A founding document of African American Studies, reissued for today’s students and scholars
 
An originating document for the field of African American Studies, this is the account of a landmark 1968 conference at Yale University involving students, faculty, and community activists that helped establish “Afro-American Studies” as a major, and then a thriving department, at Yale. In the conference proceedings, participants argue for the necessity of Black Studies as a field, start to delineate its central debates, discuss its relationship to community activism outside the university, and lay out a plan for what a course of study might be. Bristling with implied action and the power of an idea whose time has come, this classic reissue will serve as a resource for new generations of scholars and activists.
 
Contributors to the proceedings include McGeorge Bundy, Lawrence W. Chisolm, Harold Cruse, David Brion Davis, Nathan Hare, Maulana Ron Karenga, Martin Kilson, Jr., Gerald A. McWorter, Sidney W. Mintz, Boniface Obichere, Alvin Poussaint, Edwin Redkey, Charles H. Taylor, Jr., and Robert F. Thompson. In a new introduction, Farah Jasmine Griffin reflects on the legacy of this book and the trajectory of the field over the decades; forewords by Ralph Dawson and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., recall the pioneering moment at Yale and all that it made possible.