“Committed to Institution Building”: James Turner and the History of Africana Studies at Cornell University, an Interview

Jonathan Fenderson

James Turner has been at the center of the modern Black Studies Movement since its emergence in the 1960s, as an extension of the Black Power Movement. Since his days as a student activist at Northwestern University he has remained a consistent voice in the struggle to expand the discipline and re-write scholarship on the people of Africa and the African Diaspora. This detailed oral history interview chronicles the life of the initiator of the term "Africana Studies" and the founding director of Cornell University's Africana Studies and Research Center. Aside from addressing contemporary debates and interrogating his own writings in this area, the interview also draws parallels between Turner's unique career as a scholar-activist and the experiences of others working in African-American, African Diaspora and Africana Studies.

J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 DOI 10.1007/s12111-011-9176-z C O M M E N TA RY “Committed to Institution Building”: James Turner and the History of Africana Studies at Cornell University, an Interview Jonathan B. Fenderson & Candace Katungi Published online: 28 April 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Abstract James Turner has been at the center of the modern Black Studies Movement since its emergence in the 1960s, as an extension of the Black Power Movement. Since his days as a student activist at Northwestern University he has remained a consistent voice in the struggle to expand the discipline and re-write scholarship on the people of Africa and the African Diaspora. This detailed oral history interview chronicles the life of the initiator of the term "Africana Studies" and the founding director of Cornell University's Africana Studies and Research Center. Aside from addressing contemporary debates and interrogating his own writings in this area, the interview also draws parallels between Turner's unique career as a scholar-activist and the experiences of others working in African-American, African Diaspora and Africana Studies. Keywords Black Studies . Africana Studies . Cornell University . James Turner . African Diaspora . Black Power Movement Preface In the contemporary academic climate, where professors rarely stay in one location beyond a decade and young academics are concerned with maintaining personal websites and attaining publishing agents, James Turner is somewhat of an anomaly. Laboring as a scholar-activist in the name of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University for more than four decades, James Turner is the epitome of an “institution builder.” His example and career trajectory offer an alternative model for young Black scholars who have witnessed the emergence of a growing J. B. Fenderson (*) Africana Studies, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA e-mail: jbfenderson@gmail.com J. B. Fenderson Program in African and African American Studies, Washington University in St. Louis Campus, Box 1109, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130-4899, USA C. Katungi History Department, Cornell University, 450 McGraw Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA 122 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 trend of “Black public intellectuals” who are often, although not always, motivated by ambitions of personal wealth, media popularity and academic prestige. Turner is part of a pioneering generation of Black Studies scholar-activists who worked to establish an academic and praxis-oriented enterprise that has come into its own over the last 40 years. While foundational Black Studies scholars like Nathan Hare, Abdul Alkalimat, Maulana Karenga, Molefi Asante, James Stewart and a number of others have moved around throughout their careers before settling into one location and building cohesive programs in Africana Studies, Turner represents a smaller group that is even more distinct. Like Delores Aldridge, William “Nick” Nelson, Shirley Weber, Ekweume Michael Thelwell and a handful of others, Turner is among a very small group of Black Studies scholars who have stayed at one campus over the course of their careers and systematically developed departments and research centers committed to the study of Black history, life, culture and politics. However, Turner’s decision to stay at Cornell was never motivated by an obligation to the University itself, or the idea of remaining at a respected Ivy League school. Instead, Turner’s forty-year tenure is anchored by a pledge to Black students and devotion to these same students’ educational initiative. His commitment is to something larger than himself. It is a commitment to—an intellectual (and political) project, a safe space, a site of study, a mission inaugurated by Black students—an institution called the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell. Founded in 1969, the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell thoroughly reflects what Black students and activists of the late 1960s referred to as, “the Black University.” It is the institutional vestige of a period when Black students, progressive faculty, staff and radical activists transformed the American university and forced the academy to deal with the Black experience, in all its complexities and contradictions. As Derrick White has argued, “students’ call for a Black University referred not to the racial demographics of the student population or the administration, but rather to the university’s ideological framework as represented in the curriculum” (White 2004). In addition, the idea of a “Black University” also extended to the orientation of scholarly work produced within the institution, and the institution’s relationship to the ongoing struggles of people of African descent (on and off campus). These are issues that Turner (and a number of other Black students) forced administrators at Northwestern University to confront; these are ideas that he discussed with thousands of Black students from across the country at Howard University’s “Toward a Black University” Conference in 1968; and thoughts he carried with him to Cornell University. More importantly, these are ideas that he has tried to implement and make the hallmark of the Black Studies project at Cornell (Turner 1969). The Africana Studies and Research Center remains a place fully devoted to the study of the history, culture, politics and life experiences of Black people in Africa and the Diaspora. It boasts the largest number of Black faculty in any department or research center on the Cornell campus, as well as the most internationally diverse, and is rivaled in size by very few Black Studies programs in the country. And, perhaps most importantly, it lays claim to a history of faculty members and students involved in everything from Civil Rights protests, Black Power advocacy, anti-colonialism, the anti-apartheid movement, Cuba support projects, PanAfricanism, labor activism, feminist and gender work, anti-prison activism, struggles for local workers’ rights, leftist electoral politics and various other Black radical projects. This is the link between scholarly critique and social activism that remains a definitive characteristic of both the Africana Center and the idea of “the Black University.” J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 123 The interconnected positions of James Turner and the Africana Studies and Research Center in the overall history of Black Studies in the U.S., require us to ask ourselves some critical questions: what is most important about the work of Black Studies? What are the intellectual and activist thrusts driving the discipline’s origins, and why do they remain important? Indeed, Turner is, what James Stewart often refers to as, “a long distance runner.” His poise cautions us to remain vigilant of the discipline’s recent turn to professionalism. He challenges young scholars to ask themselves if professionalization and activist commitment are inherently in opposition to one another; can they co-exist and should they co-exist? Is there a way that emerging scholars in Africana Studies can situate themselves at the intersection of an academic world that is becoming more corporatized and a societal landscape that is in desperate need of political and economic transformation? And perhaps the toughest question, to what ends do emerging scholars in Africana Studies plan to work? What does the scholar-activist (or activist-scholar) tradition look like in the twenty-first century? This interview with James Turner does not answer all of these questions. However, it does extend the conversation by offering Turner as one model, among many, in Africana Studies. And hopefully, it encourages those of us in the field to explore alternative models, record the experiences of other trailblazers in the discipline and begin to think creatively about our collective future, in and outside of Africana Studies and the broader academy. The Interview The interview was conducted in the Hoyt Fuller Lounge at the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University on 19 July 2010. A follow-up session took place on 20 November 2010. The follow-up session was conducted at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, during the W.E.B. Du Bois Department’s 40th anniversary conference, “Art and Power in Movement: an International Conference Rethinking the Black Power and Black Arts Movements.” The Long Road to Cornell Candace Katungi (CK): Talk about your life prior to Black Studies and what events helped shape your intellectual-activist outlook in a way that would lead you down this path? James Turner (JT): Alright, I want to talk about this in terms of the informal background, my informal experience and then the more formal. And you will see what I mean by this. When I say the informal, it’s not to say it wasn’t important, but it wasn’t structured formally around the academy. But it provided a background, a foreground if you will, that was very important. And I have to go back to my late teenage period, roughly I would say when I was between 18, 19 and 21. And this is a period in which Harlem was very vibrant, in terms of a number of contending political organizations that were arguing essentially, about the need for Black people to have a sense of consciousness of who they are and what their interests were. Therefore they often 124 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 articulated a position of the importance of the place of Africa and Africans in world history. And this was done in Harlem in what has now been called Africa Square, but it is at the conjunction of 125th St. and Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. And a critical anchor was the African Memorial Bookstore that was just off the corner of 125th St. and Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. It is a place in which many notable figures—Adam Clayton Powell, Hulen Jack, David Dinkins, and others, and visitors to Harlem—would come to speak.1 In latter years, when Nelson Mandela came to Harlem, that is where he spoke from, in an open-air rally. It was where Malcolm X frequently spoke. Also people like Carlos Cook of the African Nationalist Pioneer Movement, James Lawson, and Queen Mother Moore spoke there.2 And this was important because these people reflected on this question of “the absence of African Americans, of Black people, from world history” and how this was a part of the enslavement and the colonizing experience. So I was exposed to that as a young person; listening to these lectures, going to the bookstores, reading the material that was being circulated at that time. And they all were pretty much talking about the same thing—that the future liberation for Black people would be based upon their ability to have a liberating knowledge; a liberating education. And as I say, Malcolm X was to figure prominently in that, as was the Nation of Islam.3 The Nation of Islam was asking the questions: “Who are you? What is your name? What is your language? Where do you come from? If you can’t answer these fundamental questions,” they would say, “you can’t consider yourself a free or liberated person.” There were other organizations like the African Jazz Arts Society.4 They would put on a number of programs in the community, but they had a major festival once a year, with dramatic skits, and they were called “Naturally ‘63”, “Naturally ‘64”, “Naturally ‘65.” The reason why they called it that was because they were the early advocates of natural hairstyles. And they had impact on people like Odetta and Abbey Lincoln, two great performers at that time, Max Roach, who was a major Jazz drummer known as being prominent in the bebop era.5 But these two brothers Elombe Braith and Kwame Braith were at the forefront of this group; their names or, as we say, slave names were actually Braithwaite but they shortened it and took Ghanaian first names. And the natural hairstyle developed and gained popularity. They also had what they called the Grandassa Models.6 These [Black] people would put on these shows and accentuate looking beautifully in a natural state, not trying to alter your appearance to fit the European ideal type. So these were the informal experiences that I was having in my community. Another very important reference would be to Richard B. Moore. Now Richard B. Moore is well known as a major Caribbean scholar and activist from Barbados, who migrated to Harlem around the time of the Harlem Renaissance.7 But he was active in the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), which was a sort of a contemporary with the 1 Hulen Jack was the first Black Borough President for Manhattan, in the late 1950s. For more information on Carlos Cooke and James Lawson see: (Harris 1992; Clarke 1961, 1974); for more information on Queen Mother Moore see: (Moore and Gilkes 1986; Queen Mother Moore 1973; Jackson-Issa 1999; McDuffie 2003, 2006). 3 See (Allen 1996; Gomez 2005; Ogbar 2004; Lincoln 1994). 4 For a discussion of the African Jazz Arts Society see: (Braithwaite 2010). 5 For discussions of Black cultural politics and Jazz in the late 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s see: (Anderson 2007; Porter 2002; Monson 2007; Saul 2003). 6 For a discussion of the Grandassa Models see: (Gumbs 1994). 7 See: (Turner and Turner 1988). 2 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 125 Garvey Movement. The ABB tended to be more left, more Marxist orientated, but they were also nationalist, so they were seen as radical Black nationalist.8 Richard B. Moore was the proprietor of a bookstore called the Frederick Douglass Bookstore, which was around the corner on 125th St. between Adam Clayton Powell and Malcolm X Blvd. So I would often go in there; and I developed a relationship with Mr. Moore, and he began talking to me about this modern 20th Century African history. He exposed me to some of the early classic books like James Henry Breasted’s The Dawn of Consciousness, Survey of the Ancient World and Ancient Records of Egypt (Breasted 1906, 1919, 1933). He would parcel out these readings to me. He would say, “Here, this is James Breasted’s work in two volumes. I want you to read it and then come back and discuss it with me.” He first introduced me to books by Du Bois—Black Reconstruction, ABC of Socialism, Africa and the World (Du Bois 1935, 1965, 1969). These were things I was exposed to and told to read by Mr. Moore. As a result of being present in these environments I also met Professor John Henrik Clarke.9 And I was then invited by him to come to his home, where he held more private, smaller study groups. And between him and Mr. Moore I was invited to join an organization they had in common called, the Committee to Tell the Truth about the Name “Negro.” It may sound funny now, but Mr. Moore was absolutely passionate about this. He argued that the term “Negro” was a non-identifying term for Black people; it was a negated term; it was a term without history. They would say, “Where is ‘Negroland? There is no such place on the globe. Where is your history?” So I became involved and Mr. Moore published a book called, The Name ‘Negro’—Its Origin and Evil Use.10 I still have the first edition copy of it preserved. And he would write letters to the New York Times, Esquire, to all these magazines frequently. And of course, I later met Hoyt Fuller, who was equally as passionate, and he argued for the term[s] African and African American. And lastly, to finish this informal side, it was the younger activists like Larry Neal, Amiri Baraka, who started the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School in Harlem, and the publication called, the Liberator, which Dan Watts was the editor of, and Larry Neal, Charles Wilson and others often wrote in it. As a young person, I was a frequent reader of the Liberator.11 So that’s some of the informal background. CK: And what about the more formal experience? Especially your experience at Northwestern University, the Black Student takeover of the Bursar building and where you were in terms of your individual trajectory. JT: Well, when I was in undergraduate school, we began having a number of discussions about what our role was on these college campuses. And the Black student Movement actually started to blossom in the early 60s—‘61, ‘62, ‘63, and on. And most college campuses then had a Black student organization. It started there; that was the incubator. We started to talk about these issues. And Malcolm X’s book, Malcolm X on Afro-American History also became an important primer that we were reading at that 8 See: (James 1998). For more information on John Henrik Clarke see: (Swanston 2003; Adams 1992a, b; Clarke 1999; Conyers and Thompson 2004). 