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Controversial Blackness: The Historical Development & Future Trajectory of African American Studies

Author(s): Martha Biondi

Source: Daedalus , Spring 2011, Vol. 140, No. 2, Race, Inequality & Culture, volume 2 (Spring 2011), pp. 226-237

Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences

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Controversial Blackness: The Historical

Development & Future Trajectory of African American Studies

Martha Biondi

MARTHA BIONDI is an Associate

Professor of African American

Studies and History at Northwest ern University. Her publications include To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar

New York City (2003) and "The Rise of the Reparations Move ment," Radical History Review (2003). Her newest book, The Black Revolution on Campus, is forthcoming from the Univer sity of California Press.

The election of Barack Obama as president of the United States has prompted some observers to assert that the nation has overcome its history of white supremacy and moved into a "post-racial" era, making continued attention to race and rac ism passe and unnecessary. Radio and television host Tavis Smiley posed this provocation to his guests in a 2009 radio special on the fortieth an niversary of African American studies in Ameri can colleges and universities. He asked, is African American studies still necessary in the age of Oba ma? Eddie Glaude, Elizabeth Alexander, Greg Carr, and Tricia Rose - chairs of African Ameri

can studies departments at, respectively, Prince ton University, Yale University, Howard Univer sity, and Brown University1 - each articulated important themes in the intellectual tradition of African American studies. Thus, their discus sion is a useful lens through which to explore key themes in the historical development and future trajectory of the field.

Eddie Glaude and Greg Carr captured two truths about the history of African American studies. Glaude noted its origin in black student activism of the 1960s. The upsurge of campus activism in 1968 and 1969 was a critical component of the broader black freedom struggle. In contrast to the media-driven notion that Black Power was merely a slogan lacking concrete application, black col lege students successfully turned the concept into a genuine social movement. On some campuses,

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the students emphasized the black col lege graduate's responsibility to serve black communities. They saw black studies as a means of generating leaders for, and sharing intellectual resources with, neighboring black communities. Even more, they envisioned black stud ies as a means of training black students to one day return to, and help enact the self-determination of, their communi ties. But the black student movement

also aimed to affect campus politics. On most campuses, the push for curricu lar transformation - alongside the fights for open admissions, affirmative action, black cultural centers, and black faculty, coaches, and advisers - was part of an in tentional effort to redefine the terms of

integration: away from assimilation into a Eurocentric institution and toward the

restructuring of that institution and its mission. Students won many victories and launched major changes in campus culture, opportunity structures, and in tellectual production, notwithstanding continued resistance and challenges.

Greg Carr offers a more critical inter pretation of this history. African Ameri can studies, he notes, was "a concession" that began as "crisis management."2 Today, it bears remembering that in 1969, the majority of white academics and ad ministrators doubted the scholarly grav itas of African American studies and

viewed black studies as a means to ap pease student discontent. African Amer ican studies began its modern career in a context of insurgency and turmoil, and its advocates continually had to fight for resources and support. Carr argues that the real history of African American stud ies, as a serious, respected endeavor, lies in historically black colleges and univer sities (HBCUs) and other black-controlled spaces, such as Atlanta's Institute of the Black World, an activist think tank of the

1970s. Indeed, HBCUs employed the schol

ars who wrote pioneering studies of black life, namely, giants such as intel lectual leader W.E.B. Du Bois, political scientist Ralph Bunche, sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, and philosopher and educator Alain Locke. This intellectual

tradition is at the heart of the black stud

ies project. Moreover, Carter G. Wood son's Association for the Study of Afri can American Life and History, founded in 1915, exemplifies the long history and autonomy of Africana intellectual life.

Still, this genealogy is contradictory and complex. A tidal wave of protest swept through HBCUs in the 1960s and 1970s. The outcry was inspired by a range of student grievances, most no tably, criticism of white financial and administrative control, excessive regula tion of student life, excessive discipline, inferior facilities and faculty, and out moded or Eurocentric curricula. "With

out question, the Black Power-Black Consciousness movement has been felt

in the South," wrote political scientist and activist Charles Hamilton, formerly a professor at Tuskegee Institute (now University); its biggest manifestation was the quest for a "Black University,"3 he said. Hamilton first articulated the

concept of a black university in a 1967 speech on "The Place of the Black Col lege in the Human Rights Struggle." He called on black colleges to reject the white middle-class character imposed on them by white funders and to re define their missions to provide great er aid and assistance to black communi

ties. Later published in the Negro Digest, Hamilton's article spawned a yearly tra dition of devoting an entire issue of the Negro Digest (later the Black World) to the idea of a black university.

