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African Studies at Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2016

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Establishing an African studies program at a historically Black college or university (HBCU) may seem to make as much sense as carrying coals to Newcastle. In fact, though, very few of these institutions have African studies programs. Howard University is an important exception and was the first HBCU to establish an African studies program. That program, which was led initially by Rayford Logan, was created in 1953 following a $50,000 Ford Foundation grant in 1952. Anthropologist Melville Herskovits established the first African studies program in the United States in 1948. Howard University remains one of the few, if not the only, institution in the United States with an African Studies department that has its own faculty and that offers a doctorate in African studies.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2002 

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References

Notes

1. Meier, August and Rudwick, Elliott, Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915-1980 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 1 Google Scholar.

2. U.S. Department of Education, National Center of Education Statistics, Historically Black Colleges and Universities: 1976 to 1994, see http://www.nces.ed.gov/pubs/96902.pdf.

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5. After completing his doctorate from Harvard University in 1895, Du Bois was offered his first teaching position at Wilberforce College, where he taught Latin, Greek, German, and English. Wilberforce refused his offer to teach sociology. Therefore, when the University of Pennsylvania offered him a temporary appointment as an assistant instructor at $600 a year, Du Bois accepted it in the fall of 1896. Although he was not permitted to teach, Du Bois was able to complete a scientific study of the Negro problem. His study on the Philadelphia Negro was eventually published. Then Atlanta University, which needed someone to develop the Department of Sociology and provide scholarly direction for the conferences on the Negro it had launched in 1896, offered the position to Du Bois at the salary of $1,000 a year.

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12. Schmidt, 5.

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