5 Selected Works of African American Studies Faculty at the University of Florida by Sharon D. Wright Austin

Abstract: One of the primary functions of the Institutions of Higher Education is research, “the systematic investigation and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.” As a part of the academic mission of the University of Florida, this chapter examines the contributions of the faculty in African American Studies at the University. While the faculty has an impressive list of research production since the establishment of the African American Studies Program in 1969, the focus in this chapter is on selected major research publications that have attracted national and international recognitions and awards. It also documents other major publications by the faculty towards knowledge production and the advancement of African American Studies.

Introduction

The stature of African American Studies programs and departments is primarily based on the research of their faculty members, especially at Research I universities like the University of Florida. The core faculty of the UF African American Studies Program have done an enormous amount of prestigious research on various topics. Many are also sought-after public intellectuals who have appeared on television and print outlets. In this chapter, I will discuss the impact of this research since the program’s inception in 1969. This research includes a diverse array of theories and methodologies pertaining to the study of African Americans. Some faculty members have also conducted research on their community service, experiential educational, and social justice activities. Others have published books and articles that compared and contrasted the experiences of people of African descent in the United States to those in the wider African Diaspora. Finally, the faculty has co-authored research with undergraduate and graduate students. While the faculty has an impressive list of research production since the program’s establishment, the focus in this chapter is on selected major research publications that have attracted national recognition. It also documents other major publications by the faculty towards knowledge-production and the advancement of African American Studies. The selected publications by the affiliate faculty of the African American Studies Program at UF are included in the Appendix. I will begin with a discussion of the program’s origin and evolution.

The Early Years of the UF African American Studies Program

After the April 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., African Americans, including college students, increasingly participated in demonstrations of massive civil unrest to demand that America make good on its promises of democracy and equality. Part of the change demanded was greater access to higher education. Many Predominately White Institutions (PWIs) responded by granting symbolic access to Black students. Once on campus, students again protested for substantial inclusion in curriculum and increased presence of Black students, staff, and faculty. Responding to increasing nationwide student activism, President Robert Smith announced the creation of a Black Studies Department at San Francisco State University in September 1968. This is recognized as the first such department in the nation. Dr. Nathan Hare, a sociology professor, was named Acting Chair.

In November 1968, students at the University of Florida went on strike against the administration and demanded, among other things, inclusion of Black Studies courses as a part of a Black Studies Program with the capacity to grant Bachelor’s Degrees in Black Studies, as well as increased admission of Black students and creation of positions for Black faculty members. Similar student strikes took place at many other institutions. Thus, it is clear that the development of the African American Studies Program at the University of Florida was part of a worldwide push for enfranchisement by Africans throughout the Diaspora, and a national development of student activism for equality and equity in higher education.

Key figures in the establishment of the African American Studies Program at UF included administrators: Dr. Manning J. Dauer, Chairman, Social Sciences Division; Dr. Harry H. Sisler, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences; and Dr. Harold Stahmer, Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences. The faculty who assisted in the earliest development of the program included: Dr. Hunt Davis, Jr., (History Professor); Dr. Seldon Henry, (History), Dr. Steve Conroy, (Social Sciences), Dr. James Morrison (Political Science); and Dr. Augustus M. Burns (Social Sciences, History). The students who played a role in the program’s development include Samuel Taylor (the President of Black Student Union in 1970 and the first Black Student Government President in 1972), David Horne (Doctoral candidate in History), Emerson Thompson (Undergraduate student), and Larry Jordan (Undergraduate student).

The Program was established in 1969 and enrolled its first students during the Fall 1970 semester. In 1971, the Program awarded the first certificate in African American Studies, but during that year UF only had three African American faculty members out of a total 2,600 faculty members and only 387 Black students, including “foreign” Black students. In 2006, the Program began offering an African American Studies minor and began offering an African American Studies major in the Fall 2013 semester. After many years of efforts, the University now has a Black student enrollment of less than 10% and a Black faculty presence of less than 5%. Although many things have been accomplished in the Program and concerning the increased enrollment and employment of African American students, faculty, and staff, many challenges remain.

Since 1970, the following individuals have served as Director of the UF African American Studies Program: Dr. Ronald C. Foreman, 1970-2000, Ph.D. in Mass Communications, University of Illinois; Dr. Darryl M. Scott, 2000-2003, Ph.D. in History, Stanford University; Dr. Marilyn M. Thomas-Houston, 2003-2004, Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology, New York University; Dr. Terry Mills, 2004-2006, Ph.D. in Sociology, University of Southern California; Dr. Faye Harrison, 2006- 2010, Ph.D. in Anthropology, Stanford University; Dr. Stephanie Evans, 2010- 2011, Ph.D. in African American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Dr. Sharon Austin, 2011- 2019, Ph.D. in Political Science, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; and Dr. David Canton, 2020-Present Ph.D. in History, Temple University.

