African Studies in the United States, An Afro-American View

Author(s): John Henrik Clarke

Source: Africa Today, Vol. 16, No. 2, African Studies and the Black Protest (Apr. - May, 1969),
pp. 10-12
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4185003 .
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 African Studies in
An View
Afro-American
John Henrik Clarke
University-basedAfrican Studies programs in the
United States are comparatively new. Most of them
did not exist priorto the AfricanFreedom Exploration
with the emergence of Ghana in 1957.
American interest in Africa is as old as the nation
itself. But this interest has not always been in Africa's
favor and it is highly questionable now.
Why are so many Americans now studying about
Africa?Whyare most of them white Americans? Why
are there so few black Americans with decision-
making positions in present-day African studies
programs? In light of the prevailing American at-
titude toward Africa, mainly negative before the
Freedom Exploration, what is the basis of their in-
terest in Africa now?
Most of the African Studies programs in the
United States deal more with anthropology and
politics thanwith history. There is not a single African
Studies program in the United States that is ap-
proaching African history systematically, beginning
at the beginning.Indeedthere is some justificationfor
questioningwhether these are really African Studies
programs inasmuch as most of the attention is paid to
the evolvement of Africa since the European contact
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and present-
day African politics in transition. Couldn't these
programs be more correctly called "American
Studies of the Effects of European Expansion-1442-
1969"?
DEFECTS IN AMERICAN AFRICAN STUDIES
The glaring defect in all of the American African
Studies programs is the total, insulting neglect of the
role that black Americans played in keeping alive an
interest in African history when no university in the
United States had any respectful interest in the sub-
ject.
Any honest approach to African Studies in the
United States must begin with at least a brief history
of the interest that black Americans have shown in
this subject and the desire to reclaim their African
heritage.
The Africans who came to the United States as
slaves started their attempts to reclaim their lost
African heritage soon after they arrived in this
country.They were searching for the lost identity that
the slave system had destroyed. Concurrentwith the
black man's search for an identity in America has
been his search for an identity in the world; which
10
the United States,
means, in essence, his identity as a human being with
a history, beforeand after slavery, that can command
respect.
BLYDEN AND DUBOIS
Some Afro-Americans gave up the search and
accepted the distorted image of themselves that had
been created by their oppressors.As early as 1881,Dr.
EdwardWilmotBlyden, the great West Indianscholar
and benefactor of West Africa, addressed himself to
this situation when he said: "In all English-speaking
countries, the mind of the intelligent Negro child
revolts against the descriptions of the Negro given in
elementary school books, geographies, travels,
histories.... having embraced or at least assented to
those falsehoods about himself, he concludes that his
only hopeof rising in the scale of respectable manhood
is to strive for what is most unlike himself and most
alien to his peculiar tastes."
But despite the alienation Dr. Blyden speaks of,
the Afro-American's spiritual trek back to Africa
continued. Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, the Afro-American
elder statesman, addressed himself to the broader
aspects of this situation at the celebration of the
Second Anniversaryof the Asian-African (Bandung)
Conferenceand the rebirthof Ghanaon April 30, 1957,
when he said: "From the fifteenth through the
seventeenth centuries, the Africans imported to
America regarded themselves as temporary settlers
destined to return eventually to Africa. Their in-
creasing revolts against the slave system, which
culminated in the eighteenth century, showed a
feeling of close kinship to the motherland and even
well into the ninteenth century they called their
organizations 'Africans' as witness the 'African
Unions' of New York and Newport, and the African
Churchesof Philadelphiaand New York."Evencloser
kinshipwith Africa and the East was felt in the West
Indies and South America.
THE AFRO-AMERICAN PRESS
The awareness of Africa by the men who built and
developed the Afro-AmericanPress goes back to the
hectic and heroic beginningof black journalismin this
country. Some of the back issues of these old papers
show their editors' keen awareness of Africa and its
importance.
Alexander Crummell, founder of the African
Academy, friend and contemporaryof Dr. Edwin W.
Blyden, was one of the first of our early writers to call
attention to Africa throughthe Afro-AmericanPress.