According to Hamilton, the mission of the black university was to develop a dis tinctive black ethos; to prepare students

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The Historical

Development & Future

Trajectory of African American

Studies

to help solve problems in poor black com munities; and to offer a new curriculum, one that was relevant to contemporary needs but that also required a course in ancient African civilizations. "I am talk

ing modernization," Hamilton asserted. "I propose a black college that would deliberately strive to inculcate a sense of racial pride and anger and concern in its students." The ideas in his essay illus trate the emerging view that the black intelligentsia was a relatively untapped and potentially radical leadership re source for the black liberation move

ment. "We need," Hamilton declared, "militant leadership which the church is not providing, unions are not provid ing and liberal groups are not providing. ... I propose a black college that would be a felt, dominant force in the community in which it exists. A college which would use its accumulated intellectual knowl

edge and economic resources to bring about desired changes in race relations in the community." It would dispense with "irrelevant PhDs," he wrote, and "recruit freedom fighters and graduate freedom fighters."4

Given that schools such as Howard

and the Atlanta University Center had been home to pioneers in black scholar ship, what provoked the charge of Euro centrism? Darwin T. Turner, dean of the

graduate school at North Carolina Agri cultural and Technical State University, argued that the academic turn away from blackness emerged from the optimism spawned by early legal decisions support ing desegregation, the defeat of Fascism, and postwar affluence. Political repres sion, too, most likely was a factor. "The tendency for black educators to neglect materials related to Afro-American her

itage intensified, I believe, during the early 1950s," Turner wrote. The many "indications of opening doors persuaded many blacks to discourage any education

which emphasized the existence of Afro Americans as a body separate from the rest of America." As a result, "studies of

Afro-American history, literature, sociol ogy, economics, and politics were stuffed into the traditional surveys, which were already so overcrowded that important materials must be omitted." He felt that

"integrated surveys" were necessary but insufficient "to provide Afro-Americans with the necessary understanding of their culture."5

Indeed, in 1968, several members of Howard's board of trustees "were

shocked that courses in Black history, jazz and literature were not presently offered. 'We had many of these things in the 1930s' commented one member."6 Students there had taken over a build

ing to press for a department of Afri can American studies. They pressured Howard to identify itself as a black uni versity and adopt an explicit mission of serving local black communities.

Black nationalist thought and action in this period were also directed toward transforming black education on white campuses. Much of the impetus to de velop black studies came from exposure to the freedom schools of the Southern

(and Northern) civil rights movement. Activists had come to view the entire

nation's educational system as a contest ed and profoundly significant space: a means of racial domination, on the one hand, or a path to black empowerment on the other. Thus, as Greg Carr sug gests, administrators may have viewed the introduction of black studies courses

as "crisis management," but for students, the turn toward black studies reflected a

genuine development in their approach to advancing the cause of black liberation.

Strikingly, this huge achievement of the black power movement immediately faced a crisis. With the students gone, who would design and develop this new,

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and quite extensive, national black stud ies infrastructure? In 1970, less than 1 per cent of those with a Ph.D. in the United

States were black, and most of these schol

ars were over age fifty-five.7 In a further dilemma, quite a few traditionally trained specialists in African American subjects initially opposed the creation of African American studies as an autonomous unit, or were reluctant to risk their careers on an

untested experiment. Many young black scholars probably questioned whether black studies would even last and may have viewed launching a career in the field as too risky. On this reluctance from black scholars, sociologist St. Clair Drake observed, "[T]hey want the security and prestige of being in a traditional depart ment. Black Studies might be a fad, and they'd be left out in the cold."8 At times, non-academics filled faculty positions; on occasion, immigrant scholars with little connection to the students' politi cal vision filled positions, generating new tensions and many local debates over the field's responsibility and mission.

A view quickly took root among many elite academics that creating African American studies programs was smarter than creating departments: the former, by being formally affiliated with other departments, stood a better chance of attracting top scholars. Yet for all the scorn/neglect/resistance heaped on them, departments have defied the recurring predictions of their demise. Most stu dent-founders preferred departmental status, owing to the department's greater status and independence or, as the stu dents would have put it, its autonomy and control. The more recent develop ment of doctoral programs in African American studies has relied on depart mental structures, even inducing Yale to convert its program - once held up as the national exemplar - to a department. Today, African American studies attracts

leading scholars, trains graduate students, and produces influential research, even though faculty still face occasions when they must explain or defend its existence.

