University of Michigan. Center for Afroamerican and African Studies

The University of Michigan Center for Afroamerican and African Studies (CAAS), was founded in 1970 to be a home for interdisciplinary research, teaching and community outreach. In 2011, CAAS became the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS) in the College of Literature Science and the Arts (LSA).

CAAS's beginnings are rooted in the era of the modern civil rights and black consciousness movements of the 1960s. Beginning in 1968, following the assassination of Martin Luther King, black students commandeered several campus buildings and demanded talks with new University President Robben Fleming. In addition to discussing the overall atmosphere on campus for black students, the activists voiced the first public call for a program in Black studies. A committee was charged by Rackham Dean Stephen H. Spurr to explore the possibility of creating an African-American studies program. Interest in such a program increased in 1970, when participants in the first Black Action Movement (BAM) on campus called for the establishment of a "Center for Afro-American Studies" to be based on a proposal written by J. Frank Yates, Assistant to the Dean of LSA.

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