Afro-American Studies: A Legacy of Black Student Activism

When more than 100 students, led by members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), occupied University Hall on April 9, 1969, only one Black student was in the group.

Harvard's Black students, politicized since the death of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. through the African and Afro-American Association of Students (commonly called Afro), largely avoided the radical, anti-war political groups such as SDS, centering their activism on the issue of an Afro-American Studies Department.

But even though the takeover of University Hall was the work of an almost all-white student group, the events of the days and weeks that followed saw the formation of a new coalition between the Black students and other campus radicals.

"Smash ROTC, No expansion," was the rallying cry of the SDS students as they took over University Hall. Days later, "Black studies" had been added to the demands by the vote of more than 800 SDS members.

In return, Afro pledged to support amnesty for the students arrested in the takeover and to back the anti-war and anti-Harvard expansion demands.

The result of the new coalition was to refuel an already heated faculty debate about the incorporation of Black studies into the Harvard curriculum.

"By the time it was clear that SDS was going to strike, the political climate became favorable for those who wanted to press for more," says Roderick J. Harrison '70, an associate professor of Afro-American studies and sociology.

Pressing for more in that context meant rejecting the terms of a report on Afro-Am that just two months earlier had received the faculty's approval.

In February, the faculty committee led by Geyser University Professor Henry Rosovsky had released a report advocating the formation of a Standing Committee on Degrees in Afro-American Studies, similar to the programs in History and Literature and Social Studies.

The Rosovsky Report also included several other recommendations--including a committee to increase course offerings in Afro-American Studies and a cultural center for Black students--which the faculty approved by a large margin in February.

Things seemed to be proceeding smoothly for Afro-American studies at Harvard; after gaining faculty approval, a formal Standing Committee on Afro-American Studies was set up to outline the new concentration's specific format.

But, as Rosovsky now says, the language in the original report was intentionally vague about how the concentration would be structured. Rosovsky says the intent was to allow the standing committee leeway in determining its future course.

The definition the committee settled on was that the Afro-Am program would be interdisciplinary, offering only tutorials and requiring students to fulfill the rest of their concentration in allied fields.

But the day scheduled for the announcement of the standing committee's plans was a poorly chosen one--it was on that day that the SDS-led students occupied University Hall and changed the entire political climate at Harvard.

Afro reacted with outrage to the Black studies plan, and, in the context of the day's other events, decided to act quickly against the faculty's program.

"Whenever the administration forms a committee that advises a major chunk of what you are asking for, the tendency is to say 'Good, at least they agreed in principle,'" Harrison says. "The other thing is that it goes 50, 60, 70 percent of where you want it to go, but in the right atmosphere you might want to push it all the way."

And the student strike certainly seemed to offer the right atmosphere for such a push.

The students demanded a formal Afro-American Studies Department and a Standing Committee whose membership would include faculty and six students--three chosen by Afro and three concentrators in the department. The students were to be granted the same status as senior faculty members in votes on tenure and hiring decisions.

Harrison says students wanted a department--rather than a committee--because it could hire its own professors and make course decisions. In addition, the students wanted to create an activist department that would grant them a measure of control over their education, he says.

Days after the takeover, the faculty acceded to the student demands, despite the fact that they had earlier voted to approve Rosovsky's original report.

"I think the faculty felt that they were buying peace," says Rosovsky, who resigned from the Standing Committee immediately after the faculty voted to accept the students' demands. "I certainly prefer peace to all the other alternatives, but I think the price was too high. Too high for the students."

Faculty members agree that the early years of the Afro-Am department were difficult. The first chair of the department, Dr. Ewart Guinier, was not considered academically qualified, according to several faculty members. As well, professors say, outside scholars were reluctant to enter a department which seemed to be controlled by the students.

"None of the eminent people would come to Harvard under the atmosphere of student domination," says Ford Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus David Riesman '31, who at the time was asked to help recruit faculty for the department.

"The origins certainly did make life difficult for the department in the beginning. There definitely was the desire that an Afro-American Department should be much more activist oriented than other departments," says Harrison. "That has very clearly been resolved in favor of a more traditional conception of an academically oriented department."

But while professors today assert that the department has fallen in line with Harvard's more traditional--and less controversial--departments, it still has its troubles.

Only two tenured faculty members are currently teaching in the department, and it has been unable to fill vacant senior posts for the past several years. Many students charge that the administration is unwilling to support Black studies with financial and other support--and that perhaps, is also the legacy of Afro-Am's early years.