The black studies movement has been

marked by intense debates over its aca demic character. During and after the years of its emergence, black studies was criticized, internally and externally, on two interrelated grounds: that it lacked curricular coherence and that, by not having a single methodology, it failed to meet the definition of a discipline. As a result, many educators in the early black studies movement pursued a two-pronged quest for a standardized curriculum, on the one hand, and an original, authorita tive methodology on the other. At the same time, many scholars in the black studies movement questioned whether either of these pursuits was desirable or even attainable. In other words, while some scholars have insisted that African American studies must devise its own

unique research methodology, others contend that as a multidiscipline, or interdisciplinary discipline, its strength lies in incorporating multiple, diverse methodologies. In a similar vein, while some have argued for a standardized curriculum, others argue that higher education is better served by dynamism and innovation. I argue that the disci pline's ultimate acceptance in academe (to the extent that it has gained accep tance) has come from the production of influential scholarship and research and the development of new conceptual ap proaches that have influenced other dis ciplines. Pioneering scholarship and in fluential intellectual innovations, rather

than standardized pedagogy or method ology, have been the route to influence in American intellectual life.

A tension between authority and free dom animates these debates. As late as

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The Historical

Development & Future

Trajectory of African American

Studies

2000, an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education reinforced the idea that multi

ple perspectives and methodologies had retarded the progress of African Amer ican studies. The author of an essay on the state of the field criticized the diverse character of African American studies courses at different universities: "The

Ohio State class is chronological with a literary bent," she wrote. "Duke's take: cultural studies. The Penn course filters

everything through a W.E.B. Du Bois lens, and N.Y.U. combines pan-African ism with urban studies." Of course, this

sampling reflects the range one would find in the departments of history, soci ology, or English at these same univer sities. But the author stresses disarray. "There's a reason 30 years after the disci pline developed that people still wonder whether the black-studies curriculum

represents a coherent subject or a smor gasbord," she concludes. In this view, the discipline's strengths - "eclectic, expansive, experimental curricula" - are also its weaknesses.9

James B. Stewart, a former president of the National Council of Black Studies, shares this anxiety about disarray. In his view, "We do everything - the diaspora, sex, history, language, economics, race." Yet he seems oblivious to the fact that each of these areas has been vital terrain for research innovation. "We don't have

a paradigm," he laments. "That is why we don't make progress." If achieving this unified paradigm is the measure of progress, then Stewart, judging forty years of African American studies, sees none. Longtime black studies educator Abdul Alkalimat echoes Stewart's view that "standardization means the disci pline exists."10 Arthur Lewin, a profes sor of black and Hispanic studies at Baruch College, agrees that black stud ies lacks "a coherently stated rationale," a consequence, in his view, of having

"burst full-blown upon the academic scene a generation ago." He envisions a "grand theory" that would unify the views of black nationalists and "inclu sionists" as well as benefit from the in

sights of Afrocentrism while moving beyond its ethnocentrism.11

Scholars and teachers influenced by Afrocentricity have been among the most consistent advocates of the need to cre

ate a distinctive methodology. For Tem ple University scholar Molefi Asante, Afrocentricity "is the only way you can approach African American Studies" because it puts ancient African knowl edge systems at the center of analysis.12 For Greg Carr of Howard University, the challenge is to draw on "deep Africana thought," the traditions of "classical and medieval Africa," for guidance in enact ing positive social change for African descendants. A key mission of African American studies, he believes, should be to reconnect "narratives of African

identity to the contemporary era." His department taps "into the long genealo gy of Africana experiences" in order to assess how to improve the world. Carr distinguishes this mission from the mis sion of African American studies on

other campuses. "We're not trying to explain blackness for white people" or looking at "our contributions to Amer ican society." Rather, the approach at Howard is "an extension of the long arc of Africana intellectual work."^ The

inclination to look for insights in the precolonial African past, rejecting Euro pean modernity and thereby hoping to escape or resolve the legacies of colonial ism and enslavement, is fundamental to

the approach that leading architects of Afrocentricity have taken. Indeed, for Ron Karenga, author of an early black studies textbook and the founder of