He was the dean of the black scholarly and literary
groupin the closing quarter of the nineteenthcentury.
The life of Dr. Crummelllater fired the imagination
and redoubledthe vigor of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, whose
sharp and penetrating pen burned its own path in
national and international affairs, from the early
nineties to the present day.
DuBois made the subject of Africa an issue in the
Afro-AmericanPress. In 1915,the Home University
Library brought out a small book, "The Negro", in
which Dr. DuBois outlined the program that must be
followedin order to deal properlywith the whole field
of African life and history.
Dr. Carter G. Woodson's researches and
publicationscame forth into the widest popularization
of the subject. Quietly,African scholars like Dr. J. E.
Moorland,Mr. ArthurA. Schomburg,Mr. J. A. Rogers
and Professor William L. Hansberry led the field in
gathering material.
After the first World War, W.E.B.DuBois again
accelerated the American black man's interest in
Africa by organizing a series of Pan-African
Congresses. At a time when the news about the
aspirationsof Africans for self-governmentwas being
ignored throughout most of the world, the Afro-
American Press gave full coverage to this subject.
In the pages of these newspaperswe learned of the
activities of and briefly appraised the significant
events leading to the establishment of the new state.
In other articles by J. A. Rogers, Marguerite Cart-
wright and the editorof the "Courier",the history and
importance of the new state were presented in a
manner that readers who had no prior knowledge of
the subject matter could understand.
BACKGROUND OF AFRO-AMERICAN INTEREST
IN AFRICA
Interest in Africaextendedinto every part of 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 of
books,monogramsand articles relating to Africa. The
Afro-Americanchurch interest was shown in their
many missionary efforts and in the early concern for
education in Africa.
In 1958,the French-Africanmagazine, Presence
Africaine, published a special issue devoted to the
subject "Africa Seen by American Negroes". The
publication was widely distributed by the American
Society of AfricanCulture.This organizationwas then
young, bright and hopeful and a lot of black
Americans were looking to it as the potential builder
of a new bridge of understandingbetween Africans
and Afro-Americans. Most of the articles in the
publication "Africa Seen by American Negroes"
tended to justify this potential.
In her article "African Studies Programs in the
United States", Dr. Adelaide Cromwell Hill calls
AFRICA TODAY
attention to the fact that the interest of American
universities in Africa and their interest in area
programs, as such, are two quite different things. In
fact, she states, academic concern with Africa at the
university level far antedates the popularity and
feasibility of so-called area programs.
In calling attention to Afro-Americaninterest in
Africa, Dr. Hill makes this observation: "As early as
1903,W.E.B. DuBois, scholar, writer and university
teacher makes the following assertion in his classic
work, Souls of Black Folk - 'The problem of the
twentieth century is the problem of the color-line
the relationof the darkerto the lighter races of men in
Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the
seas'. DuBois was for some years associated with
Atlanta University. As a teacher and thinker, he
undoubtedlyinfluenced generations of Negroes both
within and outside the Negro universities. Another
equally persuasive influence for students at Negro
universitieshas been the workof CarterWoodson.The
voluminous writings of Dr. Woodson represent a
classic repositoryof reliable data, much of which was
previously unknownto Negroes, on the history of the
American Negro. In his many-times revised work
The Negro in Our History Dr. Woodsonunderscores
the African origin of American Negroes.'"
Among Afro-Americanuniversitites, Howardand
Lincoln have had the best African Studies programs
through the years; Howard, located in Washington,
D.C. being the first black university with a full fledged
program in African Studies. Lincoln University, in
Pennsylvania, has played another important role in
developing interest in Africa. A number of Africans
who become the leaders of their respective nations
such as Kwane Nkrumah of Ghana and the late
Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria were Lincoln University
graduates.
There is a traditional interest in Africa in every
major Afro-Americanorganization. In the NAACP
this interest was best expressed in the pages of the
Crisis Magazine during the editorship of Dr. W.E.B.
DuBois. A similar interest was reflected in the pages
of the Journalof Negro History while that publication
was being edited by Carter G. Woodson.