10 This text was originally published in 1960 by Afro American Publishers in New York City, but later republished in Turner and Turner (1988): 223–239. 11 For more on the Liberator see: (Tinson 2008, 2010). 9 126 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 time (Malcolm 1990). We later became exposed to Carter G. Woodson’s Miseducation of the Negro (Woodson 1990). And so these were things we were talking about outside of class, and it followed through while I was in graduate school at Northwestern, but it was at a more graduate level. There was an undergraduate organization and there was a graduate organization. I was in the graduate organization called the Afro-American Student Society; and already you see we had dropped the word “Negro.” No one was using the word at this point, and for us using the word “Afro-American” represented, and was seen as, a major leap in our consciousness.12 Some students there had already been exposed to Harold Cruse’s Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (Cruse 1967). At that point I was not familiar with it, but soon I was exposed to it in the discussions and study groups we were having at Northwestern, while we were taking classes. And it then emerged for us that the issue of Black Studies, of African American Studies, was absolutely critical. So the Black Studies Movement also converged with the Black Power Movement, which was largely led by students—young intellectuals in SNCC primarily, but CORE and other organizations. So my informal background merged with this formal experience. And I saw clearly that this was important. So, I began to articulate some of the things I had learned prior to coming. And this prior experience made myself, and a few others, a little more advanced than some of the other students. Therefore, my position in the organization led to me emerging as a leadership figure, but it was a collective leadership with others who were there at the time. For example, John Bracey was a classmate and Ibrahim Sundiata was also there.13 John Higginson, Sterling Stuckey, Jeff Donaldson later came, and he [Donaldson] was very important in the Black Arts Movement and Afri-COBRA.14 So, this was the climate that we were in, but it was also reflecting the climate at other campuses as well. And we then began to argue that it was absolutely critical for education to reflect these intellectual issues and that we needed to have an education that would not alienate us, separate us, or cause us to fall in the trap of a kind of crude elitism if we were going to be useful once we left campus. And by “useful” we meant that we would have some relevance to the struggle for liberation that was going on and to the community that we were returning. We hoped to continue this movement of self-enlightenment. Jonathan B. Fenderson (JF): You said “undergraduate school,” what institution were you attending? JT: I was at Central Michigan at that time. And there were 40 of us [Black students] out of a population of about 9,000. So that was the reality at many institutions. It made 12 The use of the term “Afro American,” instead of “Negro,” was very important to student activists. The former term represented a major leap forward in consciousness and politics. Historian Donna Murch has discussed the politics and uses of these terms in her work on the Bay Area’s Afro American Association. See: (Murch 2010). 13 Ibrahim Sundiata is a Professor of History and African and African-American Studies at Brandeis University. John Bracey is a Professor in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Both are the authors of several books. 14 John Higginson is a Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Sterling Stuckey is a Professor of History at the University of California at Riverside. Jeff Donaldson is remembered as one of the leading visual artists of the Black Arts Movement. Aside from acting as a founding member of Chicago’s Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) and Afri-COBRA, he also worked as a professor of Art History at Northwestern and later Howard University. He passed away in 2004. J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 127 us a very close and tight knit group. But we had internal debates constantly. We would argue over whether we should spend our time on self-study or we should be playing bidwhist. So I was on the other side, you know, that is the non-bid-whist side. And it was strange because you were popular because people would say, “Oh, here he come! He gon’ start raisin’ that black stuff!” They didn’t particularly like it—some of them. But no one ignored you. And then you became popular because you knew things that they respected, and realized that they didn’t know. So that became very important. Another thing that was important for me while at Northwestern, I was active at the African Studies center. I had a job there as a graduate assistant. So I was very much a part of preparing for the lecture series they had every quarter. That also helped to focus us because we said, “We don’t see any Black people coming to do lectures in the African Studies center.” So we raised the issue with Dr. Gwendolyn Carter, who was the Director. And the only Black person she brought was Hollis Lynch, who I believe was at Columbia University at the time. And so we raised a contention with her about it. This was the beginning of the issues that we would raise with the African Studies Association [ASA], which led to us having a major confrontation with them. CK: Talk to us a bit about the Howard University Conference: “Toward A Black University.” What was the importance of that conference as an event and how did it lead to Cornell? JT: The Howard Meeting was in the Fall of 1968. It was the culmination of a series of meetings that were taking place around the country by Black Student organizations talking about the need for Black Studies. What we were all asking was, “What would that look like? What would be the model? How would it be organized conceptually? What would be the theory behind the curriculum and courses that would be offered?” And we recognized that we were, as students, at a disadvantage to some extent. Harold Cruse’s Crisis, Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, were important text, as was Albert Memmi’s Dominated Man (Fanon 1963); (Memmi 1968). These [texts] were important things we were reading and raising questions from. These works and others helped us recognize that the issue of oppression was not just racial segregation, but it was domination. And domination impacts all spheres, not just in terms of command over the body of a people, over their labor, but also over their cognition, over their cognitive abilities, over their consciousness, over the way that they looked at themselves and looked at others— things that made them more pliable as a dominated people. So when it was suggested that a conference be held at Howard, that [idea] came from the struggle at Howard University that previous spring. The Black student movement at Howard and at Black Universities has been overlooked. Those students at Howard had taken over the administration building, Douglass Hall I think it was.15 And [they] had also blocked the Board of Trustees at Howard in the meeting room, and refused to release them or let them out until they agreed to having a commission that would study how to make Howard more of a “Black institution” rather than its emphasis on being a replica of the dominant white institutions. So the Board of Trustees agreed at Howard. And working with a faculty and student group they agreed that the best way to do this was to have a national conference. And that’s how the conference in 15 See: (de Graaf 1970; Hare 1968, 1972; Malson 1967, 1968). 128 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 Fall, I think it was November of ‘68, took place. Delegations were being sent from all across the country. And the records show that modestly 1,500 delegates came to that meeting.16 But in the Black Studies history, the Yale Conference, which had fewer than 300 or 400 people—and I’m not even sure if it was that many—has loomed larger than the Howard Conference.17 So I was sent as a part of the representatives of Northwestern students, as a leader coming from Northwestern’s campus. And that spring, in May of 1968, the Black students had taken over the Bursar’s Building at Northwestern, to press for a Black Studies program. And students were extrapolating or borrowing from the tactics of Black students in the South with the sit-in movement. So the taking over of a building was essentially the same notion of an occupation of sit-in and determining to stay in the building until the institution began to effectively deal with negotiating your issues. So we at Northwestern already, in the Spring of ‘68, had an agreement from the university to establish an African American Studies program. So we were, like people coming from other places, attending the Howard Conference to participate in it and to learn what we could bring back as prototypes for the Northwestern situation. At this conference that ran for two and a half days, roughly over a 3 day period, there were speakers who were invited in from around the country, there were panels and sessions in which students were involved. I was invited to be one of the speakers at the conference, and it was as a result of that I was exposed to a particular delegation of students that had come from Cornell. The Black student organization at Cornell had sent a delegation of their leadership and there were several people—I can’t remember exactly, but I know there had to be at least 8 or 10 members of their group, if not more. Because at the conference the Cornell group delegated their members to go in groups of 2 to attend different sessions that they had decided, from looking at the program, were potential people of interest to them. They already had an agreement at Cornell. Now they were looking for a candidate who could become the director at Cornell. Now, the students at Cornell had established a very clear agreement with the university and the Afro American Studies Committee of faculty and students, that Black Students would play a central role in the selection of the process. They were not going to accept a partial or minor role in the selection process. While faculty on that committee would also be part of determining who would be selected, no candidate could be selected or appointed if the students didn’t approve. So at the Howard Conference I was approached by a group of students. They explained to me that they were from Cornell. And they asked me if I would be interested in meeting with the rest of their group so they could tell me what they were doing. So I agreed. That was on the Friday afternoon of the Conference. That next morning we had a breakfast meeting at the hotel where we were all staying. So we talked and the two students who attended my session had briefed the others. They had a series of questions they were asking. And so we met and that was it. I went back to Northwestern after that, without having any sense of what might come from Cornell as a result. 16 George B. Davis, who was a staff writer for the Washington Post, reported that “more than 1,900 students, scholars and artists from 40 states and more than 100 colleges and universities gathered at Howard University for the conference called, ‘Towards A Black University.” See (Davis 1969). 17 For information on the Yale Conference see: (Robinson et al. 1969; Hall 1999). J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 129 “Black Student Power” at Cornell18 CK: So the Howard University Conference took place before or after the Willard Straight Occupation? JT: It was before the Willard Straight Occupation, you see. It was before. The students at Cornell had a series of actions during ‘68, the academic year of ‘68–69. And they had come in ‘68, but they already had an agreement on what the basis of a program might be. In fact, in ‘68 they already had an arrangement where three people were brought to Cornell as forerunners to the Black Studies program. They were brought in as Humanities Fellows and Lecturers through the Society of the Humanities. And that was Michael Thelwell, Haki Madhubuti and Cleve[land] Sellers, who had been in SNCC.19 They had already come and were lecturing and holding classes. And this was in response to people on campus, faculty and other folks saying, “Well what would a course on Black Studies look like? What could that possibly be?” So for the pilot these three people were invited in ‘68, ‘69 to lecture. So motion had already begun at Cornell. CK: Ok, so a lot has been written about the Willard Straight event and its aftermath—some accurate and some probably inaccurate. What role, if any, did you play in that event?20 JT: Ok after this meeting and discussion with students at Howard in ‘68 of October, about a month later—I think it was November—I received a contact from the university, from administrators at Cornell. They said my name was on a list of people of potential interest. And they asked me would I be interested in making a visit to Cornell. So we talked some, over a week I thought about it and then I agreed. In December, it was December 20th and 21st of ‘68, I came out to Cornell. I gave a lecture that was campus-wide, open to faculty and students. I met with the faculty committee and the student committees. At the very same time that I was here in that December being interviewed, the students had also made a demand for a space for Africana Studies and they took over the building at 320 Wait Avenue.21 So these things were going on in tandem—my visit and the student action. So I came, had the interview, did my lecture and left. Two months later, in February, I was called again, was told I was on the short list and that I was, by all members on the committee, at the top of the short list. They said I was everybody’s favorite candidate and that they were prepared to make an offer. That’s when the offer was made to me to come as the Director of the Africana Studies and Research Center, which still wasn’t in existence. So I agreed to come. My wife and I were invited back in February—well, this was the first time she came with me. At the February meeting I met with the 18 “Black Student Power” is a term coined by Stefan Bradley; see: (Bradley 2009). For perspectives on their experiences at Cornell see: (Thelwell 1987; David 1969; Sellers 1990). 20 For scholarship on the Willard Straight Occupation see: (Downs 1999; Bradley 2009; Strout and Grossvogel 1970; Ross 1991; Tyehimba 1997). 21 This building at 320 Wait Avenue, located on the northern part of the Cornell campus, was the first location for the Center for Africana Studies and Research. On April 1, 1970 the building was razed to the ground by an act of arson. 19 130 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 President and the offer was made. I met with the students and they all agreed that I was their choice and so I accepted the position. It was also agreed that I would finish out my year at Northwestern, which was to finish out all my course work at that point. So I would stay in Chicago and come every other week for a two-day period, in which I would then meet with administrators and other faculty and start to lay the groundwork for the Africana Center. That’s when the work was done to really lay the basis, to develop the conceptual plan, the curriculum and so forth (Fig. 1). CK: What was your relationship with the Black students that initiated the occupation? JT: Well during that period when I was coming, late February, March, early April, I was always meeting with the students and talking with them. So I knew very much that they were still not satisfied by the realization of the agreement. The terms were agreed upon but they still were not satisfied; there was no space, there was no adequate budget developed, there was no materials in the space to be used. All those things were still to be determined. So we consulted. I came from a similar background at Northwestern. I gave them the benefit of my experience. It was clear that I understood what they were up against and was in solidarity with that, alright. I knew they had something planned, alright. And I knew broadly what it was going to be. But they respected the need not to compromise my position coming and I also knew that I didn’t want to be perceived in anyway as compromising them or being in anyway opposed to what they were doing. So I was not directly involved in that sense. They agreed it was important that I not be on campus the day that it was to take place (Fig. 2). And that’s how we planned. Fig. 1 The young founder and director of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell makes his way across campus in 1969 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 131 Fig. 2 Black students march across quad after leaving Willard Straight CK: Can you remember the role or outlook of the other Black faculty, staff, and campus employees? JT: Well one Black faculty member here at the time was actually Thomas Sowell.22 He took a position with the conservative Alan Bloom and some of the other conservative and more reactionary faculty. He took a position of opposition. And they had been in opposition to the students before I came. I didn’t have direct contact with them because they were also in direct opposition to my being appointed. They pointed out that I had been active at Northwestern and so forth. Well, when the agreement was made with the students, the conservative group protested and then left. So I didn’t have any interaction with them. There was a broad group of faculty who were generally opposed to this whole program of bringing Black students into the University—and that was the COSEP Program that preceded the Willard Straight occupation.23 Now there was one Black faculty member who remained and his name was Vance Christian. He was in the Hotel School and he was very supportive, alright. There were several people in the Agricultural School, who were students who had come from Africa. When they understood what was happening they were very supportive. Critically important to the Africana Studies Center and our history at that point when we were first developing was the support of the very few Black staff people who were on campus at that time. Two people were particularly important and both were women; one’s name is Ardella Blanford and the other was Jacqueline Haskins. They were the only Black women in the administrative and secretarial field at Cornell. Jacqueline Haskins was an Ithaca native; she had risen further than anyone else from the community working at Cornell. She was a secretary in the President’s Office at 22 For Sowell’s extremely problematic, right-wing (and in many ways comical) view of Black Student’s occupation of Willard Straight, see: (Sowell 1999). 