Fred L. McGhee is a maritime archaeologist and historical anthropologist whose area of expertise encompasses the maritime dimension of the African Diaspora, particularly the role of both African and African-American slave trading in the conquest and colonization of the Americas. He is the author of The Black Crop: Slavery and Slave Trading in Nineteenth Century Texas  an interdisciplinary investigation which is the first major academic study of both African and African-American slave trading in the Lone Star State during this important time period told from an African-American perspective. He is also an urban anthropologist and is an authority on the history of African Americans in public housing and on environmental justice and community development issues. In addition to conducting historic preservation research, he has conducted grassroots organizing in conjunction with public housing resident councils, civic organizations, and various nonprofit organizations in several cities. He is a noted public housing preservationist and is a former employee of the Austin Housing Authority and served as the last Mike Hogg Fellow with the Urban Issues Program at the University of Texas at Austin.

A native of Karlsruhe in the Federal Republic of Germany, Dr. McGhee received a B.S. degree in Linguistics (with a focus on American Sign Language and German) from Northeastern University in Boston, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin. He also attended Norwich University in Vermont, Fachhochschule Karlsruhe in his hometown, and Asnuntuck Community College in his American hometown of Enfield, CT. A German and American national, Dr. McGhee is of African, European, and Indigenous ancestry.

Dr. McGhee's military career began in 1984 when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. A graduate of the Broadened Opportunity for Officer Selection and Training (BOOST) program, he was commissioned an Ensign in the Navy's Special Operations community in 1991. He is one of the first African-American naval officers to become a United States Navy Deep Sea Diver.   Dr. McGhee served on two ships in a variety of capacities (including environmental protection) and left the service in 1997 with the rank of Lieutenant. Between 2001 and 2003 Dr. McGhee served as the Chief Archaeologist for the U.S. Air Force in Hawaii, based at Hickam Air Force Base and managed nationally significant historic resources related to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, as well as sensitive Native Hawaiian sites. Hickam received the 2004 Secretary of Defense Annual Environmental Award as having the best cultural resource management program in the Department of Defense.

Dr. McGhee is affiliated with numerous professional organizations, including the Society for Applied Anthropology, the Society for Historical Archaeology, the World Archaeological Congress, the Society for Hawaiian Archaeology (Life Member), the Council of Texas Archaeologists, and the U.S. Greenbuilding Council.  He has taught anthropology, archaeology, and sociology at various colleges and universities including the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the University of Houston, Huston-Tillotson University, Hawaii Pacific University, Park University, and at Central Texas College.  In addition to his pursuits in the private sector, he is currently an adjunct associate professor of anthropology at Austin Community College.

Civically active in the Austin community, Dr. McGhee is a 2011 graduate of Leadership Austin and is the founding president of the Montopolis Neighborhood Association, among many other volunteer activities.  He currently serves on the board of the Austin History Center Association and is a member of the preservation comittee of the Heritage Society of Austin.

He is HAZWOPER certified, EPA Environmental Justice trained (by EPA Region 10 staff), Trimble GPS certified, ArcGIS certified, and is also a University of Hawai'i Scientific Diver with full NOAA reciprocity. In keeping with the practice oriented education he received as an undergraduate, he chooses to affiliate with the Society for Applied Anthropology instead of with the Register of Professional Archaeologists.