African Americans Who Hold Endowed University Chairs

Abstract

SCHOLARLY GIANTS SUCH as Charles Drew, Alain Locke, George Washington Carver, and W.E.B. Du Bois were never granted full professorships at white universities, let alone endowed chairs. But times are slowly changing. Today, as a result of a confluence of black people's sacrifices, white collegiality, and black intellectuals' work, 122 African Americans hold endowed chairs. Two of black academy's most influential scholars who never held endowed chairs, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois and Carter Goodwin Woodson, outlined more than a half-century ago an agenda that is still relevant today. Who is to guide work of Negro people? Du Bois asked in 1903. It is the 'talented tenth' of Negro race [that] must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture. But Woodson sounded a warning in 1933. One of most striking evidences of higher education among Negroes is their estrangement from masses, very people upon whom [they] must eventually court for carrying out a program of progress. Today African-American professors holding endowed chairs are not isolated from what Alex Haley called core experience. Rather, they are using their intellects and operational unity to help guarantee for centuries to come an audacious power for African diaspora. Here are some interesting facts about African Americans and endowed chairs: