Song of the Towers
by Aaron Douglas
 

Welcome!                                                                 

The African American Studies and Research Program (AASRP) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was born out of student protest more than thirty years ago. African American students and faculty encountered a hostile environment dominated by racial exclusion, Eurocentric knowledge, and a white supremacist culture. Black students challenged the University's ethos by affirming the liberatory elements in the University's land grant mission, creating curricular and cultural space for emancipatory African American knowledge, values, and practices, and by building bridges between the campus and the local Black community. Responding to student protests, campus leadership established the Faculty-Student Commission on Afro-American Life and Culture in 1969 (see Joy Ann Williamson, Black Power on Campus: Student Protest at the University of Illinois). A year later, the Faculty Student Commission was replaced by the Afro-American Studies Commission, which included academic, cultural, and student service components. In 1974-75 the three components were removed from the Vice Chancellor's Office, and divided, with the Afro-American Academic Program being transferred into the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. During this process, nearly thirty years ago, the program acquired the title, the Afro-American Studies & Research Program.

For most of its history AASRP struggled against institutional restraints against its determined efforts to achieve. Under the leadership of Chancellor Nancy Cantor, Provost Richard Herman and Jessie Delia Dean of Liberal Arts & Sciences, major obstacles are being swept away. AASRP is in the midst of a multi-year enhancement initiative. Enhancement entails expansion and development of the racialized communities and women and gender programs in several ways: New faculty positions, budgetary increases, and most significantly, elevation to “tenure offering status.” The current transformations are part of the beginning of a process, of which the end-result should be parity with other academic departments, and incorporation into the center of University life. The future, although still fraught with difficulties and potential setbacks, promises to be exciting.

– Sundiata Cha-Jua
   Director, African-American Studies & Research Program