Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

xvi Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States
Robert L. Harris, Jr., director of the Africana Studies and Research Center at
Cornell University; Darlene Clark Hine, John Hannah Professor of History
at Michigan State University; and NellieY.McKay,professor of American and
Afro-American literature at the University of Wisconsin. Commissioned in
1987, Harris, Hine, and McKay set out to evaluate diverse institutions with
the intention of keeping their report confidential (as would be necessary if
it were to contain an honest assessment). When many within the field expressed
interest in the findings,the foundation compiled and published their
essays in a report titled Black Studies in the United States in 1990.
The report begins with Dr. Harris’s“The Intellectual and Institutional
Development of Africana Studies,” an overview of the field dating back a
century to the late 1890’s. Today, 20 years since Dr. Harris was commissioned
to write that essay, his contribution remains one of the most extensive
histories of the field.
In her essay, “Black Studies: An Overview,” Dr. Hine explores the
nomenclature of the field: African American, Afro-American, Africana,
Black Studies—titles reflecting the diversity of the field, its varied curricula,
and geographic reach. Indeed, Hine’s exploration is echoed in this volume;
from Huggins’ “Afro-American Studies” report to Harris, Hine,
McKay’s “Black Studies” essays and O’Meally-Smith’s and Pinderhughes-
Yarborough’s final two reports’ “African American Studies,” the term now
officially used by the foundation.
From 1987–1989, when the Harris, Hine, McKay essays were commissioned
and completed, Hine found that White college administrators
enthusiastically supported African American Studies as the site that has
racially diversified the university population and curriculum.
Yet, as Dr. McKay notes in her essay, “Black Studies in the Midwest,”
despite the commitment among predominantly White institutions to
strengthen African American Studies, there was reason to doubt the extent
to which the discipline had been accepted in the scholarly community.
While the first two Ford reports—Huggins’ Afro-American Studies: A
Report to the Ford Foundation (1985) and Harris-Hine-McKay’s Black
Studies in the United States (1990)—provide historical overviews and survey
the landscape of the field, the next two reports document the health of