african studies in the united states an afro-american view

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African Studies in the United States, An Afro-American ViewAuthor(s): John Henrik ClarkeSource: Africa Today, Vol. 16, No. 2, African Studies and the Black Protest (Apr. - May, 1969),pp. 10-12Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4185003 .

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A f r i c a n S t u d i e s in t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s ,A n Afro-AmericanV i e w

John Henrik ClarkeUniversity-basedAfrican Studiesprogramsin theUnited States are comparativelynew. Most of themdid not exist prior tothe AfricanFreedomExplorationwith the emergence of Ghanain 1957.Americaninterestin Africais as old as the nationitself. But this interest has not always been in Africa'sfavor and it is highly questionablenow.Whyare so many Americansnow studying aboutAfrica?Whyare most of themwhiteAmericans?Whyare there so few black Americans with decision-making positions in present-day African studiesprograms? In light of the prevailing American at-titude toward Africa, mainly negative before theFreedom Exploration, what is the basis of their in-terest in Africa now?Most of the African Studies programs in theUnited States deal more with anthropology andpoliticsthanwithhistory.Thereis not a single AfricanStudies program in the United States that is ap-proaching African history systematically, beginningat thebeginning.Indeedthereis some justificationforquestioningwhetherthese are really AfricanStudiesprogramsinasmuch as most of the attention is paid tothe evolvement of Africa since the European contactin the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and present-day African politics in transition. Couldn't theseprograms be more correctly called "AmericanStudies of the Effects of European Expansion-1442-1969"?DEFECTS IN AMERICAN AFRICAN STUDIESTheglaring defect in all of the AmericanAfricanStudiesprogramsis the total, insulting neglect of therole that blackAmericansplayed in keeping alive aninterest in Africanhistory when no university in theUnitedStates had any respectfulinterest in the sub-ject.Any honest approach to African Studies in theUnitedStates must begin withat least a brief historyof the interest that black Americans have shown inthis subject and the desire to reclaim their Africanheritage.The Africans who came to the United States asslaves started their attempts to reclaim their lostAfrican heritage soon after they arrived in thiscountry.Theywere searchingfor the lost identity thatthe slave system had destroyed. Concurrentwith theblack man's search for an identity in America hasbeen his search for an identity in the world; which

means, in essence, his identityas a humanbeing witha history, beforeand after slavery, that can commandrespect.BLYDEN AND DUBOISSome Afro-Americansgave up the search andaccepted the distortedimage of themselves that hadbeencreated bytheiroppressors.As early as 1881,Dr.EdwardWilmotBlyden,thegreat West Indianscholarand benefactorof West Africa, addressed himself tothis situation when he said: "In all English-speakingcountries, the mind of the intelligent Negro childrevolts against the descriptionsof the Negro given inelementary school books, geographies, travels,histories.... having embraced or at least assented tothose falsehoods abouthimself, he concludes that hisonlyhope of risinginthe scale of respectable manhoodis to strive for what is most unlike himself and mostalien to his peculiar tastes."But despite the alienation Dr. Blyden speaks of,the Afro-American'sspiritual trek back to Africacontinued. Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, the Afro-Americanelder statesman, addressed himself to the broaderaspects of this situation at the celebration of theSecondAnniversaryof the Asian-African (Bandung)Conferenceandtherebirthof Ghanaon April 30, 1957,when he said: "From the fifteenth through theseventeenth centuries, the Africans imported toAmericaregarded themselves as temporary settlersdestined to return eventually to Africa. Their in-creasing revolts against the slave system, whichculminated in the eighteenth century, showed afeeling of close kinship to the motherland and evenwell into the ninteenth century they called theirorganizations 'Africans' as witness the 'AfricanUnions' of New York and Newport, and the AfricanChurchesof PhiladelphiaandNewYork."Evencloserkinshipwith Africaand the East was felt in the WestIndies and South America.THE AFRO-AMERICAN PRESS

The awarenessof Africaby the men whobuilt anddevelopedthe Afro-AmericanPress goes back to thehectic and heroicbeginningof blackjournalismin thiscountry.Some of the back issues of these old papersshow their editors' keen awareness of Africa and itsimportance.Alexander Crummell, founder of the AfricanAcademy, friendand contemporaryof Dr. Edwin W.Blyden,was one of the first of ourearly writers to call

