Africana Studies Program

In the late 1950s and 1960s higher education faced the challenge of whether to allow equal access by African American students and faculty. Lehigh admitted its first African American student in 1951. This student was Costel Denson, who attended Lehigh University to be a chemical engineer. Being the first African American student, Denson faced plenty of doubt and unfair treatment. However, despite this, Denson was able to graduate from Lehigh, the first African American to do so. Denson’s determination to finish his four years began the road for other African American students at Lehigh.

Since the 1950s much has changed in how African Americans are seen and treated, not just on campus but around the country. Lehigh has had a particularly interesting path since Denson graduated. During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Lehigh accepted many more African Americans. Even though they were accepted as students, the university population as a whole still made it difficult for them to integrate, and stereotypes were usually formed. The University gradually made its way from being more accepting and eventually began a program that studied the history and culture of African Americans. The history of African Americans and the Africana Studies program at Lehigh is brief compared to the long history of the university. Despite this there has been many drastic changes since the 1950s and the program has recently seen drastic transformation in faculty and in its plans for the future.

As stated before during the 60s, 70s, and 80s, the number of African Americans on campus slowly increased. Professor James McIntosh stated that he noticed a slow increase over the years, and with the increase African American students took a proactive role. Instead of sitting around and accepting the discrimination directed at them, they forced themselves into situations that most African Americans did not do at the time. Students, directed by faculty, would experiment on how people in public would react to African Americans. In these experiments students would go to public restaurants and functions with groups of different faces and colors. The experiments, in which were usually led by Professor James McIntosh, evaluated the quality of service these groups received. Generally the experiments went successfully; as the worst anybody ever did to them was give them poor service. Also during the 50’s African Americans were not allowed in fraternities, as it was against the code of most of the national chapters. In response to this African American students would gather up and go to the fraternity houses and have a trial. These trials never had a ruling or anything, and eventually just turned into meetings to discuss issues. This was the first step to allowing African Americans into fraternities, which was eventually required by the University sometime in the 60’s. The most common stereotype of this time was that African American students were athletes. While this was stood true for most African Americans on campus, it frustrated others greatly. Professor McIntosh stated how numerous African American students who were assumed to be athletes wanted to fight students who thought this.

Following these trials and experiments, Lehigh has prided themselves on being more accepting to African Americans. The biggest step was in 1992 when President Peter Likens approached multiple faculty members about starting an Africana Studies program. With support from the president, Lehigh created a team led by Professor Rick Matthews and Professor Ted Morgan, and their job was to find someone who could lead the new program. In searching they found a very qualified individual in Professor William Scott. Scott had previously worked in a similar position at Columbia University, and he was the perfect person to have in the start of the program. The program was, at first, not popular. Along with that the program had no actual professors besides Scott, as they just used professors from other departments a procedure that characterizes most interdisciplinary programs at Lehigh.

Eighteen years went by until there were any major changes to the program, and that was when Professor James Peterson was hired in 2011. With Peterson’s hiring the program began the transition to becoming much stronger. It took Peterson a few years to get settled but in 2014 but in 2014 he was able to cluster hire four new professors for the program. These professors were Kwame Essien, Susan Kart, Monica Miller, and Darius Williams. These professors bring different areas of expertise to the program, and their arrival constituted the beginning of a new Africana Studies program that offered a diverse curriculum, sponsored rich and innovative programming throughout the year, and worked to improve issues of tolerance and climate on the Lehigh campus.

Kevin Klinkenberg and Tanner Buss '18