Many African American Studies departments have achieved distinction because of their emphasis on certain types of research. For example, Temple University has been known for the Afrocentric paradigms developed by Dr. Molefi Asante. While some programs and departments such as Harvard merge the study of Africans with the study of Africans (that is, the African Diaspora), others such as UCLA primarily emphasize the study of African Americans. UF’s African American Studies Program integrates knowledge about African Americans with information about African descendants in other diasporic situations within the Americas, the Afro-Atlantic, and the broader African World. Using and reworking the theories of traditional academic disciplines, the African American Studies Program at UF specializes in disseminating knowledge about African descendants in the United States (encompassing African Americans, African Caribbeans, Afro-Latinos, and African immigrants [sometimes all labeled African American in the pan-ethnic sense]) as well as in other diasporic settings. In this section of the chapter, I will examine the selected works of UF African American Studies core faculty members listed in alphabetical order as follows: Dr. Sharon Wright Austin, Dr. David A. Canton, Dr. Manoucheka Celeste, Dr. Stephanie Evans, Dr. Faye V. Harrison, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, Dr. Ashely Robertson Preston, Dr. Daryl Michael Scott, Dr. Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, and Dr. Marilyn Thomas-Houston. A display of faculty books was organized by African American Studies Librarian Stephanie Birch at the Smathers Library for the AASP 50^th Anniversary Commemorations (Figure 5.1.).

 

The Contemporary Research of African American Studies Core Faculty Members

Dr. Sharon Austin’s Research on Southern and Urban Politics

Dr. Austin’s career began at the University of Florida in 2001. She worked as both an affiliate faculty member, core faculty member, and Director of the African American Studies Program. During her eight-year tenure as Program Director, the Program gained approval for its major and had the largest number of majors of any African American Studies entity in the country. In addition, she heavily emphasized both undergraduate and graduate research by encouraging students to coauthor research with their professors and present their research at academic conferences.

Dr. Austin’s research focuses on African American women’s political behavior, African American mayoral elections, rural African American political activism, and African American political participation. She is the author of three books. Her first, Race, Power, and Political Emergence in Memphis (Garland 2000), examines Black political behavior and empowerment strategies in the city of Memphis. Each chapter of the text focuses on three themes: mobilization, emergence, and incorporation. By analyzing the effects of race on Black political development in Memphis, scholars will be able to examine broader questions about its effects in other cities. How do political machines use substantial Black electorates to their advantage? What forms of protest do Black communities conduct to rebel against machine rule? What primary mobilization tactics have Black citizens used during the different periods of their political development? Why do Blacks mobilize more quickly in some cities? In cities with large and predominantly Black populations, what elements prevent Black candidates from winning citywide races? What constraints do newly elected Black mayors face? What benefits do Black citizens gain from their representation? After a predominantly Black governing coalition is elected, what obstacles remain? Can Black citizens translate proportional representation into strong political incorporation? How much power can African Americans realistically expect to gain in cities? This book is the most comprehensive case study of the city’s political scene written to date. The text primarily shows that white racism is not the only obstacle to Black political development. Black citizens can have population majorities but lose elections for other reasons. Their ability to win elections and gain full incorporation depends heavily on whether they minimize internal conflict and establish coalitions with middle-class citizens and the business establishment.

Dr. Austin’s second book, The Transformation of Plantation Politics in the Mississippi Delta: Black Politics, Concentrated Poverty, and Social Capital in the Mississippi Delta (State University of New York Press 2006), explores the effects of Black political exclusion, the sharecropping system, and white resistance on the Mississippi Delta’s current economic and political situation. Her interviews with residents of the region shed light on the transformations and legacies of the Delta’s political and economic institutions. While African Americans now hold most of the major political offices in the region and are no longer formally excluded from political participation, educational opportunities, or lucrative jobs, Wright Austin shows that white wealth and Black poverty continue to be the norm partly because of the deeply entrenched legacies of the Delta’s history. Contributing to a greater theoretical understanding of Black political efforts, this book demonstrates a need for a strong level of Black social capital, intergroup capital, financial capital, political capital, and human capital in the form of skilled, educated workers.

Her third book, The Caribbeanization of Black Politics: Race, Group Consciousness, and Political Participation in America (State University of New York Press 2018), explores the impact of ethnic diversification in African American communities on the prospects for Black political empowerment. Focusing on Boston, Chicago, Miami, and New York City—cities that for the last several years have experienced an influx of Black immigrants—she surveyed more than 2,000 African Americans, Cape Verdeans, Haitians, and West Indians. Although many studies conclude that African American’s group consciousness causes them to participate in politics at higher rates when socioeconomic status is controlled for, Wright Austin analyzes whether this is true for other Black groups. She assesses the current political incorporation of these groups by looking at data on public officeholders and by examining political coalitions and conflicts among the groups; she also discusses the possible future of Black political development in these cities.

