Program Description
African-American Studies at the University of Montana connects African and African-American (including Latin America and the Caribbean) history, experiences, and perspectives with the 21st century. The goal of the African-American Studies curriculum is to develop a basic knowledge of, and appreciation for, the diverse experiences of the African diaspora, and their contributions to the nations into which they were incorporated.
Through this study students will recognize that the African-American narrative connects to the core issues of nation formation, identity politics, social movements, and the liberal state. Those who take this minor will likewise be equipped to talk alongside, through, and in the midst of the racial fracture lines that mark this nation as a country where the color of one’s skin is socially significant. In all these efforts, we promote scholarship that is driven first and foremost by an interest in creating knowledge and furthering our understanding of the African-American experience.
The interdisciplinary curriculum of African-American Studies includes course offerings from the following academic disciplines: anthropology, economics, English, geography, history, music, political science, and sociology. Some topics of study include: African heritage and cultural continuity among African-Americans; African-American identity issues and cultural variation; the history of African-American protest and resistance, including the abolitionist, anti-lynching, and civil rights movements; the Harlem Renaissance; the social dynamics of integration and segregation; and the various circumstances of, and prospects for, African Americans in the 21st century.
History
Founded by Dr. Ulysses Doss in May of 1968, the African American Studies Program at the University of Montana was one of the very first in the United States - apparently the third, nation-wide - and the first outside of California. The first AAS program was founded at Cal State LA in 1967, followed by Cal State Long Beach in April of 1968. The AAS program at San Francisco State, often cited as the first, did not begin until September of 1968. To put it in further perspective, that same year the Universities of Alabama and Georgia initiated their desegregation.
Dr. Ulysses Doss was active in the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and worked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during the campaign for the integration of residential neighborhoods in the Chicago area. Dr. Doss was also the founder of Christian Action Ministry, an ecumenical community organization in Chicago which ran educational, employment and other uplift programs. After Dr. King’s assassination in April of 1968, Ulysses struggled to prevent negative reactions such as rioting from occurring in the black community in Chicago, as he also struggled with his own pain and grief from King’s loss. Rev. Jon Nelson of Missoula, whose sister, Mary had worked with Ulysses Doss in Chicago invited Ulysses to Missoula to recover and perhaps find some new avenues for continuing in the work of progressive social change. Soon after his arrival, Ulysses gave a few public lectures and was consequently invited to teach in the Humanities program (now called "Liberal Studies") at the University of Montana. Ulysses immediately began to teach African American history and culture and put a sign on his office door identifying himself as "Director of Black Studies." Ulysses continued in that position at UM for 25 years, until his retirement in 1993.
In Dr. Doss’ first year at UM, a total of 500 students enrolled in the four classes he taught. His course on Gandhi, King and the power of non-violence was standing room only for the entire 25 years that he taught it. During his tenure here he worked constantly to recruit more African American students to UM, and raised the number from 10 when he first arrived to a high at one point of 116 African American students. Those early recruits founded the first Black Student Union at UM during the 1968/69 school year and began publishing a newsletter (“Watani”) and sponsoring public events. In the early years of the Black Studies Program, those successes were accomplished in spite of some considerable opposition to the existence of such a program and even to the presence of black students on campus, although the majority of the responses were positive. The program probably would not have continued beyond its first year without the vigorous and enthusiastic support of then President of UM, Dr. Robert Pantzer. Through the unrelenting efforts of Dr. Doss, Dr. Pantzer and many others who joined and supported this work, the academic, social, and cultural value of both the Black Studies Program and having a more diverse student body soon became apparent to many, leading, in part, to the founding of the Native American Studies Program in 1970. Dr. Doss received the Standard Oil Teacher of the Year award (1971), the Most Inspirational Teacher of the Year Award (1990), the Greek System Faculty Award (1992), and the Black Student Union Humanitarian Award (1993).
After the retirement of Ulysses Doss, Dr. Ed Sanford succeeded him as Director of Black Studies and served from 1993 until 1999. During that time, Dr. Sanford continued to offer some of the courses that Dr. Doss taught and introduced some new courses, while helping to keep the Black Student Union in operation. It was during those years that the Black Studies Program was renamed the African American Studies Program. When Dr. Sanford departed from UM in the summer of ’99, an adjunct instructor from the Native American Studies Department, George Price, was recruited by the College of Arts and Sciences to teach AAS courses while they searched for a new director. Dr. Price has continued to lecture and create new courses for both programs since that year. A new director, Dr. Tunde Adeleke, was hired in 2000. Under Dr. Adeleke’s leadership, from 2000 until 2006, several new courses were added to the curriculum and the AAS minor was initiated. After the departure of Dr. Adeleke, the AAS program was without a director again for two years, until the hiring of our current director, Dr. Tobin Miller Shearer in 2008. Under Dr. Shearer’s leadership, the program has continued to grow, offering new courses and adding new students as AAS minors. We have also sponsored several public forums and events.
During the last 41 years of AAS at UM, the program has brought several significant national figures from the Civil Rights Movement to speak on campus, including Dick Gregory, Julian Bond, and, for our 40th Anniversary celebration last year, Jibreel Khazan (formerly Ezell Blair) one of the original four Woolworth sit-in protesters in 1960. Since the founding of our program in 1968, our AAS courses have always been full and the students who have filled them have been about 90% Euro-American, with the other 10% composed of not only African Americans, but also Native Americans, foreign students, and representatives of a vast array of other ethnicities. What these students have come to realize is that African American history and culture is, and always has been, integral to American history and culture. We find it to be very gratifying that these students hunger to learn more of this vital knowledge that was not readily available at most American colleges and universities 40 years ago. We gladly look forward to continuing in this significant work.
