Celebrating 60 Years: African Studies at Howard University

from the library of congress in washington dc so good morning good morning everybody on on behalf of the librarian of congress who could not be with us today i would like to welcome you all to the library of congress i'm mary jane deeb chief of the african and middle eastern division and i'm delighted to see so many of you who have worked with us over the years and who are here tonight today so we are here in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the program of african studies at howard university the first institution in the united states to offer a doctorate degree in the field of african studies historical ties and cooperative undertakings between africanist scholars and researchers at howard university and the library of congress have a long-standing tradition for decades howard university african scholars and researchers have acknowledged the library of congress as one of the major and richest repositories for the study of africa it is not worthy that in 1958 eve franklin frazier professor of sociology and director of the program of african studies at howard and dr dorothy wesley porter eminent curator and supervisor of the university's prestigious moorlands spingarn collection were instrumental in advocacy efforts and planning for quote a national center to acquire catalogue and preserve library and research materials documenting the history and cultures of the african continent in 1916 the african section was formally established here at the library of congress the section continues to play a vital role in the library's acquisition program offer offers expert reference and bibliographic services to congress and to an international community of researchers and maintains liaison with professional associations and research and teaching institutions all over the united states and around the world as well the section is well known for its bibliographic program which includes more than 40 bibliographic guides designed to help researchers access the library africana collections more effectively a further step in augmenting the growth of the library's africana collections was the establishment in nairobi kenya in 1966 of a regional center with responsibility for acquiring current publications in eastern and southern africa cultural and scholarly programs and other outreach activities have long been part of the african sections agenda in 2008 for example both the department of african and african studies and the ralph bunch international affairs center at howard university partnered with the library's african section in sponsoring a symposium commemorating the 50th anniversary of things fall apart one of the most important literary works to come of africa by the great literary scholar chinua achebe and we currently have an ongoing program called conversations with african poets and writers that uh is entering its third year now uh we're working with the africa society of the national summit on africa and with the poetry center here and we have six speakers in the three in the fall and three in the spring and i'd like to invite you to come and attend those those there are readings interviews and they go all over the sweep of african literature the libraries africana collections provides an extraordinary intellectual record for the study of both the historical and contemporary present-day african nations holdings cover virtually every major field of study in the social sciences and the humanities and include an invaluable body of primary source materials in many diverse formats and languages including materials in african vernacular languages we have a very significant collection in the vernacular um it is important to note that howard university africanist scholars have extended invaluable assistance to specialists in the african section facilitating a number of professional networks with government officials librarians and publishers in the africa region to support the library's acquisition program additionally howard scholars have provided expertise to improve bibliographic control of many of our african language resources at the initiative of dr robert edgar new graduate students in howard's african studies program have met with african section specialists each semester for more than a decade for briefings on library research on africa related topics from these briefings the african section has benefited greatly from the support of a number of student volunteer volunteers and interns who have witnessed the work of the african section specialists in efforts to promote bibliographic control preservation and accessibility of the treasures and resources of the library's africana collections today the african section salutes howard university's department of african studies and it's six decades of scholarly achievements we actually have representative samples of these works from howard university scholars by howard university scholars who are there for you to look at later if you wish we also take this opportunity to say thank you for the continuing institutional support and cooperation that you have provided to advance the library of congress african sections and its programs and to promote scholarly research on africa now the next speaker is dr mb sham and before i introduce him i'd like to make to thank him and uh dr angel batiste a howard graduate and a pillar of african studies here at the library together dr cham and dr batista organize and made possible the event today and now let me introduce very briefly dr cham he is a professor and chair of the department of african studies at howard university dr cham has received numerous awards from howard university including the howard university fund for academic excellence travel award he has also served as a jury member for prestigious review panels and awards both within and outside howard university these include the paul robinson film awards prize pieces film and video competition and the annual rosebud awards and competition dr cham has also presided on the jury on short film competition of the 16th um fest paco of ugadugo in burkina faso 1999 and the future films and video features jury from in southern africa film festival harare zimbabwe 1998 and he has served as a consultant to unesco and the world bank so dr cham i pass on the baton to you good morning thank you uh for those kind words dr deeb i bring you greetings from howard university especially from our deans the inverligation interim dean college of arts and sciences and dean gary harris who is also the interim dean of the graduate school who were not able to be here with us today but they do send their warm greetings to all of you thank you dr deeb for hosting this particular event here we're very honored and i thank you very much angel for taking the initiative actually to propose that in support of the series of events that we've been putting up the whole year that we also have a session here at the library of congress giving the important role historically that as dr deep has just pointed out howard scholars have played in enabling developing the collection here at the library of congress actually i was browsing through rayford logan's uh prodigious history of howard uh just recently and uh he relates um some kind of uh an inside joke or inside anecdote at howard at the time where howard scholars had such a massive thick and influential presence in um one of the federal government agencies i mean howard scholars were going there constantly they were being called upon constantly to go and give lectures related to africa to the diaspora and all of those other issues there that uh logan says that you know howard scholars started calling that particular department of the u.s government an extension department of howard university now i think it would be hyperbolic or an exaggeration to say that you know the africa section here is an extension of howard university but uh i think that metaphor really captures the sort of um umbilical ties you know that have brought together howard university and the africa section here and as dr div has also pointed out we are very proud that some of our alumni have been very uh much a presence in the africa section of the african middle eastern division here at the library of congress i can go through the names there is angel british here uh not here is fantasy yeah he's probably on his way here i think laverne also so exactly so you know uh well i guess for our purpose today we can say that it's an extension of an extension department of house university this is a very exciting moment for us celebrating 60 years of the graduate program in african studies at howard university but i think if you take a long view you'll see that the formal establishment of the graduate program in 1953 was really a step to institutionalize to formalize what has always uh been a part in fact uh the dna of of of howard university since its inception the study of africa and uh people of african descent uh throughout the world so um excuse me we are glad that um we're able to be here today to celebrate uh this moment here and uh to also take pride in the fact that um uh if you look at institutions all around the world uh i think one can i mean howard stands out not just in terms of being a pioneer in uh the field but also in terms of uh institutionalizing and consistently over the years supporting the study of uh africa and and and african diaspora uh institutionally and um it is um one of those institutions that don't depend on uh outside funding grants to maintain these programs as uh is the case in many other universities but these are hard institutional monies that have been invested in the study and promotion of this particular area of study of discipline and we're very proud to be here to celebrate that uh uh particular moment uh 60 years of this uh of of of this uh institution so i want to thank all of you for coming and supporting us and uh also to thank my colleagues who responded enthusiastically when we reached out to them to uh be part of this um uh moment here and dr batis will be introducing them in more detail in a moment so i want to thank all of you again and uh welcome you on behalf of all the authorities at howard university and again thank you dr dave for hosting us here we're very delighted thank you i too welcome all of you to the library of congress as an alumni of the howard university department of african studies i am extremely pleased to salute the department in celebrating a momentous milestone six decades of training african specialists and elevating african studies scholarship my sincere apprecia appreciation goes to our distinguished faculty uh dr yang dr carr dr dotson and dr edgar i'd like to note that this program is being webcast and it will be accessible to an international audience on the african and middle eastern division website it will also be preserved in the library's digital africana collections we will be having a break at about 11 15 at this point and i urge all of you to take a look at the scholarship that has been produced by the faculty of howard university the africanist faculty and we will also take that time to have coffee and tea african studies at howard is rooted in the pan-african consciousness of an impressive list of prominent howard university faculty including dr w.e.b dubois dr carter g whitson and dr charles wesley the acknowledged architect of the field of african studies adding to this list we include professors ralph bunche e franklin frazier alain locke kelly miller rayford logan frank snowden john hope franklin chancellor williams lorenzo turner dow joseph harris joseph applegate and importantly the renowned bibliographer dr dorothy wesley porter the establishment of the african studies and research program at howard in 1953 and the launching of the nation's first doctoral program in african studies in 1969 symbolically represents the vision and the relentless efforts of these pioneer africanist scholars today the howard university department of african studies offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees and african courses are dispersed throughout the curriculum of the university's discipline based and professional degree programs before we lead into our discussion i would like to introduce our guest panelists who will provide a broader insight into the intellectual tradition of african studies at howard university dr greg carr is the associate professor of africana studies and chair of afro-american studies at howard university an adjunct faculty at the howard university school of law the school district of philadelphia's first resident scholar on race and culture dr carr led a team of academics and educators in the design of the curriculum for philadelphia's mandatory high school african-american history course dr carr is the first vice president of the association for the study of classical african civilization he is co-editor of the association for the study of classical african civilizations multi-volume african world history project dr carr here dr dotson to my right is the director of the moreland spingarn research center in howard university's libraries a national leader in the movement to preserve african american history he was formerly chief of the new york public library's schomburg center for research in black culture the world's leading repository for materials on black cultural life dr dodson served as chair of the federal steering committee for the african burial ground and was a member of the pres president's commission on the national museum of african american history and culture he also serves on the scientific and technical committee of the unesco slave route project and dr robert edgar dr robert edgar is the professor of african studies is a professor of african studies at howard university his areas of teaching and research include african history southern african history african religions and political movements and social science research methods he has served as visiting faculty at universities in the united states and in lesotho and has received numerous awards including the howard university faculty research award and a three-year grant from the national historical publications and records commission for a documentary editing project on african-american historical linkages with south africa from 1890 to 1965. and last but not least dr sulaiman suleiman yang is professor of african studies at howard university from 1986 through 1993 dr yang served as the chair of the department of african studies he has served as deputy ambassador of the republic of gambia to saudi arabia and seven other north