23 COSEP is the acronym for the Committee On Special Education Projects. Among other things, it was responsible for bringing Black, and undergraduate minority, students to Cornell. The program was launched in 1963 during the tenure of Cornell President James Perkins. 132 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 Cornell. Now I mention these two women because they knew the administrative structure of Cornell because they had worked as secretaries, department secretaries and in Haskins’ position in the President’s Office. After the Willard Straight takeover and after I had been appointed and we were working to establish the Africana Center, she went to the President and said that she wanted to join this project, this endeavor. And could she possibly move over to work with us and if he would bring her to my attention as I was interviewing people for staff support. That was extraordinary! Here she was the only Black woman to be working in the President’s Office, which was a prized position and a prestigious one. She agreed to come to the Center. We interviewed her and of course saw her value immediately. We appointed her and she became the administrative manager and then rose to be the administrative assistant director at the Africana Center. She was critical in helping us—coming as we were new to Cornell, without previous University institutional position—to do things like budget and salary, you know, all the relationships with the other departments. And then there were two other people. Gloria Joseph, who had been tapped to be the first Director of COSEP, which is now the Office of Minority Affairs. She was in Human Ecology as a PhD student. She immediately said that she would like to be a part of the development of Africana, even though she was playing a critical role as the first Director of COSEP. We met and talked. I interviewed her and the students knew her work as not only the Director but also she taught a course and they had high respect for her. They agreed that she would be a promising person for one of our first faculty. So she moved over and became one of the first faculty members. The other person was a gentleman by the name of Dalton Jones. Dalton was in the College of Arts and Science in his latter stage of his PhD in Psychology. He also expressed real support. So these people and the support we got was absolutely essential to the development (Fig. 3). And lastly, but certainly not least, was the [surrounding Ithaca] community. Community people like Lucy Brown, who was from the Ithaca community and a secretary in Human Ecology. The local ministers were also very important. They actually came on campus to demonstrate their support for the students while they were in Willard Straight. Fig. 3 James Turner talks with Africana faculty, staff and students in front of the first location of the Center at 320 Wait Avenue, 1969. This building was later razed by arson J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 133 The Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell CK: Since you seem to be right at this point of the founding of the Center, let’s talk about your vision of the Africana Center, which is best articulated in your article: “Black Studies: A Concept and Plan.” It is a unique vision that seems to be informed by the idea of “the Black University”. Talk to us about your vision of the institutional structure of Africana: as an independent Department structure with no joint appointments; a graduate studies program (one of the first in the discipline); a library (as part of the research center); and an urban resident center, etc. JT: Well this is very important. We were moving, as you can imagine, at a fast pace. There was a lot of demand on us to deliver. Everyone was watching us. And of course I need not say, there were many people here who were hoping we [would] fail. They expected that we would fail. They thought that we would just come in and develop a crude political project. That the students would be running around espousing political rhetoric. And the thing would simply collapse on itself by ineptitude. And we were aware of this because we had seen these kinds of oppositions at other campuses—at Ohio State, at Pittsburgh, at San Jose State, at University of Illinois, Columbia and even at Northwestern where we were. So that helped to inform me about the need for us to in fact be diligent and deliberate to build a very solid foundation. But we were also concerned that we were not just going to be responsive to those people who were hoping that we would not make it—that didn’t want us. But we had also to keep faith to the real vision that the students had and that the Black Studies Movement in its best elements was also projecting. That meant that we would have, first and foremost, a solid curriculum that would be taught by people who were clearly competent and also committed. We wanted not just people who showed that they had academic and intellectual capacity and excellence, but that they were committed to this mission. Therefore we had to have an institutional base. So we had to be like a department in that we had our own institutional base, our department nomenclature, our own courses that we developed. [We made sure] that these courses would be articulated through the educational policy committee of the college, but we would be the ones designing and determining who taught the courses. We would also be the ones who appointed the faculty. And the faculty would be appointed in the Africana Center—not somewhere else. And therefore, these other departments did not have a role in determining who was appointed and they could not veto who was appointed. Our appointments were made, they were consulted with the provost, who was the direct person whom we reported to, and they were established in the Africana Center. But most of all we had to have our own institutional formation in terms of a space and department offices, but we also had to have a budget. We recognized that it was important to have a direct line budget. We had seen in other instances where the budget had only been given for a short period and it was said that you had to go around and husband with other departments in order to get them to put in so much money. And then you could make the appointments. And [in those instances] the money would have to be contributed from outside donors, mainly foundations. We saw the pitfalls in that 134 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 immediately and, I must also say, so did the students. Part of my negotiating to accept the position, I said I would not come unless there was a clear articulation of direct line budget coming from central administration [to] the central budget of the Africana Center that would be administered by us; that we would have a certain part of it for faculty salaries and hiring for administrators and that there would also be another segment of the budget for equipment, for telephones, for computers— well not computers then—for mimeograph machines, for furniture, for all of that. So we could have a high-class institutional base. And that was done. We also realized that we had basis to be supported by a library. We articulated the concept of a library. Now this was innovative and it was probably the first. Most Black students called for a cultural center as an arm of the Black Studies Department, as a kind of complement. This roughly was seen as a place where Black students could go and hang out. There would be Ebony magazine, there would be Amsterdam News… CK: Bid whist… JT: Right, Bid whist. A few others…Essence magazine and things like that around. And that would be sufficient for the students. I immediately argued that we needed to have a library that would develop a collection. We needed to have a librarian that would run it, not students who were working on work-study. At first, the University was somewhat taken aback. They said, “Well, why don’t we just buy books and have them placed in our library?” We said, “No. We want a library that would be fully devoted to Africana materials and would have that kind of presence and identity to it.” And we pushed for it. We also argued that we would use our institutional funds, part of our budget, to help support it. We wanted it to be part of the library system here, in the sense that they would have to provide resources. But it would be housed in the Africana Center. The librarian was to be chosen by the director in consultation with the students and faculty. Therefore we had administrative control over it. The second development that came clear to me was that if we were going to have a long-term, outstanding Black Studies Department, we had to have a graduate program. That’s the only way it would gain broad respect on campus and in other places as well. So within two years of having developed the undergraduate base and institutionalizing ourselves, we proposed the graduate program. We were now moving pretty fast. As I said, this was just two years. So I had to write a proposal for the graduate program, meet with the graduate school, the deans, [and] all the graduate school committees. And we said that we wanted this degree to be a full two-year degree. We proposed that there would be one year based in supporting students in doing academic work. There would be fellowships that would be granted by our decision from the graduate school, so people could come and study full term and not worry about having to scrounge for money. As long as the students did well, they knew they had support for two years. And I knew that would be critically important. It proved to make the difference in our graduate program. People got here and realized they would have stability, they would have support and they would be in a reinforcing environment. We then said the second year would be an opportunity to focus on their project or on their thesis and also to work as teaching assistants or research assistants. And I must say that was fairly innovative at that time. No one else had even thought of anything like a graduate program. J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 135 The other component that we had proposed was an urban center, an urban component. What we wanted to do was have a site in a Black community. We had focused on Harlem at that point because of its proximity to us—in the sense that it was in New York State. We wanted a place were undergraduate students could go in their third year and graduate students in their third semester and live in a facility that would be, you know, properly carpeted and prepared. It would be a livable and decent space that would have an on-ground director. And there would be faculty who would come on a rotating basis. These students would be encouraged to do field research. We wanted them to do field studies; to go out into the field and identify issues and problems they wanted to work on and interact with the community. In many ways it is the precursor to the University’s Cornell in Washington Program.24 We always thought that the University benefited from our proposal. We were able to get as far as convincing the trustees to put up a pilot project and put up money to conduct a pilot study. We commissioned the Black Economic Research Center, which was in Harlem at that time on 122nd St. The Director was Robert Browne, the well known Black economist.25 They did a feasibility study. They located potential sites and buildings that could be used. They did the cost analysis and everything. They presented it back to us after a year into this feasibility study. We presented it to the University. It would have required not just having money allocated in the budget, but also having money that would be endowed. And that was the one part of our initial plan that we were unable to effect. We were unable to convince the people who had their hands on the purse strings, who would contribute from, you know, endowment, that this was economically viable. There were issues they raised about insurance questions; that students at these sites would have to be insured by Cornell. The students would be the responsibility of Cornell. These men, for the most part, were White patricians, who had no idea of what a Black community is like. They had all of the stereotypes of Harlem. They thought, “How are we going to have people go live in Harlem? God knows what could happen! They could get devoured, they could be kidnapped, they could be brutalized! And Cornell would be held responsible.” And so, we were unable to get [the Urban Center established]. It now turns out in hindsight that it was a great mistake on their part because we had a site on Hamilton Terrace, which is just two [or] three blocks from City University. It’s a nook right there off Convent Avenue and City College, an isle of a long-term Black middle class community. We could have gotten the building at that time for something like less than $30,000. You couldn’t get a building there now, one of those Brownstones for less than three million. So it would have been a real boon to them as a real estate investment. But that was the other part of our vision to bridge the town-gown divide; to have students not just be isolated in the ivory tower in Ithaca, but also have concrete experience. We were not able to achieve it. Our colleagues at Ohio State built on our ideas, and we were sharing ideas then. And 24 The Cornell in Washington Program started in the Spring of 1980, a decade after Turner put forth the idea for the urban research center. It offers students the opportunity to study in Washington D.C. by taking courses, working with specified non-profit organizations and government agencies, while residing at the Cornell University Wolpe Center, twenty-seven apartments in a building on O Street in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of D.C. 25 For more information on Robert Browne the Black Economic Research Center see: (Alexis 2008a, b; Betsey 2008; Handy 2008). 136 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 they were fortunate to have a Black Studies Community Research Center, which is still there, that Dr. [William] Nick Nelson runs.26 CK: Yes, I’ve visited there. It’s an important space for the local Black community in the area. JT: Mmhmm. CK: It’s interesting you mentioned the library, because it parallels my experience. We didn’t have Black Studies at UCSD, but we did have a cross-cultural center. And through my time [on campus] and by the time I was leaving, my friends and I would always talk about how Black students, African American students especially, were the students on the margins of the crosscultural center. Yet we were always the ones people came to when they needed support. But somehow because it was a “cross-cultural center” over time we got pushed to the margins.27 So I think that having a library was one of the most fabulous moves that could have been made. JT: You know that point makes me think about the library question a bit further. When we raised it, they said, “Oh, we will have this multi-ethnic library,” you know, “We’ll have this multicultural library, and we will have stuff for everyone, for all the minorities.” And we said, “No!” You know, and that often made these people think, “God, this guy is so hard! He’s so unreasonable!” You know how they say it: “He’s so hard ass!” Excuse the language. “What’s wrong with him?” You know. But that wasn’t our purpose. Our purpose was to say, “No, we have to create this thing that will stand over time and be distinct.” And we encouraged our fellow students, our cousins in the Latino Program and these others, to push for the same thing. Because we felt over time it would do just [like the center at UCSD], that it would get whittled down. And so it’s a good thing now to see how much pride and honor people have in the John Henrik Clarke Library.28 And even when we were in my second term as Director, [we] argued that we had to have the remodeling and refurbishing of the Center. We said one of the critical things, when we were working on the initial plans, was that the library had to come from out of downstairs—in this small humid place—into a major site so that it would be seen as a library. And we think that we have been vindicated in this struggle. You know, but you could see that very often the administration would say, “Well, why?” Because their idea was that all these minorities were alike, [so] conflate them and pile them all together. And they would say, “Why can’t you be reasonable about that?” (Fig. 4). 