Black Studies in the University

A founding document of African American Studies, reissued for today's students and scholars

In a landmark 1968 conference at Yale University, students, faculty, and community activists helped establish "Afro?American Studies" as a major, and then a thriving department, at Yale. In these conference proceedings, participants argue for the necessity of Black Studies as a field, start to delineate its central debates, discuss its relationship to the broader community, and plot a course of study. Bristling with implied action and the power of an idea whose time has come, this classic reissue will serve as a resource for new generations of scholars and activists.

Contributors to the proceedings include McGeorge Bundy, Lawrence W. Chisolm, Harold Cruse, David Brion Davis, Nathan Hare, Maulana Ron Karenga, Martin Kilson, Jr., Gerald A. McWorter, Sidney W. Mintz, Boniface Obichere, Alvin Poussaint, Edwin S. Redkey, Charles H. Taylor, Jr., and Robert Farris Thompson.

In a new introduction, Farah Jasmine Griffin reflects on the legacy of this book and the trajectory of the field over the decades; forewords by Ralph C. Dawson and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., recall the pioneering moment at Yale and all that it made possible.

About the Authors

Armstead L. Robinson (1947-1995) was a distinguished scholar of slavery and the collapse of the confederacy. In 1981 he founded the Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia, which he directed until his death.

Craig C. Foster is a Yale Class of 1969 graduate. He is a member of the Ogilvie, Robinson, and DeChabert Advisory Board at Yale's Afro-American Cultural Center.

Donald H. Ogilvie (d. 2003) was a Yale Class of 1968 graduate and a community leader in New Haven, remembered for his part in establishing Yale's Black Studies Department and founding the Afro-American Cultural Center.

Ralph C. Dawson, a member of the Yale Class of 1971, was a student activist and campus leader instrumental in the establishment of Yale's African-American Studies Major and its Afro-American Cultural Center. He was a leader of the Black Student Alliance at Yale.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. He is a Yale Class of 1973 graduate and was a leader in Yale's Black Student Alliance.

Farah Jasmine Griffin is the William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University