african and middle eastern countries dr yang was the founding editor of the american journal of islamic studies now known as the american journal of islamic social sciences he was also the president of the association of muslim social scientists dr yang has served as consultant to several national and international agencies and on the boards of the african studies association the american council for the study of islamic societies and the american islamic heritage museum he was an advising scholar for the award-winning pbs broadcast documentaries muhammad legacy of a prophet and prince among slaves produced by unity productions foundation our discussion format today what sorry i'm sorry i'm anxious to get to our speeches our speakers our discussion format today will include two sessions our first session will be approximately an hour and i'll be asking our guest panelists to try to limit their presentations to 20 minutes as a howard diet i know that can be a bit difficult but if we could try to limit the discussions to 20 minutes and following each session we will have a q a for those who participate in our question and answer i'd like to note that today's program is being uh webcasts and by submitting a question you are agreeing to be a part of our webcast production after our first hour we'll be breaking up let's say we're running into 10 30 now about 11 30 we'll break up for a brief coffee and tea break and a view of some of our exhibit items and i'd like to ask that for those with coffee and tea if you can stay away from the africana treasures um so our first panel session will include uh dr dotson and dr edgar and dr dotson will be our first speaker i turn the podium over to dr dodson well thank you very much and let me also on behalf of howard university libraries and the moreland spin garden research center staff congratulate the african studies department on its uh 60th anniversary we um we share a lot of history together and look forward to sharing more i had when i was asked to do this i had a lot of some levels fear and trepidation being asked to talk about this topic because i don't claim to be a historian of howard university and i don't claim to be an african as though i study african and african diaspora experience as a central part of my own academic and intellectual interests um i've been at howard now for a little more than about a year and a half and in my efforts to develop a rational 21st century library program that is aligned with howard's teaching research and learning mission i've been obliged to delve into its history some of the impetus for this particular line of inquiry has been in search of insights into contemporary policies programs and academic practices and most intriguing for me has been questions related to the origin and development of howard's moreland spaniard research center there are a few i guess official histories that have been written but i've found a lot of questions unanswered in them and so i've been probing around trying to get some sense of that and the reason for this in part is because moreland spin yarn will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year and so behind these questions have been what appears to me to have been howard's uh seemingly at times ambivalent relationship to the study of the black experience and i say that knowing that dr chen has already said that it's been there for all of this history but we'll i'm going to raise some questions about that i suspect um this ambulance has seemingly been a part of howard's uh founding creed and while howard has been a national leader in the study of the black experience especially since the 1920s and while howard boasted one of the largest and most distinguished faculties specializing in the study of the black experience in any american university institutionally as i look at it how it is um then seemingly more committed to advancing its role as a center for educating and training black leadership then it has been committed to the establishment of itself in an organic way an institutional way as the leading intellectual authority on the study of the global black experience this is not to suggest that individual faculty members and indeed some department schools and colleges have not played such leadership roles in the past nor do i mean to say that individual faculty members and departments and schools are not playing such intellectual leadership roles today or that they are not engaged in the struggle for intellectual hegemony in these fields what i do want to suggest is that while howard pioneered in the development of many of the disciplines and subfields of african and african diaspora experience experience howard as an institution has not maintained that leadership position in many of these areas and i would like to suggest that ironically institutionally howard's ambivalence about placing teaching and research on the black experience at the core of its mission is one of the sources of that there's also institutional ambivalence about the values of study and research but i'm getting ahead of myself the charter of howard university establishes howard as a university for the education of youth in liberal arts and sciences that's not that's in quotes the education of youth in the liberal arts and sciences now general howard the founder of the school was committed to making howard an integrated institution so the charter language avoided specifying a mission that was singularly focused on black people the project was funded by the freedmen's bureau and whose express purpose was to prepare the formerly enslaved black population for citizenship and productive economic political and socializes free people actually howard wasn't the only one of the schools that was found funded by the freedmen's viewer indeed some 21 including howard received funding to support the educational development of blackvult for reasons that are not all together clear to me howard left the door opened to non-blacks especially non-black women the first students enrolled at howard were not black they were four white women daughters of the founders who ultimately aspired to get to legal careers and if you know anything about that period of time women were not admitted to law schools in the country and so as we cut through the chase and i i'm afraid to get into this because it's not anyway as you cut to the chase the school was actually founded to fund both of those and it's the way the language was written was to make sure that that second option could in fact be carried out now what is significant for our purposes today is that while the mission and i should say and this is um the women actually did matriculate in the law school and um well into the 1990s were still matriculating but they made a decision that they needed to get away from men and so they moved and set up their own independent women's law school and no blacks were admitted but that's another story uh what is significant for our purpose today is that while the mission of the university was to educate black folk there were no provisions for teaching them about themselves about their african origins and cultures of their uh experiences as enslaved africans in the united states or throughout the americas there are likely at least two reasons for this um oversight the first one the reigning unwisdom of the 19th century and before was that black people had no history in culture and this myth was part of the ideological justification for slavery and for colonialism and in the minds of most uh europeans at least africans were pagans savages devoid of civilization or any history and hence there was nothing really to teach them about themselves uh ironically uh and there was this notion too that um the history of black folk uh you couldn't teach it because there wasn't any enough information to say anything about them anyway now ironically as late as the 1960s and early 70s variations on this theme were being raised to question the intellectual viability of establishing black studies programs it's almost 100 years after howard is around they're still raising questions about whether or not there's this field that the study of black folk is uh has intellectual viability uh the congregational missionaries who were who founded howard like their abolitionist brothers and sisters were opposed to slavery and to racial oppression they did not however embrace the notion that africans or the formerly enslaved freedmen were or ever could become equal to whites in racial and intellectual terms moreover the concept of education that the founders brought to their missionary enterprise also precluded any serious intellectual engagement with the histories and cultures of the human beings they propose to educate and so as it's been the case in missionary enterprises on the african continent and in asia and other parts of the world the educational function in missionary enterprises was in fact to civilize the uh the natives to pass on the knowledge of and civilization that europeans had to them rather than to try to tell them anything about themselves or have them learned anything about themselves so that's a a kind of context in which we ask ourselves and have to ask ourselves where do we begin to find some space at howard for teaching and studying and researching the histories and heritage of people of african descent now um since the first decade of the 20th century howard has been pridefully referred to as the capstone of negro education this reference derived from howard's status is the largest and most comprehensive of the colleges and universities that primarily served african americans and other people of african descent established to provide as i said before in education for youth in the liberal arts and sciences howard successfully defended and affirmed the value of liberal arts education for blacks and fended off efforts to displace it with industrial education the struggle between the two educational philosophies was carried out in many tangible ways on howard's campus itself and i'll just mention this very briefly uh booker t washington was invited to serve on the board of howard university in 1907 and he joined the board in 1907 along with a gentleman by the name of jesse moreland booker t and moreland's appointment to the board signaled to some people that uh this was a um and a move to start to transition howard to the industrial model of education and the the president at the time president durkee was frankly trying to find some way of balancing both but in all honesty the reason why he was inviting the two of them onto the board was he was trying to figure out how to get some of the white philanthropy money okay and uh so he ends up catching a lot of heat quite frankly because of that but that as as they moved on to the board there were discussions about strengthening the industrial program howard had an industrial program in the curriculum but it was um it was not at the core of the curriculum at the core of it was this classical education anyway for much of the 19th and early 20th century the struggle to determine the best or most appropriate educational philosophy for blacks as well as in the united states as well as africa and the caribbean shaped african-american and african political discourse and educational philosophy uh it also in my judgment delimited it for large the unasked and answered was what was the place of the study of the history and culture of people of african descent in the classical or the industrial curriculum howard's classical liberal arts curriculum had been modeled on the uh on that of the schools where its founders graduated princeton yale dartmouth bowdoin etc well into the first decade of the 20th century the classics including latin greek and mathematic dominated and really shaped the curriculum at howard it's firmly believed that the study of the classics had a civilizing impact on black students and mastery of these subjects by blacks mastery of math mastery of greek mastery of latin was also viewed as evidence that black folk quite frankly could be could learn as well as white folk could to those who doubted the viability or utility of teaching blacks the classics the quality of howard university graduates which proved positive that classical education itself was and could be transformative and in an evolving intellectual center like howard whose mission was to produce leaders of the race there was little or no place for industrial education and even though as i mentioned there was a industrial department the myth of black racial inferiority and white superiority had been carried over from the slavery era so it public intellectual assaults on the identity and character and humanity of black people the black press as you know which had been founded to defend blacks against these kind of assaults in 1821 um had found a redoubled effort in in the reconstruction and post reconstruction period in northern and southern newspapers these uh assaults on both the dignity and humanity of black folk were buttressed by darwinian social thought in the new breed of pseudoscientific apologists for racial supremacy in the academy it was also buttressed by what we saw on the broadway stage and in advertising in public media and in the film medium white and academic and indeed some black academic authorities on the quote's negro problem end quotes populated scholarly and public journals and periodicals with new so-called scholarship proving that the myth of black social inferiority and racial inferiority was true now some black colleges including hampton and tuskegee and atlanta university started to engage intellectually in trying to defend or use scholarship to advance the condition of the race um howard did not provide a comparable platform for black intellectuals to apply their intellectual talents to the study and solution of problems affecting the future development of black folk this did not begin to happen in an institutional sense quite frankly until after 1926 when mordecai johnson became the first african-american president of howard university but prior to 1926 there was a gentleman by the name of kelly miller who was the leading proponent of a significant black intellectual leadership position and agenda at howard significantly keller miller began positioning himself for this role in 1897 the same year that du bois had actually assumed the directorship of the atlanta university studies uh project uh in atlanta um miller was a native of winsboro south carolina i'm running tight on time i may have to skip a little bit of this let me i'll skip a little bit of his background but um miller enrolled at howard um in at the age of 