Her latest edited book is entitled Political Black Girl Magic: The Elections and Governance of Black Female Mayors (Temple University Press, unpublished manuscript) and examines the experiences of Black female mayors from two perspectives–-the acquisition of power (their campaigns) and the actual exercise of power (their governance). The main research questions are, “What is the influence of race, gender, or the combination of both on the mayoral campaigns and governance of Black women?” and “What are the most significant obstacles for Black women when running for mayoral offices and governing as mayors?” The chapters will assess the campaigns and governance of Black female mayors in several cities including Atlanta, Baltimore, Charlotte, Chicago, Flint, Pontiac, Rochester, San Francisco, Tacoma, and Washington, D.C. She is also coauthoring a book with Dr. Angela K. Lewis-Maddox of the University of Alabama, Birmingham on Black women and the presidency. Using the intersectionality framework that examines the impact of both racism and sexism on Black female candidates, Austin and Lewis-Maddox examine, first, what racial and gender barriers have Black women encountered in seeking the vice-presidential and presidential offices? Second, what impact have Black female voters had on presidential election outcomes? These will be the first books examining Black women as mayors and presidential candidates and as a distinct constituency with the power to determine election results.

Dr. David Canton and African American History

David Canton began his service as the current Director of the African American Studies Program during the Fall 2020 semester. He is currently working diligently toward the goal of attaining departmental status for the program. Dr. Canton is the author of Raymond Pace Alexander: A New Negro Lawyer Fights for Civil Rights in Philadelphia (University Press of Mississippi 2010) and several other scholarly works. In his book, Dr. Canton discusses the life and work of Raymond Pace Alexander (1897-1974), an African American Philadelphia attorney. A Harvard Law School graduate, Alexander was motivated to engage in activism after enduring vehement racial discrimination.

In the book, Professor Canton details Alexander’s tireless participation in the National Bar Association, which is the oldest and largest association of African American lawyers and judges. Raymond Alexander cooperated with prominent attorneys such as Charles Hamilton Houston, William Hastie, and Thurgood Marshall in the fight for civil rights both in Philadelphia and nationwide. Although Hamilton Houston and Marshall achieved prominence because of their work that set the stage for the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) case and for other civil rights cases, few people are familiar with the contributions of Pace Alexander. All of the aforementioned men believed that racial equity and change could be accomplished via the litigation strategy.

In the book that was an expansion of his doctoral dissertation, Professor Canton refers to Pace Alexander as a “New Negro lawyer.” During the World War I period, the New Negro lawyers advocated for civil rights, economic independence, and integration while also emphasizing Black pride (Canton, 2001). These individuals played a major role in the civil rights struggle by working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other civil rights organizations. Although they mostly worked in Northern cities, their efforts had implications in cities all over the country (Canton, 2001). Alexander was heavily influenced by Booker T. Washington’s self-help concept with W.E.B. Du Bois’ agitation theories. During the height of his activism, most of Alexander’s clients had connections with Black businesses, churches, and fraternal organizations (Canton, 2010).

Raymond Pace Alexander achieved several civil rights accomplishments before the height of the modern civil rights movement. For example, his collaborations with civil rights organizations resulted in the desegregation of an all-white elementary school in Berwin, Pennsylvania during the 1930s. After World War II, some Black activists had Communist affiliations because of the Party’s emphasis on racial equality. However, he became an anti-Communist activist who cooperated with both white and African American activists in the struggle for civil rights. During the sixties, Alexander criticized the rhetoric used by Black Power activists, but agreed with their focus on Black political empowerment, economic self-sufficiency, and the need to study Black history. Although he spent decades fighting for racial justice, some of the younger Black Power activists criticized his tactics and those of other older Black civil rights activists. Dr. Canton wrote a fascinating account of an unsung hero who fought for rights that many Americans sometimes take for granted.

Dr. Manoucheka Celeste and Travelling Blackness

In 2018, Race, Gender, and Citizenship in the African Diaspora: Travelling Blackness (Routledge Press 2017) won the National Communication Association’s Diamond Anniversary Book Award. With the exception of slave narratives, there are few stories of Black international migration in U.S. news and popular culture. This book is interested in stratified immigrant experiences, diverse Black experiences, and the intersection of Black and immigrant identities. Citizenship, as it is commonly understood today in the public sphere, is a legal issue, yet scholars have done much to move beyond this popular view and situate citizenship in the context of economic, social, and political positioning. The book shows that citizenship in all of its forms is often rhetorically, representationally, and legally negated by Blackness, and considers the ways that Blackness, and representations of Blackness, impact one’s ability to travel across national and social borders and become a citizen. This book is a story of citizenship and the ways that race, gender, and class shape national belonging, with Haiti, Cuba, and the United States as the primary sites of examination.

