RAAA Hall of Fame
2005
Celebrating the 35th Anniversary of the
Africana Studies Department
1970 - 2005
The death of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968 ignited action by Black students, and concerned administrators on the New Brunswick campus of Rutgers University. Dr. Milton Scwebel, Dean of the Graduate School of Education, spearheaded the establishment of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professorship, in which the highly respected Black educator and clergyman, Dr. Samuel DeWitt Proctor became its first Chair. Dr. Proctor initiated the first program to bring Black educators from predominantly Black colleges in the South to earn doctorates.
Around 1968 Black students at Rutgers College began to protest for the admission of a larger presence of Black students in New Brunswick , N.J. Dr. Charles Wade, an African-American Assistant Provost, proposed the creation of an African and Afro-American Program in New Brunswick in 1968-69. After much discussion and debate, programs were created at Rutgers College in 1970, at Livingston College in 1970, and at Douglass College in 1971.
Professor Harold Weaver, a creative educator from New York was hired as the first program chair of the Rutgers College program in 1970. He hired Leonard Bethel, who was teaching Afro-American Studies at the Somerset County College, as an Assistant Instructor. Dr. Bethel was the first Black faculty person at Rutgers College to be hired at that rank to rise up through the tenure process.
In the Livingston College program, the first instructor to be hired was Dr. Ernest Dunn, linguist and theologian, who taught the first African language at Rutgers and one of the first in the country at the university level. He also served in the Livingston Dean's Office, and is presently retired. Presently, the Department teaches Swahili, Arabic, Yoruba and Zulu in a program that is second to none in the country.
The Douglass college program was led by the late Dr. Lawrence Houston. The next hire was Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, the internationally respected anthropologist, linguist and author. His prize-winning book, They Came Before Columbus was the first work to form the argument that Blacks settled in America before any other group. He wrote a total of twenty-eight books on subjects related to Africana which has made him a premier scholar on the national and international scene as well as an asset to the Department and Rutgers University.
In 1980 the three Departments of Africana Studies at the New Brunswick Campus joined together under the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and is currently under the leadership of Dr. Kim D. Butler. In 2005, the Department introduced a new graduate program offered jointly with the Graduate School of Education.
Visit the Africana Studies Website
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