IUB marks 30th anniversary of Afro-American studies

By Susan Williams

Becoming a department

Wiggins was part of the original faculty for what would become one of the oldest Afro-American studies programs in the nation. The department began in 1970 as a program, partially the result of an organized effort of black students to eliminate racism from the university. Under the leadership of Herman Hudson, the university’s first vice chancellor of Afro-American affairs, the program became a department in 1971.

Along with Wiggins, the original faculty included Joseph Russell and Phyllis R. Klotman.

Over the past 30 years, the department has expanded impressively. From its original three tenure-line faculty and five associate instructors, the teaching ranks have grown to nine full-time professors, nine adjunct faculty members and 12 associate instructors or graduate teaching assistants. From its original 12 courses, the curriculum has grown to more than 60 offerings in three concentration areas: the arts; literature; and history, culture and social issues.

From an average of 1,100 students taking those classes in the early ’70s, there were well over 2,000 by the early ’90s. The 15 students with majors in Afro-American studies have grown beyond 100. A minor and a double major are now offered. And in 1999, the Department of Afro-American Studies admitted its first class of eight master’s students. Two of those students completed degree requirements in December 2000 and will join their classmates for commencement this spring.

‘Growing’ a program

John McCluskey Jr., professor and chair of the department from 1995-2000, referred to guiding the development of African American studies as a discipline as “growing” the field. “Growing” a vital department, one that operates on the forefront of the discipline, means far more than developing a longer list of classes. In creating a diverse array of awards, activities, programs archives, institutes and opportunities, IU’s Department of Afro-American Studies has become a vital and an important university community.

Hudson, the department’s original chairman, founded the Urban and Overseas English Program in IU’s School of Education, the Office of African American Affairs, the Black Culture Center, the Afro-American Arts Institute, the Minority Achievers Program and a program of summer fellowships for minority faculty who come from other universities to teach and conduct research at IU. During the ’80s, an associate instructor/graduate assistant program began, along with a junior faculty mentoring program.

The ’80s also saw the development of the Black Film Center/Archive (BFC/A). A repository of historic and contemporary films and related materials by and about African Americans, the BFC/A serves as an academic, professional and community resource. MGM/United Artists, Paramount and Warner Brothers have donated 16mm prints of movies such as The Green Pastures, In the Heat of the Night and Lady Sings the Blues, and the center’s sponsors include Maya Angelou, Bill Cosby, Quincy Jones, Sidney Poitier and Tavis Smiley.

The Department of Afro-American Studies has also developed a close relationship with the Ford Foundation based upon its faculty scholarship in the area of the arts and humanities. In 1989, Ford awarded the department a $300,000 grant which supported junior faculty development, and undergraduate and graduate research. The Ford Foundation also supported the creation of the Archives of African American Music, History and Culture in 1991 and the three-year Black Atlantic Seminar, 1995-98, which explored the history and culture of the black diaspora with outstanding college juniors and seniors brought to Bloomington from across the country.

IU’s Afro-American studies faculty also hosts the annual Telluride Association Sophomore Seminar each summer. Sponsored by the Telluride Association—an organization committed to fostering the ideals of self-government, public service and intellectual development—the six-week, college-level seminar brings 16 intellectually gifted high school sophomores to campus on full scholarship to study a particular topic.

Eyes toward the future

As the department enters its fourth decade, new academic and cultural growth continue. Fred McElroy, an IU associate professor who authored the department’s history, is in the beginning stages of plans for a new journal of African American studies that would exchange ideas on the current state of the discipline. John McCluskey recently published the first in a series of Occasional Papers, “Religion and Social Movements in the African Diaspora,” to highlight scholarship in Afro-American and Black Diasporic Studies.

Last spring, the new volunteer-based Blackfeat Theatre Company opened with a production of August Wilson’s play “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.” The company hopes to become incorporated into IU’s African American Arts Institute, which along with the Black Culture Center, will move into a new home in spring 2002, the Theatre/ Neil Marshall Education Center.

Foremost in the department’s plans, though, is to enhance collaborative efforts with other academic and research units on the Bloomington campus. Through that development, IU’s Department of Afro-American Studies would fully mature into a doctoral degree granting department within the College of Arts and Sciences.

Note: This story drew generously upon the department’s history, written by Fred McElroy, associate professor.

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