26 For more information on Ohio State’s African American and African Studies Extension Center, which is located in the historic Mount Vernon area of east Columbus and considered the outreach component of Ohio State University’s Department of African American and African Studies, visit the departmental website: http://aaas.osu.edu/resources/aaascec/default.cfm. 27 Katungi’s anecdote about the Cross-Cultural Center at the University of California, San Diego speaks to a trend that occurred on college campuses during the height of popular debates on multi-culturalism and the years of the Culture Wars. For an in-depth scholarly discussion see: (Princes 2005; Bankole 2005). 28 The John Henrik Clarke Library is an extraordinary collection of over 22,300 volumes and more than 18,500 microforms. It was moved into a new section of the Africana Center during the Center’s renovation and expansion in 2005. The collection is superb, and within New York State, it is perhaps only second to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 137 Fig. 4 James Turner displays books and magazines on Malcolm X, which are part of the collection of the John Henrik Clarke Library—a wing of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University, 1990 CK: But historically, I know the cross-cultural center at UCSD came about because of the Black students there. JT: Right, mmhmm… CK: And there is still a Black presence, but there is something to be said about having something for us. JT: For us, right. Yes, you know it’s the same thing here at Cornell. It was the Black Student Movement; it was the boldness and tenacity of those students. It was their willingness to carry this on from one semester to another—to keep the energy and the movement going. Their dedication to struggle had the impact that opened up and made the way easier for the Latino students, for the Asian American students. Whether these groups carried through as fully as they could have here [at Cornell] is another question. But it certainly did [open things up]. They didn’t have to argue these arguments that we put forth, in order to have the Latino Living Center. And it made the difference. And that’s why I also say its important for us to see how critical Black students, who were committed to a Black project coming from a consciousness and perspective of themselves as Black people, was so important. Because without that consciousness the students would not have pushed for that kind of self-determined project. And the institution understands it. That’s why they continually try to reconstruct… CK: Every year JT: Yea! CK: Or every five years. 138 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 JT: Right, they try to reconstruct it so that we have a different kind of outcome for students.29 They [university administration] are always hoping that students don’t have that kind of commitment. And the students recognize it, as well. JF: Dr. Turner, I’d like to pick up on this issue of resistance to the Center at Cornell and discuss its history. I think the historical record has not reflected the kind of intense resistance that you’ve had to face over the years, along with the other Africana faculty and students at Cornell. I think there is a need to clarify the history and shows that it wasn’t just an intellectual or bureaucratic fight that you were taking part in. The struggle at Cornell was very much grounded in concrete lived experiences; peoples’ lives were threatened long after the conclusion of the Willard Straight Occupation… JT: Well, I think that first you have to understand that the Black Studies Movement emerged out of the broad movement of resistance in which all forms of apartheid, segregation and Jim Crow were being called into question. The Black Studies Movement focused specifically on education, and most specifically at American higher education, [the] college and university level. Although the movement in ‘67, ‘68, ‘69, was also at high schools; there was a rich high school movement as well. Just like in other parts of the society, the universities are not much different. They resisted in a very strenuous manner and sometimes that resistance was also violent. It certainly was antagonistic and it took various forms. That is what required Black students to have to take up direct action demonstrations, and major upheaval on the campus to make themselves heard and demand attention to get the administrations to deal with them. So you had a split in the white communities. At the administrative levels there was a decision reached, out of a sort 29 In this portion of the interview Candace Katungi and James Turner are referring to Cornell administrators’ persistent attempts to undermine the autonomy and integrity of the Center. One such attempt came in the form of “the Report on the State of the Humanities at Cornell University” commissioned by Phillip Lewis, then Dean of College of Arts and Sciences, in 1998. One of the sections of the report, and what proved to be the most controversial portion, recommended the university to “house all ethnic studies programs in the same building, located on or adjacent to the Arts Quad.” This recommendation would have forced the Africana Center to forfeit its own independent building and move to the opposite end of campus in order to consolidate and share space with several other programs. Student and faculty protests on campus forestalled the reorganization from taking place. Later in 2004, then Provost Biddy Martin commissioned the less public “Provost’s Committee on the Comparative Study of Race, Ethnicity and Indigeneity.” Besides handpicked committee members, most people on campus had no idea that the committee existed, nor did they know its purpose. When a Native American Studies student came across an early draft of the report through an accidental email, news spread quickly and students were outraged by the Committee’s call for “the re-articulation of Ethnic Studies and American Studies.” Although the Committee held a conference, student and faculty opposition prevented further planning. Then again on 1 December 2010, just weeks after the final days of this interview, Cornell Provost Kent Fuchs announced his plan to remove the Africana Studies & Research Center from under the auspices of the Provost’s office and move it into the College of Arts and Sciences. Since they were not consulted, the Africana faculty described it as a “patronizing, autocratic, and non-negotiable” decision. As a result, the Center’s Director, Robert Harris resigned, and the faculty, students, and alum have once again organized against what has been a long history of administrative assaults on the Center’s autonomy and integrity. See: (Crawford 1998); “Africana Studies and Research Center’s Position on ‘Report on the State of the Humanities at Cornell.” (28 October 1998) in author’s possession; “Provost’s Committee on the Comparative Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity, Draft #1” (27 September 2004) in author’s possession; “Provost Fuchs to move Africana Studies and Research Center to Arts and Sciences” Cornell Chronicle Online. http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Dec10/FuchsASRC.html (accessed 2 Dec 2010). J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 139 of pragmatism, about how to get released from this tension and overcome the crisis of confrontation without it being projected through the institution, [and] without it causing some permanent or lasting damage. And, in that sense, there were enlightened administrators, who understood that to allow for major violent conflagration—either between different factions on the campus, whites and blacks, or by using state violence through the use of police or National Guard—would be utterly disastrous. So they brokered agreements either out of a certain amount of enlightenment or, simply, informed pragmatism. But in response to that you had large numbers of Whites that were still hostile. And to some extent, the university leadership did not go forward to the university campus and explain to them why we must unite, move forward and allow for a more inclusive development of the university. So you had threats. And to talk about Cornell specifically, there were White students, faculty, and local community White people, who were just outraged at the idea that Black students would have a demonstration and would disrupt. But they were also equally angered at the University leadership, which they felt should have taken a harder line and just repressed these students. So what they did was just continue a kind of guerilla warfare to undermine and to resist every step of the way. So you had those people who were threatening. Even while the Willard Straight Occupation was happening, there were reports of Whites gathering from different places in the county—downtown Ithaca, in the outskirts of Ithaca and the surrounding areas of Lansing and Dryden—in these small towns. And they were threatening to come in armed. There were all these reports. Some of them obviously were hysterical, but some of them were true. Then there were middle level administrators and operatives at the college level who resisted the courses being established. They resisted providing space. They resisted accepting [classes] for credit. Whichever way they could they continued to resist. They then turned to resisting [the] appointment of Black faculty, you know. This went on for the first several years, you know, openly. So 10 and a half or 11 months, almost a year after we got there, the first Africana Center was completely burned to the ground.30 And the fire inspectors that were brought in and the special arson investigators from Syracuse determined that it was clear arson. Ok? (Figs. 5 and 6) There were those people who were angry that these provisions and accommodations at the University would be made and given to Black students. There were hostilities in the dormitories amongst Whites who refused to be roomed with Black students. They harassed and humiliated Black students at any turn. They made life difficult for them. That is how Wari House began, because of the ways in which Black women students were being treated in such a racist fashion in Clara Dixon Hall, which is one of the large dormitories on campus, and in other 30 On Wednesday, 1 April 1970 a pre-dawn fire engulfed the Africana Studies & Research Center building at 320 Wait Avenue. Alarms for the fire sounded at 1:02 am as the fire destroyed the wooden, three-story building and the majority of the contents housed inside. The fire occurred a month after an attempted arson on an all-Black Women’s living quarters called, Wari House, and several months after a suspicious fire at the Southside Community Center, a meeting space utilized by Black members of the local Ithaca community. While the attempted burning of Wari House was a clear attempt at arson that involved gasoline induced flames thrown at the front entrance of the living space, the nature and timing of the three fires provided significant evidence that all three of the acts were indeed arson. In fact, Chester Whiteside, the special investigator from the Syracuse Police Department brought in to analyze the fire at the Africana building, ruled that the fire was indeed started by an arsonist. See: (Cornell Chronicle 1970). 140 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 Fig. 5 Chester Whiteside, an arson investigator from Syracuse [with lamp and briefcase], talks with J. Congress Mbata and James Cunningham of the Africana Center, and Ithaca Police Chief Herbert L. VanOstrand [in light coat and top hat] places.31 Well that’s not out of character with the history of Cornell, when some 30 years earlier Black women could not live on the campus, you know. Black students couldn’t live on the campus. Black women could not visit a women’s dorm, like Dickson Hall or Balch Hall [by themselves]. They had to stand outside and wait for a White co-ed who would come out and bring them into the dorms as their guest. There is that tradition of racism at Cornell. 31 Wari House is a Black Women’s Cooperative that was formed in 1968. The original members of Wari House aimed to create a space of their own that would free them from the kinds of discrimination and racial harassment that they faced in the dorms, on account of many of Cornell’s White students. For example, on one occasion Black women students were in the dorms pressing each other’s hair. When White female students smelled the fumes, they reported that the students were smoking marijuana. Such incidents, including some that were violent, led Black women to establish their own living quarters. During the initial year of Wari House a cross was burned on the front lawn. The cross burning was one of several key events that lead to the Willard Straight Occupation. Wari House still thrives today. It is a threestory cooperative that houses ten students. It also remains one of three central nerve centers for Black students on the Cornell campus, along with the Africana Studies and Research Center and the Ujamaa Residential College on North campus. For an exploration of Wari House’s history in relation to the Willard Straight Occupation, see the forthcoming film: Straight Shots: Guns at Cornell (a one hour documentary film by Frank Dawson—a Black freshman at Cornell during the occupation—and Abby Ginzberg). J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 141 Fig. 6 Two Africana faculty members stand across the street from the burned down Africana Center with special arson investigator Chester Whiteside (on right), who ruled the fire an arson Then you had hostility by Whites in general, driving by shouting racial epithets, calling all sorts of names to Black students that were walking across the campus going to the library or returning to their dorm room. One of the worse incidents we had was a situation where a White student turned the corner of Jessup Road, and Black students were walking on the shoulder, and he [the White student] turned the corner and plowed right into them [the Black students], knocking them to the ground and a few of them were injured rather seriously. A couple of them were wearing eyeglasses and when they fell their glasses shattered into their eyes. We would get calls like that all the time. I would be called when these incidents took place because I was the major presence of a Black faculty and administrator to help deal with these situations. I remember we had to rush to the hospital, the Cayuga Medical Center. There would be fights, groups of White students attacking Black students. And then there was, for the most part, blocking out and shunting Black students out. And counselors would make it difficult if Black students came to talk to them about taking courses at the Africana Center. They were told all the time, “No, don’t do that!” They were discouraged from doing it and the counselors would make it as hard as possible for the students to do it. And in the first two years there, because I was the visible figure after the Willard Straight Occupation, not only on campus but also in the citywide and countywide community, it was me that people saw on interviews when these incidents happened. They would see me when reports were given about how Black Studies was going. It was me that was in the Cornell Sun or the Ithaca Journal. And when we had to speak out on these rejectionist and reactionary forces at Cornell, I was the one selected. So my face and voice became associated with the Black community. And for whites that were opposed to it, I was the visible figure. So then threats were now 142 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 being made toward me regularly. You know, called into the office or sent in little scripts in letters. And then, I guess our phone was publicly listed, the threats started coming into my home. You know, saying in all the racist language you can imagine, what was going to happen to us. And it got to the point that the University could not hide from that. They could no longer neglect the seriousness of it. So they assigned police security detail to our home. And we lived for a whole academic year with a police squad car at night just outside in front of our house, on the lawn just in front of the driveway to our home. I didn’t realize how traumatic it was for our children until recently. I was talking to them recently, and they are now adults, and they remember vividly looking out of their bedroom window and seeing the police car there and trying to make sense of that. I remember they would ask us, “Mom, what’s the police car doing there?” We had to make up some kind of story for them. I remember, “Why are the police out there? Are they coming to visit us?” And then eventually we told them and they knew. But they then realized that this was something to be anxious about, to be frightened about. So whenever I left home and was gone for a while traveling doing all the things we had to do, they would wonder if I didn’t come home what might have happened. Did something happen? And then after the fire, we had the big responsibility of finding an alternative space for the Africana Center. And that took some time. We had to work for a year in, what was only then being built, the North Campus High-rises, like where