15. now he was awarded a scholarship at howard at the age of 15 in 1880 he completed his three-year program in two years and earned a ba in liberal studies from howard in 1886. that same year he uh purchased a 200-acre farm for his family as a graduation gift to them we don't get that anymore a year later he enrolled at johns hopkins university the first african-american to enroll in a ph.d program there he spent two years there studying mathematics and physics but ran out of money and in 1889 left the university to pursue employment he spent a year at dc's elite black m street dunbar high school um and at the conclusion of which he was appointed the first alumni professor of mathematics of howard university in 1890 now that title is important because the alumni actually raised the money to fund the position which they weren't able to continue to sustain the university eventually took it on as a part of its payroll but that they took that initiative and raised the money to do that is something quite extraordinary um miller never returned to john hopkins but he did earn a uh a an am degree from howard in 1891 and an lld in 1903 now miller was of humble background as i mentioned he was from south carolina he just decided he needed to get some education uh and significantly in in the context of howard uh kelly miller was a black man um a dark-skinned black man uh he was not your typical howard university black faculty member in the late 19th century the majority of both black faculty members and members of howard's administration and board of trustees have been drawn from the black community's mulatto elite group and miller's intellectual brilliance and his aggressive commitment to defending and advancing the interests of black people endeared him to america's black intellectual elite as well as to the black masses as as a whole a powerful lecturer and prolific writer and journalist he was much sought after speaker and activist for the race he was in the in the language of the 19th century a race man par excellence he was an invited a speaker just by way of example at one of du bois's earliest atlanta university studies conferences and he regularly published articles on issues affecting black people in black newspapers etc certainly the strongest testimony of his intellectual gravitas is the fact that he was one of the two young intellectuals selected by the dean of 19th century black intellectuals alexander crummell to plan and found the american negro academy the first major black american learned society in 1897. equally significant is the fact that his solid critique of edward i'm sorry frederick hoffman's pernicious book race traits and tendencies of the american negroes was the first critical scholarly paper published by the academy and keep in mind that at the meeting where he presented his paper um w.b du bois francis grimke and uh and crumble all presented and his was chosen as the first one to be published so this is a man of a giant intellect an incredible commitment and passion who had been schooled and had been actually working actively through the american negro academy to start to challenge the myths of black racial inferiority etc in the academy miller though saw this kind of activity as things that should be going on at howard university and so he started to try to bring quite frankly the academy into howard he made proposals to the board and to the president to have um the academy meet uh establish howard as its regular meeting place he tried to get the um the academy was trying to set up a library and he tried to get the university to establish the library there at howard and uh he he tried on numerous occasions to have the the academy become a formal part of howard university and the board of trustees rejected it over all three of those those initiatives um and anyway he didn't stop and uh during the first two decades of the 20th century miller either initiated or was centrally involved in virtually every initiative to promote the study of the black experience at howard jesse moreland a howard alumnus who was elected to the board of trustees along with washington as i mentioned miller found a powerful and resourceful collaborator both washington and moreland had been viewed with suspicion when appointed because of their relationship to each other and the world of white philanthropy moreland was believed to have been recruited to help washington turn howard into an industrial school but a brief review of moreland's background would have made it clear where his intellectual allegiances lay moreland graduated from the theological department of howard as the salitutarian in in 1891. he was in ordain a congressional congregational minister and combined a career as congregational minister and secretary of the colored ymca of washington dc for several years he eventually rose to become the national secretary of the colored ymca organization and this is important the 12th street ymca building that's uh a 12th i think that r were there abouts um that building was built by well the funds were raised in the building was built by moreland not only that he raised the money and built similar buildings for the colored ymcas in 19 different cities across the country and over that period of time that he was working uh actually raised over two million dollars which is a each of those buildings cost about a hundred thousand dollars and he raised the money and got the buildings built all over the country as jesse morland um moreland was widely read in english in american literature and history and geography and current social and political affairs he was also a passionate bibliophile who had amassed a large collection on the black experience a liberation theologian before his time moreland's concept of of of proper ministerial work was that one should be working to help the provisioners own their own homes take proper care of their children and become community leaders capable of lifting the burdens of the poor he pursued this kind of practical ministry from until 1898 before he became the head of the colored um men's department uh unlike his trustee dps and i'm almost there unlike his trusty psg i'm almost there unlike his trusty peers moreland believed that howard had a distinctive intellectual role to play in african and african-american studies especially in the fields of history and sociology and early in his tenure he supported kelly miller's efforts to house the a a on campus and publish its research findings he also supported elaine locke's proposal to offer a course on race relations believing like miller and luck than instruction and research on the african and african-americans should be encouraged by the board when those efforts failed to jump start the university's formal entry into these fields more than 40 years after its founding moreland decided to take the next step which was to donate his extensive collection on the black experiences to howard in 1914 kelly miller had been encouraging him to do so for a long time and it's a part of his larger vision for for howard miller's own vision was that howard should establish a national negro library and museum on the campus and that that should be the the foundation on which the whole global study of the african african diocesan experience should play take place miller campaign with the institution off and on to to get um this kind of an institution on campus but when um when moreland uh donated his collection to the um the university said and i quote he did so because howard is the one place in america where the largest and best library on the subject of black history and culture should be constructively established that was in quotes his gift established the moreland foundation the first research library in an american university devoted exclusively to documenting the black experience he continued to donate materials to the collection and supported financially and in many respects the acquisition of the moreland collection was the first substantive commitment by the university to the study of the black experience moreland was also supported the development of courses and research in howard's history department he was responsible for the addition of carter g woodson to the staff in 1919 and william leo hansberry in 1922. though woodson would only stay for a year he managed to plan and launch a graduate program in history and supervise the department's first master's degree hansberry on the other hand would establish the african civilization section of the history department in 1922 and within two years he was offering three courses to more than 800 students on an elective basis annually a year later in 1925 hansberry's section sponsored a symposium on the cultures and civilizations of negro peoples in africa that featured 28 scholarly papers by his students his research and teaching activities at howard would establish him as the real father of african studies in the united states and it was moreland's hope that the research and instructional programs in howard's history department would take advantage of the resources of his collection and make howard the national center for the study of the global black experience thank you dr dotson um as you can see our time format um is not working for us but again i'm from howard university and i know i will have to say this we are a bit off schedule um i only have this room until one o'clock so we must keep that as our deadline uh at this point dr edgar well thank you angel i'll try to keep my comments succinct first i'd like to acknowledge the presence of so many of our former students and present students in african studies at howard university the library of congress has been a real treasure for many of them over the years i think it was about 20 years ago that we actually started bringing our graduate students to the library of congress for orientations on the enormous resources that this library has on africa and so your africa section has graciously hosted our students dr tom mann in the reference section has also done orientations and so this has really become a second home for many of our students they spend many hours here so we appreciate this occasion uh for hosting this event today i'd like to focus my remarks on one of the early africanus at howard university where we talk about the 60 years that we're celebrating of our african studies program but the study of africa at howard goes back of course many decades before that africa really is part of howard's dna but as dr dodson pointed out it hasn't always been received that way at howard and so it's been a struggle over the decades to establish africa on the campus and it was not only a struggle on the campus but it was also a struggle in dealing with the larger society and in particular foundations the various gatekeepers of african studies around the united states and so if one was at howard and you wanted to work on africa you had to navigate a very tricky field in terms of establishing yourself and getting access to the continent so i'm going to be focusing on ralph bunch he's a person that i've long had a an interest in and partly because we shared a lot of similarities we're both graduates of ucla our first faculty positions were at howard university he received the nobel peace prize in 1950 i received the i've they told me it's in the mail at any rate a bunch is someone who's fascinated me for a long time and i produced a book about him and a segment of his journey at howard in which he was able to travel around the world and i'll talk about that a bit uh a bit later um now first a little bit of background on bunch and then i want to talk about his transition into becoming an expert on international affairs and his baptism really into african affairs bunch was born in 1904 in detroit he eventually spends most of his youth growing up in los angeles goes to ucla in the early 1920s he's a star athlete but he's also a star student and he graduates the top of his class after he leaves ucla he goes to harvard university for an m.a degree and there he produces an m.a thesis on a 17th century english political philosopher robert filmer now i stress this because none of us know who robert filmer was but the point is bunch was off in a very different direction political philosophy but in 1928 he's invited by mordecai johnson the first black president of howard who had come to howard in 1926 to become the chair and really the founder of the political science department at howard so in 1928 bunch arrives at at howard university and as dr dodson used this term bunch saw himself very much as a race man someone who was going to actively work for the race and for the betterment of the race and so always as part of bunch's agenda he was dealing with not only doing academic work but also political activism those two components were always part of his life so he spent about three years at howard university starting the political science department also working considerably for mordecai johnson and the president's office and for those of us who have been at howard for a long time we know you know the administrative duties that we're called upon to do uh take up a considerable amount of time and that's going to become a a source of of uh of concern for bunch over the years but among his colleagues during that time were people like abram harris eve franklin frazier allen locke doxie wilkerson emmett dorsey dorothy porter alfayus huntin rayford longan leo hansberry charles wesley you can go on and on and some of these folk had an interest in africa but the key thing about them was that all of them had an interest in international affairs and there was a real tradition at howard of people traveling to europe especially to do further studies either advancing their degrees or doing research uh on various issues related to the black world and so during his first stent at howard uh bunch was very much exposed to international ideas international studies and so in the early 30s when he decides to go back to harvard for a phd he's very keen on doing a topic that is going to have international issues in it and he especially wants to deal with africa now of course his idea of doing something about africa is not well received it's not well received by the the funders of his fellowship at harvard the rosenwald foundation dr embry who was the head of the foundation advised bunch instead to do a study on west virginia politics and it's interesting how bunch responded to that and here's a quote from bunch in a letter he sent back to back to embry he said i am fully persuaded that the negro of all scholar scholars must first develop a broad international background if