Kwanzaa, "the fundamental point of departure for African American Studies

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or Black Studies is an ongoing dialogue with African culture. That is, continuous ly asking it questions and seeking from it answers to the fundamental questions of humankind."14

Whether proponents of Afrocentricity or a different approach, most scholars in African American studies reject the effort to impose a single methodology, seeing it as unrealistic and stifling. Rhett Jones, cofounder and longtime chair of the de partment of Africana studies at Brown University, was an early critic of the "one size fits all" approach to the discipline. "In its early years, Black studies wasted considerable human, intellectual, and material resources in battles over finding the master plan for the study of Black people," he argues. Similarly, he feels that "much energy was also wasted on responding to the charge by America's Eurocentric, racist disciplines that Black Studies had no methodology of its own. Neither did the Eurocentrists. And they still don't." He points out, "Historians are no more agreed on methodology or theory than are anthropologists... soci ologists or philosophers."15 In contrast to those who see pluralism in black stud ies as a weakness, Jones believes that this

element was crucial to the development and staying power of the field. Plural ism was "a credit to black studies," he observes, as "its founders realized there

could be no master plan as to how the dis cipline should serve black Americans."16 Historian Francille Rusan Wilson simi

larly resists the effort to impose a single approach. "There's not one way to be black or to study black people," she as serts. "The discipline is quite alive," in her view, "and the differences indicate

that."17 Political scientist Floyd Hayes concurs, stating, "One must ask whether there should be conformity to a model curriculum and a single theoretical or ideological orientation in African Amer

ican Studies." Moreover, Hayes believes it is important to cultivate "a more flexi ble and innovative atmosphere" so that "African American Studies can continue

to grow and develop. "l8 Scholars have endeavored to move be

yond the notion that African American studies was merely "additive knowledge" by emphasizing that it constitutes a pro found critique of the major disciplines and seeks to transform intellectual life

generally in the Western academy. For Eddie Glaude, African American stud ies is about "pushing the boundaries of knowledge production" and influenc ing fields of study across the university. African American studies at its best, in

Glaude's view, is "challenging the ways we know the world." Elizabeth Alexan

der shares this emphasis on humanistic transformation and regards African American studies as an essential compo nent of "being fully educated." Tricia Rose's approach to the question of the field's focus is in many respects exem plary of dominant trends. She expresses agreement with Greg Carr that an im portant African intellectual tradition preceded European colonial contact, but in her view, scholars must confront the

transformations wrought by processes of enslavement and colonialism. "We are in

the west, in the so-called New World," she contends, and should "examine the circumstances we are in, examine the hybridities that have emerged from it."19

The early black studies movement co incided with major anticolonial strug gles in Angola, Mozambique, and Guin ea-Bissau ; struggles against white settler regimes in southern Africa; and a widen ing African solidarity movement among black American radicals. According to (pioneering scholar of the African dias pora) St. Clair Drake, "[T]he country was deeply mired in the Vietnam War

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The Historical

Development & Future

Trajectory of African American

Studies

but many black youth were much more interested in how the war against Portu gal was going in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau than in the war in

Vietnam." In his view, it was critical to understand that the "modern Black Studies

movement emerged within this international

context."10 Still, a global consciousness in black studies was not simply a prod uct of postwar solidarity struggles. It has shaped black historical writing ever since its origins in the nineteenth century. Black historiography has been both invested in rewriting the Western distortion of Afri can peoples and societies and keenly in terested in erecting a powerful counter discourse to the statelessness, dispersal, subjugation, and dehumanization of Afri cans in diaspora. W.E.B. Du Bois is most famously associated with this effort, but its practitioners are numerous.21

Although the black studies movement is thought of as resolutely U.S.-based, many of its early scholars tried to per suade universities and funders to connect

formally the study of continental Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. There was widespread agreement that the typical American curriculum had "ignored the African heritage of African Americans, characterizing them as having begun their existence in North America as a tabula

rasa - blank slates to be imprinted with Euro-American Culture." This was a dif

ficult battle in part because African stud ies had been programmatically estab lished after World War II as a result of