Ujaama Residential College is now. These were fully brick buildings with finishing on the inside that was not flammable, with sprinklers and fire distinguishers. And I insisted that any place else we moved had to be a secure site. It had to be a brick building where we would have greater ability to observe who was moving in and out of the building, who was coming up to the building. The building had to be up to fire code; it had to have roofs and walls that were made of material that was not flammable. And I insisted that they had to put in a complete, up-to-date and modern sprinkler system that would run through all the classrooms, offices and meeting spaces, to guard against this fire. And that’s eventually why we moved into the new space we have occupied at 310 Triphammer. We were originally further down where Triphammer turns into Wait Avenue. Even that was an issue, you know. I had to be insistent that we receive these type of quarters. Many in the University wanted to take the opportunity to break us up and scatter us. They would say, “We have an office over in Rockefeller. We have another office in Goldwyn Smith. We have another office in White Hall. We have an office here. We could put some of ya’ll there.” And we said, “No!” These were awfully difficult times because here we were being presented with these options by University administrators, by whom we were employed. And I was saying to them, “No,” and being steadfast. We were also looking for a place that was contiguous and had its own integrity as a space. We wanted a site that would be defined as the Africana Studies and Research Center. [We wanted a site] that we could then build on. That was our conception all along. So the second site allowed us to be able to make the John Henrik Clarke Library, the Hoyt W. Fuller Lounge and show the significance of these people in our history and to the development of the discipline, which was not readily understood by the White administrators or faculty. And then during my second term as director, we continued the vision that we had, which was to modernize that space after thirty-four J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 143 or thirty-five years. So I realized that this was my last rotation as director and I took up the idea of the renovation and expansion of the Africana Center. So with the site that we now have we all can celebrate, but hardly anyone talks about why is this site here (Fig. 7). Of course we realize now why it is where it is. Because [the site] allowed us to do what we have done—to expand, to remodel, to reshape it in our image and for our needs. But yea, these were difficult times. Also sometimes traveling to downtown Ithaca to go shopping and places, people would recognize us. Those reactionary forces who were angry, resentful and rejectionist knew who we were very well. And then there were the progressives and radicals who were around in the sixties, they were there and were trying to be supportive. They knew who we were. And there were developed students mostly around SDS; they were trying to oppose what they also understood to be violent racism. So you were also known well by them, as well. Then there was the middle group of liberals who were trying to determine, “How could we support this? Is this legitimate?” So they were constantly doing programs that they argued were going to help us. They would say, “We want you to speak with this audience, it’s a new audience that you can help win over.” So we had to be involved in the internal struggle and dialogue, but they were also trying to show that maybe we were not capable. So we had to always go before these different audiences and do presentations, lectures and stand our ground, and have to disprove any preconceptions they would have. It was the same thing in meetings with alumni and trustees and so forth. And that was quite trying in the first seven years. But you know, we were young and vigorous and brimming with confidence, so we had no problem. But each time you knew you were “in the gallows,” as it were (Fig. 8). Fig. 7 The renovated and expanded Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University is the largest collegiate facility in the northeast dedicated to the discipline of Black Studies, 2006 144 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 Fig. 8 James Turner gives lecture to Cornell audience, 1970 CK: Now transitioning a bit, Dr. Turner, can you tell us why you decided on the broadest geographical scope and the term “Africana” for the Center? JT: Well there were three things. It goes back again now to the informal part of my experience where these things were being discussed and debated and articulated. And it was clear to us that any complete, comprehensive approach to the study of Black people had to begin with the sense of the origin of Black people, not just in the U.S. Because we didn’t come into being in slavery in the U.S. So the questions of where we came from. What was our historical origin? So that Africa was connected, and had to be seen as connected, to any study of Black people in the U.S., any Afro American or African American Studies program. In addition to the historical background and origin, the only way you could understand the cultural development and creativity of Black people was to understand that they came from Africa and Africa was their heritage. So if you understood their musical production, their dance, their linguistic and their culinary development, [these cultural practices] all had to be seen as these people having a cultural origin. And so therefore we were confronting the so-called Herskovits/Frazier debate about The Myth of the Negro Past, and whether or not there was continuity.32 And we said surely there is cultural continuity, re-adaptation and redevelopment. So that to us seemed clear. Africans were not dehumanized in the sense that they were washed clean of their culture and reduced to cultural zeros. We took the position that African people were denigrated, 32 See: (Frazier 1974) (specifically the first chapter on “The Break With the African Background”) and (Herskovitz 1958). J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 145 but not dehumanized. They struggled to maintain their humanity and they reproduced themselves in this new environment. And the way they reproduced themselves was influenced by their African self, by their African being. We all interpret new places we go to on the basis of who we are when we get there and what we bring in our memory store and in our practice from other places. [It’s] the same way. Africans came and they re-informed this new environment based upon who they were. Now, they had to re-imagine themselves in these new places but they did it from the standpoint of their own perspective. Alright? So we reproduced culture in every place we’ve been. And that’s why when you look at Africans in the Diaspora, what you find is cultural distinction in the most obvious things—in speech, in language, in music, in dance, in song, in spirituality. There’s just no question. So that was the [first part of the] notion [of “Africana”]. The second part of it is that Black people migrate. Africans have moved before and after the coming of the Europeans. Our movements across various terrains have taken place before the Europeans, you know. We explored the land routes; we explored the sea as well, the Africans before Columbus. Africans have moved in their experiences not just only from Africa, but across other parts of the Americas. And there were Africans who were taken even as enslaved people, not only in the U.S., but first had come through portals in the Caribbean, and Africans were brought to those places as well. So we had to understand that there was a connection of Africans in the U.S. to Africans in the Caribbean, in so-called Central and Latin America, from Cuba to Venezuela and also Brazil. And we share this transatlantic experience with other Africans, who are on this side of the Atlantic. The final thing is this exchange relationship. We had to be informed and knowledgeable of what was happening outside the national boundaries of the U.S. We couldn’t be confined by these national boundaries, which were superimposed on us to begin with. But we had to actively relate to Africans on the continent and in the Caribbean. At that time, those were largely the sites we were talking about, and also in Brazil and in Central America. And they, likewise, had to be prodded and also reform the way they were considering their relationship to us. They also had to advance in their universities a global perspective on the Black global community, or the Black world community. So that was the other thing we were talking about. That was the third dimension (Fig. 9). Africana Studies instructs our students and our colleagues to look at the global relations between African people, which is complex and also specific. It doesn’t mean that each unit or each place doesn’t have its [own] specificity. Sure Brazil has its specificity. South America and Cuba have their specificity. The English speaking and French speaking Caribbean have their specificity. And we here in the English colonies have our specificities. They all have specificities of history, political history, and also unique cultural developments. But we also have similarities. Right? So we can go to different sites in the Diaspora and recognize things that we do [in common]. We can see, “hmm, listen to that language,” or, “look at the way they do this,” or “listen to that music.” So there are these interchanges. But also to understand the political economy of race and oppression and inequality and the effect of settler colonialism, internal colonization and imperialism, we have to not only understand ourselves but what has happened, and is happening, to our kin in the Caribbean, and in these other places. And they do too. So [the notion of “Africana”] 146 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 Fig. 9 Prior to the expansion and renovation of 2005, the entry window of the Africana Studies and Research Center captured Turner’s vision of the discipline. Photo taken by Jonathan Fenderson in 2004 is really, hopefully, to have a global perspective on these economic and political questions, so that we don’t fall into false competition with each other as competing classes of workers. Now, you see the captains of industry shifting off the mainland, to these off sites of production, encouraging the importation of other classes of labors. It is important that they [do] not, and we [do] not, see each other as competitors, but understand the global context of political economy. CK: Can you talk to us a little about the people that have taught and passed through Africana over the years? There are a number of people that are associated with the center, but there are also a number of people who have taught here and gone on to make names for themselves in other places, and they are therefore associated with somewhere else now. JT: Well there has been an extraordinary range of people who have come through Africana Studies here at Cornell and have gone on to other places, you know. Betty Parker Smith, for example has been one of the people…Manning Marable…who have come through here. I’m trying to think of all…Gloria Joseph is another. Dalton Jones, William Cross…as I think about it I can give you…Maryemma Graham, Ron Bailey…This is just an…Floyd Hayes, who is now at Johns Hopkins. I mean the numbers have just been extraordinary. I mean beyond the faculty, the people who have come through here have been astonishing. People would say, “How could you bring these people to such a rural and out of the way place?” At that point we were the model and, in fact, we were beyond the model of anything else that anyone else had. So people were prepared to come. And we had a space where people could be relaxed as Black people. Our people felt they could come and engage and speak, so they were pleased to come. So yea, I mean we had Julian Mayfield, who was a major writer and activist. You know, John Henrik Clarke, John O. Killens, Toni Cade Bambara, Sara Fabio Webster, Sonia Sanchez, Gwendolyn Brooks, Shirley Graham Du Bois, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Ron Daniels…I mean it was no end to the people we were able to bring here because of the kind of institutional structure J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 147 we had, and the respect they had for the integrity that we had established in terms of commitment to the mission of Black Studies, and to the discipline. You know, they didn’t like being in a small isolated cold place with snow for 4 or 5 months of the year, away from Black people, but they were also equally attracted to this model and the people who were here that had committed to it and also come and had roots in the community organizations and movements. But yea, the range of people who came to speak is incredible. Anyone who was a major intellectual and artist of the time, we had them up. And we also had a great deal of performance art, you know. It was annual. We had African dancers and performers, theater groups and readings. So it was rich not only for the student community, but for the rest of the community. After a while, the Whites were just in dismay. “How could you get these people here? How did they come here?” You know. These people would get up and say to Cornell, “I came here cause the Africana Center is here.” “I came here cause James Turner is here and he invited me here,” you know. Houston Baker, his earliest visits to Cornell were through us. So we were fortunate. And then our travel abroad meant we were making contacts with people. So you know [Robert] Bobby Hill and Walter Rodney came, you know. CLR James, George Beckford, George Lamming, Ayi Kwei Armah, all these people would come. We could literally write to them because we had developed these kinds of direct connections. Eleanor Traylor from Howard came up. We’d bring people for a semester. And then we would also offer people institutional support during critical times of need. For example, when there was the invasion of Grenada, we invited Dessima Williams who was the Grenadian ambassador to the UN and to the United States in the Maurice Bishop government; [she was] from the New Jewel Movement. We wanted to help stabilize her because once they were overthrown she was isolated in the U.S. and also, because of the coup, out of her position in the foreign ministry. So we had a reputation. People respected that; they respected that we would do these things and look out for Black folks in that way. It was a similar situation with Walter Rodney when he got deported from Jamaica suddenly without notice and was left stranded. Then later when we saw him in Tanzania we extended these relations. And we were developing relationships with heads of state, foreign ministries and ministries of education in Africa, you know. So we were a place that people saw and respected. We were a place to be reckoned with. And when these international figures thought of visiting the U.S. we were often right on their list. They would call us up. And in that sense, the University administration understood that. They would say, “Wow these people of influence want to come.” And this often helped us considerably with the internal situation at Cornell. And it also established beyond doubt that we were serious about what we were doing. This was no lightweight activity. We were serious about the scholarship. We were serious about the discipline and we were serious about organizing; this was a serious institution. And after awhile, whether the administration agreed with us or not, they could not avoid that reality. So grudgingly the respect and the reputation grew widely. And then [people from] other places like Ewart Guinier, the director of Afro American Studies at Harvard, would come and visit and we established a relationship. We started developing regional relationships with groups of Black Studies directors, working closely with the Institute of the Black World [IBW] and their development. 