Making change: Africana Studies celebrates its 55th anniversary

Binghamton University’s Africana Studies department was among the first of its kind in the nation, sparked by the efforts of student activists during the 1960s.

The department celebrated its 55th anniversary in October with a special production of John Reilly’s The Life and Legend of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. The event celebration also provided an opportunity for alumni who proved instrumental in the department’s creation to get together and connect with the next generation of Africana Studies students and scholars.

“Who knew back in 1967 when we were agitating for more courses that this would develop into a department with majors and professors?” reflected historian Deborah Gray White ’71. “That it would become a major part of the institutional life?”

An associate professor emeritus of English at Loyola Marymount University, Reilly earned his bachelor’s degree in English from Harpur College in 1968, followed by his master’s and doctorate in American literature at Cornell University. He is both a scholar and a playwright, focused on the dynamics of the American experience; currently, he’s working on a play centered on the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The October production was directed by Binghamton University Assistant Professor of Theater Brandon A. Wright and starred stage and screen actor Eric Lynch in the title role.

The play centers on a former Congressman and minister of the Abyssinia Baptist Church in Harlem, known for his political savvy. For Powell, being Black was an ethos tied into the emerging civil rights movement and democracy itself, Reilly explained. He was a powerful figure who headed the Congressional Committee on Labor and Education, which meant that most domestic legislation went through him.

“He helped the civil rights movement by attaching to all allocations a caveat that stated that you couldn’t get federal funds if you were involved in discriminating against people on the basis of race or other surface characteristics,” Reilly said.

Making Harpur history

The late 1960s was a politically active time on campus, with rallies, protests and sit-ins, many against the war in Vietnam.

But students of color were few and professors of color even fewer. Rodney Young, who attended Harpur College as a political science major from 1966 through 1969, was among only six African-American students during his first year. Four of them came via a special admissions program that was the precursor to today’s Educational Opportunity Program, then headed by John Benson; Young, from Rochester, wasn’t among them.

Once at Binghamton, students of color felt disconnected from campus culture. Artist Ed Wilson was the only Black faculty member, and the surrounding community had few residents of color; classes in that day were typically taught by white men and presented a Eurocentric worldview, alumni said.

This disconnect sparked the creation of the Afro-Latin Alliance, one of the first groups in the country focused on the shared experiences of students of color, said William Luis ’71, who was among the trio of initial leaders.

“It was the 1960s, and we were looking for ways to express ourselves and demand justice,” Luis said. “This is an idea that has continued to be a part of who I am: to seek justice and equality and opportunities for all.”

The Afro-Latin Alliance was followed by the creation of the Black Student Union and a meeting space for Black students, Young remembered. Now a federal judge, Theodore McKee joined the campus to recruit students of color. Students also made a film with Cinema Professor Larry Gottheim on African-American and Latine students from New York City and their experience at Harpur.

And, of course, the students rallied, calling for courses — and later, an academic program — grounded in both the African-American experience and in their aspirations.

More diverse faces and voices joined the faculty in those early days, including lawyer and Civil Rights activist Floyd McKissick, author of 3/5 of a Man, and history professor Richard Dalfiume, author of the 1968 article “The ‘Forgotten Years’ of the Negro Revolution,” White remembered. Through the years, the program expanded to include the entire African diaspora.

“We believed in democracy. We believed that our movement wasn’t a racially exclusive movement, but a moral movement and a humanitarian movement, and that we could create a program with that emphasis,” Reilly remembered.

Sometimes, the young activist made sacrifices; Young devoted so much of his time to the recruitment of Black students and the development of Africana Studies that his academics suffered, leading him to drop out, he admitted.

But by the time Young left campus in December 1969, the Africana Studies program had launched. He went into the insurance and investment business and then to the United Way of Greater Rochester and the Finger Lakes, where he coordinated the African-American leadership development program.

“The department has survived and thrived,” Young said of the anniversary celebration he attended in October. “It was a joyous event for me to see that, and it’s encouraging that the University has supported the initiative all of these years,” he said.

Students in the special admissions program not only defied expectations but also went on to develop as top professionals, Luis said.

After graduating from Binghamton, Reilly taught for a time at a Harlem school. Before embarking on his later career as a professor, he returned to Binghamton as the first African-American counselor in the same special admissions program that brought him there.

A history major at Harpur, Luis taught in a bilingual education program in East Harlem before heading to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Ultimately, his path led him to Cornell University, where he earned a doctorate and then embarked on an academic career, teaching at Dartmouth College and Washington University in St. Louis before joining Binghamton as a faculty member. He headed Binghamton’s Latin American and Caribbean Area Studies Program from 1988 to 1991.

“I was very appreciative of my education at Binghamton and wanted to contribute. Binghamton was that first step, where the seed was planted and watered,” he reflected. “To understand where I am, I have to remember where I came from. The shared Black experience at Binghamton marked my academic career.”

In 1991, he landed at Vanderbilt University, and shortly after was invited to be a visiting professor at Yale University. The Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor in the Humanities is also a Guggenheim winner, editor of the Afro-Hispanic Review and the author of 14 books and more than 100 articles.

“I’m well-regarded in my field, but none of this would have happened if a person like John Benson wasn’t around to give me an opportunity,” he said.

A political science course at Harpur sparked White’s own interest in Africa and colonialism; she went on to earn her degree in history, as well as a certificate of recognition for her coursework in Africana Studies.

From there, she earned her master’s at Columbia University and her doctorate at the University of Illinois at Chicago, joining Rutgers as a professor in 1984. During the course of her 40-year career, the Board of Governors Distinguished Emerita Professor of History won a Guggenheim award and authored 11 books.

As a professor, White has seen the growing popularity of Africana Studies-themed courses among students of a broad array of backgrounds and disciplines. Initially, the African-American history courses she taught appealed mostly to students of color; today, there are classes in which Black students are actually in the minority, she said.

Sometimes, students express doubt that their voices and efforts can make a lasting difference, White observed. She thinks back to her own college days, when young people — most still in their teens — decided to work together for change.

“We actually made a difference,” White said. “Fifty years later, look at what we did.”