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Teaching the African Experience: A Pan-Africanist Approach

The pioneering book The Negro, by W.E.B. Du Bois (1915), more than fifty years ago claimed a place for Africa in world history and opened the whole field of black historiography. It is fair to say that until its publication in 1915 the serious study of Africans at home and abroad had been neglected. Aspects of African and black American history had been surveyed but no synoptic view of Africans and people of African descent throughout the world had been undertaken, nor had the black man's right to be considered an integral part of human history been established. The originality of the book lies in its attempt “to pull together into one succinct but comprehensive whole the different elements of African history.” What we now frequently refer to as the “African Diaspora” still challenges historians, and it seems that there has not yet appeared a general history of the black race that goes much further than The Negro. It is equally important to note here that not much has been done in terms of the development of comprehensive African studies centers. As a matter of fact, I believe—although many Africanists, I know, would disagree with me—that the failure of African area studies centers to develop programs which embrace “The Black Diaspora” was partly responsible for the birth of separate Afro-American studies departments and Afro-Caribbean studies departments in the 1960s. This apparent lack of a Pan-Africanist perspective in African studies programs has created problems yet to be dealt with by American academia.