After an introduction, the book includes chapters entitled “Framing Cubans and Haitians in The New York Times: Enduring Imprints of Political History”; “Communists and Immigrants: Images of Cubans and Haitians”; “Negotiating Media Representations and Cultural Icons: Audience and Group-Identity”; and “A Love Story: Media and an (New) Exceptional Haitian-American Political Subject, and a Conclusion.” Dr. Celeste’s other publications appear in journals and book chapters including Black Camera and Feminist Media Histories. She is committed to critical scholarship on representations of Blackness, including public scholarship, with her work published in The Seattle Times, The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, and Spark: Elevating Scholarship on Social Issues. Dr. Celeste is currently working on a second book project, The Wailing Black Woman: Interrupting Narratives of Life, Death, and Citizenship in Media and the Public Sphere, where she centers Black women to examine media portrayals of Black notions of life, death, and criminality, exploring the implications of such representations.

Dr. Stephanie Y. Evans’ Innovative Research on Black Women

Dr. Evans has authored or edited six books on topics ranging from Black women’s intellectual history to their mental health. In 2007, her first book, Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954, was published by the University Press of Florida while she served as an Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Women’s Studies. Her comprehensive historiography primarily emphasizes the educational contributions of Drs. Anna Julia Cooper and Mary McLeod Bethune. Dr. Cooper was an Oberlin College graduate and also earned a doctorate from the Sorbonne in Paris. Despite her extensive educational record, she spent much of her career teaching high school, but authored A Voice from the South in 1892, a book which some refer to as the first Black feminist text. On the other hand, Dr. Bethune founded a small school for Black girls that later evolved into the coeducational Bethune-Cookman College, even though she never attended college herself. She was also a member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Black Cabinet. Professor Evans also traces Black women’s higher educational experiences from 1850 to the beginning of the modern civil rights movement more generally. The book has two major sections that address their “Educational Attainment” and “Intellectual Legacy.” Professor Evans also mentions other Black female educational pioneers such as Fanny Jackson Coppin, Lena Beatrice Morton, and Pauli Murray. One review of her book mentions the significance of these women as the “first of their race and gender to prevail in formerly all-white academic spaces, as well as some of the personal travails they experienced, including rejection and ridicule” (McCluskey, 2008).

Her other research reveals the manner in which Africana women’s life writings serve as paradigms for social justice education and portraits of historical wellness, while modeling a sustainable struggle for human rights. Along with Andrea D. Domingue and Tania D. Mitchell, Dr. Evans edited Black Women and Social Justice Education: Legacies and Lessons (SUNY Press 2019). In addition, Professor Evans’ research has addressed issues involving community engagement. In 2014, SUNY Press published her book Black Passports: Travel Memoirs as a Tool for Youth Empowerment. Along with Colette Taylor, Michelle Dunlap, and DeMond Miller, she edited African Americans and Community Engagement (SUNY Press 2019). More recently, Dr. Evans has examined the manner in which African American memoirs are guides to self-care, inner peace, and stress management, particularly for survivors of sexual violence. With Kanika Bell and Nsenga Burton, Professor Evans edited Black Women’s Mental Health: Balancing Strength and Vulnerability (SUNY Press 2017). Her two forthcoming books are Black Women’s Yoga History: Memoirs of Inner Peace (SUNY Press 2021) and Black Women’s Public Health: Regenerative History, Practice, and Planning (SUNY Press 2021). She is also the editor for a book series on Black women’s wellness for the State University of New York, Albany Press.

The Pioneering Research of Dr. Faye V. Harrison

Dr. Faye Venetia Harrison is one of the nation’s most accomplished anthropologists and has achieved international acclaim for her pioneering research. For 10 years, she was Professor of Anthropology and African American Studies at UF and also served as Program Director for three years. She served as President of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences from 2013 to 2018. In 2010, she received the Legacy Scholar Award from the Association of Black Anthropologists. Throughout her distinguished career, her research has examined political economy, race, and power in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Jamaica (“Faye V. Harrison,” n.d.). This research agenda includes an analysis of the gendered division of labor within Jamaica’s urban informal economy; the interplay of gangs, crime, and politics in Jamaica; the impact of neoliberal globalization on everyday life in Jamaica, Cuba, and the United States; racism, antiracism, and human rights in the global context; and critical race feminist methodology as a tool for global research (“Faye V. Harrison,” n.d.).