Cold War pressures to develop knowl edge about an area of the world that the

United States viewed as part of Soviet strategic designs. These programs, in the words of scholar Robert L. Harris, "had

no real link to Black people in the New World." African studies "became wed

ded to a modernization theory that mea sured African societies by Western stan dards. African history, culture and poli

tics were explored more within the con text of the colonial powers than with any attention to African cultural continuities

in the Western hemisphere." Black Amer ican intellectuals had long resisted this "compartmentalization of knowledge about Black people."22

Administrators initially sought to lim it the scope of African American studies to the United States, but early efforts to include Africa as well as the diaspora in black studies departments and profes sional organizations ultimately bore fruit. After four decades, it has become

increasingly common to encounter de partments of African and African Amer ican studies or departments of Africana studies, which explicitly take Africa, the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin

America as their subject. Campuses as diverse as the University of Illinois, Dart mouth College, the University of Min nesota, Duke University, Harvard Uni versity, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Kansas, Stanford Uni versity the University of Texas, and Ari zona State University join together Afri can and African American studies. Of

course, the limitations of budgets and faculty size may interfere with fully real izing the promise of interdisciplinary, truly global coverage. But the crucial point is that the black studies movement ultimately achieved a degree of success in undoing the colonialist compartmen talization of research and knowledge that had insisted on severing African studies from African American studies.

At various junctures in its forty-year history, African American studies has been steeped in a discourse of crisis. In the 1970s, many of the discipline's units were marked by declining course enroll ments, budget cuts, part-time faculty, and continued questioning of their legit imacy and scholarly rigor. The rise of

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black women's studies in the 1980s pro vided an extremely significant counter weight to these trends and proved criti cal to re-visioning the field. An outpour ing of scholarship and literature by and about black women helped revitalize African American studies - and raise its

stature. In many respects, this develop ment is ironic, given the patriarchal char acter of the early black studies movement. Male scholars dominated leadership of the field and often resisted research and

pedagogy on gender and sexuality, cast ing these topics as beyond the boundaries of black studies. But as historian Darlene

Clark Hine noted in 1990, after summa rizing a body of pioneering black femi nist scholarship, "[T]he study of black women is the current frontier in black

studies. "23 In more recent years, the rise of black queer studies has further pushed African American studies to confront

the homophobic and hetero-normative assumptions that shaped early pedagogy and scholarship in the field. According to Tricia Rose, on the discipline's fortieth anniversary, "[G]ender, class and sex uality are more and more a part of the field."24 The study of intraracial divisions - along various axes - has assumed a prominent place in African American studies.

Yet in this era of escalating income in equality, mass incarceration, permanent unemployment, and global economic restructuring, many African American studies programs and/or scholars main tain a commitment to using scholarship and the resources of the academy to ad dress the multiple crises facing black com munities. Social conditions are dire for

large segments of the African American population, as the middle class shrinks, HIV/AIDS incidence soars, jobs disap pear, and the number of families living in poverty increases. The left-wing, or progressive, tradition in black studies

has been most visible in curricula that

seek to join and engage traditions of so cial resistance and critique. Individuals such as sociologist and radio host Michael Eric Dyson and scholar and civil rights activist Cornel West make such inter

ventions to a mass media audience, but more typical are the less well-known black studies scholars and teachers who

are activists in their local communities

on issues ranging from immigration to health care, employment, education, and housing. Black studies, along with other interdisciplinary fields, has created lead ers in producing scholarship and engag ing in critical social analysis on issues ranging from the rise of neoliberalism to the development of the United States as a mass prison society with all its atten dant social, economic, cultural, and po litical implications.25

^Returning to Tavis Smiley's question: what is the role of African American stud

ies in the age of Obama? Princeton's Eddie Glaude argues that African Ameri can studies teaches "the skills to under

stand race and racism," which in many respects is more urgent than ever as we face a post-racial discourse that refuses to acknowledge racism and racists. As Elizabeth Alexander puts it, the goal is not to be post-racial, but post-racist. Tri cia Rose believes the independent mis sion of African American studies remains essential because "most academic knowl

edge in the west has not been race neu tral." The disciplines came "into forma tion inside ideological moments when white supremacy was profoundly dom inant, " and this formation is relatively recent.26 But has the mission of African

American studies changed in other ways? One change, commented on by many

longtime professors in the field, concerns a shift in the composition of students tak ing black studies courses, from almost ex

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The Historical

Development & Future

Trajectory of African American

Studies

clusively black in the early days to mul tiracial in later years. Rhett Jones cites student diversity as the most striking difference from 1969: "In the early years our classes were almost entirely black. Now we know we will find a rainbow of