148 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 CK: This makes me wonder about your approach to hiring and recruiting faculty, just in general? JT: Yea well, one of the things that we emphasized is that anyone coming would not see themselves as narrowly constructed to teach, for example in, African American or African literature only. That if African or African American literature was their main focus, they also had to have a complementary focus in either African, or African American or Caribbean literature. [We hoped] that they shared this sort of wider view and that they also saw the need to look at the intersections between the different locations of African people; to look at how there were similarities as well as distinctions. We looked specifically for that in the people who came. We didn’t want people who were sort of tunneled into a very narrowed perspective. Contemporary Debates and Issues CK: In recent years you have used the term BLACK/AFRICANA STUDIES as a way to deal with the misuses of “Africana”? What are some of the ways you think the word—“Africana Studies”—is being misused and why reinsert the word “Black”? JT: Well there is a way in which there is an attempt [by some scholars] to sort of create this movement away from Blackness. The Black Studies project was seen as being critical to combating a sense of negation, of Black as negation, as alienation, and of Black students feeling separate and removed from their identification with Blackness and a sense of Black consciousness. We felt that one of the objectives of Black Studies was to encourage [and] to challenge the development of a Black consciousness. So that there would not just be class-consciousness, in the sense that we talk about the need for people to have a sense of what their relationship is to power and wealth in this society. In the same vein we argued that we must go beyond just recognizing that we are Black within ourselves, but that we need to be Black for ourselves. And that’s a project that is still needed. And I should also point out that we developed the notion of “Africana” to talk about the intersections and specificity of the sites of African people or Black people, and their connections with each other. We clearly meant this to reflect the way in which the Black experience was globalized, and that was an important part of the Black experience. We were talking about Black people. And so we wanted that to be clear and that was what inspired our debate with the African Studies Association [ASA]. They wanted to, in fact, distinguish, to disconnect Africa from African Americans. In fact, at one point in our struggle they said, “Alright, you can have this thing called African American. And we will have Africa.” And we argued against that. And that’s why at Cornell we, shortly after arriving here, confronted the African Studies Committee. And soon took over that committee and argued that African Studies is under the umbrella of Africana. What we are finding I think now—if I understand your question and if not we can discuss it and amplify it a bit more—what we are finding is that Africana Studies in some ways now is being used simply to talk about migration sites and J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 149 dislocating these different groups from one another. That is in a sense to talk about the Caribbean as a distinct site unto itself, Africa as distinct and unto itself, and all these disconnected from African America. And African America disconnected and also diminished from that, you see, and de-centered from these others. Global now means other Black sites, and Diaspora means other Black sites, not African American. So Diaspora to a lot of people has to be somewhere else other than among African Americans [in the U.S.]. So there is Diaspora in Germany where Blacks are, there is Diaspora in certain parts of the Arabian Peninsula, there is Diaspora in Europe, in France and Britain as well as, I said earlier, Germany. There is Diaspora in the Caribbean. But African Americans are not in the Diaspora. And so who [are they] and where do they fit in this model, you see? One sees this as increasingly becoming a part of the current theoretical constructions and discussion. It is almost inevitable that “Diaspora” means something else other than African American. It is also, and maybe we can speak to this later, by not focusing on African America, we are not, in fact, continuing the mission to look at where are the issues of injustice, inequality, and disparity in the U.S. These issues are not being considered. So you find that there is virtually no discussion about inequalities and continued problems of systemic racism and oppression, and how they relate to the behavior of the state, and problems of racism in society, as well as public policy issues. We find that fewer students are being even encouraged to take up these issues. And much of the emphasis is in other directions. Now is that what you had in mind with this question? CK: Yea, I think that gets at the question. JBF: That’s what I was thinking. I know that yourself, [James] Stewart and [Maulana] Karenga have argued for this idea of Black/Africana, and reinserting “Black” into the lexicon, to kind of bring the hard issues of race, the United States, and the African American experience back into the equation.33 However, this brings up another interesting point as well. In your work “Africana Studies and Epistemology: A Discourse in the Sociology of Knowledge,” you talk about these relationships, but there is also a point where you say, “The Black World is perceived as patterns within a trilateral relationship between Africa, the African Caribbean, and the African Americas.” Then you go on to say, “with, understandably, primary concentration on African America.” So of course, the reference to “African America,” and not “African Americans” would include everything from Northern Canada to the southernmost tip of South America. But also, I have always interpreted it as you saying, any Black Studies department or unit must begin with the immediate political and historical experience. So for example, in your case, Africana Studies at Cornell in upstate New York, must begin with the African American experience within the context of the U.S. Or for example, a Black Studies department in Brazil would have to begin with the Afro-Brazilian experience, same for a Black Studies project in Ghana, or Cuba, and so forth and so on. In other words, you begin with the historical experiences that 33 See: (Karenga 2009). 150 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 created the conditions of the immediate locale and read out from those. Meaning you can’t start with the experiences of somewhere else and read those foreign experiences onto the immediate national experience. And I think that is part of the thing people have misinterpreted. You know, some critics might say “primary concentration on African America” is a form of “exceptionalism” and completely miss the kind of immediate, local, political project that is also being engaged within the context of a national history. JT: You’re right, I don’t see it as exceptionalism either. And it is a misuse of that notion or that concept, trying to read it into our experience in the U.S. That’s why I use the term, “historical specificity.” You know? These are specific, not fully different so that they are unintelligible to one another. But they also map their own experience. We never said we were exceptional from anyone else, or even so exceptional that we didn’t have ways of relating to the broader humanity or even to the European descendant American. We never said we were exceptional from anyone else. If so, then we would not have framed the project of Black Studies as “Africana Studies.” We were never excluding ourselves out from the Black world. In fact, it has been the African American end [of the Black Studies project] that has been the most open ended, the most extensive, the most reaching outward; it is not an in-closed experience. But we don’t mean for that kind of more cosmopolitan view to in fact erase who we are and what our experiences are. And sometimes you know, one wonders, when people talk about this “exceptionalism,” but they themselves in their own national site do not reconstruct the academic and intellectual project where they are to be more “Africana,” more broad. So you go to the Caribbean and you go to universities in Africa, you see very little ways in which academia and education is focused on Africans in other parts of the global community, or other parts of the world. Where you find that most is here [in the U.S.] as a result of the project we propelled into American higher education. And who has been most accepting of that? It’s us. You have found the ability of most Black scholars to migrate from Africa and migrate from the Caribbean and come into the U.S. and get their greatest employment opportunity as scholars inside the Africana Studies discipline. How could you argue that Black people in America are exceptionalist? You know? Now we are reaping some of the internal problems of that. We find that some of our people coming in as recent migrants or immigrants have a different socio-cultural perspective and imagination of how they see themselves. Many have not yet settled on whether they see themselves committed to the American present. Often it is, “No, I am going back.” At this point they are second-generation immigrants, so their preoccupation is with keeping alive the identity of their own national reality. And of course, I have no problem with them sustaining, interrogating and preserving their cultural traditions. But then you can’t turn around and accuse African Americans of being exceptionalist because we argue that our traditions also need to be [sustained, interrogated, and preserved.] You don’t want erasure; neither do we. JBF: I think that is an important point. And one of the interesting aspects of this discourse of exceptionalism is that many of the same scholars who have made this argument, have also argued against Pan-Africanism, right. So, on the one side, they make the critique of African Americans, and more specifically J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 151 Black Nationalists, in the U.S. projecting what they describe as an “exceptionalist experience,” or what Gilroy refers to as “the constraints of ethnicity and national particularity (Gilroy 1993).” Then on the other side, they disagree with the idea of Pan-Africanism. And even go as far to disavowal and deny the role that yourself and other Black Studies intellectuals have played in articulating and enacting Pan-Africanism. So it is really a kind of extreme intellectual acrobatics because the two sides of the argument do not match up. You can’t say, “We are not going to look at Pan-Africanism and we are not going to engage with the ideas of Pan-Africanism.” And then also say, “these same Pan-Africanists are enacting a form of exceptionalism.” The two arguments do not coincide. JT: You’re absolutely right. And they deform the argument in terms of what our discussion really was. They have created a narrative that is predicated on some of these presuppositions that they hold. Or that they simply have constructed without engaging our tradition, without, in fact, coming and really talking about it. And in some instances, not even going back and looking at the literature; simply not studying. They start off, in fact, now, as if it all began when they arrived. JBF: I think this is an important point because some of the scholarship—like Robin Kelley and Lisa Brock’s “Transnational Black Studies” or Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic—has been seen as innovative, new and creative.34 But your work, which has always been attentive to the “geo-politics of Black Studies,” if you will, precedes this scholarship by more than 30 years and has been overlooked by many of these scholars. I think you’re right to say that it shows a lack of familiarity with the depth of Black Studies scholarship. And in fact, some people have not engaged the foundational scholarship and texts that were there from the very beginning (Fig. 10). JT: Sure. JBF: The second point is that, a lot of the scholarship written about the institutional formation of Black Studies in the U.S. has framed the history as a linear movement in naming and perspective. Scholars argue that the name has moved from “Black Studies” to “African American Studies” to “Africana Studies” and/or “African Diaspora Studies” and that the scholarship has gradually broadened in the same way (Rooks 2007; Asante 2006a, b). However, your place in the history disrupts this narrative. “Africana” is a term you are using in 1969, and a concept you are implementing institutionally. So I think this historical and intellectual unpacking of the term, “Africana,” and your scholarship, changes the conversation in some very important ways. JT: I agree. And the difficulty with the arguments of some of these scholars that you’re talking about is that not only are they trying to give this linear kind of perspective, but ultimately they are trying to reduce the project to one dimension. So for them it is all moving from a sort of national site, to something called an 34 Radical History Review “Transnational Black Studies” Issue 87 (Fall 2003). 152 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 Fig. 10 The Next Decade: Theoretical and Research Issues in Africana Studies; edited by James Turner and published as part of the Africana Monograph Series in 1984 “international” or “transnational” and that’s it. We recognized the transnational aspect of it from the very beginning. But we also understood that [the transnational aspect] did not displace or supplant the national realities. You know? It’s interesting because often when they argue for the transnational, they really often argue for a more national site, which is looking mostly at a country in the Caribbean, or Europe, or translating it to look at a country in Africa. Well, that’s not transnational. You all are funneling into a very limited one-dimensional aspect. And it’s unrealistic as well because you can’t conflate these different dimensions of the Black experience by just calling them global or international. They do have national realities, you see. In Africa, for instance, because of the different histories, peoples’ identity is still largely located in their ethnicity and in their language group. Then next to that, into their broader geo-linguistic language group. And then, maybe to their nationality. You know, Nigerian or Senegalese, or Kenyan, or whatever. But we still see that those are quite tentative and there are tensions surrounding them. But then, [they have to go] even [further] to see themselves as African, in the sense that it’s continental. You know? How many school children in Kenya are learning anything about Ethiopians, or vice versa? Right? Or South Africans, right? How much are they learning about the people from Tanzania, other than a geography lesson that says, “oh, that’s part of Africa.” How much are they learning? Or you know, how much is there an interchange of linguistic culture as well? No, if they get to [the idea of being] Nigerian, then African becomes synonymous with Nigerian, or either it has some sort of broader abstract notion. There are very few ways in which they connect. And even more difficult for them is to translate that abroad and see Africans abroad in foreign places, who are not national specific to them, they are not Ghanaians in London, or Nigerians, but they are Africans. J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 153 So these things tend to be overlooked. And we respect that there are national specificities and differentials. Sure people who have stayed in the continent of Africa have a different experience with Europe, with Western imperialism and colonialism and with their own national experience and struggle to be a nation. It’s different than what we had to struggle with [in the U.S.], our conditions of domination, exploitation, internal marginalization and internal colonialism as a source of massive exploitation and underdevelopment for us. You know? We are trying to negotiate what it means to be “a minority” and “a social problem” inside [the country]. That’s why you have now—without having the understanding of these specific distinctions and qualities—you have brothers and sisters of, what they call, the modern and voluntary Diaspora coming from Africa and the Caribbean, and even their scholars saying, “Why you Black people [in the U.S.] make so much of race? What’s the matter with you?” You see? That’s a misreading, a misunderstanding. And there is an attempt to try and conflate these perspectives, specific histories and experiences into one. You know, Gilroy and these Black intellectuals coming from Britain, that’s one experience; leaving the Caribbean and going back into Europe. You know? That is an experience that is different from what we have [here in the U.S.]