his contribution to the solution of our own domestic problems is to make much uh impress so he very much sees becoming well-versed in international issues a uh an important component of his education and for the advancement of black people the bunch also found resistance to his idea of studying africa from president mordecai johnson at howard at one faculty meeting of all the howard faculty president johnson got up and said bunch is going all the way to africa to find a problem now president johnson could be quite sarcastic and i think he was very sincere in his sarcasm um but he was certainly not uh sympathetic to what bunch was was uh doing now it's interesting about that same time in 1932 when uh bunch was contemplating doing his dissertation on an african topic leo hansberry was also wanting to go to egypt and hansbury wanted to become a part of an archaeological team a british archaeological team in egypt and he sent a letter to an official at the boston museum of fine arts inquiring about whether he would be well received by this archaeological team and this is the letter that he received back from this official at the boston museum he said to be perfectly frank with you if i were in charge of such an expedition i should hesitate long before taking an american negro on my staff i should fear that the mere fact of your being a member of the staff would seriously affect the prestige of the other members and the respect which the native employees would have for them now you can see there's a bit of an obstacle here and by the way i see professor hansberry's daughter in the audience and shows she knows very much this this kind of this kind of history so in other words there was a real resistance to african americans doing work on africa and the foundations generally would not fund any african-american going to africa until the 1950s and that's when professor hansberry was able to get a fulbright to go to africa am i correct yeah good okay um now bunch's idea of working on africa also was not well received by generally by the harvard faculty there was an ex an expert on colonial africa raymond buell that became one of his sponsors patrons and it's interesting bunch learned that game very early on and i'm looking at my students now this is something that you should be learning as well and that is in negotiating your way through academic life you you've got to find patrons who are going to support you and and uh help you navigate the road of getting funding and so forth for your for your projects but eventually bunch prevailed he was very hard-headed on this and he eventually produced a dissertation on the french colonies studying the comparison between uh a former uh league of nations well a league of nations mandate that was run by the the french in togaland and dahomey and it was actually a brilliant dissertation if one reads it now it still holds great value now the thing that distinguished bunch about this research on africa was that he was able to get the funding not only to go to europe for his uh research but he also was able to spend three months in the territories that he was studying and so this was very important for him in terms of opening up his outlook his exposure to africa because most americans who worked on africa who rode on africa never went to africa and so bunch was very distinct among all the american academics and in actually going to the continent for a period of time to do his research and they really established three hallmarks of his approach to to research and his research on africa first of all creating knowledge through empirical data secondly studying race is a global problem and finally the critical importance of fieldwork for validating knowledge about africa so he's very much concerned about having on the ground experiences on the continent so eventually he produced his dissertation in 1934 it was a very quick write-up it took him about a year to produce and he was the first american african-american to be awarded a phd in political science so he returns to howard after finishing his dissertation once again resumes his work on in the political science department and his work for president johnson but he still has this fascination of going to africa again so he begins plotting out a way of of uh getting the funding so he can go back and do research and what he wants to do this time is to do a study on africa from the ground up he had done his dissertation on africa from the top down from the colonial policies and what their effect was on africans but this time he wanted to do a study on africa from the ground up he became very active on the howard campus and organizing conferences on african affairs or international affairs there was a notable conference in the mid-1930s on world imperialism dealing with africa and asia that was hosted by bunch and others in the social sciences at howard i've often wondered where those papers are in the orleans finger room but i i haven't been able to find them yet but there's a they're there okay we're good the keeper of the of the papers um but bunch was also growing weary of his administrative duties at howard and he longed for a way of escaping them and so in the mid-1930s he makes a proposal to the social science research council and it is along the lines here that is of that he would like to do the study of africa from the ground up and he receives a negative response from the foundation they are not really interested in in doing that but bunch has a patron and a very important patron melville herskovitz now herschkovitz it's been a year at howard in the mid-1920s and he had become quite a notable anthropologist the time that time and afterwards but he had a strong affinity for people working at howard and so he came to bunches rescue and proposed to the ssrc that bunch be given a fellowship to study anthropological field methods in various parts of the world now this is something that floors me it floored me when i was doing my research at floored me even now they gave bunch two years of support and told him that you could take a round-the-world trip and you know you could sort of decide where you would go and what you would study uh and so bunch like any of us academics jumped at that uh opportunity to to do that and so in 1936 he he sets off actually 1937 he sets off in this round-the-world trip and part of it is to study anthropology with the doyens of anthropology at northwestern herzkowitz malinowski at the london school of economics and isaac shapra at the university of cape town and on that trip he's able to go to london for a period of time his swahili teacher there is jomo kenyatta he goes to south africa for three months that's what my book is based on his research notes from that and without going into the details of that i'll leave you the book to introduce you to that he has a really extraordinary time traveling around the country people are not quite sure what to make of him because he's a very light-skinned black person they don't know if he's filipino if he's egyptian they are not quite sure how to regard him or define him but he his research notes that he kept on that trip were just fascinating reading about south africa in 1937. he then goes on to east africa for five months and spends that time studying african societies especially the kukuyu in uh in kenya eventually he comes back to howard and i think many of you are probably familiar with his story after that and i think one of the uh the fascinating things about bunch is that even though he gets pulled into other activities the myrtle report is one of its key researchers then into the united nations in the trusteeship council a mediator in the middle east for which he wins the nobel prize he still maintains his interest in africa it's a shame that he was never able to write the book he was planning to write on his travels in africa in the late 1930s but i hope what my comments today have signified is that in order to become an africanist at howard or in the united states especially an african-american africanist one had to jump through a lot of hurdles a lot of obstacles to do that and so as we look back upon african studies at howard today we should be very cognizant of the fact of all the struggles that have gone on before and then actually go on now in terms of making sure that the field is sustained on our campus thank you very much unfortunately dr edgar had to leave us for an appointment this afternoon but we'll continue into our second session with our speakers and starting off this session will be dr carr dr cars dr carl chairs the afro-american studies or the african-american studies department at howard university thank you dr batiste and i want to uh thank the organizers and thank you dr chan for the invitation and thank the department of african studies and also um i'm grateful to be in this conversation with uh my friend dr dotson and dr chom who's going to clean up all the unanswered questions when i get finished stumbling through this and adding a little bit more chaos to the conversation it's always nice to be in uh what began as mr jefferson's library always nice to be here um because it reinforces the idea that the negro is not part of this conversation i like to sit in the room in the greeting room and look up in the area and see the egyptians that's white and all the beautiful i guess the apotheosis of george washington's across the street in the capital rotunda but when you look up in the rotunda at the library of congress you re it reinforces it's almost like the the catholic or even the anglican tradition in christianity it reinforces your worthlessness and so the aspiration is to become part of this conversation and in many ways i think this conversation about african studies at howard which is really the insurgent movement in the field is a conversation about not particularly wanting to be in the conversation but the conversation that uh and the ambivalence about even that position and that's something that uh dr dodson has laid out so i don't have to i don't have to plow that field you already plowed it up real good no that's that's important because i mean howard politics are no different in the university of politics anywhere else which means that they are as small bore and as petty as any other institution and in some ways i think my remarks which i had titled african studies afro-american studies in the study of the african diaspora at howard university on translation recovery and disciplinarity i could perhaps throw that title out and perhaps call this the evasion of william leo hansberry because the way i understand it when dr franklin good to see you brother when uh when the ford foundation and decided to give some money to african studies they damn they didn't give howard anything and they didn't give roosevelt anything cause sinclair drake and them was there by the time i think lorenzo dalton was there with him but will hansberry was cut out of that conversation e franklin frazier was seen as a more dependable kind of negro to keep howard in line in what was emerging as a cold war discourse african studies being hatched as an idea where white folks could kind of keep an eye on these negroes i hope they didn't run off to the russians or the chinese and howard had to convince philanthropy that they would not be insurgents now that's important to understand um i think it's important to understand particularly given the context of the mid 1950s because what you begin to see is what gerald horn calls a truce in some ways what is the truth the truth is the ruling elite in this country political elite and economically particularly politically trying to make a truce with an emerging black middle class that in exchange for some concessions on kind of social you know not dalliances social social accommodations you know you need to turn away from linking internationally to in any way that can unsettle the existing political dynamic in the world certainly the post-world war ii dynamic china's got its own problems you know mao zedong is winning a civil war and then he's going to go through 10 years of reconstruction great and all this kind of thing but cultural revolution what you don't want the american negro to do is continue to look beyond these shores for help certain people you know geraltorne talks about this a lot certain people were sacrificed wbd boys shirley graham dubois paul roberson that's lined up good robeson take their passports lock up old man dubois this kind of thing but you know walter white and these cats are more than happy to kind of accommodate well that doesn't you know that wind doesn't uh ignore howard howard is struggling with those internal tensions and what i'd like to talk about for a few minutes this morning is how african studies at howard represented those tensions survived those tensions emptied forward out of those tensions and forged a space where it protected and protects inquiry that is designed to transform these conversations so there's a kind of insurgency involved um so i came in and saw the books here um and it's funny yeah i think i have all but maybe three or four of those over there and one two of them in particular dr young your book on islam that one of your books the small solid one there and the one just beyond it ayadeli langley's book on pan-africanism um when i got my copy of langley's book it was at the 100th anniversary of the first pant african conference henry sylvester williams conference in london and that book's been out print so long that you know it's one of those things that tempts you to kind of liberate books from the library and i know that's a federal crime in this place but i'm not about it but when i saw one for sale red lion squared a book table bookseller right it said this is where clr james and marcus garvey used to speak man is that i bought it it was maybe 20 pounds which was a lot of money for a graduate student but um when i came to howard had my job talk i came down the hill to the howard center looking for sulaimanian i've never seen him with my eyes before and when i went up there knocking on doors it was only one door open that afternoon i mean you know by that time i didn't realize that how many hour factory carry bankers hours but so but this this was this was an afternoon like 5 30 in the afternoon and that didn't apply to the folks generally in african studies but i but i saw an open door i knocked on the door and it said a langley opened the door and there's this older cat sitting in there i said um i'm looking for susan young he said he's not he's not here right now i said okay well i'll come i said you're not you're not ideally lately yes yes