Acclaimed author, psychiatrist, management consultant, and noted civil rights leader Price M. Cobbs was MIT's Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Lecturer in 1983. Dr. Cobbs led a workshop entitled "Developing and Maintaining a Positive Ethnic Image or Identity in a Predominantely White Working Environment," which he alluded to in his lecture.

Dr. Cobbs was board certified as a psychiatrist in 1966. He was the son of Rosa Mashaw Cobbs, a school teacher, and Dr. Peter Price Cobbs, one of the first practicing Black physicians in Los Angeles, CA. 

Dr. Cobbs's national bestseller Black Rage (Basic Books), co-written with fellow Black psychiatrist Dr. William H. Grier, was published in 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The book was intended as “a clinical handbook spelling out in the clearest possible language certain special aspects of the psychiatric treatment of blacks.”