Graffiti artist Max Meano, HiiiPowerEd Cypher, Jabari Exum

In December 2015, the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency that funds high-quality research, education and public programs at colleges and universities, museums and other institutions across the United States, awarded the Africana Studies program a prestigious $500,000 challenge grant. The grant recognized Lehigh University’s commitment to developing partnerships with the surrounding community.

Now in its third year, the three-to-one matching grant requires Lehigh to raise $1.5 million over the next three years. The funds will be used to create an endowment to expand the Africana Studies program at Lehigh through curriculum development, increasing public humanities initiatives and strengthening the program’s community partnerships in an effort to explore public concerns and a variety of social issues, including race, politics, gender and religion.

“The activities undertaken by Africana Studies faculty help advance the college’s mission of promoting and supporting strong interdisciplinary education,” said Cameron Wesson, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “These actions also tie into Lehigh’s Path to Prominence vision, creating innovative approaches to undergraduate and graduate education and developing long-term partnerships with the community.”

Kwame Essien, associate professor of history and director of the Africana Studies program, is the initiative’s principal investigator. Susan Kart, assistant professor of art history in the department of art, architecture and design, is co-principal investigator.

A Rite of Passage

As part of the program, a steering committee—comprised of Africana Studies faculty, students, staff and community partner leaders—has been formed. Members meet regularly to implement the grant’s various elements. Africana Studies faculty have built partnerships with the Greater Shiloh Church in Easton and helped bring prominent artists to campus, says Essien. 

And the project is off to a solid start. During the 2016-17 academic year, the Africana Studies program organized and implemented the William R. Scott Rites of Passage program with the church. The goal was to develop a public-facing, community-engaged initiative that would benefit the youth of the Lehigh Valley. Under the leadership of Deacon Harold Levy and Dr. Omaris Zamora, visiting assistant professor in Africana Studies, a team created a youth-centered curriculum for a Rites of Passage program, which was focused on providing youth with important tools for their development through adolescence into young adulthood. 

Rites of Passage programs provide youth with tools for self-empowerment and important insights necessary for becoming agents of change in their community. During March of 2016, seven workshops were held on Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings at Greater Shiloh Church. Twenty-one youth participants ranging in agefrom 13 to 17 came to learn from, and engage, Africana Studies faculty and community leaders. The effort concluded with a lunch to publicly acknowledge the participants and introduce them to the community as its newest active members. The Easton program is named in honor of the late Professor William R. Scott, founding director and longtime leader of Lehigh’s Africana Studies program and an active member of the Greater Shiloh Church community.

Now in its third year, the three-to-one matching grant requires Lehigh to raise $1.5 million over the next three years. The funds will be used to create an endowment to expand the Africana Studies program at Lehigh through curriculum development, increasing public humanities initiatives and strengthening the program’s community partnerships in an effort to explore public concerns and a variety of social issues, including race, politics, gender and religion.

“The activities undertaken by Africana Studies faculty help advance the college’s mission of promoting and supporting strong interdisciplinary education,” said Cameron Wesson, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “These actions also tie into Lehigh’s Path to Prominence vision, creating innovative approaches to undergraduate and graduate education and developing long-term partnerships with the community.”

Kwame Essien, associate professor of history and director of the Africana Studies program, is the initiative’s principal investigator. Susan Kart, assistant professor of art history in the department of art, architecture and design, is co-principal investigator.

The Past Sets Direction

Africana Studies was born of the clamor of the 1960s, largely in response to demands from African-American students and faculty that the experiences and history of African-Americans be included in what was being taught and studied on college campuses. Lehigh has offered an Africana Studies program since 1992, when it was founded by William R. Scott, then professor of history. In 2007, the College of Arts and Sciences approved a two-year predoctoral/postdoc fellows program for Africana Studies. Scott, having steered the program to that point, felt it was a good time to return to his research in black religious history in 18th-century America, and Ted Morgan, professor emeritus of political science, stepped in to serve as interim director. 

In 2011, Lehigh selected Africana Studies as its first academic “cluster,” bringing together faculty from English, history, political science, art history, religion, theater, sociology and anthropology. Five new faculty positions were added. Africana Studies faculty are dynamic partners with community organizations. Essien was one of those five new faculty.

Each semester, Lehigh’s Africana Studies courses draw hundreds of graduate and undergraduate students from disciplines across the university to explore public concerns and social justice issues. Since the Africana Studies cluster was established, both course offerings and student enrollments have increased significantly. In academic year 2017-18, Africana Studies faculty and affiliate faculty taught more than 550 undergraduate and graduate students in 23 classes on a range of culturally diverse topics.

In service of the greater Lehigh and regional communities, the Africana Studies program has developed influential public conferences and lectures, including a live-streamed, four-day conference in February 2015 that drew scholars internationally to explore the life and legacy of Malcolm X. Recently, it helped bring to campus Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Colson Whitehead, author of the critically acclaimed The Underground Railroad, who delivered the Martin Luther King lecture last March. In April, Jabari Exum, the African dance and movement coach for the film Black Panther, discussed this experience with students, as well as his passion and involvement in hip-hop, at HiiiPOWEREd Cypher, a hip-hop expo held on the Lehigh campus.

The National Endowment for the Humanities, created in 1965, supports research and learning by funding high-quality projects in fields that include history, literature, philosophy and archeology. In announcing its latest grant recipients, the NEH said the projects that were chosen will strengthen the nation’s cultural fabric and identity.