From 2004 to 2014, Dr. Harrison published one single-authored book (Outsider Within: Reworking Anthropology in the Global Age, 2008) and two edited books (Resisting Racism & Xenophobia: Global Perspectives on Race, Gender & Human Rights, 2005, and the third edition of Decolonizing Anthropology: Moving Further toward an Anthropology for Liberation, 2010). The three books reflect her interest in antiracism as a site of human rights struggle (Resisting Racism) and in pursuing a critical anthropology of anthropology as a discipline to be “reworked,” “decolonized,” and “transformed”—untethered from its Eurocentric, white supremacist, colonial past and the afterlife of that history of knowledge and power (Decolonizing Anthropology and Outsider). The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Anthropology describes Decolonizing Anthropology: Moving Further toward an Anthropology for Liberation as a “key moment of re-invention” for American anthropology encouraging the re-centering of anthropological work by people of color (“Faye V. Harrison,” n.d.).

In Outsider, Dr. Harrison reflects on her years of research in African American, African Caribbean, and Afro-Caribbean/Black British Diasporic contexts to inform an anthropological analysis of the forms of structural power and structural violence that shape African descendants’ lives, agency, and knowledge production. The book brings a critical anthropological project into a crossroads of knowledge with insights and tools from African American studies, Caribbean studies, and gender/women’s studies. Outsider Within presents an approach to critically reconstructing the anthropology discipline to better encompass issues of gender and race. Among the nine key changes to the field that Faye V. Harrison advocates are researching in an ethically and politically responsible manner, promoting greater diversity in the discipline, rethinking theory, and committing to a genuine multicultural dialogue. In drawing from materials developed during her distinguished 25-year career in Caribbean and African American studies, Harrison analyzes anthropology’s limits and possibilities from an African American woman’s perspective, while also challenging anthropologists to work together to transcend stark gender, racial, and national hierarchies. Professor Tony Whitehead noted that:

Outsider Within is a real winner. The anthropology field has been waiting over three decades for new scholarship on the African diaspora to the New World. This book is a masterpiece of broad scholarship that covers the field’s multiple lineages and legacies, and also draws on literature from a range of other fields: sociology, psychology, women’s and feminist studies, popular literature, political science, cultural studies, and more (Whitehead, n.d.).

Audrey Smedley, professor emerita of anthropology at Virginia Commonwealth University, called Harrison, “One of the most gifted and profound writers in anthropology today, it is imperative that her corpus of materials be shared (n.d.).” Finally, Professor Lee D. Baker, author of From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954 said, “Harrison provides a bold vision for anthropology in the twenty-first century. She calls for a collective reworking of anthropology so we can be more responsive to issues of race, gender, and inequality in this century than we were in the last (n.d.).”

In addition, Professor Harrison has published many articles, chapters, encyclopedia entries, review essays, and even some blog posts on issues such as racism and antiracism as sites of struggle within the international human rights regime and the transnational human rights movement. Her research on the Diaspora, particularly the African Diaspora and more recent migrations propelled within it, examines a variety of topics. For example, her work has examined the “gendered activism” of African Diasporic women in the fight for human rights; their racial, gendered, and class consciousness; and their overall fight against racism in groups such as the Network of Afro-Latin American, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-Diaspora Women. Her work uses conceptual, theoretical, and methodological perspectives to research the national and transnational solidarities and coalitions among Black American, Caribbean, and Latin American women.

Throughout her career, Professor Harrison has contributed to several other important anthologies on the African Diaspora, among them: Afro-Descendants, Identity, and the Struggle for Development in the Americas; Transnational Blackness: Navigating the Global Color Line; Afro-Atlantic Dialogues: Anthropology in the Diaspora; and Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean. Her writings also appear in several significant feminist collections, among them: Third World Women & the Politics of Feminism; Women Writing Culture; Situated Lives: Gender & Culture in Everyday Life; Gender & Globalization: Women Navigating Cultural & Economic Marginalities; and, most recently, Feminist Activist Ethnography (for which she wrote the foreword).

Stamped from the Beginning and the Research of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi

Dr. Ibram X. Kendi is now one of the nation’s foremost authorities on issues pertaining to race. Before arriving at UF, Professor Kendi published the Black Campus Movement book that won the W.E.B. Du Bois Award. While employed as an Assistant Professor of African American Studies and History at UF in 2016, Professor Kendi won the National Book Award, winning for his #1 New York Times bestselling book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. At 34 years old, he was the youngest-ever winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

In Stamped from the Beginning, Kendi argues that racism is still prevalent in American society. Although some believe that we live in a post-racial society, he argues that racist beliefs are more thinly veiled and covert, but remain just as insidious as in the past. In Stamped, Professor Kendi chronicles the extensive history of racist ideas in America. The book analyzes the life histories of five major American intellectuals: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Angela Davis. Professor Kendi explains that racist ideas do not result from ignorance or hatred, but instead are used by society’s elites to justify discriminatory policies and to maintain the nation’s racial inequities.