i am i said what i said you're alive that's the first thing i mean i was so embarrassed no because they don't always tell you when people pass right i mean no seriously if anybody can confirm for me and i'm confused because i'm mindful of the time i'm talking about five minutes six and so i know i'm going to be very mindful of this but if anybody can tell me for example where and when jay uh jc degraff johnson passed because i can't find his obituary did he pass yeah see i think it's practice right because i've looked through all the kind of newspapers i mean because 19 oh well let me put this in for instance 1954 is a very important moment because you see three books emerge right nations negative city called jewels check out the joke you see stolen legacy which is of course george j.m james's attempts to pull us through some of this thing but he's at the university of arkansas i think pine bluff at the time so you know he's like oliver cox who was at langford they're writing in very limited circumstances at these negro colleges and cox is doing world theories 20 years before emanuel wallistein but they're writing at these black colleges and they're teaching in the third book of course was jc graham johnson's jonah coleman de graf johnson's african glory so but that's 1954 and these are far beyond the scope of what's being generally accepted as academic scholarship that is you know it's accepted by the white academy now 1954 of course is important because brown versus board of education but what we're talking about to kind of tie this together and then empty it into the frame that i had written down we're talking about a moment now in 2013 of anniversaries celebrations uh commemorations and what do these things do anniversaries are narrations there are attempts to narrate the past in a way that makes the present make sense justifies the present explains the present complicates the present so that we can move forward there's no other reason to talk about a 50th anniversary of march on washington there's no other reason to talk about the fifth anniversary of the birmingham bombings or in the next two weeks you'll see the whole country come to a stop in a way that it didn't for those first two for the uh 50th anniversary of the assassination of uh john kennedy but the which will remind us again as fred douglas said you know these days of national ritual you find out you're not part of this conversation but the celebration of the 60th anniversary of african studies at howard gives us an opportunity to think about not only what happened 60 years ago but what has happened since and what needs to happen going forward so what we see then is the re-inscription of a liberal consensus in some ways in the mid 50s african studies emerging as a kind of spy network and folks who don't want to be part of that spy network trying to figure out as dr edgar said how can we baby you know cut out a little space to operate and get a few pennies to do what we're going to do because we don't do it anyway i mean as he said yeah ralph bunch writes and i forget how many pages he wrote that summer that uh he ended up emptying into what becomes gunner murdoch's an american dilemma but a lot of his memos that don't find it into that manuscript extol the fact that what he says is the american negro is a special award of the supreme court and so bradford's board of education in many ways is concession to cold war politics we can't just keep beating these negroes up while the world is looking because the world is changing we can't keep doing that so they have to give howard a few pennies in african studies even though they don't necessarily want to but will they leave it to howard to figure out how to frame that appeal and the negro that gets left out his hands buried why because hansberry doesn't fit you see if you yank on william lil hansberry do boys falls out and now you got a real problem because it was du bois who when hansberry was working in mississippi uh and helped help me uh the same very if i get this wrong because i noticed from years of listening to john henry clark and then reading people like kwame west alford and this but you know hansberry leaves mississippi goes to atlanta well he's got a few other places he ends up but he ends up in atlanta he reads the negro by dubois 1915 and wants to read all the books in that bibliography because du bois has finally given him what he was looking for which is the global framework of dealing with africa and once he's dealing with africa he said i got to go nagin's up at harvard he ends up not with the phd because there's nobody there that can really train him and plus they're looking at him suspiciously anyway because he's making connections that nobody else is trying to make not from the academic community and so hansberry when he ends up at howard has been laboring like this from the 20s you know you say i mean woodson came stayed for a minute and left because he said i'm not going to let these administrators kill me moves down to 9th street and keeps going with his work hansberry comes in for the long haul but by the time this appeal is made what you see is that hansberry has to be marginalized in part because you know his approach is just too problematic but what hansberry's approach was attempting to do african studies at howard continued to do anyway in collaboration with its kind of partnerships with other folks around the campus and with the study of the african diaspora and what it did was survive through several subsequent iterations of struggle and what i mean by that it survives the cold war era and that's important to understand because black institutions doing work like this we're not in a position to be able to do very much you know i mean the foundations would basically tell a lie and they told sinclair drake and them that we don't give money to undergraduate programs well that's not true you gave money to other programs that were doing undergraduate work they uh and of course saint claire drake is problematic because he can't prove that he's not a communist or communist affiliated and of course he's fortunate because who is with him by the time there roosevelt dealing with african studies on the undergraduate level who but of course the howard affiliated and uh one one time employee lorenzo dow turner whose work on language ironically you can compare to what howard has the presence to do which is deal with language study in african studies which gives it a unique lens that makes it a little bit more difficult to dismiss howard's african studies program because language is really part of the key language study is not as well developed when hansberry starts looking for classical africa he's got to go as du bois did to the secondary sources but by the time you get to the 1960s check out the joke has begun to emerge again on the periphery of these white conversations not in african studies still being kind of marginalized but howard eventually is going to provide a space where some of these things can be brought back into the conversation but at first it hasn't survived the cold war era and it did now the 1960s come and now you have a problem why you got another problem you got negroes coming to school who were never supposed to be educated in the first place and you have the long retreat from the cold war dodge that brown kind of gestures toward brown is like oh let's desegregate but they never desegregated 10 years later they're like none of these schools desegregated so then you see another swell unrest that's the 50th anniversary stuff that's going on now the birmingham stuff that happened in the spring of 1963 uh the march on washington which was a kind of negotiated settlement between kennedy and his forces and the elite leadership of the civil rights movement which kind of made snick kind of mad but you know john lewis was going to go along to get along because in part his southern grounding and his ability to kind of negotiate the tensions between the older elite and the civil rights movement and the kind of shock troops of the movement which was the students gave him a space to negotiate but then you empty that out and the response to the march on washington in many ways is the bombing in birmingham you know when you not only have uh caroline robertson and um you all know them uh addie mae collins and um who are the other two young ladies um caroline robson cynthia wesley addie mae collins um denise mcnair denise mcnair not only those four girls but you have james robinson and another young brother virgil ware who were killed the same day one by the police shot in the back and the other one on the handlebar of his bicycle they're in a rock fight with the white boy gangs that have gathered around 16th street baptist church it's war going on in birmingham of course kennedy dies by the end of the year and you've got turmoil but that becomes the impetus to let lyndon johnson ram through what ends up being the civil rights act of 1964 the voting rights act of 1965. okay that's it what else do you want over the next 10 years however that's when you see the long retreat the long retreat from the idea that y'all are going to have political equality in this country but by then many students are on black college campuses who were never supposed to be in school and those negroes aren't satisfied that's where my department came from for many people in this room understand that that student movement that emptied into the tour de black university conference in 1968 and then the founding of american studies department in 1969 of which i'm so glad to hear dr batista is a proud graduate among the vanguard of that undergraduate group that came through established that department to do something different at the same time african studies at howard continued to do something different but freed up with a little bit of space to operate they're absolutely actually able to capture some of that momentum from the late 60s because in that same 1960 year of 1969 that's when the negroes walk out of the african studies association and form the african heritage studies association and say no we're going to negotiate with y'all but it will be from a position of strength now you have people who have real problems with that why because we love you negroes as long as you all are our pets you know never heard of this nice tank but black people are no longer no longer inclined to be pets no longer inclined to be the favorites of certain foundations and the sprinkling of a nickel here when we gonna give everybody else a hundred dollars no we are going to try to establish the independent beach head out of which to operate and aha hsa ends up meeting at howard subsequently to kind of put that together african studies at howard is at the center of that conversation now i'm gonna make a turn to conclude because i'm very mindful about five about five minutes i think that's what makes you no no i want to miss you that no no no ma'am no because really the important thing i think about these moments is however short we have is the question and answering conversation because i take notes the whole time i'm learning about that because you know we teaching i'm in the classroom and i think our undergraduate students particularly need to know this material um hansberry is still you know passed away in 1965 but his presence is still felt at howard but it's marginal weight that the dachshund said it's not institutionalized it's very important to understand that because had it been institutionalized we would have been light years ahead in every academic field in every academic field you know and let's not even get to the small bore academic politics i mean does uh elaine locke support hansberry's uh fulbright so he can get him out of the country because they about to make this pitch for african studies and they don't want the negro even around on the soil frazier who has done so much important work he ralph bunch abram harris these guys and insurgents kind of saying that the boys didn't radical enough but yet and still in the mid 50s will dare to tell the foundation that you know you don't worry about hansberry i got that yeah but african studies still provides a core out of which emerges scholarship that transforms the way we think about so many different approaches to the study of africa at the same time in the 1970s after students have unceremoniously uh kind of dumped or led to the dumping of james neighbor which is kind of sad i mean it's inter-generational you know but then james she shows up hires andrew billingsley and then you see ron walters come here joyce ladner come here robert hill come here there's going to be another wave in the 1970s and african studies rides that wave as well and then you see some of the folks who are sitting in this room who were recruited into that same conversation that becomes the bridge to now and where is now in 2013 i know from where we are in african american studies several years ago we went through this whole program review thing you know the first thing that everybody always wants to do is say black okay so let's put all the black together that usually means that white hwc's historically white college universities if you've got african studies department and an african-american studies department you just say black and then stick afro diet sport world studies of the whole black thing together and say okay that's beautiful university of texas austin michigan state i mean you know this is what they do but what do you do with it at a black school and not just able any black school the school has led this conversation well the way we think about it is in afro-american studies we're the unit that doesn't have to be big because our whole reason for existence is to theorize the possibility of reconstructing discipline so that we can think differently and for that that's for two reasons number one to have our own academic discipline with methodology inquiry techniques and deal with that so we don't we just get and that in itself is a step eventually to getting rid of all the disciplines but you got to have that first step which means language training we're the only university of hbcu in the country probably university where you can study ancient egyptian language hansbury would have had a ball now we got the only egyptologists of african descent training essays in the world on our faculty and he's one of two so now you can take all the forms of the classical language but the second reason as i conclude i think is very much important for african studies at howard and history at howard and economics at howard and all the other academic fields every one of those fields