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attention to Africathroughthe Afro-AmericanPress.He was the dean of the black scholarly and literarygroupin the closing quarterof thenineteenthcentury.The life of Dr. Crummell later fired the imaginationandredoubledthe vigor of Dr. W.E.B.DuBois, whosesharp and penetrating pen burned its own path innational and international affairs, from the earlynineties to the present day.DuBoismade the subjectof Africaan issue in theAfro-AmericanPress. In 1915,the Home UniversityLibrary broughtout a small book, "The Negro", inwhich Dr. DuBoisoutlinedthe program that must befollowed in order to deal properlywith the whole fieldof Africanlife and history.Dr. Carter G. Woodson's researches andpublicationscame forthinto thewidest popularizationof the subject.Quietly,Africanscholars like Dr. J. E.Moorland,Mr. ArthurA.Schomburg,Mr. J. A. Rogersand Professor William L. Hansberryled the field ingathering material.After the first WorldWar, W.E.B.DuBoisagainaccelerated the American black man's interest inAfrica by organizing a series of Pan-AfricanCongresses. At a time when the news about theaspirationsof Africans forself-governmentwas beingignored throughout most of the world, the Afro-AmericanPress gave full coverage to this subject.Inthepages of thesenewspaperswe learnedof theactivities of and briefly appraised the significantevents leading to the establishmentof the new state.In other articles by J. A. Rogers, Marguerite Cart-wrightand theeditorof the "Courier",the historyand

importance of the new state were presented in amanner that readers who had no prior knowledgeofthe subject matter could understand.BACKGROUND OF AFRO-AMERICAN INTERESTIN AFRICAInterestinAfricaextended intoevery partof Afro-American life. For nearly fifty years, the editors of"The Negro Year Book" published at Tuskegee In-stitute, compiled and published an annual list ofbooks,monogramsandarticlesrelatingto Africa.TheAfro-Americanchurch interest was shown in theirmany missionaryeffortsand in the early concernforeducation in Africa.In 1958,the French-Africanmagazine, PresenceAfricaine, published a special issue devoted to thesubject "Africa Seen by American Negroes". Thepublicationwas widely distributedby the AmericanSocietyofAfricanCulture.Thisorganizationwas thenyoung, bright and hopeful and a lot of blackAmericanswere lookingto it as the potentialbuilderof a new bridge of understandingbetween Africansand Afro-Americans.Most of the articles in thepublication "Africa Seen by American Negroes"tended to justify this potential.

In her article "AfricanStudiesPrograms in theUnited States", Dr. Adelaide Cromwell Hill callsAFRICA TODAY

attention to the fact that the interest of Americanuniversities in Africa and their interest in areaprograms, as such, are two quite differentthings. Infact, she states, academic concernwith Africa at theuniversity level far antedates the popularity andfeasibility of so-called area programs.In calling attentionto Afro-Americaninterest inAfrica,Dr. Hill makes this observation: "Asearly as1903,W.E.B. DuBois, scholar, writer and universityteacher makes the followingassertion in his classicwork, Souls of Black Folk - 'The problem of thetwentieth century is the problemof the color-linethe relation ofthe darkerto the lighter races of men inAsia and Africa, in America and the islands of theseas'. DuBois was for some years associated withAtlanta University. As a teacher and thinker, heundoubtedlyinfluenced generationsof Negroes bothwithin and outside the Negro universities. Anotherequally persuasive influence for students at Negrouniversitieshas been theworkof CarterWoodson.Thevoluminous writings of Dr. Woodson represent aclassic repositoryof reliable data, much of which waspreviouslyunknownto Negroes, on the history of theAmerican Negro. In his many-times revised workThe Negro in Our History Dr. Woodsonunderscoresthe Africanorigin of American Negroes.'"AmongAfro-Americanuniversitites, HowardandLincoln have had the best AfricanStudiesprogramsthrough the years; Howard, located in Washington,D.C.beingthefirst blackuniversitywitha full fledgedprogram in African Studies. Lincoln University, inPennsylvania, has played another importantrole indeveloping interest in Africa. A number of Africanswho become the leaders of their respective nationssuch as Kwane Nkrumah of Ghana and the lateNnamdi Azikiweof Nigeria were LincolnUniversitygraduates.There is a traditional interest in Africa in everymajor Afro-Americanorganization. In the NAACPthis interest was best expressed in the pages of theCrisis Magazineduringthe editorship of Dr. W.E.B.DuBois.A similar interest was reflectedin the pagesof the Journalof Negro History while thatpublicationwas being edited by CarterG. Woodson.THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF AFRICANCULTUREIn June of 1959the AmericanSociety of AfricanCulture held its second annual conference at theWaldorf-Astoriain New York City. The paperspresentedat thisconference, collectively, representeda new andin-depthapproachto AfricanStudies. Mostof the papers were prepared by black scholars. Anominous and negative note crept into this conferenceand went almost unnoticedby those attending.Thiswas in the form of a paper by Dr. Harold R. Isaacscalled "The American Negro and Africa: SomeNotes". In thispaper, Dr. Isaacs infers very uniquelythat the Afro-American and the African are total