After winning the National Book Award for Stamped, Professor Kendi authored two additional #1 New York Times bestsellers How to Be An Antiracist and Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (co-authored with Jason Reynolds). The New York Times referred to How to Be An Antiracist as “the most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind” (Stewart, 2019). Kendi has published 14 academic essays in books and academic journals, including The Journal of African American History, Journal of Social History, Journal of Black Studies, Journal of African American Studies, and The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture. He also coedits the Black Power Series at NYU Press with historian Ashley Farmer. Then and now, he was a contributor writer for The Atlantic and a popular media analyst and public intellectual whose op-eds have appeared in numerous periodicals, including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, London Review, Time, Salon, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, Paris Review, Black Perspectives, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He commented on a series of international, national, and local media outlets, such as CNN, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, Al Jazeera, PBS, BBC, Democracy Now, OWN, and Sirius XM. A sought-after public speaker, Kendi has delivered hundreds of addresses over the years at colleges and universities, bookstores, festivals, conferences, libraries, churches, and other institutions in the United States and abroad.

Dr. Ashley Robertson Preston Explores Life and Leadership of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune

Dr. Preston is former Curator and Director of the Mary McLeod Bethune Foundation National Historic Landmark at Bethune-Cookman University. She is a lecturer in African American Studies at UF. In her book, Mary McLeod Bethune in Florida: Bringing Social Justice to the Sunshine State (2015), Dr. Preston explores the life, leadership, and amazing contributions of this dynamic activist.

Mary McLeod Bethune was often called the “First Lady of Negro America,” but she made significant contributions to the political climate of Florida as well. From the founding of the Daytona Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls in 1904, Bethune galvanized African American women for change. She created an environment in Daytona Beach that, despite racial tension throughout the state, allowed Jackie Robinson to begin his journey to integrating Major League Baseball less than two miles away from her school. She was an advocate for issues including educational funding, access to affordable housing, and equitable healthcare in her local community. As she rose nationally and internationally as an influential voice on politics, education, and women’s rights, she continued to fight for justice within her state also. Today, her legacy lives through a number of institutions, including Bethune-Cookman University and the Mary McLeod Bethune Foundation National Historic Landmark.

Dr. Daryl Michael Scott: Challenging Beliefs about the History of Damage Imagery

Dr. Daryl Michael Scott is a historian of Black-white relations in America since the Civil War, Southern history, and African American history. He is also the author of Contempt and Pity: Social Policy and the Image of the Damaged Black Psyche, 1880–1996 which won the Organization of American Historian’s 1998 James Rawley Prize for the best work in race relations. For over a century, the idea that African Americans are psychologically damaged has played an important role in discussions of race. In this provocative work, Daryl Michael Scott argues that damage imagery has been the product of liberals and conservatives, of racists and antiracists. While racial conservatives, often playing on white contempt for Blacks, have sought to use findings of Black pathology to justify exclusionary policies, racial liberals have used damage imagery primarily to promote policies of inclusion and rehabilitation. In advancing his argument, Scott challenges some long-held beliefs about the history of damage imagery. He rediscovers the liberal impulses behind Stanley Elkins’ Sambo hypothesis and Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s Negro Family and exposes the damage imagery in the work of Ralph Ellison, the leading anti-pathologist. He also corrects the view that the Chicago School depicted Blacks as pathological products of matriarchy. New Negro experts such as Charles Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier, he says, disdained sympathy-seeking and refrained from exploring individual pathology. Scott’s reassessment of social science sheds new light on Brown v. Board of Education, revealing how experts reversed four decades of theory in order to represent segregation as inherently damaging to Blacks. In this controversial work, Scott warns the Left of the dangers in their recent rediscovery of damage imagery amidst an age of conservative reform.

Dr. Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons’ Scholar Activism

Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons is a scholar activist who has devoted her life to the fight for social and human rights justice. A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Dr. Simmons experienced vehement racism. A gifted scholar, she eventually graduated from Spelman College. While there, she became heavily involved in the modern civil rights movement, especially in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, after hearing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak.

