When the legendary Dr. Ruth Simmons came out of retirement to lead Texas’ oldest HBCU, Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU), one of the first things she noticed was the institution lacked an African American Studies program. This absolutely did not fly with Simmons who had been instrumental in founding AAS programs on the Ivy League campuses she led as president before her time on The Hill.
“Dr. Simmons called for the creation of an African American Studies department, emphasizing the importance of the field’s ability to provide critical knowledge for our students in the areas of race, social justice, African American history and culture,” said Dr. Jeanelle K. Hope, director of PVAMU’s AAS program. “During a period of unprecedented growth at PVAMU, launching a program in African American Studies honors our historical roots and allows our students and faculty to look to the future.”
The program was announced in 2022 and officially hit the ground running during the fall of 2023 – kind of. The program, in its fullness, has yet to be offered to PVAMU. But with its one-year anniversary fast approaching, the Defender wanted to see how things are progressing in this critical area of study, especially amid a national move by Republican elected officials to ban Black books, Black studies, and Black scholarship.
Mission
African American Studies is an interdisciplinary academic pursuit that explores and elucidates the lived experiences of African descendant people in the United States and globally. The PVAMU African American Studies program ultimately seeks to equip the next generation of academic scholars, activists, and leaders.
“We align our endeavor with the original Black Studies mission to document Black life, produce rigorous academic research, challenge students to think critically and engage with the broader community about the role African descendant peoples have played in US nation building and world making beyond its borders,” says the PVAMU website.
Program Goals
The PVAMU AAS program goals include
- Ensuring students receive an appropriate grounding in the field’s major themes and can place these themes in a historical context and use the knowledge to address the social science issues of race, racism, and inequality in African Americans’ lives.
- Developing students’ critical, analytical, research, writing, and oral skills.
- Emphasizing the importance of diverse perspectives and intersecting identities in understanding the lives of African Americans.
- Promoting civic and community engagement activities among students and faculty to enhance African American communities.
The Leader
Unlike the vast majority of Black people in the U.S., Hope was blessed with an early exposure to the liberating field of African American Studies.
“I took my first African American Studies course while in high school at my local community college. African American Studies helped me understand who I was as a young Black girl from East Oakland. The field gave me a language to interrogate the many inequities I saw and experienced in my community (from environmental racism to dilapidated housing), and helped me connect them to larger systemic and global issues,” she said.
Hope added that AAS also provided a space to have critical conversations and conduct research that would make needed interventions to advance racial equity in public policy and other sectors.
AAS Benefits
AAS critics have often said students with such degrees could not find jobs in the field. However, Hope begs to differ and sees AAS as preparing PVAMU students for the workforce of the future.
“With a rapidly diversifying workforce, it is my hope that every PVAMU student considers taking an African American Studies course to not only have a space to critically discuss the Black experience with their peers, but to also gain integral interpersonal communication skills and the language to help navigate 21st-century workplaces,” said Hope.
And Hope is not alone. Legendary former Houston anchor Linda Lorelle shared with the Defender in an interview several years ago that when she was a student at Stanford University, she and her good friend Dr. Mae Jemison both minored in AAS, and each gushed about how the field prepared them for professional success in their respective careers.
PVAMU’s website states: The African American Studies (AAS) program at Prairie View A&M University prepares students for careers in areas including, but not limited to, education, public service, public history, higher education and student affairs, archival research, media, law, policy advocacy and digital content creation. The AAS program encourages critical thinking, enhanced communication, and practical skills in applied research and analysis.
The Future
Hope is ready to take PVAMU’s AAS program to higher heights.
“This program has been in the works for some years, and there is much that needs to be done to ensure that African American Studies at PVAMU will indeed serve as a model for other HBCUs. With that in mind, I will spend much of this year: (1) launching African American Studies core courses, (2) recruiting majors and minors, (3) building relationships and partnerships on campus and in the community, (4) coordinating co-curricular programs and events, and (5) collaborating with the Ruth J. Simmons Center to boost research opportunities for students.”
To that point, Hope encourages students interested in majoring or minoring in the program to contact her directly at jkhope@pvamu.edu.
