• 1 Howe, Stephen, Afrocentrism. Mythical pasts and Imagined Homes, London, Verso, 1998, p. 61.
• 2 Walker, Clarence, We can’t go home. An argument about afrocentrism, Oxford, Oxford University Press (...)

1The aim of this paper is to talk about an association of African American, African and Caribbean scholars and activists that was created in 1969 in Washington D.C. This organization is called the African Heritage Studies Association (AHSA). It came out of a conflict between members of the US African Studies Association and Black participants in this association’s annual meetings in 1968 and 1969. The AHSA was given a bit of attention in the 1990’s when European and North American scholars began to write about what they feared was the threat of “Afrocentrism” in North American Academia. For Oxford professor in political science Stephen Howe, for instance, the AHSA “by no standard large bodies” was an “undistinguished group of scholars”, led by “prolific but unscholarly John Henrik Clarke” “who, speaking for nobody apart from themselves” tried to impose on the African Studies Association racialized and afrocentric categories1. In the same line of thought, Historian Clarence Earl Walker in his book We can’t go home² sees the creation of AHSA as the real founding act of “Afrocentrism” in US Academia.

• 3 Guedj, Pauline, “The transnationalization of the Akan religion : Religion and Identity among the U. (...)

2I first got interested in AHSA when I was writing my dissertation which dealt with an African American religious group called the Akan who used a religion originating from Ghana to sustain its members’ search for African origins3. That movement was created in the 1960’s and echoed some of the AHSA’s line of thought among which was the need for African Americans to reclaim African history in order to liberate themselves and their community from oppression.

• 4 The debates around “Afrocentrism” arouse in American and European Academia at the end of the 1990’s (...)

3After my dissertation, I decided to build a research project focusing more precisely on what was called in the literature “Afrocentrism”. I was interested in pulling afrocentric ideologies out of the polemical debates that it often creates4 and to study it as a social construct that lies at the intersection of Academia and Politics and sometimes religions and arts. In order to do so, I decided to focus on the careers and trajectories of a few afrocentric intellectuals who made the transition from politics to the universities. One of these intellectuals and probably the main focus of my research investigation is John Henrik Clarke who became the first chair of AHSA in 1969.

• 5 See for Instance Aldridge, Delores P., Out of the revolution. The development of Africana studies, (...)

5This paper will go back to the history of the organization, talk about its ideological framework and introduce its founder John Henrik Clarke as a symbol of the type of activism that was at the basis 1960’s movement for Black studies. Indeed if AHSA’s break from ASA has been studied by a set of scholars5, the history of the organization per se is largely unknown.

• 6 Biondi, Martha, The Black Revolution on Campus, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California (...)
• 7 In April 1968, a group of Black students of Sir George William University filed a complaint against (...)

6The rising of AHSA took place within a period of two years with two major events at its heart : the African Studies Association’s (ASA’s) annual meetings of 1968 in Los Angeles and 1969 in Montreal. During that period of time, American Academia was divided around the issue of Black Studies. Throughout the entire country, African American students who had recently enrolled in Post-Civil Rights and integrated universities began a fight for the larger admission of Blacks in the university system as well as the creation of Black studies programs which would emphasize on their contribution in the making of the United States and of world history. In 1966, the first Black studies department was created at San Francisco State College chaired by the African American sociologist Nathan Hare. San Francisco state was soon followed by other departments and programs in universities like Columbia, Harvard, Cornell and the City University of New York6. While tensions between African American and ASA scholars were happening in Montreal, in 1969, the US still had a few universities taken over by students. Earlier this year, in Canada, Sir George Williams University (now part of the University Concordia at Montreal) found itself at the heart of what was referred to as the “riot” of its Caribbean students. The protest led to the adoption of new sets of regulation and rights to fight against institutional racism in Canadian Academia7.

• 8 Howe, Stephen, Afrocentrism. Mythical pasts and Imagined Homes, London, Verso, 1998, p. 60.
• 9 Martin, William J. and West, Michael Oliver, “The ascent, triumph and disintegrating of the African (...)
• 10 ibid., p. 135.

