Anthropologist Robert Gelston Armstrong was born in Danville, Indiana, on June 29, 1917. Extraordinarily adept at languages, he was conversant in Latin, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and both Yoruba and Idoma (the official languages of Nigeria). Armstrong studied economics at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he became interested in Marxism. He joined the Communist Party USA shortly before graduation in 1939. Armstrong then attended the University of Chicago, transferring his interest in socioeconomic theories to the study of cultural anthropology. As an active member of the campus antiwar movement, Armstrong chaired the Peace Action Committee, which sponsored the last prewar “peace strike.” In fall 1941, he began a year of field research among the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes sponsored by the University of Oklahoma. Just four months into his assignment, however, Armstrong was called up for service with the US Army. A special dispensation allowed Armstrong to defer his induction for six weeks in order to write an abbreviated thesis.

Armstrong was inducted into the US Army in early April 1942 and assigned to the military police. He then received a succession of assignments which included service as a cryptanalyst with the Signal Corps in Panama, code clerk at Camp Shelby in Mississippi, and squad leader of a line company. By early 1945, he was a staff sergeant in charge of the intelligence section of a battalion of the 99th Infantry Division in Belgium, participating in battles at the Ardennes Forest, Ludendorff Bridge, and the Ruhr Pocket.

Following the end of hostilities, Armstrong was transferred to the Office of Military Government in Berlin as a Russian translator. In September 1945, he joined the MFAA as a scientific collections specialist in Berlin. During the course of his duties, Staff Sergeant Armstrong worked alongside Monuments Man Captain Bernard D. Burks to salvage and reconstruct the collections of scientific museums and institutions in the US Zone of Occupation in Germany. Of the approximately one hundred large scientific collections in Germany, roughly forty were located in the American zone and many were significantly damaged or destroyed during the war, including specimens belonging to the Botanisches Museum (today, the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin) and the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte (Museum of Prehistory and Early History). Armstrong and Burks found scientific collections looted from locations throughout Europe, most notably the Galerie de Botanique in Paris and a large collection of insects belonging to a private collector in the Netherlands. In addition to their work to restore these specimens, scientific instruments, and research archives to the institutions from which they had been stolen, Armstrong and Burks collaborated with German museum officials to expedite the reopening of their scientific museums for international research and education.

Following his return to the United States in early 1946, Armstrong rejoined the Communist Party and reentered the University of Chicago Department of Anthropology. He began his dissertation project on economic and social organization in Africa. In 1947, he was appointed as assistant professor of anthropology at Atlanta University, where he became involved in the civil rights movement. His efforts included persuading the dean of the Episcopal Cathedral to allow African Americans to attend services and participating in a conference on the report of President Harry S. Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights. The following year, he secured a leave of absence to teach for one year at the University of Puerto Rico while conducting field research, first with anthropologist Julian Steward and later on behalf of the British Colonial Social Science Research Council. Armstrong conducted further field work in Ibadan, Nigeria, at the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research of the University College Ibadan (today, the University of Ibadan). He completed his doctoral dissertation State Formation in Negro Africa in 1952.

The onset of McCarthyism in the early 1950s targeted the faculty of a number of prominent universities. In 1953, during negotiations for a teaching position at the University of Chicago, the FBI informed the university dean of Armstrong’s past interest in communism and negotiations for that position faltered. This disappointment proved to be the first of many instances in which Armstrong was passed over for a teaching position or isolated by former colleagues who feared associating with him. Armstrong did finally receive a five-year appointment at Atlanta University, but only after two years of searching for a new position. The FBI continued its investigation into Armstrong’s past.

In an effort to escape his controversial past and build a more promising professional future, Armstrong moved to Nigeria in September 1959. There, he conducted field research on the Yoruba people of western Nigeria using a grant from the Social Science Research Council. He also served as director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ibadan from 1966 to ⁠1975 and 1976 to 1977. He never returned to the United States.

Robert Armstrong died in Nigeria on April 29, 1987. His work was held in high esteem and Och’Idoma II conferred on him the title of Odejo K’Idoma, which means “a philanthropist.”