Teaching the African Experience: A Pan-Africanist Approach

Abstract

pioneering book 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 say that until its publication in 1915 the serious study of Africans at home and abroad had been neglected. Aspects of and black American history had been surveyed but no synoptic view of Africans and people of descent throughout the world had been undertaken, nor had the black man's right be considered an integral part of human history been established. originality of the book lies in its attempt to pull together into one succinct but comprehensive whole the different elements of history. What we now frequently refer 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 Negro. It is equally important note here that not much has been done in terms of the development of comprehensive studies centers. As a matter of fact, I believe-although many Africanists, I know, would disagree with me-that the failure of area studies centers 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 studies programs has created problems yet be dealt with by American academia. Compounded by the emergence of Afro-American studies in the late 1960s, these problems are deeply rooted in the historical development of studies in the United States.