Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987) was a Brazilian sociologist and writer who proposed a new interpretation of Brazil and its past based upon a modern anthropological understanding of race.

Gilberto de Mello Freyre was born into a distinguished Catholic family on March 15, 1900, in Recife, Brazil. The distinctive characteristics of this northeastern region were to shape all his life and work. His father, a college professor, was a great admirer of Anglo-Saxon traditions and, after teaching English to his son, enrolled him in a Baptist missionary school run by Americans. Freyre's intelligence and conversion to Protestantism led his teachers to arrange a scholarship for in 1918 him at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

Upon graduation Freyre headed for Columbia University, where he lost his religion but acquired a new enthusiasm: cultural anthropology. Professor Franz Boas had an especially deep influence upon him, and as his disciple Freyre learned that race mixture, rather...