Latino, Asian American, white and black students in our Afro-American Studies

courses."27 According to Elizabeth Alex ander, 30 percent of students at Yale are of color. "What we do," in African Amer ican studies, she insists, "is for all of our

students."2,8 This shift is widely celebrat ed as a sign of the broad appeal of Afri can American studies and the fact that

a diverse group of students appreciates its centrality to a well-rounded liberal arts education. Yet this development also illustrates the shift away from the original Black Nationalist intent by some advocates of black studies - that is, to halt "the mis-education of the Negro" and instill black collegians with a strong racial consciousness. As the black liber

ation movement waned, the ambitious visions of the more radical Afro-Amer

ican studies programs also waned, or were crushed, depending on the campus. And as employment prospects soured in the 1970s, black students pursued an agenda in higher education more close ly tied to acquiring job skills and profes sional mobility. According to a business major at George Washington University at the time, "Black students are taking accounting instead of black history as a matter of survival. They're asking 'what can you do with Black Studies?'"29

In more recent years, black students have faced a series of obstacles in their

efforts to attend college. Forty years ago, student activists asserted a right to edu cation and not only won open admissions and affirmative action but also increased

financial aid. Many of these reforms have been repealed outright or dramatically weakened. The early black studies move

ment was a vibrant development in both urban, working-class public institutions and elite research universities. This dual

presence survives, but as the incorpora tion of African American studies by elite institutions coincides with the defend

ing of public institutions and the sharp rise in economic inequality in the United States, a widening chasm has formed between these locations, and distanced them from their shared histories. These

developments have led some commu nity-based black studies programs or veterans to question the contemporary direction of the field. The rise to public prominence of black studies scholars at Ivy League institutions likely fuels this feeling of estrangement. Olive Harvey College, a working-class public institu tion based on the South Side of Chica

go, has been hosting an annual African American Studies Conference since 1977.

On its thirteenth anniversary, confer ence convener Armstead Allen expressed concern that the new wave of black stud

ies proponents had strayed too far from the founding mission. "From its incep tion, black studies has sought tangible, not just theoretical, connections to the everyday concerns of the African-Amer ican community," he said, contending that the field had moved in less relevant

academic directions.30

The relationship between African American studies and Latina/o, Asian American, and other ethnic studies is increasingly broached in this era of rap idly changing demographics and new racial discourses and configurations. On the one hand, African American studies

is respected as a pioneer and looked to as a model of interdisciplinarity as well as institutional resourcefulness and

longevity. As Rhett Jones rightly notes, "Ideas about multiculturalism, plural ism, and diversity are now central ele ments in higher education because of

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black studies' many successes. Cynics and conservatives predicted that Afri cana studies would be a fad, but it has

instead proved to be a strong and endur ing part of higher education, shaping scholarship, teaching, and service." In addition, "African American studies serves as the model for ethnic studies, women's studies, Native-American stud ies, Latino studies and Asian-American studies."31 This modeling happened quickly on many campuses in Califor nia, where, in the late 1960s, radicalized Asian American and Mexican American students demanded curricular inclusion

and recognition, and in New York City, where Puerto Rican students protested alongside African Americans in the 1969 uprisings that swept the City University of New York.

But the push for Latino/a, Asian Amer ican, and comparative ethnic studies came later in other parts of the country. In some instances, budgetary pressures and the seeming logic of the white/non-white divide have induced administrators to

collapse heretofore independent black studies programs into umbrella ethnic studies units, introducing new anxieties into a discipline whose resources and stature, to the extent that it has them, have come relatively recently. In any event, African American studies will face many challenges and dilemmas as it adapts to a new intellectual/political/ demographic landscape. For example,

Muslims in the United States have been

targets of many forms of racial profiling in the years since the attacks of Septem ber 11, 2001, politicizing a new Muslim generation that has begun to assert itself on college campuses. These students are demanding a voice and place among eth nic studies and student-of-color organi zations. Will African American studies

approach this development as an oppor tunity to cultivate solidarity and sharpen and update its analysis of racism in the United States? Or will it ignore such concerns in favor of an exclusive focus

on the culture, struggles, and dilemmas of African Americans?

