The situation of human rights in Africa evokes the image of a parasitic vine, growing rapidly, its tentacles reaching into every crack, to wedge it open further, its broad leaves shading the ground and preventing healthy plants from maturing. This vine of human rights violations has its main root system in the epoch of colonialism and it is fed abundantly by the waters of neocolonialism. In order to cut back this tangle of violations, to eradicate it so that human rights and the rule of law and justice can flourish, it is not enough to hack at the branches. We must discover its roots and pull them up.

Africa and Africans do not get along well with the United States press, radio and television—and vice versa. Most Africans (whether students, individuals, or government officials) who have had some exposure believe it offers of Africa. Most directors of the U.S. media are leery of Africa and would prefer major news events to occur elsewhere. Fraternization and sympathy are mostly limited to African journalists who have lived or traveled in the United States (a considerable number on various exchange grants) and American journalists who have done an African stint. Alcoholically cursing their respective bosses, these two groups usually get on quite well.

As we come to the end of the Symposium, it is my pleasant duty to thank all those who have made this occasion and these events possible. I must, of course, single out first of all the writers who consented to speak on the different panels, and then those who responded to them. I think the consensus of opinion is that all of the sessions have been exciting, and some have been enormously exciting and have made this Conference worthwhile.

I must also, of course, thank the people who ran the local Working Committee.

Afro-Americans have always had more than academic interest in the study of Africa; it was inevitable therefore that they would come into conflict with Euro-Americans who (through myopia or cunning) insisted that they had no unique relationship to Africa. Viewed in historical perspective, it is quite understandable why in the 1960s blacks would challenge those whites who had arrogated to themselves the control of African Studies in the United States. For blacks, parity (if not dominance), in the study of Africa is inextricably part of their struggle for full equality in America. The reasons for this are quite simple: the whites who conquered and settled America decided quite early that the people of African descent who were brought to these shores as captives could not and (later) should not be permitted to live on a plane of equality with them.

I would like to take the liberty of responding to a “statement” which appeared at the end of Issue, number 4 [Winter 1975] which was recently sent to the ASA membership. Since the authors have often sought to keep “politics” out of the Association I was rather surprised to see them taken by a “matter of conscience” which is perhaps one of the most politically charged issues of the day. In any case I was annoyed with the inference that the fight against colonialism, racism, apartheid, and fascism was a “partisan urge” while attributing only the noblest sentiments to their “statement”.

It was particularly ironic for the authors to note that they will withdraw their “support” from nationalist organizations and governments which identify Zionism as a form of racism since they stood against a resolution raised and passed in the 1973 ASA meetings calling upon the United States government to recognize the Republic of Guinea Bissau.

Like any respectable modern organization, the Ford Foundation has computer printouts showing in fat volumes of lists and tables what it has done. Some of these compilations trace the record from the beginning of the Foundation’s national and international programs in 1950. An international interest was there from the start, because the study group that in the late forties advised the Foundation’s trustees on what they ought to do successfully urged that they should devote major attention to world problems of peace and international understanding. The first specific attention to Africa south of the Sahara came in 1954 with a half-dozen grants and a series of what were then called “foreign study and research fellowships.” Fellowships for Asian and Near Eastern studies had started earlier, in 1952, and some of them went to young scholars working on the Maghreb, Egypt, and places down as far as Sudan and Ethiopia.

The modern Black Studies movement, in its present form, appeared in the 1960s as an emergent academic field and a self-conscious component part of the larger social and political movement for Black liberation. In contrast to the 1950s, which had been labeled “the silent generation” by some scholars, the 1960s were times of widespread political unrest and social movements. These currents were enlivened and precipitated by the Black liberation movement in its current stage of struggle for democratic rights, commonly referred to during that period as the “civil rights movement.” The Black college campuses were the source of leadership for this movement by young (though not exclusively) activist-intellectuals. The general social climate of self-assertion and political protest released an intellectual ferment that stimulated some Black students and Black scholars in their demand for “Black Studies” as a vanguard opposition to an entrenched intellectualism in American society.