“Committed to Institution Building”: James Turner and the History of Africana Studies at Cornell University, an Interview

Hulen Jack was the first Black Borough President for Manhattan, in the late 1950s.

For more information on Carlos Cooke and James Lawson see: (Harris 1992; Clarke 1961, 1974); for more information on Queen Mother Moore see: (Moore and Gilkes 1986; Queen Mother Moore 1973; Jackson-Issa 1999; McDuffie 2003, 2006).

See (Allen 1996; Gomez 2005; Ogbar 2004; Lincoln 1994).

For a discussion of the African Jazz Arts Society see: (Braithwaite 2010).

For discussions of Black cultural politics and Jazz in the late 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s see: (Anderson 2007; Porter 2002; Monson 2007; Saul 2003).

For a discussion of the Grandassa Models see: (Gumbs 1994).

See: (Turner and Turner 1988).

See: (James 1998).

For more information on John Henrik Clarke see: (Swanston 2003; Adams 1992a, b; Clarke 1999; Conyers and Thompson 2004).

This text was originally published in 1960 by Afro American Publishers in New York City, but later republished in Turner and Turner (1988): 223–239.

For more on the Liberator see: (Tinson 2008, 2010).

The use of the term “Afro American,” instead of “Negro,” was very important to student activists. The former term represented a major leap forward in consciousness and politics. Historian Donna Murch has discussed the politics and uses of these terms in her work on the Bay Area’s Afro American Association. See: (Murch 2010).

Ibrahim Sundiata is a Professor of History and African and African-American Studies at Brandeis University. John Bracey is a Professor in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Both are the authors of several books.

John Higginson is a Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Sterling Stuckey is a Professor of History at the University of California at Riverside. Jeff Donaldson is remembered as one of the leading visual artists of the Black Arts Movement. Aside from acting as a founding member of Chicago’s Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) and Afri-COBRA, he also worked as a professor of Art History at Northwestern and later Howard University. He passed away in 2004.

See: (de Graaf 1970; Hare 1968, 1972; Malson 1967, 1968).

George B. Davis, who was a staff writer for the Washington Post, reported that “more than 1,900 students, scholars and artists from 40 states and more than 100 colleges and universities gathered at Howard University for the conference called, ‘Towards A Black University.” See (Davis 1969).

For information on the Yale Conference see: (Robinson et al. 1969; Hall 1999).

“Black Student Power” is a term coined by Stefan Bradley; see: (Bradley 2009).

For perspectives on their experiences at Cornell see: (Thelwell 1987; David 1969; Sellers 1990).

For scholarship on the Willard Straight Occupation see: (Downs 1999; Bradley 2009; Strout and Grossvogel 1970; Ross 1991; Tyehimba 1997).

This building at 320 Wait Avenue, located on the northern part of the Cornell campus, was the first location for the Center for Africana Studies and Research. On April 1, 1970 the building was razed to the ground by an act of arson.

For Sowell’s extremely problematic, right-wing (and in many ways comical) view of Black Student’s occupation of Willard Straight, see: (Sowell 1999).

COSEP is the acronym for the Committee On Special Education Projects. Among other things, it was responsible for bringing Black, and undergraduate minority, students to Cornell. The program was launched in 1963 during the tenure of Cornell President James Perkins.

The Cornell in Washington Program started in the Spring of 1980, a decade after Turner put forth the idea for the urban research center. It offers students the opportunity to study in Washington D.C. by taking courses, working with specified non-profit organizations and government agencies, while residing at the Cornell University Wolpe Center, twenty-seven apartments in a building on O Street in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of D.C.

For more information on Robert Browne the Black Economic Research Center see: (Alexis 2008a, b; Betsey 2008; Handy 2008).

For more information on Ohio State’s African American and African Studies Extension Center, which is located in the historic Mount Vernon area of east Columbus and considered the outreach component of Ohio State University’s Department of African American and African Studies, visit the departmental website: http://​aaas.​osu.​edu/​resources/​aaascec/​default.​cfm.

Katungi’s anecdote about the Cross-Cultural Center at the University of California, San Diego speaks to a trend that occurred on college campuses during the height of popular debates on multi-culturalism and the years of the Culture Wars. For an in-depth scholarly discussion see: (Princes 2005; Bankole 2005).