. I mean we are trying to escape from the traps of white domination. They are experiencing one where not only have they been transported from Africa to the Caribbean, now there is a quasi-voluntary move. But it is also involuntary because they are pushed by economic prospects to go to Europe. So we have to have a sense of cosmopolitanism that respects these historical contrasts and differences. And then try to build ways in which they meaningfully intersect. CK: I want to transition a bit, but continue to think about the Black Studies project. One of the ongoing debates in Black Studies is on this question of discipline vs. field. And in your work you have consistently argued for a disciplinary approach. Why do you think a disciplinary approach is the best? JT: Well, I think it is important just as having a unit in which the faculty home is in Africana Studies as opposed to being in another department and loaned partly to Africana Studies, or that it becomes joint and therefore it lacks integrity as an academic unit itself. I think that it’s important to take a disciplinary perspectives so that it challenges us to think creatively at the theoretical level about how we theorize about the Black experience as well as teach about it. We also need to have a group of scholars who are committed in their study to the discipline of Africana Studies, as opposed to seeing it as a minor interest and as their subject interest, but their disciplinary interest is elsewhere. Then those people will forever have a kind of bifurcated identity to the discipline. They will think of themselves as largely part of these other disciplines. They will therefore think out of a framework that tends to privilege what the current constructions and theoretical issues are in these other disciplines and not look at the way in which they need to develop Africana Studies as a disciplinary identity in and of itself. It does not therefore mean that there is no way that Africana Studies works adjacent to or intersects with other disciplines as well. But it maintains itself as a distinct identity, as any other discipline does. Now there are those who say, “Well there are fuzzy areas. There are areas in which Africana Studies intersects with these other disciplines.” Well this is true for any other [discipline]. There are people who do social history, political history, economic 154 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 history, cultural history, anthropological history. And these reflect ways in which they are using some of the tools and concepts of these other disciplines. But they are also fashioning them in a way in which they give a specific emphasis or imprint to it as well. I think it is important for the long-term development of Africana Studies that we be challenged to think creatively at the theoretical level within our own discipline and disciplinary matrix. I think it’s important as we go forward into the next generation, in the next couple decades, that the Black Studies project have its stand as a discipline that has its own integrity. If not, it [the discipline of Africana Studies] will slowly simply fuse into the dominant disciplines. Intellectual Influences and Interests CK: It seems your work is highly influenced by this idea of “the sociology of knowledge”; when did you first encounter the idea and how has it influenced your outlook on Black/Africana Studies? JT: I guess some of my early thinking was, of course, both reading Du Bois and Carter G. Woodson, and then later of course Lerone Bennett—he was very critical— Sylvia Wynter and the things she wrote, and then Gloria Joseph who was here with me. And also reading Malcolm X, who was very critical, you know. He used to argue, “How is that you think you know what you say you know? How do we come to know what it is that we know? And what is the impact of what we don’t know? And then, how does knowledge become structured as the kind of master narrative? How does it become the established knowledge? And if there is established knowledge, what is its role in society in terms of determining what is and what isn’t?” I think that’s where some of the cultivation of my early thinking about it [derived from]. It was reading a number of sources. It was also Paulo Friere’s work on the Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Friere 2006). So there were a number of these things that came together and began to heighten for me the sense of interest in the area of the sociology of knowledge. CK: We have kind of talked around Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism, but they seem to be the other major hinges of your intellectual work. How did you come to adopt a Black Nationalist political and philosophical outlook? And how has it informed your outlook on Black Studies (as an activist project and in terms of institutionalized space for the discipline)? JT: Well I guess it began in this earlier informal period. The people that I experienced who were raising these fundamental questions—about how Black people would liberate themselves as both a project of their self-liberation as well as any physical relationship to their environment—came from people who were nationalist. All of these people I mentioned to you earlier—Larry Neal, Daniel Watts, Richard B. Moore, although he also was a Marxist, these people, and of course Malcolm X—were all nationalist. The students that I later encountered in the university who were raising these questions were being formed in their discourse by essentially nationalist ideas and nationalist thinking. And therefore, Black Studies J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 155 was fundamentally a nationalist project. The people who were pushing for this, who were willing to talk about challenging the major white institution and creating a Black site and space that would be defined as a Black space and would be commanded and controlled by Black people, who would be in charge of their own self-determination, these were nationalist precepts. The others, either classical Marxist, [who] were arguing that this was all false consciousness or in effect interrupted the development of class-consciousness and therefore class unity which was needed. Or the integrationist, who argued that they saw no benefit to any of that because it would tend to interfere with Black people moving smoothly into the society and assimilating. And their idea was that Black people needed to be the models for dispelling racial stereotypes to the larger White public, so that the White public would look more favorably upon Black people. And Black people would eventually be assimilated. Their ultimate goal was that Black people would overcome racism through assimilation and that’s how it [racism] would be defeated. The nationalist argued that in order for Black people to have any attempt to fight against White domination, they had to understand the role of White supremacy and it had to be refuted from within and its influence expelled from within the Black community. Nationalists also argued that Black people would have to be selfdetermining. And once they were able to control power and resources on their own behalf, then they could be in a position to negotiate positions with other groups. But other than that they were at a clear disadvantage. And so for me the notion of how to be a people not only within ourselves but for ourselves was the critical question. And to me that is still the critical question. You get Black people giving up institutional position, which is not in their best interest! It’s extraordinary! These are people who are not prepared to work for Black people, for themselves. And if you are in not only a capitalist society, but also a multi-racial, multi-ethnic society, where groups are also jockeying and competing within this society, how do you situate yourself, unless you can also have a program that articulates a policy of what your interest is. And how do you pursue that for yourself? And if we don’t actively take the responsibility to educate a class of Black intellectuals who have some commitment to these values then what’s the prospect for us in the future? Organizational Coalitions, Oppositions and Activism CK: There has been no definitive history on the break from the African Studies Association [ASA] and the formation of the African Heritage Studies Association [AHSA]? From your perspective, as someone who was at the center of everything, what were the core reasons for the split? And what was the significance of the establishment of AHSA? Also, who were some of the leading figures in AHSA and the leading figures in ASA? JT: Well, ASA was dominated in the United States by a half dozen academic centers that were controlled by White scholars—Northwestern, Columbia, Syracuse, Indiana, Wisconsin and I think UCLA. These were places in the 156 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 U.S. where there were active programs in African Studies. These institutions saw no relationship to African America; they didn’t see what Africa had to do with African Americans at all. Their interest in African culture and history was limited to their relationship, largely, with government agencies—the State Department, the U.S. Military and Defense Department, and the U.S. AID programs. And they saw themselves as providing experts to those agencies. And in fact, at least with the case of Northwestern, there were regularly people who were furloughed, or sent on short missions to take short courses from these agencies. We, of course as I have explained, thought that African Studies should be directly related to African American Studies. But there also was another factor. We felt that African Studies should also serve to support decolonization in Africa. We thought that ASA should take a position in supporting the antiapartheid struggle in Southern Africa. That it should also provide support for the liberation struggles in Africa. They did not. They would not. Their Senior Board, I think it was called Board of Seniors or whatever it was, their executive committee refused to take a position denouncing apartheid or even declaring their support for Africa’s liberation. And we thought, “How do you make your career off Africa and you’re not supportive or interested in the liberation of Africa?” So that’s how we began the encounter with them. On the other side were people like Dr. Elliott Skinner, who was one of the first African American chairs of the Anthropology Department at Columbia and specialized in Africa, St. Clair Drake, who was at Stanford at that time, Hollis Lynch, and several others who were Black scholars, even Adelaide Cromwell Hill, all these people. They were not elevated or allowed to be part of the leadership of ASA. And in our first encounter we called for them to open up the leadership at the executive level of ASA to these Black scholars. And they agreed to have a yearlong study to see how this could be done. At the Montreal conference they were supposed to report their results. And they came with a proposal that we found completely unacceptable. None of the Black scholars would be given full membership in the executive council, but they would be given some alternate position. We met in Montreal as a group of not only young activists but also the senior Black scholars and some also from Africa and we agreed this was unacceptable. That it was unacceptable for an African Studies Association to have no African people in its leadership. So we rejected the proposal right then and there. There were other people like Dr. Herchelle Challenor and Leonard Jeffries, all who were students of Dr. Elliott Skinner and who had been working in Africa and traveling there. Everyone unanimously agreed to reject it. We rejected the proposal and ASA did not put another proposal on the table. They said, “Well, it would take another year to consider it.” And they would report it at the next annual meeting. We said, “No, that is not good enough.” So we got to a stalemate. We determined at that point, ‘the young turks’ as we were called, that if they didn’t come to terms with the most elementary issue of respect for Black people—that Black people could be in the executive leadership—then there would be no further conference! They didn’t, so we pulled the plug on the conference. We went around to all the sessions and pulled the plugs out of the microphones and said, “This session is over!” And we were still hoping that this would provoke them to be reasonable and to see that their position was untenable. J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 157 But they became even more reactionary and they said, “No!” Well some of them had deep relationships to the State Department and to military intelligence. They saw those relationships as being threatened because we argued that those relationships would have to be aborted. So we left the meeting and at that point we met at another part of the hotel—all the Black folks from the U.S. and Canada, cause this was taking place in [Montreal] Canada. We asked [ourselves], “What will we do?” And we argued that we weren’t going to petition them any further for admission into the organization and that we would start an organization. If that is what we believed in, then we ought to have an organization that we could control, which would, in fact, focus on African Studies. And that’s how the African Heritage Studies Association was born. We came back to the U.S., continued the meetings and constructed the organization. [We] created a council that was international that had people from the cross-section of the U.S., from Africa and the Caribbean. Professor John Henrik Clarke was elected the first President and the Board of Directors was set. And we, the next year, in 1970 held our own conference. And we continued to do that. What happened then was that most of the Black members of ASA withdrew and joined AHSA. The next year, as I understand it, several African members of ASA from abroad became radicalized by the Montreal Conference event around the same issue. And they demanded that Africans be considered in the Executive Council or else they were going to withdraw. So that struggle continued. A group of white radicals led by Immanuel Wallerstein also withdrew and they created a group called Concerned Africanist Scholars. They developed a fraternal relationship with AHSA and that continued throughout into the 1980s. Then, of course, ASA then admitted Africans into the Executive Council and then eventually also as president.35 JF: Growing straight out of this struggle over engaged scholarship on Africa, can you talk to us a bit about the role you played in the Sixth Pan African Congress and later TransAfrica?36 JT: As part of our concept “Africana” and a global Black world, we started out early on in’70 and’71 saying that a part of our students experiences had to be travel abroad and based in the community. Of course, as I said, part of this was connected to our idea of an urban extension. Then [we also argued] for the need to take our students to Africa, so they could see the place, touch the place, see their ancestral homeland and understand the connection. So we were taking students to Africa in conjunction with contacts at the University of Ghana, and at the University of Zambia, at Tanzania, right. So that was an integral part of the Africana mission. And we saw ourselves as being part of the ongoing movements that were taking place in Africa. So while I was at Cornell, teaching and directing the Africana Center, I was also involved as an activist in the movement supporting the liberation of Southern Africa, and to extend Pan-African relations. When the idea of the Sixth Pan African 35 For more information on AHSA and the split from see (ASA 1969; Turner and Murapa 1969a, b; van den Burghe 1969; Sklar 1969; Shepherd 1969; Mathews et al. 1969; Challenor 1969; Clarke and Onyewu 1969; Gibbs 1969; Emerson et al. 1969; Cowan 1970; Clarke 1976; Gutkind 1976; Skinner 1976; Martin and West 1999; Campbell 1999). 36 For more information on the Sixth Pan African Congress, see: (Levy 2008; Campbell 1974; Garret 1975; Wilkins 2010); For more information on TransAfrica see: (Nesbitt 2004). 158 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 Congress came up and was being discussed, I was integral to that discussion. I was in the organizations that were discussing it. I was immediately involved and selected along with Sylvia Hill to be the co-chairs of the North American delegation. We were involved in extending the movement for a new African Studies, as I discussed with our challenge to the African Studies Association. So I was involved with the organizations as they were developing. I was working with all these groups, and with Congressman [Charles] Diggs and so forth. So when the idea of building an African American lobby group came about, I was integral to that. I was in the group called the Association of Concerned Africanist Scholars. I was also perceived as someone who saw his range of involvement not confined to Ithaca. We were willing to use our resources to support these developments. So we often invited people to come and have these planning meetings at the Africana Center. So from Six-PAC came the relationships to develop TransAfrica. I was at the table when we were talking about how that organization should be structured, and where we were going to be located and everything. I was subsequently elected to the Board of Directors and then 2 years later when we started the TransAfrica Forum journal I was appointed to the editorial board. But that was because of my activism and activity outside of the campus. Same thing with the Gary Convention, you know, or the Congress of African People in Atlanta. I was there at those [meetings] too. I was not only present by all aspects of the development of the Black Studies Movement but into these other movements of struggle that were taking place in our community. I was insistent that I was not going to be limited by my position at Cornell or constrained from being involved in these broader movements in our community. And you know, I must say for the most part, I was effective, a good administrator and organizer, so all the kind of budget stuff, costs, courses and administrative stuff were always handled. Things were on time, done well and efficient. And fortunately we had good people, and the most important was this sister I mentioned who worked as the assistant director, Jacqueline Haskins. She was with us for 20 years and she was a solid administrator. So that allowed me to be able to be involved in these other activities and movements outside of campus. She was supportive enough to understand the importance of these things, but she also was a very diligent administrator. So I knew that my responsibilities on that end would be carried forward. CK: Okay, while we are on this issue of movement support and organizational allies, you mentioned the Institute of the Black World [IBW] earlier. What was the relationship between IBW and the Africana Center? JT: Oh, well I am so glad you asked that. There was a very important relationship between the Africana Center and the Institute of the Black World because IBW became the one site that was helping these new programs in Black Studies to confront some of the institutional, administrative and curricular issues that they were confronting. They put out publications that were important [and] tried to help us move in the directions that we needed to take. But most importantly they created a series of what they called, Directors’ Seminars, in which they invited people like myself, Nick Nelson, Ronald Walters, all these other people who were first generation directors of these programs to