7In 1968, the African Studies Association organized its 12^th annual meeting in Los Angeles. At the end of the 1960’s, the association counted over 1500 members and about 300 affiliated institutions. It was a predominantly White organization and gathered only North American scholars8. During the meeting in Los Angeles a group of Black scholars, most of which were actually not members of the ASA, emerged, calling themselves the Black Caucus. They asked the ASA to render “itself more relevant and competent to deal with the challenging times and conditions of Black people in Africa, in the United States and in the whole Black world”9. It condemned the fact that the ASA never took into consideration the knowledge produced inside of the African American community in which intellectuals and activists have been studying African societies for centuries. It asked for more Blacks to be associated to the organization and for the establishment of steady and long-term relationships between the ASA and new Black studies departments in the country. The group’s claims were presented to the African Studies Association’s board by John Henrik Clarke, an intellectual and activist teacher from Harlem, who had been teaching African history in grassroots organizations for about 30 years. The board’s response lied on the creation of a committee, the Committee on Afro-American studies, led by James L Gibbs Jr, a professor of anthropology at Stanford, whose major role was to carefully examine the Black caucus’s demands and critiques10.

• 11 Since the 1970’s, the expression Africana studies has often been favored by scholars involved in th (...)
• 12 John Henrik Clarke Papers, Box 37, Folder 5, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Studies, New Yo (...)

8While James L. Gibbs was carrying on his mission, the Black caucus began organizing itself into a functioning committee. The committee included Len Jeffries (who will soon become the head of New York City College’s Black studies department), Harold Weaver (educator at the center for African Studies of Saint John University, Jamaica NY and who will become the chair of Rutgers College program in Africana11 studies), Shelby Lewis (assistant professor at the department of political science of Southern University Baton Rouge in Louisiana and today professor emeritus at Clarke College in Atlanta, Georgia), Chike Onwuachi (a Nigerian scholar, future director of the African studies research program at Howard university) Nell Painter (then a Master student in anthropology at the University of California Los Angeles and today a retired professor from Princeton), Mike Searles (Then an activist educator in Washington D.C., today retired professor of history at Augusta State University, Georgia) and John Henrik Clarke (instructor for Harlem based organization HARYOU ACT at that time who will become the first chair of the Black and Puerto Rican studies department at Hunter College, New York)12.

• 13 Clarke, John Henrik, My Life in Search of Africa, Ithaca, Cornell University Africana Studies and R (...)

10This first meeting was followed by a second one on June 27-28 1969 at the Federal City College in Washington D.C. where the Black caucus was named the African Heritage Studies Association13. The AHSA reminded the Black caucus’s demand for greater Black representation in the ASA, and especially in the board of the association but still considered itself as a group within the African Studies Association. The group demanded that a formal meeting be organized during the ASA’s following conference in Montreal. According to John Henrik Clarke, that meeting was cancelled by the organizers. In the meantime, a few members of the AHSA did meet with the ASA Committee on Afro-American Studies. That was the case in particular for John Henrik Clarke and Leonard Jeffries who participated in a reunion that took place in San Francisco on January 1969.

• 15 Martin, William J. and West, Michael Oliver, “The ascent, triumph and disintegrating of the African (...)

13The group demanded that the study of Africa be undertaken “from a pan-africanist perspective, or Afrocentric perspective, which defines that all Black people are African peoples and negates the tribalization of African peoples by geographical demarcation on the basis of colonialist spheres of influence”15. Finally, the AHSA demanded racial parity in the ASA, asking for the creation of a new board consisting of “6 Africans and 6 Europeans”.

• 16 Ibid. p. 100.

14At the evening ASA business meeting of the ASA, professor Chike Onwuachi reaffirmed the AHSA demands. A motion was suggested on racial parity. Nevertheless, ASA fellows, who were the only ones allowed to vote out of the 1600 persons registered in the meeting, voted against AHSA’s claims (104 to 93). As the AHSA members along with a group of supportive White scholars who called themselves the White radical caucus led by Tanzania specialist Idrian N Resnick were about to leave the meeting, Professor Fred Burke of SUNY Buffalo, tried to come up with a solution to the conflict16.

• 17 Ibid.

15Claiming to be the voice of a group of “25 White concerned liberals”, Burke proposed the creation of a 30 members racially balanced committee to draft a new constitution that would respond the AHSA demands and would include a clause stating that “at least half of the members of the new board of directors must be Black”17.

• 18 ibid. p. 101.