The John Henrik Clarke Library is an extraordinary collection of over 22,300 volumes and more than 18,500 microforms. It was moved into a new section of the Africana Center during the Center’s renovation and expansion in 2005. The collection is superb, and within New York State, it is perhaps only second to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.

In this portion of the interview Candace Katungi and James Turner are referring to Cornell administrators’ persistent attempts to undermine the autonomy and integrity of the Center. One such attempt came in the form of “the Report on the State of the Humanities at Cornell University” commissioned by Phillip Lewis, then Dean of College of Arts and Sciences, in 1998. One of the sections of the report, and what proved to be the most controversial portion, recommended the university to “house all ethnic studies programs in the same building, located on or adjacent to the Arts Quad.” This recommendation would have forced the Africana Center to forfeit its own independent building and move to the opposite end of campus in order to consolidate and share space with several other programs. Student and faculty protests on campus forestalled the reorganization from taking place. Later in 2004, then Provost Biddy Martin commissioned the less public “Provost’s Committee on the Comparative Study of Race, Ethnicity and Indigeneity.” Besides handpicked committee members, most people on campus had no idea that the committee existed, nor did they know its purpose. When a Native American Studies student came across an early draft of the report through an accidental email, news spread quickly and students were outraged by the Committee’s call for “the re-articulation of Ethnic Studies and American Studies.” Although the Committee held a conference, student and faculty opposition prevented further planning. Then again on 1 December 2010, just weeks after the final days of this interview, Cornell Provost Kent Fuchs announced his plan to remove the Africana Studies & Research Center from under the auspices of the Provost’s office and move it into the College of Arts and Sciences. Since they were not consulted, the Africana faculty described it as a “patronizing, autocratic, and non-negotiable” decision. As a result, the Center’s Director, Robert Harris resigned, and the faculty, students, and alum have once again organized against what has been a long history of administrative assaults on the Center’s autonomy and integrity. See: (Crawford 1998); “Africana Studies and Research Center’s Position on ‘Report on the State of the Humanities at Cornell.” (28 October 1998) in author’s possession; “Provost’s Committee on the Comparative Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity, Draft #1” (27 September 2004) in author’s possession; “Provost Fuchs to move Africana Studies and Research Center to Arts and Sciences” Cornell Chronicle Online. http://​www.​news.​cornell.​edu/​stories/​Dec10/​FuchsASRC.​html (accessed 2 Dec 2010).

On Wednesday, 1 April 1970 a pre-dawn fire engulfed the Africana Studies & Research Center building at 320 Wait Avenue. Alarms for the fire sounded at 1:02 am as the fire destroyed the wooden, three-story building and the majority of the contents housed inside. The fire occurred a month after an attempted arson on an all-Black Women’s living quarters called, Wari House, and several months after a suspicious fire at the Southside Community Center, a meeting space utilized by Black members of the local Ithaca community. While the attempted burning of Wari House was a clear attempt at arson that involved gasoline induced flames thrown at the front entrance of the living space, the nature and timing of the three fires provided significant evidence that all three of the acts were indeed arson. In fact, Chester Whiteside, the special investigator from the Syracuse Police Department brought in to analyze the fire at the Africana building, ruled that the fire was indeed started by an arsonist. See: (Cornell Chronicle 1970).

See: (Frazier 1974) (specifically the first chapter on “The Break With the African Background”) and (Herskovitz 1958).

See: (Karenga 2009).

For more information on AHSA and the split from see (ASA 1969; Turner and Murapa 1969a, b; van den Burghe 1969; Sklar 1969; Shepherd 1969; Mathews et al. 1969; Challenor 1969; Clarke and Onyewu 1969; Gibbs 1969; Emerson et al. 1969; Cowan 1970; Clarke 1976; Gutkind 1976; Skinner 1976; Martin and West 1999; Campbell 1999).

For more information on the Sixth Pan African Congress, see: (Levy 2008; Campbell 1974; Garret 1975; Wilkins 2010); For more information on TransAfrica see: (Nesbitt 2004).