the Institute. We were there for sometimes a week for these intense symposiums. And they brought in distinguished people like George Beckford, CLR James, St. Clair Drake, Sterling Stuckey, Vincent Harding, J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 159 [William] Bill Strickland, Lerone Bennett and many others. We would have these intense sessions. First people reported what issues they were confronting at their universities. And then we all talked about how we were dealing with these things, experiences that showed success in dealing with the issues and so forth. Those that were still unresolved and were major issues of contention, the Institute then took these up and talked about how we could develop effective programs to confront these challenges that we were facing. It was very important. We also developed a mutual support relationship with the Institute. We sent students there in the summer. They had summer institutes for students. Many of our students involved in Black Studies and those who were involved in the Black Student organization went there. Some of the people that they brought in to be visiting fellows at the Institute, we invited up to Cornell, like Bobby Hill, George Lamming, G Beck [George Beckford], and many others. We invited these people up to be short term visiting fellows at the Africana Center, to be part of doing lectures. Our first invitation to Dr. Shirley Graham Du Bois was through the Institute of the Black World. So there was a very important synergistic relationship that we had with the Institute. You know, Vincent Harding, William Strickland, Sterling Stuckey and all these others were also invited [to the Center]. So it helped us, in a way, to have people who could help us deal with the issues we were dealing with. But also bring people who were outstanding scholars at that point, and at the forefront of the discipline, to bring them in to help show the standards that we were setting, the level of quality and expertise in the scholars that we were bringing. Our first program bringing James Baldwin for a period [was through IBW]. This exposed many White scholars here at the University to people that they had never encountered. And to people that they realized not only knew what they thought was important, but knew much of what these White scholars didn’t know. And who challenged them. And they [the White scholars on campus] would often come after public lectures or coming to seminars at the Africana Center, and say, “I didn’t realize that this would be so helpful to me. How can I advance myself in this area.” So the Institute was really very critical to the early stages of the Black Studies Movement because they came out of the Black Studies Movement and saw themselves as an Institute for the purpose of advancing Black Studies. Remembering the Past and Confronting the Future CK: Africana Studies is best known as a scholar-activist enterprise. Some people have emphasized the scholarship over the activism; others have emphasized the activism over the scholarship. How would you characterize your career? (Fig. 11). JT: Well, I would hope that I’ve been able to situate my career at an effective balance of both, you know. But I also recognize that the great part of my career has been committed to institution building and building a solid institution that would be a prototype for other institutions and being also a model for ourselves and for 160 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 Fig. 11 James Turner listens to a lecture in the auditorium of the newly renovated Africana Studies and Research Center, circa 2005 generations to come. I think the fact that we were able to demonstrate that you could have an institute that emphasized outstanding quality, but also was self-determining and autonomous, was, I think very important for a very long time. People would point to how we were able to do this, achieve this, at Cornell. I also feel that it was important that I tried to situate my career such that we worked both in African America, as well as with colleagues in Africa and the Caribbean. And to see the importance of these intersections. So we have spent time building relationships, and traveling to those places as well. But [we have] always maintained the importance of the social justice issues and not compromising that for the sake of careerism. And we certainly could have. I don’t see the need in boasting, but we were often offered opportunities if we would be prepared to leave Africana or if we were prepared to compromise on the focus. We realized that there were risks involved. You knew that if you refused and stood on your position that there would be attempts to undermine it or withdraw the position—we knew that. But we made a commitment to not compromise and we felt that ultimately the support would be there and if not we would simply have to leave, but maintain our integrity. CK: So since we are kind of on this topic, what do you think are some of the directions Black Studies needs to move in the near future? JT: I think that it still is very important that there be strong, identifiable, Black Studies sites that are based on being an academic unit that’s fully committed to Africana Studies. That people who come are appointed to Black Studies units and are committed to that. That the Black Studies project also is an institution that graduate students would be introduced to the Africana intellectual tradition and be encouraged to work in that tradition and expand it. That there be intersections, yes, with other academic disciplines. But there would not be a sense of being secondary to any other academic discipline. I think that there needs to be sites with that kind of integrity as we go forward. I’m realistic to know that it’s not going to be [this way] for all or most. But I clearly think that this is important. And there needs to be departments that have open relationships with the National Council for Black Studies, with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, that encourages their students to become involved and participate with these J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 161 organizations as well as their faculty. Now faculty can certainly participate in any other associations they want but they ought to be encouraged to see these as valuable to the discipline of Africana Studies and their role in it. They should stay current with the people in the discipline who are active in these associations. That’s what I think is important for the future as we go forward. Also that those academic departments that have achieved self-governance, that their self-governance be maintained and be strengthened. And other departments coming into being in the near future should recognize the importance of self-governance and self-integrity. And that they encourage most of their faculty to make principal commitments to Africana Studies and avoid becoming highly dependent on their association with the dominant disciplines through random joint appointments. I think that we now need to give serious attention to curriculum development. We paid a great deal of attention to that in the beginning. Looking at how curriculum was to be constructed, how it was to be deployed through the humanities, social sciences, history; the relationship between African and African America, Caribbean Studies, etc. I find today that too much of the curriculum is eclectic. It has no sense of symmetry or theoretical core. There is no clear construction as to what constitutes curriculum and how it’s built upon. CK: What are some of the mistakes or regrets you’ve had over the years? JF: And, to bring some balance to the question, some of your greatest joys. JT: I don’t have too many regrets, but I will go back and say…Yea, some regrets I have. In the beginning of the Black Studies Movement and the establishment of Black Studies programs at predominately White universities, many of us as younger people at that time talked about how to do this. We strategized on how to deploy our limited energy. And what we agreed was that we would not compete with each other, but try to find the best ways to cooperate with one another. We would encourage each other to go to different places. So I would go to Cornell, Ron Walters went early to Brandeis and then to Syracuse, Len Jeffries went to City College [University of New York], Nick Nelson went to Ohio State, Delores Aldridge went to Emory and different places. I think as I look back on it—other people went to Pittsburgh and some also went to Northwestern—I think it may have been a mistake, in that we dispersed the people, who were so committed to this mission [and] who had come out of the movement for it, out into these places roughly by themselves. People had to struggle within these universities roughly by themselves. We could have benefitted from a critical threshold of people who were coming from a common perspective, who shared the experience from a common background. So we didn’t take into enough account the politics of the institution. So that if you are going to be successful you have to have people at least who provide a critical mass in the department who are coming from a like-minded perspective. Not that they had to be uniform or exact minded, but had a basis. I think that we might have been effective in sustaining these departments in terms of their self-governance, integrity and so forth, if we had that. That’s just a thought. I’ve wrestled with that back and forth. On the other hand, the other argument is that all these people went out to all these different places and they gave rise to these broader numbers of departments. But in any event that’s one thought that I’ve had. 162 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 I’ve thought that we could have paid more attention to developing the external, urban base. I think it would have been so important to advancing the discipline by having people do that kind of fieldwork. There, as I look back on it, were people who we had as part of our faculty that maybe we should have done more to keep here. I think for example, we should have done…I should have done more to keep people like Dr. Gloria Joseph here for a longer period of time. But you know…those are regrets. Some say I should have gone to some of these places that were developing also at the time rather than stay here all this time. I’m not sure. I had options to go to Howard at critical periods. But there are moments that I feel I regret not having done that. But when I think about it overall I think that I made the right decisions to stay, to see this development over a protracted period. I knew that it was going to be a protracted struggle to have the Africana Center established and institutionalized. You know, forty-one years on, it is still one of the most outstanding units established and it has weathered the time. So I feel extraordinarily good about that. That it still stands as one of the original institutions that is most recognized and has kept, as much as possible, faith with the early objectives of the Black Studies Movement. We have always honored the role that the student movement has played in our origin. Not just to pay lip service to that, but to be respectful to that [history]. We have been able to advance principles of, you know, developing a library that is fully committed to an Africana collection and named in honor of John Henrik Clarke, who, as I said, was one of the important early developers [of the discipline]. And places like the Hoyt Fuller Lounge in honor of people like Hoyt Fuller, whose memory continues. And while there have been difficulties over time, there has been tremendous satisfaction. I can’t imagine another place where I would have had as much satisfaction. Or another place where I would have been as honored to have met so many Black students and young scholars. To know Africana scholars in all the global places that they are—that’s more than I had imagined. And to have relationship with generations of Africana scholars who have come through here as students, both graduate and undergraduate students, with whom I maintain relationships and have been proud to be some small part of their great development— it is a real joy. Because I think it is important that it be understood that we came to Cornell because we saw the good, the possibility to provide an option for education and advancement of Black students. And we have maintained that commitment. And that’s what determined why we came, and [we agreed] that we would work to do that. And we have been able to do that. I felt that in each year of the four decades I have been here, we have been able to be committed to that—to provide a place that’s not only been a safe haven, but to be a place for intellectual ferment. [A place] where people could come and feel they could talk to mentors who encourage them and shared their ideas and shared our commitment to the people from whom we come and to whom our services are still needed. You know, those principles have been articulated freely here in the Africana Center. And in that sense it’s been joyful, you know. I wasn’t looking for much more than that. So I’m not disappointed in anything. I didn’t come hoping that I would be appointed somewhere else, or selected to be promoted to go somewhere else. In this institution or any other I would have refused it, as I have in the past for offers to go somewhere else other than here. I knew positioning myself the way I was that I would be fully identified with Africana. I would be identified rightly or wrongly with its stance for self-determination and integrity. I knew that it would not J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 163 necessarily sit well with many institutional gatekeepers, but that’s what we were committed to. That vision was fermented, or I should say fertilized, from that early informal period that I explained to you. And when I can walk at home, or when I can go to Harlem, go to Chicago, go to D.C., wherever, Atlanta, and see our people both in the academy and outside the academy and they say to me, “Hey man, what you’ve done and what’s happened at Cornell is really something we are proud of,” that to me is the greatest satisfaction. To be able to be recognized still in these places and they look at what has taken place here with respect—that’s the highest respect you can look for. You can’t live your life better than that. CK: Yea, that is extremely important. Very important! JBF: And very well said. Now, before we close, is there anything on your mind that you wanted to touch on or perhaps expound upon as we draw to a conclusion? JT: Well one thing I was thinking of right now, in addition to what we have already discussed is that we were part of a movement of young intellectuals and scholars who took the inspiration and ideas of a previous generation of our elders, some of those who I have mentioned. Most of them had limited relationship to the academy but were very serious about academic education. As you know, Du Bois had very limited access to these institutions as an educator, as did others, like Carter Woodson and John [Henrik] Clarke. But we were able to take the inspiration, the information and what knowledge they could pass on to us, to prepare us. And we carried it forward in our time and in the places where we were. And I guess for me, I have been really proud to be a part of the history of younger people, who are now all at their stages of retirement, who have been consistent over that period [of forty-plus years]. And we have created a discipline, you know. Forty years ago, you know, there was no Africana or African American Studies in any American institutions outside of Black institutions. There was no reference, and there was no regard to that history and tradition. Today we have a robust discourse taking place from various perspectives and it is now established. There is a growing and impressive bibliography of scholarship that has just expanded and exploded. And it has also given presence to people who may not regard that history, or not always respected the mission of it. But that Black Studies Movement—its mission and struggles—on the university [campus] made it so that we could see the illustrious Toni Morrison, you know, Maya Angelou, you know, and any number of people that you can talk about as outstanding people in the academy. Overwhelmingly the Black scholars, who have received prominence and position in predominately White institutions of American education, have done so through the venue of Africana and African American Studies. An overwhelming percentage of them have some association to this discipline. And it has been the movement of Black students and the Black Studies Movement, that was a Black project, that said to American institutional education that, “you can no longer have a white exclusive academy,” that “you have to, even if in modest and token form, show some commitment to inclusion and diversity.” And that all comes from that movement and in that sense it was one of our most radically successful movements in American history. 164 J Afr Am St (2012) 16:121–167 CLK: Thank you so much for making time for us. JBF: Yes, thanks Dr. Turner. JT: Well thank you, Candace and Jonathan, for doing this and being willing and interested to do this. This is really… CLK: This needed to be done! JT: Yea, this is really, one of those good moments for me, a proud moment. Asante sana to Mwalimu Abdul Nanji for his technological assistance during the first portion of the interview and his continued support over the years. 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