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Program Description


The Department of African American Studies offers the opportunity for study, research, and community involvement in African American Studies and enables students to explore cultural, literary, historical, socioeconomic and other issues affecting African Americans as well as the link with continental Africa and the Caribbean areas. The department provides a major, leading to a B.A. degree and a minor, both with two sub-areas of specialization, one in the social sciences and one in humanities.




Each year the Department of African American Studies selects graduating majors and minors as recipients for the following awards:


  • Anna Julia Cooper/Carter G. Woodson: Award for Academic Achievement in the Major of African American Studies.
  • W.E.B. DuBois: Award for Outstanding Scholarship to an African American Studies for highest overall GPA.
  • Fannie Lou Hamer: Award for Outstanding Community Service.
  • Angela Davis/Walter Rodney: Award of Academic Achievement in the Minor of African American Studies.


Images (From Left to Right):


Anna Julia Cooper, Professor, Prolific writer, and early-Black Feminist; Carter G. Woodson, Historian, Journalist, Father of African American history and Black history month; W. E. B. Du Bois, Public intellectual and prolific Black freedom scholar, an architect of the Pan Africanist movement and agitation politics, and a founder of the NAACP; Fannie Lou Hamer, Civil Rights Leader and Voting Rights Activist from humble sharecropping roots, was a lead organizer of Mississippi Freedom Summer (1964) and ran for Congress on several occasions, ultimately becoming a Democratic National Committee (DNC) Representative from 1968-1971 and DNC delegate in 1972.