16The status quo did not last though. Indeed a few days after the conference, James Duffy, the African Study Association executive secretary and a former president of the organization suspended the resolution and determined along with the ASA attorney that the constitution of the organization had been violated at the Montreal meeting and that the votes were actually unconstitutional. With his actions, died the possible reconciliation of the AHSA with the ASA18.

• 20 Van Den Berghe, Pierre, “Report of the 1969 Crisis”, Africa Today, 1969, 16, 5-6, p. 8-9.
• 21 Sklar, Richard L., “African Studies at Montreal”, Africa Today, 1969, 16, 5-6, P. 11.
• 22 Immanuel Wallerstein, then Associate professor in sociology at Columbia University, remained after (...)

19Pierre Van Den Berghe, a Belgium sociologist, professor the University of Washington and specialized in the study of African ethnic relations, then opened the discussion accusing AHSA of being an apartheid association acting in the logics of racial conflict. Van Den Berghe20 then praised the Burke decision arguing that the board should be made of 6 Africans, meaning 6 citizens of African States (highlighted) and 6 non Africans. He was then followed by UCLA political scientist and soon to be president of ASA Richard L. Sklar arguing that the association could not hide behind objectivity anymore. “The ASA today is political or nothing.”21 Immanuel Wallerstein22 in an essay entitled “Africa, America and the Africanists” denounced the apartheid analogy and defended the need for quota as a way to succeed racial integration.

• 23 James Turner is the founder of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University. Afte (...)
• 24 Turner, James and Murapa, Rukudzo, « Africa : Conflict in Black and White », Africa Today, 1969, 16 (...)
• 25 Resnik, Idrian N., “Crisis in African Studies”, Africa Today, 1969, 16, 5-6, p. 15.

20Finally, a voice was given to members of the two caucuses that arouse during these meetings : Political scientists James Turner23 and Rukudzo Murapa of AHSA condemned the arrogance of White scholarship, the exclusion of Black scholars in the debates on African history and issued of their action “a challenge to the White criteria of competence, definition and direction of White research in Africa.”24 Idrian N. Resnick of the Radical White Caucus denounced the positions of the Black caucus for not “going far enough.” He asked the ASA to clear their opposition to colonialism, neocolonialism and imperialism and longed for an ASA “that serves, rather than impedes, the liberation of Black peoples.”25

• 26 Martin, William J. and West, Michael Oliver, “The ascent, triumph and disintegrating of the African (...)
• 27 ibid. p. 101.

21Oppositions to the Montreal accord were soon published and discussed elsewhere. South African historian Arthur Keppel-Jones took over the apartheid analogy and pushed it even further. “I recognize Nazi stormtroopers when I see them, and I am no more willing to submit to bullying from black ones than from white”26. Martin Kilson, Harvard political scientist and only African American members of the ASA board also strongly condemned the Black caucus. In a letter addressed to the ASA board member in 1970 and signed by 96 Africanists, Kilson denounced the “almost incomprehensible gesture of concession made to a small minority.”27

• 29 See also Skinner, Elliott, « African Studies, 1955-1975 : An Afro-American Perspective », Issue : J (...)

23In fact, D’Arboussier and Damas ended up making a statement at the end of the Montreal conference indicating their support to the AHSA demands and explaining that some similar thoughts had been enunciated during the 1967 Africanist congress in Dakar that they both participated in29.

• 30 John Henrik Clarke papers Box 37, folder 2, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Studies, New Yor (...)

26“The intent of African Heritage Studies Association is to use African history to effect a world union of African people. This association of scholars of African-descent is committed to the preservation, interpretation and creative presentation of the historical and cultural heritage of African people both on the ancestral soil of Africa and in diaspora in the Americas and throughout the world. We interpret African history from a Pan-Africanist perspective that defines all Black people as African people… As scholar-activists, our program has as its objective the restoration of the cultural, economic and political life of African people, everywhere... But this is only the beginning. We know that there is no way to move a people from slavery to freedom and self-awareness without engaging in political expediency and revolutionary coalitions… It will be our function as scholar-activists to put the components of our heritage together to weld an instrument of liberation.”30

• 31 This D.C. conference gathered some of the most influent Pan-African scholars (CLR James, Walter Rod (...)
• 32 Skinner, Elliott, “African Heritage Reappraised”, John Henrik Clarke papers, Box 39, Folder 19, Sch (...)