must mount continue to mount an insurgent campaign to destroy those disciplines as we stand here in mr jefferson's library and everything that's been added since just like this library has its founding template places that i've stood in many times and i'm so glad you hear from from kemet from egypt those first libraries that they call prague in the ancient egyptian language it's not the first library it's an important library it's an extension of a literary tradition but what the academic feels that howard must do is reclaim human knowledge in all of those disciplines and there's no more place more important place to do that than the place that is marked by its study literally of the african continent and the extension of africa throughout the diaspora and that is the department of african studies i'm gonna stop with that and maybe have some more questions thank you very much and you and me again these are two people i know i know jane because we have been working on middle eastern issues with her husband we are in middle studies for years and i'm very happy that we have you here know what he is saying now this was unthinkable that you will have jane and her on the one intellectual roof there are powerful forces who don't want that to happen you see because of their own interests i am now going to use the metaphor of putting you on my mental highway so on an hov lane you will be moving very fast you don't have time i'm going to move very fast because you see what dr kell was saying for you the audience and for all of you listening to internet and the media i want you to be on the same frame with me so i'll be moving out to tell you howard university the library of congress and africa how do you look at this tree i went to the university of virginia i was a jefferson fellow we were the first blacks to go to uva randall robinson was shocked when bob cummings who used to be the head of our department that this guy got his peggy from uva say are you drinking because they were not allowed to go to ub at blacks they would rather pay for them to go to yale and study there to get their degree than to get their degrees at the university of virginia so when we talk about mr jefferson he's now gone but there's a legacy we cannot deny that but in his note on virginia he doesn't think that black people and white people will ever be equal he'll be shocked to know that there's obama in the white house i'm very serious i'm a jefferson scholar what i'm trying to tell you is when we talk about the library of congress african studies and howard you're dealing with three concepts and three ideas please follow me as i move very fast what you have to recognize is that howard university is named after general howard when we talk about the freedmen bureau and howard university that's the origin because after the end of slavery you have a large number of african-americans there were 400 000 blacks in the united states if you go back to one of our professors at howard university andrew billingsley andrew billingsley wrote a book climbing jacob's ladder which is a biblical metaphor and there he tries to talk about black families in white america now that book is very interesting metaphor as an entry point to understand howard university the library of congress and africa because if you really go back you will see that after the end of the civil war the black identity was still problematic because african-americans one out of every 16 african-american was called a free black and they were the ones who founded these black churches with richard allen called african methodist church african mental discharge zion and if you look at the history of the religions in this city you get that story that's number one so there was tension about with africa or not with africa that was a big debate nationally some of the people who established the american colonization society were interested in taking all the free blacks and put them in liberia that's why you have monrovia named after president monroe now move fast with me and you come back to our first presentation where you are now trying to locate africa at howard monica johnson was the first african-american to be the head of howard university now you have to go back to the founding fathers who came to howard that was why the first hospital we have before james chick was called the freedmen's hospital today if you come to howard university we have a radio station we have the credit union and we have the school of communication and then you have the graduate school that is a chicken metaphor it is part of the evolution of howard university when mordechai johnson came to town they were able to negotiate a deal we gave howard university one position howard university and lincoln university in nebraska where among the o and this other one is right here is named after the university for the handicapped and the blind gal with that these were the three schools ever given money by the congress of the united states and we are cutting that legacy as a university so that's one of the reasons why howard president must always have their feet on the fire every year with the congress to get money and that is one of our legacies so if you are talking about african studies at howard you have to recognize that the reason why hansberry referred logan where in a problematic relationship you see and ralph point and all of those people they are dealing with they were the victims of academic politics in american society you have the big people who have money like the rockefellers the iraqi fellows were the ones who financed the international africa institute which were doing all the anthropological work out of london university malinowski hansberry was dealing with first people now that was one hungry was not going to be given any kind of break by those people no the iraq fellows they don't want the black people to go to africa that was gabi they're not going to allow gabika was in jail for 1924 they're not going to allow that to happen so when you look at that story you understand the story how if you look at the the presbyterian church was very active in trying to train many of these africans to go back to liberia this is one of the reasons why if you look at lincoln university and you can see how lincoln university horace mann born the father of julian born he had a difficult time he and hansberry were trying to promote african studies at howard and they wanted to get the cooperation of eve franklin frasier hell no you're not gonna get any money from foundation and that's one of the reasons why rayford logan who wrote his book the betrayal of the negro talks about how black people were double crushed after the civil war by president rutherford from miss remember the rutherford who make the deal they move all the federal troops out of the south do they not that is what changed the history of the african american so when africa what do you know africa we have monrovia we put all those free blacks down there that's why booker t washington when he gave that famous speech because don't you work it where you are in atlanta which was a turning point he knew that many of the black people were called african mineralist church the white people were invading africa africa is being invaded they call them these savages and some of the intellectuals came with terran and the cannibals it became a dominant narrative who if i'm black why would i call myself african these primitives no way so bokashi bukatinu one spanish 101 let's call ourselves negros and all african-american women like tiger tigress we move away from that narrative now you see that was why the boys who like one thing we have lost at heart most of the black intellectuals at howard like he was saying they will all go to europe you go to oxford that's why we have who we have a whole name after him lockhart he became the first african american to go to oxford and they gave him what yeah cecil wrote the imperialist he went to oxford and he was allowed to go there so he came back he became one of the intellectuals from your area there another black spanish where he was in haram what do you call that sandbag he was a black of puerto rican there were some spanish jews lauren show out here we have a school named after him now did we have spanish jews who were blacks yeah some of the blacks leadership here lorenzos and an other black american who became famous and you know him he's he's the big singer corruption poor eruption for eruption murray this black jewish slave ancestry lansbury so that's one of the have to understand that narrative you see gradosa that is the narrative poor option remember poll rupture well known for eruption i'm going to read a narrative that will talk to you about something that's very interesting in the interest of time you see so when you come to talk about how when hansberry wanted to get money horace mann wanted money they said they don't have any money that's why dr edgar revealed to you they will give money to well punch they give him money they know they don't give her to hansbury they will not give money to horus man born in the end they made out a deal rayford logan who was the secretary of du bois when they went to world war one to push pan-africanism logan had to make a deal they say okay we give you lots of money refute logan you have to understand how politics at that time at howard you have hansberry you have many of the african-americans who are interested in africa they were still not going to be allowed because the british and the french will never allow them to do research and the rockefellers might not allow them to go there they have all their anthropologies to do work that's the narrative so that is one of the reasons why why we have at howard university african studies and afro-american studies it was the revolution of the students these students in 1968 this is where all of you are involved now all of you in room here your stories are involved in 1968 the people who controlled the academy were the rockefellers the fort and the carnegie people they gave you money or they don't give you any money in chicago they have all those jewish intellectuals who are fleeing from the nazis they became this chicago school and these are the people who are the children of norman paddleford at harvard all these scholars david after and all of them were trained at harvard by norman porterford who were writing about self-determination so james coleman all of the people that you read as graduates of the graduate school these were these students they are the intellectual grandchildren most of you are the great great grandchildren of normal puddleford and what is very interesting for us to understand if you tamar howard university and african studies let me move quickly in the next five six minutes to get out of here what i want to make very clear to you is that you see in 1958 people like adam clayton powell among the four blacks who were on the congress here adam clinton power was very powerful because he was able to have tenure because the blacks in highland were keeping in office over and over again so he survived and he became the chairman of the house committee on education and labor that was why he was very important that was why people like me young men from africa came here and i ended in mississippi in 1965 i would have been i would have been able yellow in mississippi but it didn't happen i was sent to hampton university adam clinton powell's secretary was his administrative assistant his father-in-law was yeah out there at hampton the registrar you see and his brother davis joris davis his brother was at howard university in english department david dave yes that's why i came to howard you see so what i'm trying to tell you your stories are linked together all of you in the room here in 68 the students had a coup d'etat you have a coup d'etat they get the president out and they brought ching with his dashiki and the african studies is implicated here and the afro-american studies implicated here you have russian items was at chicago they were able to get him like russell just when edgar was talking about our brother at the now we have an institution named after ralph branch you see roscoe was one of the african americans who went to chicago and i get that degree thanks to i don't my brother is here his father was he is a john hey family junior stand up john john his father his father was the fellow who wrote the story of the african american history he was at howard he went that was the first time they get all our black intellectuals to chicago and when they went to chicago people like russell adams were students there they were trained russell became acceptable black black like nyan got a pd from uva you black from uk from chicago his father was there he trained them they came back that's why hansel brewery's ideas now beginning to take root when the kids have a culitar at howard i remember this you have james check from north carolina then you have chicken and watching from nigeria who was teaching at fisk and there is a story which is recently divided by one of our guest speakers at howard how chica nawaki from nigeria dealt with strongly carmichael and stokely michael and all this were part of that narrative they graduated already when adam clinton powell gave that commencement address at howard he used the word black power that was the first time struggling michael estudian at howard had black power from unemployment he went to mississippi he said black power and you know the rest of that is enough so the howard students booted out their president and when that happened now people like joseph applegate was recruited from ucla to come and deal this is how the connection now we have middle studies and african studies coming together here when joseph applegate came to howard he was a linguist he knew barbara and he was linking north africa and sub-saharan africa that is how hansberry narrative now get fulfilled you see so when joe applegate came and rixby they became actively involved at howard when james chick came out with his dasiki all the young people say we want to have an afro-american studies and qt jackson was the head of the african studies department at that time he invited all the black student leaders we came to howard and unfortunately february april king was killed that is why sometimes i tell to people they said god who said obama was seven-year-old boy king was killed king went to memphis and he was speaking like moses i have been to the mountaintop i may not get there with you lo and behold just like joshua obama will be the joshua and caleb is not mentioned all the time they read the promise line they got