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.

When the Regents established the center in the summer of 1970, its scope was broadened to include African studies, on the expectation that, "the study of Africa, Afroamerica, and the Caribbean within a single intellectual framework was not only defensible but represented the future direction of Black Studies." This "diasporic perspective" has defined the framework for study and teaching conducted by the center's faculty. The center was to offer an interdisciplinary curriculum taught by an international faculty and had a first-year enrollment of 1,026 students. Over the next two years the center acquired a "Writer in Residence" program and a visiting faculty program. CAAS faculty and students envisioned a commitment to both the University and the local and regional Black communities and over the next few years, center participants worked to find the right balance between these activities.

The Ford Foundation granted CAAS funds for the project "From Margin to Center: Towards a New Black Scholarship," beginning in 1988 and additional funds for its pilot project "Strengthening African Studies." The program provided: a small seed grant program to foster collaborative research on Africa; helped fund a Summer Institute on Social Science Methods and African Studies; and an Africa Theme Semester.

During its forty-year span CAAS has played host to a number of notable events and programs, including an ongoing colloquium series, the Dubois-Mandela-Rodney Fellowship Program (since 1988), and two conferences in memory of the noted poet and essayist Robert Hayden in 1980 and 1990. The center has also sponsored study abroad programs in Barbados, Jamaica, Ghana and South Africa. Since 2000, CAAS has also been the home of the South African Initiatives Office (SAIO).

Originally, the Center sponsored an undergraduate concentration. An undergraduate minor was added in 2000 and a graduate certificate program began in 2005. First housed on Monroe Street, CAAS moved to West Hall and then to its current home in Haven Hall. Facilities have included a professionally staffed library and archives and an art gallery.

The Lemuel A. Johnson Library at CAAS supported the curriculum by collecting and organizing archival materials related to black faculty, staff and student organizations, student activism, and national and international events relevant social justice. These files, now transferred to the Bentley, were publicly available for research and consultation. They included records relating to the BAM movements as well as several other university organizations, whose records were transferred together with the CAAS organizational archives. Brief profiles of those documented organizations follow.

The Black Action Movement (BAM) was formed in 1970 from a coalition of the Black Student Union, the Black Law Students Association, the Association of Black Social Work Students, and groups of black students from the Medical School and the Psychology Department. They presented a list of demands to then University President, Robben Flemming. One of those demands, was, in fact the establisment of CAAS. There were two subsequent BAM episodes, BAM II (1974-5) and BAM III in 1985-7.

The United Coalition Against Racism (UCAR) formed in the Spring of 1987 in response to a series of racist incidents on campus, including racist jokes aired on a campus radio station and a racist flyer pushed under the door of black women studying in a dormitory lounge. UCAR engaged in action aimed at U-M administrators, putting forth demands for institutional changes and convening mass protests in response to racist incidents. In addition it presented teach-ins and speakers. Originally funded by the Office of Minority Affairs (created in response to an original UCAR demand) for specific projects, other funds were provided by the organization's own fundraising and the Michigan Student Assembly.

UCAR also founded the Ella Baker-Nelson Mandela Center for Anti-Racist Education, or the Baker-Mandela Center (BMC) during the summer of 1988. Its purpose was to collect and generate literature, provide a speakers bureau, and to serve as a gathering place for anti-racist activists. The overall objectives were to promote anti-racist consciousness and to promote anti-racist student leaders, particularly within Third World communities; to heighten the level of discussion and research on various aspects of race, class and gender issues and to provide concrete tools to anti-racist organizers to help refute stereotypes and myths, and challenge apathy or cynicism. It was housed in the East Engineering Building. Barbara Ransby and Tracye Matthews were important leaders in the organization of the center.

The University of Michigan Free South Africa Coordinating Committee (FSACC) was a diverse campus-based group of faculty and students opposed to the Apartheid system in South Africa, founded in the Spring of 1985. The group's aims included producing literature, sponsoring events and pressuring institutions to sever economic ties with corporations doing business in South Africa. FSACC records concern activism during the 1980s and early 1990s, especially the construction of an "anti-apartheid shanty" on the University of Michigan Diag and a petition to grant Nelson Mandela an honorary degree.

The Students of Color Coalition (SCC), another campus-based group, formed to protest the mocking use of Native American names, images and regalia by a semi-secret student honor society called Michigamua. In early 2000, SCC members occupied the Michigamua offices in the tower of the Michigan Union for thirty-seven days. As a result of the controversy, Michigamua agreed to stop using Native American practices, and in 2006 adopted a new name, "The Order of Angell."

• 1970: Acklyn Lynch
• 1970 - 1971 (Acting) : J. Frank Yates
• 1972 - 1973 : Harold W. Cruse
• 1973: Leslie Owens
• 1973 - 1978 : Ozzie Edwards,
• 1978 - 1981 : Ali Mazrui
• 1981 - 1984 : Niara Sudarkasa
• Fall 1982 (Acting) 1984-1986: Thomas C. Holt
• 1986 - 1990 : Lemuel A. Johnson
• 1990 - 1993 : Earl Lewis
• 1993 - 1996 : Michael Awkward
• 1996 - 1998 : Sharon F. Patton
• 1998 - 2005 : James S. Jackson
• 2005 - 2010 : Kevin Gaines
• 2010 - 2011 : Angela D. Dillard

• 2011 - : Tiya Miles

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1. History of the Center and Program, CAAS organizational archives, Box 16

From the guide to the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies (University of Michigan) records, 1966-2010, 1970-1994, (Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan)