Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Now seventy-one years old and with some forty years of academic association with Harvard University, where I've taught courses in the fields of African Politics, Afro-American Politics, and American Ethnic Politics, I rank among the old guard of African-American scholars who were participants or midwives at the birth of Black Studies curricula on American college campuses – both at Black Colleges and White ones – in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Though the number of African-American academics present at White campuses in the founding era of Black Studies was extremely small – seldom more than two or three at any given institution – the scholarly abilities of these African-American academics were at the highest level. Among that early old guard sector of African-American academics on White campuses during the founding era of Black Studies, I think of the following: John Hope Franklin (historian) at the University of Chicago; Kenneth B. Clark (psychologist) at Brooklyn College; recently deceased Hylan Lewis (sociologist) at Brooklyn College; John Aubrey Davis (political scientist) at City College; Adelaide Cromwell Hill (sociologist) at Stanford University; recently deceased John Blassingame (historian) at Yale University; Charles Davis (literary studies) at Yale University; Clyde Ferguson (international law) at Rutgers University; C. Sylvester Whitaker (political scientist) at ... log in or subscribe to read full text