Arguably the most exciting develop ment for African American studies in the

twenty-first century is the expansion of doctoral programs. The opportunity to train young scholars can only add to the growth, rigor, and institutional stature of the field. But ensuring the success of this development will necessitate further investments in order to enable depart ments to provide the additional mentor ing and teaching graduate education re quires. After forty years, it is now clear that African American studies has been

one of a series of new departures in the academy that have dramatically altered the narrow, Western-oriented curricu lum and culture of the American uni

versity. Perhaps a fuller appreciation of what has been accomplished can inspire hope in the possibilities that lie ahead.

ENDNOTES

1 "40th Anniversary of African American Studies in Academia," The Tavis Smiley Show, Pub lic Radio International, original airdate September 18, 2009, http ://thetavissmileyshow ,com/iooio8_index.html.

2 Ibid.

3 Charles V. Hamilton, "They Demand Relevance: Black Students Protest, 1968 -1969" (unpublished manuscript, c. 1971), 70; copy in author's possession.

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The Historical

Development & Future

Trajectory of African American

Studies

4 Charles Hamilton, "The Place of the Black College in the Human Rights Struggle," Negro Digest 16 (11) (September 1967): 6 - 7.

5 Darwin T. Turner, "The Center for African Afro-American Studies at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, "Journal of Negro Education 39 (3) (Summer 1970): 221-222.

6 The (Howard) Hilltop, April 26,1968.

7 Nathan Huggins, Afro-American Studies: A Report to the Ford Foundation (New York: Ford Foundation, 1985), xx.

8 Steven V. Roberts, "Black Studies Aim to Change Things," The New York Times, May 15,1969.

9 Alison Schneider, "Black Studies 101: Introductory Courses Reflect a Field Still Defin ing Itself," The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 19, 2000.

10 Ibid.

11 Arthur Lewin, "Towards a Grand Theory of Black Studies: An Attempt to Discern the Dynamics and the Direction of the Discipline," Western Journal of Black Studies 25 (2) (Summer 2001): 76.

12 Mary-Christine Philip, "Of Black Studies: Pondering Strategies for the Future," Black Issues in Higher Education, December 29,1994.

"40th Anniversary of African American Studies in Academia," The Tavis Smiley Show.

14 Maulana Karenga, "Black Studies: A Critical Reassessment," Race and Reason 4 (1997 - 1998): 41.

15 Rhett Jones, "Black Studies Failures and 'First Negroes,'" Black Issues in Higher Education, October 20,1994.

1 6 Rhett Jones, "The Lasting Contributions of African American Studies," Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 6 (Winter 1994-1995): 92.

*7 Schneider, "Black Studies 101."

18 Floyd V. Hayes, "Preface to Instructors," in Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African American Studies, ed. Floyd V. Hayes (San Diego, Calif.: Collegiate Press, 2000), xxxvi.

19 "40th Anniversary of African American Studies in Academia," The Tavis Smiley Show.

20 St. Clair Drake, "Black Studies and Global Perspectives: An Essay," Journal of Negro Edu cation 53 (3) (Summer 1984): 231.

21 A global focus had long characterized black history writing. See Robin Kelley, '"But a Local Phase of a World Problem': Black History's Global Vision, 1883 -1950" The Journal of American History 86 (3) (1999).

22 Robert L. Harris, "The Intellectual and Institutional Development of Africana Studies," in Black Studies in the United States: Three Essays, ed. Robert Hine, Robert L. Harris, Jr., and Nellie McKay (New York: Ford Foundation, 1990; repr., Inclusive Scholarship, 2009), 95 - 94,

23 Darlene Clark Hine, "Black Studies: An Overview," in Black Studies in the United States, ed. Hine, Harris, and McKay, 23 - 24.

24 "40th Anniversary of African American Studies in Academia," The Tavis Smiley Show.

25 See, for example, Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2010); and David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism (New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2008).

26 "40th Anniversary of African American Studies in Academia." The Tavis Smiley Show.

2? Jones, "The Lasting Contributions of African American Studies," 92.

Dcedalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

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"40th Anniversary of African American Studies in Academia," The Tavis Smiley Show.

29 Art Harris, "Black Studies Enrollment Shows Dramatic Decline," The Washington Post, November 11,1979.

3° Salim Muwakkil, "After 20 Years, New Respect for Black Studies," In These Times, May 16 - 22,1990.

31 Jones, "The Lasting Contributions of African American Studies," 92.

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