Founders of UB African American Studies Department Recall Difficult History as Unit Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The Black Studies Program at the University at Buffalo was established in 1969, a time that one of its founders, Jim Pappas, describes as "a heady and exciting time - a time that illustrated the best and the worst of academic life."

The program, evolved into the Department of African American Studies in 1973 as perhaps the first truly interdisciplinary academic field of study at UB, and will celebrate its 30th anniversary in the 1999-2000 academic year.

The department's anniversary plans will be announced in the fall, according to Papps and Margaret Gillette, the department's former secretary and administrative assistant, both of whom are on the anniversary planning committee.

They expect to present a series of events involving many UB departments and Buffalo's African-American community.

"So many individuals in the African-American community went through this program," Gillette says, "or their kids did, or their grandchildren. So they've supported it."

Department Chair Peter Ekeh, a native of Nigeria, says that since it was founded as a program in African-American studies, the department has developed additional strengths in African studies, the African diaspora and African-Caribbean studies, and hopes to strengthen its graduate program in the coming years.

But the 30 intervening years weren't always easy, recalls Pappas, who served as chair in the late '70s and early '90s,

"There were times when we saw the best and worst sides of the academic community," he says. "We stuck to it, though. We believed in what we were doing, were close to one another, had the academic credentials to provide very good courses and excellent teaching. And we've always had students -- nearly 1,000 in 1972, for instance."

"In the 1999 spring semester, more than 500 undergraduates took courses through our department," Ekeh adds. "We also have 35-40 majors and several graduate students. Our teaching staff is way down in numbers from 25 years ago, but we have always been very efficient. We each wear many hats here, which is how we get so much done with relatively few resources."

The civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s encouraged an interest in the study of black history and culture. By 1968, 26 courses that qualified as black-studies courses were being taught by various UB departments. The actual birth of African-American studies as an academic field, however, arose in the wake of the grief and fury that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Black-studies programs sprang up almost overnight in high schools, colleges and universities across the United States. UB was no exception.

In 1969, the university agreed to organize its relevant courses into a new program of study called the Black Studies Program. The program achieved departmental status in 1973.

"In those days," Pappas remembers, "there was so much energy and devotion to the exploration of our culture and the pursuit of social justice -- it spilled over into academic life and ultimately transformed it in substantial ways we can clearly see today."

Having garnered support among UB's white, liberal faculty, the Black Studies Program was, in its early days, well-funded, socially active and very popular with students.

"In the late '60s, early '70s, there was a strong sense of faculty fellowship, inclusion, a broadening of academic interests, a sense of being comrades-in-arms -- blacks and liberal whites joined in opposition to conservative, white, Eurocentric academic hegemony," Pappas says.

As with all change, however, there was a downside. From the beginning, the new programs in African-American studies held an alien and antithetical posture in a hostile academic world, posing a deliberate, head-to-head challenge to the very system that had born them. Traditional assumptions were challenged, along with the way the subject areas were taught.

"So with the excitement of change came years of difficulty as well," Pappas says. "There was hypocrisy, administrative distrust, freely expressed bigotry, deceit, academic turf wars and personal attack -- not just here, but everywhere. We're talking about the mid-70s, here.

"We know now that the historical period in which African-American studies was established as a discipline marked the beginning of tremendous social and cultural change in American life," he says, "and these changes literally altered the way most of us looked at the world and changed our thinking about it.

"People who had been ignored, even hated and debased -- black and Hispanic Americans, Chicanos, Native Americans, women, gays -- began to demand recognition of their lives, cultural values and way of experiencing reality. It was also a time that provoked the best and the worst behavior in academic life," he said

On the positive side, he notes, it was a time of intense, academic debate, largely in support of social change and social justice. Within the city's black community, there was a great deal of

involvement with UB, as the inquiry into African-American culture, history, psychology and values was raised to the level of university study.

Pappas and Gillette recall the opposition to the little program in some quarters -- the graffiti, name-calling and other rude and hostile behavior continued for several years.

"It was bad enough that we got it from a few angry white students," Pappas says, "but we got it from faculty and staff, too. We were criticized, for instance, for having so many students hanging around the office -- but the kids were mentored, counseled and helped there."

Gillette adds: "They were proud of the program, proud to be involved in it. We were like a family in some ways. It changed a lot of their lives. It gave them a sense of pride in their own history, their own worth. It made them think about things differently, from a new perspective."

"There was a sense of betrayal in the department, too," Pappas recalls. "Some of the same colleagues who had encouraged and sponsored it from its outset, just stepped back, 'forgot' or denied their original support and allowed its slow starvation."

The most volatile critics at UB and other universities insisted that the tendency of black studies to include non-traditional students and enlarge traditional courses of study diluted a university's overall academic quality.

African-American and other "extra-traditionals" clearly had announced, however, that they deliberately would redefine the academic structure that had excluded them.

The critics replied that minorities had created a second-rate, academic realm, and refused to respect or legitimize it.

Pappas stresses, however, that the faculty at UB was highly qualified academically and taught in content areas covered nowhere else on campus.

Ekeh concurs, noting that until very recently, all aspects of African history were ignored in every department but his own and that African art and culture might not be taught at all if the Department of African American Studies did not exist.

The department ultimately settled into relative quietude and a 20-year expansion of its interests, along with a reduction in funds and faculty. From a high of 20 in the early '70s, the faculty shrank, until today there are five members, one of them a lecturer.

But by preparing the hard ground of American culture for future change, the civil-rights movement in all of its incarnations and the black-studies programs that evolved from it have served as models for other inclusion movements, Pappas says.

The UB Department of African American Studies can be proud, he adds. It has been part of a great social-change movement that, while heralding a period of enormous social unrest, also spawned contemporary movements for the rights of women, gays, immigrants and ethnic minorities. It changed America's sense of itself as a nation and a people.