During the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi, Dr. Simmons (whose name was Gwendolyn Robinson at the time) worked mostly in Laurel, Mississippi because it was “too dangerous to send whites” there (“Gwen Robinson [Zoharah Simmons],” n.d.). In Laurel, Robinson organized 23 volunteers who built Freedom Schools and a library, conducted a literacy program and mock voter registration project, and rallied for integration of local restaurants and schools. She was arrested after a march in Jackson and was beaten and tortured for 15 days in the fairgrounds, an open area where livestock were usually kept. Robinson then left Laurel and briefly worked with the Friends of SNCC in New York before heading to Atlanta (“Gwen Robinson [Zoharah Simmons],” n.d.).

She later became a member of the Nation of Islam and continued her community, human rights, and international activism. After earning a doctorate in Religion at Temple University and before her retirement, Professor Simmons taught in both the African American Studies Program and the Religion Department. Her diverse research focuses on the position of women in Islamic Sharia Law—especially their quest for gender equality and their fight against patriarchy.

In “From Muslims in America to American Muslims,” Dr. Simmons gives an historical overview of Islam in America by focusing on the three largest American Muslim groups—African American, Arab, and South Asian. As part of her analysis, she explores the tensions among these communities, which undermine the unity of these adherents and their potential influence on the United States’ domestic and foreign policies. She also explores the question many American Muslims ask themselves: are they “Muslims in America” or are they “American Muslims?” She concludes the articles by suggesting ways that all three Muslim communities can find ways to unite.

Dr. Marilyn Thomas-Houston Started a Fire!!!

In 2012, the inaugural issue of Fire!!!: The Multimedia Journal of Black Studies was published. Sponsored by the Association for the Study of Afro American Life and History, Fire!!! was conceptualized by Drs. Marilyn Thomas-Houston, Abdul Alkalimat, and Ron Bailey, who also founded the eBlack Studies Consortium, and the late Gloria Dickerson. Former UF African American Studies Program Director and Associate Professor of History Daryl Michael Scott was also involved in its inception. Along with Professor Thomas-Houston, Professor Scott was co-editor of the journal’s first issue. Fire!!! was named after a short-lived Harlem Renaissance journal edited by Wallace Thurman and participated in by other legendary literary figures, including Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston (Harold 2012). As a strictly online journal, it contributes to the eBlack Studies movement (Association for the Study of African American Life and History, 2012).

During the summer of 2010, Dr. Thomas-Houston continued her research on Black female basket makers from Nova Scotia. She interviewed Clara Gough, a descendent of a long line of Black female basket makers who took the craft to Nova Scotia as refugees from the War of 1812. Marilyn also created a documentary (From These Roots: Taking Up the Basket) and an exhibit (From These Roots: Clara Gough’s Split Maple Baskets) at Savannah State University’s Social Science Gallery. The exhibit was there for one month and was sponsored by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and hosted by the Project to Build Capacity of African American Museums. Professor Thomas-Houston began work on these projects while serving as a Fulbright Research Chair for Globalization and Cultural Studies and studying issues of identity, citizenship, and cultural studies in Nova Scotia with a base at Dalhousie University in Halifax. She also conducted research on the descendants of Black Loyalists, Jamaica Maroons, and refugees from the War of 1812 as a Fulbright Fellow (“Mary M. Thomas-Houston, PhD,” n.d.).

In her first book Stony the Road to Change: Black Mississippians and the Culture of Social Relations, Dr. Thomas-Houston examines the impact of history, memory, space, and the concept of belonging on the social structure of a small-town, Black Southern community (Cambridge University Press 2005). Using the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s as the point of departure for a critique of the culture of social relations among Blacks, it also proposes to provide an example of activist, native ethnographic research in a complex society. In her second book, Dr. Thomas-Houston and Mark Schuller edited Homing Devices: The Poor as Targets of Public Housing and Practice (Lexington Books 2006). This collection of ethnographies addresses the problem associated with the provisions of affordable housing in America and in other countries. These ethnographies cut across national and cultural borders, offering a diverse look at housing policies and practices as well as addressing the problems associated with providing or obtaining affordable housing. The studies incorporate perspectives of both policymakers and recipients and as such provide comparative insight into public housing policy programs and practices based on qualitative research. The collected experts provide an analysis of such problems as displacement, resettlement, policy implementation, collaborative planning, exclusionary practices, environmental racism, and silencing the voices of dissent. Editors Schuller and Thomas-Houston have assembled a strong volume that offers a fresh approach to discussing policy while bringing the particular problem of housing to the forefront in a way that will appeal to scholars of anthropology and social science, governmental policy departments, and activists from the general public across the nation.

Conclusion: If Only and the Issue of Retention

The African American Studies faculty have published groundbreaking interdisciplinary research over the years. This chapter has mostly focused on their research over the last 20 years. When thinking about the depth of this research and the talent of the many scholars who have taught in the program, one must question why so many left the University of Florida. Could the University have done anything to retain talented scholars who now teach at other universities? If the University had succeeded in retaining these scholars, would it already have an African American Studies department rather than still being a program? These are questions that one cannot answer, but the University must do more than just recruit gifted faculty members, it must also find ways to retain talented Black scholars.