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF AFRICAN
CULTURE
In June of 1959the American Society of African
Culture held its second annual conference at the
Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. The papers
presentedat this conference, collectively, represented
a new and in-depthapproachto African Studies. Most
of the papers were prepared by black scholars. An
ominous and negative note crept into this conference
and went almost unnoticed by those attending. This
was in the form of a paper by Dr. Harold R. Isaacs
called "The American Negro and Africa: Some
Notes". In this paper, Dr. Isaacs infers very uniquely
that the Afro-American and the African are total
11
strangers and have a traditionaldislike of each other.
His pontificalattitudewouldlater be reflected by what
seemed to be a conscious attempt on the part of a
numberof white people involved in African Studies to
spread dissension between Africans and Afro-
Americans. Harold Isaacs continued his negative
attitude in these matters and a second paper was
presented at the third annual conference of the
American Society of African Culture, University of
Pennsylvania, June 1960. This time his paper was
called "Five Writers and Their Ancestors". In the
second paper, by taking some negative quotes from
five major black writers out of context, he tried to
reinforce the theme of the first paper. He later
published an article in the New Yorker magazine in
whichhe continuedto persist in his negative emphasis
on African and Afro-Americanrelations.
At a subsequent conference of the American
Society of African Culture,this thesis was challenged
by Dr. Horace Mann Bond. Dr. Bond was overly kind
to Dr. Isaacs who clung unrelentinglyto his original
point of view. It was three years after the presenting
of the original paper that some of the members of
AMSACbegan to question why the organizationwas
being used to project such a negative point of view.
The idealistic hope that AMSACwould prove to be a
bridge of understanding began to wane and the
romance between AMSAC and some of its early
members was over. Many continuedto participate in
the activities of the organizationbut it was no longer
effective as the instrument for which it was un-
derstoodto have been created. On reflection, many of
the members mourned the loss of the potential that
AMSACcould have had and have continuedto work in
an informal unit to exchange their points of view on
African and Afro-Americanrelations.
THE AFRICAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION
While the African Studies Association is not the
first organizationof this nature in the United States, it
is the largest and most influentialbecause most of the
other African Studies programs derive many of their
program ideas from the ASA. There are some black
Associate Membersand Fellows, but the organization
is essentially a white organizationand there has been
no overt attempt to solicit black membership until
very recently. An examination of the participants in
12
the conferences for the last ten years reveals that
most of the papers are presented by white scholars,
and their concern in the main, is African anthropolgy
and African politics. There are very few papers
presented on general African history and the attempt
to correct the myriad of misconceptions concerning
Africa, Africans and Afro-Americansis minimal. The
ASA, being the largest and most influential
organizationof this kind, does not differ essentially
from any of the other white organizationsinvolved in
African Studies. This brings to mind the question:
Whatis Africa being studied for and why are there so
few Afro-Americansinvolved in these programs?
At the tenth annual meeting at the New York
Hiltonin 1967,for the first time, there were panels on
the teaching of African history and the future of
African history with adequate Afro-American
representationon the panels. This was some change
from the previous practice of the association. There
were similar panels at the 11thannual meeting in Los
Angeles in 1968.It was at this conference that a group
of Africans and Afro-Americansattending called a
black caucus for the purpose of reassessing their role
in the organization.It was not their intent to leave the
Associationbut to demand decision-makingpositions
within the structure. This was a revolt against the
standardpractice of African organizations,governed
by whites, to give minute tokenparticipationto blacks
in roles designed to leave them voiceless in matters
concerning themselves. I think this revolt, which
seemed minor on the surface, will have far-reaching
repercussions on African Studies programs in the
United States, because it is not unrelated to the
growing revolt of Afro-Americansagainst the struc-
tured exclusion from matters relating to them and
their culture. Othersegments of the black community,
especially the students, are saying "I must be the
authority on myself."
AFRICAN STUDIES PROGRAMS WILL CHANGE
The standard African Studies programs as now
constructed are obviously being outmoded by the
pressure of Afro-Americanstudents for a realistic
presentationof Africanhistorythat will not have as its
main focus the Europeancontact and the slave trade.
The growing number of African and Afro-American
scholars entering the field will play a major role in
effecting this change.