28The framework announced in Clarke’s statement was then experimented and followed in most of the meetings organized by the group. In 1970, in Washington D.C., the organization called upon a meeting which will be divided in 4 panel sessions31. The first session, “The African Cultural Heritage Reappraised” aimed at defining African culture and discussing the needs for Blacks to reconnect with their past. The most well known participant, Columbia University anthropologist Elliott Skinner described this effort in his paper’s introduction : “People of African descent must reappraise their cultural heritage if they want to be truly free. They must actively challenge those who would destroy or distort their culture and seize control of their own destiny32.” The panel welcomed papers by Adelaide Hill, Absolom Vilakazi and George Bond.

• 33 Turner James, “Introduction”, John Henrik Clarke Papers, Box 37, Folder 20, 1970.

29The second panel “The New Africanism in Political Perspective” was opened by a statement by political activist and scholar James Turner which reminded that “The assumption of this panel is that knowledge and intellectual reflection that does not blend itself to the political activity of our struggle is useless33.” The session included papers by CLR James, Gerald Mc Worther and Stanilas Adotevi.

• 34 Lynch, Holly, “New Perspectives on the History of African Peoples”, John Henrik Clarke Papers, Box (...)

31Finally, the last panel “New Perspectives on the History of African Peoples” was composed both of papers suggesting an alternate vision of African history and others trying to define what a Pan-African understanding of that history should be ; This Pan-African perspective could be well explained by quoting Hollis Lynch’s presentation “The Pan-African perspective academically says, first that you cannot make a division, a distinction between the history of African people and the people of the new world. Second, politically we are concerned with history not for history’s sake but we see it as a weapon in the liberation of Black people34”. Adu Boahen, Walter Rodney and John Henrik Clarke participated in the discussions.

• 36 Onwuachi, Chike, “Africanism. Towards a New Definition”, John Henrik Clarke Papers, Box 37, folder (...)
• 37 John Henrik Clarke papers, Box 37, folder 36, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New Y (...)

33Second, the meeting tried to concretely engage with action. In his opening address Chike Onwuachi insisted on the fact that “Our task will not be a question of mere revolutionary verbalisms. We need to find articulations which design actional models for Black liberation and will begin to give us realistic perspectives36.” In order to do so, the organization tried to complement the plenary sessions with workshops during which scholars and participants could give their opinions and think about what the organization thought as its major issue “How do we act from here ?” This question of action is going to lie at the very heart of AHSA’s future debates and conflicts. It is because of lack of action that John Henrik Clarke will take his distance from the group and that he will end up in a 1976 letter describing the failure of the organization37.

• 38 Clarke, John Henrik, “New Perspectives on the History of African Peoples”, John Henrik Clarke Paper (...)

35In the draft presented in Washington of the ideological framework of AHSA, John Henrik Clarke precisely insisted on a figure, central to the organization, that is the “scholar-activist”. In the paper, members of the AHSA are described not as intellectuals or simple scholars, they are a set of “scholar-activists” who can not imagine their position as intellectuals being removed from social realities and political actions. Therefore, John Henrik Clarke’s 1970 piece concludes with the sentence : “It will be our function as scholar-activists to put the component of our heritage together to weld an instrument of liberation38.”

• 39 James, CLR., “The New Africanism in Political Perspective”, John Henrik Clarke Papers, Box 37, Fold (...)

36One of the issues of the Washington D.C. meeting was then to define what a scholar-activist could be. Different papers suggested different answers. In CLR James’ presentation, the scholar-activist becomes, before anything else, a Pan-African activist who is the recipient of a heritage of Black activism. Therefore, members of the AHSA are thought of as the children or cousins of WEB Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere. They are going to be “in the lead of all changes and all changes will be made according to their will39.”

• 40 Rodney, Walter, “New perspectives on the history of African peoples”, John Henrik Clarke Papers, Bo (...)
• 41 ibid.
• 42 Rodney, Walter, “New perspectives on the history of African peoples”, John Henrik Clarke Papers, Bo (...)