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strangers and have a traditionaldislike of each other.Hispontificalattitudewouldlater be reflectedby whatseemed to be a conscious attempt on the part of anumberof white people involved in African Studies tospread dissension between Africans and Afro-Americans. Harold Isaacs continued his negativeattitude in these matters and a second paper waspresented at the third annual conference of theAmerican Society of African Culture, University ofPennsylvania, June 1960. This time his paper wascalled "Five Writers and Their Ancestors". In thesecond paper, by taking some negative quotes fromfive major black writers out of context, he tried toreinforce the theme of the first paper. He laterpublished an article in the New Yorker magazine inwhichhe continuedto persist in his negative emphasison African and Afro-Americanrelations.

At a subsequent conference of the AmericanSocietyof AfricanCulture,this thesis was challengedby Dr. Horace Mann Bond.Dr. Bondwas overly kindto Dr. Isaacs who clung unrelentinglyto his originalpoint of view. It was three years after the presentingof the original paper that some of the members ofAMSACbegan to question why the organization wasbeing used to project such a negative point of view.The idealistic hope that AMSACwouldprove to be abridge of understanding began to wane and theromance between AMSAC and some of its earlymemberswas over. Manycontinuedto participateinthe activities of the organizationbut it was no longereffective as the instrument for which it was un-derstoodto have been created.Onreflection, many ofthe members mourned the loss of the potential thatAMSACcould have had andhave continuedto work inan informalunit to exchange their points of view onAfrican and Afro-Americanrelations.THE AFRICAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION

While the African Studies Association is not thefirstorganizationof this naturein the United States, itis the largest and most influentialbecause most of theotherAfrican Studies programs derive many of theirprogram ideas from the ASA. There are some blackAssociateMembersand Fellows, but the organizationis essentially a white organizationand there has beenno overt attempt to solicit black membership untilvery recently. An examinationof the participants in

the conferences for the last ten years reveals thatmost of the papers are presented by white scholars,andtheirconcernin the main, is Africananthropolgyand African politics. There are very few paperspresented on general African history and the attemptto correct the myriad of misconceptions concerningAfrica, Africans and Afro-Americansis minimal. TheASA, being the largest and most influentialorganization of this kind, does not differ essentiallyfrom any of the other white organizationsinvolved inAfrican Studies. This brings to mind the question:Whatis Africabeing studiedfor andwhy are there sofew Afro-Americansinvolved in these programs?At the tenth annual meeting at the New YorkHiltonin 1967,for the first time, there were panels onthe teaching of African history and the future ofAfrican history with adequate Afro-Americanrepresentationon the panels. This was some changefrom the previous practice of the association. Therewere similar panels at the 11thannualmeeting in LosAngelesin 1968.It was at this conferencethat a groupof Africans and Afro-Americansattending called ablackcaucusfor the purposeof reassessing their rolein the organization.It was not their intent to leave theAssociation but to demand decision-makingpositionswithin the structure. This was a revolt against thestandardpractice of Africanorganizations, governedby whites, togive minutetokenparticipationto blacksin roles designed to leave them voiceless in mattersconcerning themselves. I think this revolt, whichseemed minor on the surface, will have far-reachingrepercussions on African Studies programs in theUnited States, because it is not unrelated to thegrowing revolt of Afro-Americansagainst the struc-tured exclusion from matters relating to them andtheir culture. Othersegmentsofthe blackcommunity,especially the students, are saying "I must be theauthorityon myself."AFRICAN STUDIES PROGRAMS WILL CHANGEThe standard African Studies programs as nowconstructed are obviously being outmoded by thepressure of Afro-American students for a realisticpresentationof Africanhistorythat will not have as itsmain focus the Europeancontact and the slave trade.The growing numberof African and Afro-Americanscholars entering the field will play a major role ineffecting this change.

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african studies in the united states an afro-american view

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