Black History Month: Director's Note

Black History Month: Director's Note

February is Black History Month in the United States, and it is a good time for us to reflect on what Black History means to African Studies. African Studies in the United States originated with Black scholars addressing both academic and popular Black audience interest in African affairs dating back to the 19th century. Some like W.E.B. DuBois studied Africa in the library while others from Blyden to Bunche, conducted primary research on the continent. Black scholars shared their arguments as faculty at HBCUs, through public lectures delivered at churches and social clubs, and in the pages of The Crisis, Journal of Negro History, and other publications with largely black audiences. 

In the mid-20th century, this tradition of African Studies dovetailed with new interests emerging in PWIs. Against a backdrop of civil rights mobilization in the United States and unfolding independence movements on the continent, the Black Student Movement played a pivotal role in building African Studies. In newly integrating PWIs across the country, Black student demand led to new courses on Africa, the hiring of specialists in African Studies, and the diversification of the faculty.  These gains to the field sometimes came at great personal cost to student activists who were branded as “troublemakers,” “difficult,” or “ungrateful.” Ultimately their efforts led to the establishment of new faculty lines, new departments and research programs, new courses that needed staffing, and doctoral programs and fellowships to train young scholars for the new positions.  

Black History also connects with African Studies in the United States around immigration. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 ended prior laws that centered principles of exclusion, eugenics-fueled preferences for White immigration, and racial quotas. The precedent on which the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act was able to incorporate non-discrimination on the basis of race or national origin, against newcomers to the United States, was the famous 1964 Civil Rights Act. We all know this was the first articulation at the federal level of the unconstitutionality of discrimination against persons on the basis of race, national origin, sex, or religion.  In this way Black History played a role in creating the conditions of possibility for the diversification of African Studies by making it possible for Black African Scholars, and Africans in general, to be in the United States at all. 

This February 2025, we know we are faced with a political and intellectual climate that is hostile to the project of Black History. Disregard for, disinformation about, and attempts at outright erasure of Black History from education and public life are all symptoms of this hostility. We resist these strategies by recalling what Black History has meant for African Studies. Going into February 2025, we reflect critically on the question of what African Studies means to Black History now, and what might be possible going into the future.

Prof. Abosede George

Director of the Institute of African Studies