to the white house be biblical again when obama got to the white house he became the only one who went and took the old office and said i barack the chief justice pushing back then he has to come back who's saying all the arabs might jump you up and down you see like julia the thing is obama you see that is history again it goes back to you because you see in the afro-american studies african studies all your stories are coming up all of what you are doing come together from king at memphis barakusema seven-year-old boy becoming president 40 years later and he happens to have something that who can write the video only god can do that he has a muslim name the only american president who ever has a muslim name was teddy roosevelt the jews and arab god along before israel they were peddlers the jews and arabs in new york city gave him a muslim name when he was the chief of police they call him harun rashid roosevelt and what is very interesting for us here who are studying africa is that when you go back to ted roosevelt having a muslim name the only american president ever to have a muslim nickname and when he went on safari in kenya obama's grandfather was alive neither roosevelt nor obama's grandfather knew that one day a young man from kenya will be in the white house because what is very pronounced for us here studying about africa the american colonization society and what is happening in arabs in american society muslims american society is this story and that is not only was obama seven when king was killed forty years later he became presidential states and he has a muslim name but most importantly for all of us who are studying africa blacks and the american civilization two footnotes for all of you here that is when teddy roosevelt was the president of states he wanted to invite booker t washington the most powerful black man american to the white house hell no a in the white house no way guess who is coming to dinner now that is one of the reasons why the obama people are very much aware of this and they awarded our colleague from bahamas sydney potty the middle of freedom during the obama first time so history is being made by all of you here in africa middle east studies all of us who are studying new orleans finger if you go back to maulan spingan where he is now dealing with the reality it deals with the history of the naacp the young turks because when bugatti say we are negroes most of the educated blacks know that they know means black but the black who are not educated if you say negro they will accept it that was why the boys say we are correct they use the word colored that's why we have negro and colored interchangeably this was dubois the voice was being political he knew that the asians the arabs the jews the italians could all be called they were not accepted as white that's why you have books how did you became white how the irish became white how the italian became white this is america and i will stop here i can speak for today thank you very much thank you very much dr yang um to all of our all of the guest panelists um i'd like to thank all of you for a very very um interesting and stimulating conversation um we do see the uniqueness of the intellectual traditions of african studies at howard at this point we'll take uh questions for a good 15 20 minutes the first question my boss dr mary well i want to jane you all for a really an exciting and stimulating i mean it really is and i'm going to repeat the question i asked dr johnson a bit earlier perhaps phrase it in a different way you mentioned being out of the conversation now in antiquity yes when you write about the greeks writers become the great armies of ethiopia they speak of it they're in the conversation when you get the beginning of christianity okay the first churches early churches okay ethiopia they're in the conversation when you get into islam the great scholars from timbuktu and other parts of africa they're in the conversation so what i'm saying here is when why do they fall out of the conversation and the second part is is howard jr assistance we're talking about harvard university bringing the conversation back putting it back on the table are the students the professors putting the conversation back on the page let me just take a quick stand thanks first of all thank you for that that question is really the question um we we african people were pushed out of that narrative probably around between the time of the enlightenment and the renaissance um now we know you know mark bernal who recently passed away did a lot of work in that regard with black athena particularly volume one the falsification of the ancient model his this white he proposed his revised ancient model so it wasn't the greeks it wasn't the romans it was it was in fact a medieval moment at the same time you know europe began to expand so we know that that's we know it was pushed out is howard attempting to come to bring it back in i don't know um i think the shadow book t washington still falls on black colleges the president united states seems to be a convicted washingtonian when it comes to vocational education and i think howard is so fascinated with the possibilities of science technology engineering and mathematics the stem fields that even those who propose steam adding the arts to that equation are marginalized so i don't know but the last thing i'll say is that it's very interesting because there's always been that strain of folks who have preserved that narrative when you mention hansberry red du bois is 1915 the negro and it set him into his intellectual orbit but that 1950 book du bois rewrote it twice once as the world in africa kind of extended in 1945 and the other one was his volume black folk then and now that becomes the kind of discursive frame for what sinclair drake does with black vote here and there putting us back in the narrative and drake kind of deals with bernal in in that book but then you have joseph harris now we bring it home to howard global dimensions of the african diaspora both editions volumes the challenge for howard is not to convene this conversation but to finally empty away from those academic disciplines because you can never get where we need to go by re-inscribing the power relations in the traditional disciplines that's what makes afro-american studies important and that's why we you know proposing a name change to africana studies because africana isn't really a description that should be an umbrella term for everything we don't think it becomes a marker for theoretical enterprise and the other academic disciplines have to stay in place because the work in there has to rise to an institutional level and become the beach head to deconstruct those disciplines at the other universities we think howard is the only place that has a shot at it and so because because we have everything here in one place but the thing i'll say is the the undiscovered country the last frontier in that conversation is the will and that's not an intellectual project that's not an ideological project that is pure political economy because academic degrees are about licensure and people are terrified if they take that step they will not be able to work so that's i think that's that's what we are going to say and i i would um i would answer the second part of of your question on thusly i'll go so far as to say that if howard does not ultimately have the courage to pursue this leadership role over the intellectual hegemony of knowledge about the black experience if howard doesn't have the courage to do it quite frankly it calls into existence called into question it's rationale for existence the traditional rationale has been to train black leaders okay a whole bunch of people are doing that now a whole bunch of people are doing a whole bunch of colleges universities and all the rest of that are doing that now and um the the one thing that um howard now i need to go back we start off howard was a was a a a a missionary school a missionary school there actually had been a black who was president before mordecai johnson that's right um john mercer langston uh they would not make him permanent president and at the base of it was that the missionaries were not prepared to follow the lead of a black person leading a black school okay and that was that was in the 1860s 1860s and it went to 1926 before and and the debate over the intellectual leadership of the institution uh at the level of border trustees at the level of faculty all that that was ongoing struggle but behind that debate was this question of um you know black leadership intellectually in defining the character of the institution and what its uh unique role was going to be uh that um a truce was was i guess declared with mordecai johnson's uh appointment but quite frankly the war for intellectual hegemony has continued right down to the present time and the um what was the it's and it's fascinating what was the industrial school conversation industrial versus classical conversation in the 19th or early 20th century is now the stem versus liberal arts that's right it's the conversation and and i guess my final comment uh comment is that um basically doing three things one if you when you lose the intellectual argument in defining the meaning of your life you simply end up living somebody else's notion of your life that's right okay that that so so so the the struggle intellectually is not it's not simply some some uh some intellectual game play this is life and death stuff in the most fun fundamental way but uh beyond that um because we start out as a colonial institution and quite frankly we're still colonized howard university we're still colonized and we're not conscious of the fact that we are so we continue to live the damn colonized life huh and and if we can't in in if the intellectual community that's at at howard can't figure out how to make the breakthroughs that's right then we're in deep you know deep mess but but but beyond that um ultimately uh human beings live their lives when they take ownership of it huh when they take ownership and define what the hell they're going to do and you grow up against all kinds of obstacles but ultimately you have to envision and um struggle to create your world and live in your world and again if you if you don't have the courage to do that uh you don't live your life you live somebody else's life that some something somebody else is defined for you and so i i i say that to say that um howard is that in my judgment one of those critical moments in its history and um we don't need to engage other people's discourse we need to be fashioning one of our own huh and and and the work of doing that needs to be at the center of what howard is doing intellectually today and um and i you know i'll i'll stop there but um i'm like i'm i'm very very very very upset and very concerned because um again our intellectual leadership has been kind of following the tale of the dog of american intellectual leadership and we have a different intellectual agenda and a different set of intellectual responsibilities and if we don't take responsibility for it who's going to do it and i'll stop thank you and although i never majored in african studies african studies was a part of every class that i took i was a communications major with an english minor your question yeah julian mayfield was there oh yeah uh i was an art history master's degree with african history aziz patron was there there is a difference in the undergrad of howard university now than there was at the time i was there it's not because of the faculty i'm wondering how the faculty then can help to put that fire back into the undergrad because as dr yang said it was the students who caused the movement and i don't see that happening in howard's undergrad right now especially looking at what just happened a couple of weeks ago at homecoming the priorities have changed what is it that we as alumni can do and the faculty can do to help put the fire back into the undergrad so that they can then move on to graduate studies and bring howard back to what it used to be i would say this as somebody who deals with a lot of undergrads they come to us with a different literacy electronic technology has literally reconfigured the way that we deal with information obviously the national trend is to entertain students on the weight in a reward structure that empties into kind of a and how i talked about this this this kind of indeterminate space as it relates to labor force in other words our young people don't have a destination right now they had a destination during the book t washington area i mean there was there was jobs for them with no job except perhaps the value of their literary of their bodies which is why the prison industrial complex is so it's growing the leadership class that howard spoke of being trained by howard and other places really doesn't require content mastery as much as it requires a kind of vocab kind of orientation that allows you to manage technology what we've done in conclusion to that because i know we get a lot more conversation we can we can talk more about this afterwards what we've attempted to do is integrate some structural steps particularly like college of arts and sciences we do a freshman seminar and it's very deeply uh ingrained in kind of african knowledge systems we had a google watch young last year well they say inca was here earlier this week putting it where students can get it last thing i'll say those freshmen then coming into that curriculum that you mentioned african studies afro-american studies uh english philosophy political science economics in the general education curriculum then are reintroduced to those quite those concepts they get as freshmen and we now the proof will be in the pudding we gotta trace we track those students we this reconfigured freshman seminar is only three years old we will see as they come forward what it's going to produce but we are as dr dodson said fighting the the recently retired president was very clear about this and in the process of economic academic renewal it was hardwired into the structure of where we would go i have no faith whatsoever that that plan which took over three years to develop will go forward in the future because i'm not sure that the leadership of the institution i mean board trustees ever got it and i'm talking about every not everybody but clusters ever got it and i think that what it will take now we will have to re-visit that process but we're not far we're not far it is it's there to be actualized if we can just make this last push and you were talking about the the students