37Walter Rodney expands on that reflection building a real typology of the kinds of intellectuals needed for the Black liberation and arguing for the building of multifaceted intellectuals. First, there is the historian. But according to Rodney, the historian “can only lay the groundwork40.” Then, there is the political activist who is on the side of the action. For Rodney, a historian can also be an activist. “One can of course be other than just a historian. A man is free, a woman is free to have as many facets as he or she decides. The historian is free to pick up a gun, but in that sense he is not acting as a historian41.” Then there is third category that Rodney refers to as the “scientist”. These scientists are skilled intellectuals whose actions are concrete and who very often are educators. “In Black studies”, Rodney explains “we have to involve a lot of people who are not professional historians. Because we don’t want too many professional historians anyway. What we ought to be training our people to do in our various Black studies programs is to be scientists, to get the things that are necessary and at the same time to evolve historical perspective. This means a certain amount of amateur historians but there is nothing wrong with that42.”

• 43 Clarke, John Henrik, My Life in Search of Africa, Ithaca, Cornell University Africana Studies and R (...)

39Let us go back to Clarke’s presentation and to his career. John Henrik Clarke was born on January 1rst 1915 in Union Springs Alabama. He was the oldest son of a sharecropper family. At age 7, John moved with his family to Columbus Georgia where he began attending school. In school, Clarke explains that he was “the leader of a group of people, these students were called the dark brigade, as against the light brigade, the children of middle class families.”. “I was the first dark child to ring the bell for recess”, Clarke reminds. This was my first introduction to power. I grew up with a sense of power and I knew it was Black power43.”

• 46 Ibid. 1994.

42After that first meeting, John Henrik Clarke joined study circles such as the Harlem History Club and the Harlem Writers’ Workshop. He studied history and literature at NYU as well as the New School but he never obtained a diploma. Clarke liked in that regard to say that he trained himself in libraries and in very well chosen used bookstores. It is also the influence of major African American thinkers that helped him in his growth. “I grew up in Harlem when Dr. Schomburg was alive, when J.A. Rogers was alive, when Leo Hansberry was alive. So I am fortunate enough to have grown up and being trained by my Black masters46.”

• 47 Ibid., 1994.

43For John Henrik Clarke this training by Black masters is the reason why it “is so important for me to give back, especially to Black students”. In 1962, Clarke started his career of educator-activist within the HARYOU ACT (Harlem youth Opportunities Unlimited) an organization founded by African American psychologist and civil rights activist Kenneth Clarke. It is in that organization, that John Henrik Clarke began to “give back”. He built curriculum for the purpose of helping African American children in their attempt to better understand who they are and where they come from. He saw as his mission to transmit the “heritage” that his Black masters taught him. “Heritage, he says, is how a people use their talent to create a history that give them memories that they can respect and use to command the respect of others.” Clarke’s presentation ends with a sentence that he will frequently use after 1970 : “a peoples’ relationship to their heritage and their history is the same as the relationship of a child to its mother47.”

• 48 Marable, Manning, Dispatches from the Ebony Tower. Intellectuals confront the African American Expe (...)
• 49 Hoare, Quintin and Nowell Smith Geoffrey, Selection from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, N (...)

45In other words, the type of intellectuals defined by Clarke, the one that he cherishes and he likes to consider himself as an inheritor of are self-trained and political. In a way, they are the 1970’s equivalents of what Manning Marable48 would later call, after Gramsci, “African American organic intellectuals”. As a reminder, Antonio Gramsci49 saw a distinction between “traditional” and “organic” intellectuals. Traditional intellectuals, usually brought up in traditional intellectual environments are thought to be disinterested and to rise in the name of reason and truth above sectarian or topical interests. They are tied to their institutions and to their societal hegemonic order. On the other hand, “organic intellectuals” speak for the interest of a specific class. They were raised intellectually in that class and are the proponents of counter-hegemonic ideas and ambitions.

• 50 Marable, Manning, Dispatches from the Ebony Tower. Intellectuals confront the African American Expe (...)

46According to Manning Marable, African American organic intellectuals are then “African Americans who were not trained in traditional universities but who had a critical understanding of their world and communicated their ideas to Black audience50”. These intellectuals are “street trained”, “politically involved”, searching for the liberation of their community and maybe more importantly are the recipient of a Black tradition in history that developed outside of Academia, that was never officially recognized, that was often stolen from them and that the African Heritage Studies Association is here to represent and to claim. African American organic intellectuals have then turned Gramsci’s Marxists understanding of intellectuals into a racialist one. They are the voice of a race as opposed to the one of a class.