 

 

References

Association for the Study of African American Life and History. (2012). Fire!!!: The Multimedia Journal of Black Studies 1(1). Retrieved on November 13, 2020, from JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.5323/fire.1.1.fm.pdf.

Austin, S.D.W. (2018). The Caribbeanization of Black Politics: Race, Group Consciousness and Political Participation in America. State University of Albany Press.

Austin, S.D.W. (2006). The Transformation of Plantation Politics in the Mississippi Delta: Black Politics, Concentrated Poverty, and Social Capital in the Mississippi Delta. State University of New York Press.

Austin, S.D.W. (Ed.). (2019). Political Black Girl Magic: The Elections and Governance of Black Female Mayors. Temple University Press. Manuscript under contract.

Canton, D. (2010). Raymond Pace Alexander: A New Negro Lawyer Fights for Civil Rights in Philadelphia. University Press of Mississippi. https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781604734256.001.0001

Celeste, M. (2017). Race, Gender, and Citizenship in the African Diaspora: Travelling Blackness. Routledge Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315691824

Celeste, M. (2018). “What Now?”: The Wailing Black Woman, Grief, and Difference. Black Camera 9(2), 110-131. Retrieved March 22, 2021, from: https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/694970. https://doi.org/10.2979/blackcamera.9.2.08

Celeste, M. (2018). Black Media Studies. Feminist Media Histories 4(2), 38-42. https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2018.4.2.38

Evans, S.Y. (2019). Regeneration: Healing and Self-Care in Black Women’s Centenarian Memoirs. State University of New York Press. Manuscript under contract.

Evans, S.Y. (2014). Black Passports: Travel Memoirs as a Tool for Youth Empowerment. State University of New York Press.

Evans, S.Y. (2007). Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954: An Intellectual History. University Press of Florida. https://doi.org/10.5744/florida/9780813032689.001.0001

Faye V Harrison. (n.d.) Department of African American Studies. Retrieved March 19, 2021, from https://afro.illinois.edu/directory/profile/fvharrsn

Gwen Robinson (Zoharah Simmons). (n.d.). SNCC Digital Gateway, SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University. Retrieved March 22, 2021, from: https://snccdigital.org/people/gwen-zoharah-simmons-robinson/

Harold, C. (2012). “Introducing Fire!!!: The Multimedia Journal of Black Studies.” Black Fire at UVA. Retrieved November 13, 2020, from: https://blackfireuva.com/2012/03/01/introducing-fire-the-multimedia-journal-of-black-studies/.

Harrison, F.V. (Ed.). (2010). Decolonizing Anthropology: Moving Further Toward an Anthropology for Liberation, (3rd ed.). American Anthropological Association.

Harrison, F.V. (2008). Outsider Within: Reworking Anthropology in the Global Age. University of Illinois Press.

Harrison, F.V. (Ed.). (2005). Resisting Racism: Global Perspectives on Race, Gender, and Human Rights. AltaMira Press.

Kendi, I.X. (2019). How to Be an Anti-Racist. Random House.

Kendi, I.X. (2016). Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Nation Books.

Mary M. Thomas-Houston, PhD. (n.d.) College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Florida. Retrieved on March 22, 2021 from: http://users.clas.ufl.edu/marilynm/home.html

McCluskey, A. (2008, April). Review of Evans, Stephanie Y., Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954: An Intellectual History. H-SAWH, H-Net Reviews.

Preston, A.R. (2015). Mary McLeod Bethune in Florida: Bringing Social Justice to the Sunshine State. Acadia Publishing.

Rogers, I. (2012). Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972. Palgrave.

Scott, D.M. (1997). Contempt and Pity: Social Policy and the Image of the Damaged Black Psyche, 1880–1996. University of North Carolina Press.

Simmons, G.Z. (2008). From Muslims in America to American Muslims. Journal of Islamic Law and Culture, 10(3), 254-280. https://doi.org/10.1080/15288170802481145

Stewart, J.C. (2019, August 20). Fighting Racism Even, and Especially, Where We Don’t Realize It Exists. The New York Times. Retrieved March 22, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/books/review/how-to-be-an-antiracist-ibram-x-kendi.html

Thomas-Houston, M. (2005). ‘Stony the Road’ to Change: Black Mississippians and the Culture of Social Relations. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511614149

Thomas-Houston, M. & Schuller, M. (Eds.). 2006. Homing Devices: The Poor as Targets of Public Housing and Practice. Lexington Books.

Wright, S.D. (2000). Race, Power, and Political Emergence in Memphis. Garland Press.