um oh let me say right quick that's what got him out of retirement at the schaumburg that was part of the peak car we went we went we put a hit squad on howard dodson and drug him out of new york city no literally that was part of the process no questions i'm going to say with regard to student excuse me sure i'm sorry no you finished i'm sorry with regard to students um one of the concerns i have and it's part of what's informing the work we're doing at the library is that um the um if you will then the intellectual culture of the school needs to be fixed and what you uh what you saw at um at the at yard fest uh quite frankly in some respects uh reflects the misplaced priorities of the institution in relationship to the students i'll say it don't say another way freshmen arrive and the first thing they do the first week that they're on the campus they're climbing doing rock climbing and other kinds of crap i'm sorry uh you know and they're being oriented to howard and the orientation is a whole bunch of them play uh and we've have i've had the conversation with with the president and with some other folk about this and so it's not i'm not talking out of school and we we hope to change that in some meaningful ways but the other piece is that um the mission of the institution is teaching learning and research and um that needs to be the dominant discourse that's going on on campus being there 24 7. the way we're redoing the library is to facilitate that kind of intellectual discourse and hoping to through that begin to change service a kind of catalyst for changing the if you all the intellectual culture of the institution uh at the time when the kids were in the 60s and early 70s out beyond their classes they were intellectually engaged okay okay and and and that's where we need to return in order to uh you know recreate this kind of uh intellectual uh vitality that's uh that's purposeful intellectual uh activity uh rather than this kind of play stuff that's going on right now okay one more question and oh i'm sorry you have the question next question um angela and i were contemporaries in the african studies department i think i run through it real fast because i have two kids to take care of so i couldn't handle them pushing me so i had to roll it and then the person who you taught becomes the one who you have to be beholden to is great now rolling it in terms of how it we have a great legacy but i'm wondering where that legacy went i was trying to buy the math i was taught by scalar james so was angel eliot skinner all these people at least can i used to run down here from columbia on the train yes but where is the legacy of intellectual curiosity where is the legacy of excellence i was told once that these students pay a lot to take their class that i have to pass i used to do three four jobs just to pay for my schooling because i didn't have the right papers to get a real job now you have to run c street run back on the hill there's no sugar go take a class just to earn every five dollars in one day and i added up all those fives and i paid my 275 dollars for my tuition and buy so what i'm saying is we need to stop all that be you know what because it's not fair to hold it okay now let's look at um the modern swinger research center my students if they're studying spanish they have to do a favor on something to do with afro-hispanic writers or something but when i ask them how many people have been someone entering our research they look at me like what's wanting to that what has happened in the panel what has happened between now and then i was there in the 60s when i stood on the roof and saw from meridian and everywhere burning what has happened to me knowing then how can we correct it because sometimes we run our notes but we don't have any solutions and i really want to find a solution to how we can stop us being you know what and we have some administrators who don't really know about the legacy of forward and they don't care as long as the money is in their property is fine so i want to know how we can make african studies african-american friends with great people like gosselin great intellect you know what i like about them they don't read i can't stand for you to read to me because i can read all thank you very much because you see if you look at human beings and the money in which we have made progress we have to have legacies we are prisoners of letters and numbers the whole history of human beings is letters and numbers we speak english that's why we alphabet you convince chinese arabic speaker you have your letters you see what she is saying and those people are gone but they remember hans perry is gone but she's still alive not only because of biological livelihood because some of us still remember him as memories when he is speaking clr james was in african studies he was a great intellect we have elliot skinner who was at columbia university was a visiting professor at african studies then leon damas one of the striker of the negritude movement you see so there are great scholars at howard but when we are talking about hansberry when we leave logan and all of them that they are victims of circumstances beyond their control you can have great intellect but you don't have us you see the greatest people in human history if you look at jesus christ he was only 33 years old there are now billions of human beings who are still remembering him but he could not have done it without those apostles and disciples you can look at muhammad look at your buddha look at more recently look at gandhi and the indian narrative today you see you have to have people who follow the tradition that's what she's saying to us we're here here now at the level of congress all of you in the room here all of you with the modern technology what we are doing here each one of you can be vlogging or tweeting and pushing ideas to millions of people that's the capabilities we have now we didn't have that before so if i go back to her question in 68 those students at howard change history today we have a whole department of afro-american studies and i support the idea why would you be studying black when you are an african-american at hampton actually what is very ironic in terms of our intellectual history you don't find any african-american studies program in the hbcu with an afro-american studies program none that's right none they don't have an african studies program none what happened is those are captured in the history departments right left to some elements in the old order there will be no afro-american studies the kids say we are not going to accept that we don't want to be colonized intellectually that was why when we were a student france fano black skin white mask was very popular with the kids the problem she is asking now do we have students today who are like them when they were students they were reading books do we have books for the modern kids these kids are now prisoners i tell them i was just sticking to this undergraduate i say you are the prisoners of the electron once upon a time no because they don't talk to each other how are you going to land if you don't talk to one another you see once upon a time you're walking down this street and you're talking to yourself man or woman is crazy no they don't say anything i tell them the demarcation line between insanity and sanity is very thin because of the electron and that's what she is complaining you cannot organize if you don't talk to other people you are next to me you talking to somebody 500 miles away you say hello i'm wondering where you talk to me i stop that then you understand our problem yeah we have to live with it all of us it's not me or all of us but i just want to answer that and say that i think when and you know a question of how we construct the past again i don't think howard was ever that roma that place i think that we are at a different time to be sure but and i mentioned the freshman seminar and i say this because there are a lot of hard work faculty in this room right now when you see that bridge the reality is there are a number of faculty departments all over howard's campus that are doing that work um there are faculty that send their undergraduate students even more than spin guard have never stopped doing that in the department of african studies we fought during the p-card processes academic renewal to make sure that african studies kept its undergraduate program because it's very important to have undergraduate and graduate students in close proximity they were going to try to shut that program we say hell no you're not going to shut it because y'all understand what howard is finally there there are a number of students there are study groups that take place after five o'clock on that campus every night army trade society students against mass incarceration even the fraternities and sororities the alphas had their three i spent two hours with them last night with a hundred kids in a room talking about jim crow and legal segregation from 1850 to the present they are doing it all the time often what i find is that folks who are the most critical of what's going on at howard who are on howard's campus are the ones with the least amount of contact with the students it's very easy to launch criticism from an administrative conversation what i find is that criticism evaporates in the heat of actually doing the work which is why i'll say african studies as far as i'm concerned the models of suleiman yong the models of the models of the faculty the model of bob cummings and whose wife is still teaching by the way at howard is a model of producing scholarship while they go meet their classes every day and that is rarely done at schools where research is emphasized and they have very little contact with africa which is why all these negro is writing about africa and afro-america and all the diaspora stuff i invite them to come here for lectures because my first question is do you teach if it is no then just give me the book then i don't need to hear you anymore because he and howard we work for a living that's a very different conversation at this point one last question because you have been holding your hand up quite a while and this will be our last question and i am a graduate student at the african studies i'm so happy to be here thank you bye just my comment and question to dr dawson i do agree with you about howard campus is colonized and i have an example of this with my first year when i came to howard i used to use starbucks and i would sit there and study and over the last year i noticed this since the beginning of this year there was so many uh pictures fathers hanging on the walls of the starbucks of uh dr king harry potter and frederick douglass they're no longer there and when i asked they were um they're saying uh people complained about taking things out and then they didn't they are not taking them they're not putting them back and this is one of the things i'm it's a my suggestion can we in an attempt to decolonize uh um our campus acknowledge it's a suggestion for dr trump to to acknowledge mayo hannesbury um participation and his great contribution to the african studies to name our graduate lounge under his name and that's those pictures came down in part that's one of the reasons why if you watch baseball at all last month you saw magic johnson sitting up in the new as the owner of the la dodgers magic johnson sold all his stakes in starbucks around the country in order to leverage the money to become a minority partner the la dodgers when he sold the starbucks that's when the black pitchers came down yeah i mean i just want to let you know but that doesn't mean they can't go back up though i think they see it that's very good and and that's that's that's one one of those examples of basically you defining yourself in your space yes i mean basically if you're going to do business in here this is what has to be in it it's it's it's a very you remember the spike lethal that's right do the right thing do the right thing i i did want to say this which uh which is something that i've been kind of noodling with since i've been at howard um there is a um a constant kind of almost reification of the notion of howard's extraordinary legacy and we do need to recognize that legacy but more importantly my judgment is what do we do with the tradition and the two are not synonymous that's right and the tradition piece is how do you how do you live it and create it and promote it the best of that comes out of that past that comes out of that legacy how do you center that in the day-to-day life and work of the institution and people in my judgment end up seek claiming the legacy um doesn't take very much you you claim the legacy and you say yo they were great but what the hell are you going to be that's right and what are you doing and and and if what they did was so great why aren't we emulating it and you emulate it by keeping that tradition of excellence and critical thinking and taking charge of black people's lives and all you do it by do by practicing that not by simply holding up some pictures of people and saying he was great and he was a great sociologist that don't do it thank you thank you in closing once again i would like to thank all of the guest panelists the four individuals when i asked the four individuals i was asking those professors who i knew could give me a real analysis of the intellectual tradition of african studies at howard so we're very happy to document that and have that as a part of our africana collections here at the library additionally i would like to say particularly to the students who are in the audience everything that you heard here today the names that you heard leo hansberry kelly miller we talked about the african colonization society the papers of the african colonization society are here in the library of congress and the entire journal of the colonization society the african repository is here in the library for the african section we are collecting volumes of data on africa on a day-to-day basis these collections need to be used they need to be interpreted there's tremendous research to do here at the library of congress as well as in the moreland spin guard collection so we invite you to take advantage of those collections thank you all for coming this has been a presentation of the library of congress visit us at loc.gov

Channel: Library of Congress

Views: 104,702

Rating: 4.5239263 out of 5

Keywords: Library of Congress, Howard University (Organization)

Id: tQl04Cn0nJQ

Length: 149min 40sec (8980 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 18 2014