Afro-American Studies examines its past

The weekend of conferences focused on the past, present and future of the 25-year-old program. In 1972, the Task Force on Black Presence celebrated the University's recognition of the need for an Afro-American Studies Program at Penn. Now fully entrenched in the University community, the Afro-American Studies Program celebrated its 25th anniversary this past weekend with a conference, "African American Studies: The 21st Century and Beyond," which gave scholars scholars from across the country the opportunity to address issues ranging from history and political science to law and economic development. "Not only are we celebrating the fact that our program has survived and flourished in the last 25 years, but that the field of African American Studies has reached the level of complexity touches upon just about every discipline," Afro-American Studies Program Director Herman Beavers said. A Look Back Former University President Martin Meyerson, who headed the administration when the Afro-American Studies Program first got underway, attended the weekend's celebration and recalled the events leading up to the program's founding. "I remember when the Afro-American Studies program was first initiated my first year at Penn," Meyerson said. "Even before I came to Penn in 1970, I know this was an issue that the University felt the need to address. "Now it's larger and just one of our programs that people take for granted." Before it became just another facet of the University, however, the question of establishing the Afro-American Studies Program was the source of heated debates between the faculty and administration in the 1960s and throughout the 1970s, according to Human Relations and English Professor Houston Baker, director of the Center for the Study of Black Literature and Culture. It was the Task Force on Black Presence -- created and headed by Law Professor Ralph Smith -- that finally initiated action. "The goal of the task force was to put the University in the forefront of Afro-American Studies for the future," Baker said. "There was then a president and provost, [Meyerson and the late Eliot Stellar, respectively], who believed Penn could well capture the future. So, much work went into the recommendations of the Task Force, and authentic energy and earnestness came from the Penn administration of Penn." Baker characterized Penn as "historically well-qualified" to establish the Afro-American Studies Program, as prominent black scholars such as W.E.B. DuBois and William Fontaine left immutable marks on the University's intellectual life. DuBois came to Penn in 1896 holding a doctorate from Harvard University, but was not granted a professorship at the University. In 1949, the University awarded Fontaine what it had denied DuBois -- a full professorship, thus making him the first fully affiliated African-American faculty member of the University. By 1972, through the efforts of the Task Force, the University established the Afro-American Studies program. It was not until 1985, however, that the proposals of the 1970s received any fiscal commitment from Penn, according to Baker. Students also played a crucial role in establishing the program, following the patterns of Black Studies programs in universities across the nation, Beavers said. "In nearly every case, Black Studies in the academia have been started by students, not by a group of intellectuals," said 1974 College graduate Gerald Early, who presented the keynote address for the anniversary conference. Early, a professor of Modern Letter and Director of African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University, labeled the emergence of Black Studies nationally as a "crisis" which provoked a need for intellectual and scholarly legitimatization. The Program Today The Afro-American Studies Program stresses the practicality of its course offerings, Beavers said, adding that materials covered are not purely theoretical knowledge. College junior Rachel Skerrit outlined the practicality of the Afro-American Studies Program in community service when she spoke in an afternoon session of the conference entitled "The Role of Black Studies in Re-inventing the Research University for Community Service." Skerrit, who has worked with University City High School as a teaching assistant for the past three years, got involved with the inner-city high school through a service learning course, English 401. Half of the two-unit course focused on studying American literature and the other half on teaching the same material to University High School students. Secondary school students who use vernacular English in essays can be criticized as lacking grammatical and logical a structure, unless the teacher has an understanding of ebonics, Skerrit explained. But the Afro-American Studies and Linguistics course "History of African American Vernacular English" trained her to see the grammatical patterns in vernacular English with rules unrecognizable to people on first contact. The course aided her in helping students develop a better understanding of standard English so that they can be trained to "navigate between vernacular English and standard English." Aside from practicality, Beavers said the program is also at the forefront of continuing dialogue on diversity and minority issues. "It's the one place in the University where people have conversations about race and gender that is honest and upfront," he said. The Future of the Program Reflecting the conference's focus on the future, University President Judith Rodin announced her hopes of "establishing a graduate program in Afro-American Studies, building on its extraordinary work in the undergraduate program." "I asked my colleagues of the Afro-American Studies Department on whether or not an establishment of a graduate program would advance their goals in going forward," Rodin said. "If it is indeed right for the progress, then the University will be in full support of the institutionalizing such a department," she said. Rodin added that the invitation was a way of showing the University's commitment to the development of Afro-American Studies.