Henry Lewis Suggs is professor emeritus of American history at Clemson University. His academic concentrations are the American South, African American history, and African American journalism.
Dr. Suggs earned his Ph.D. in American history from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1976. At Virginia, he was awarded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. His first teaching assignment was at Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, North Carolina. He was WCU's first African American faculty member. An academic scholarship was later named in his honor. He taught at Howard University, Washington, D.C., for a number of years, and was selected for the faculty of Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina, in August 1983.
In the late 1980s, Dr. Suggs became the first African American to serve as an intern at the Historical Office of the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon.
In 1992 he became the second African American faculty member at Clemson to be promoted to the rank of full professor.