In 1968, a group of Drew undergraduates started the long process of bringing diverse educational experiences into the university. These students, gathered under the group Hyera, sought to bring classes on Black history and culture into Drew’s curriculum. By September 1970, Drew saw the introduction of two classes, an anthropology course titled “Peoples of Africa and the African Legacy” and a history course entitled “The Black Legacy in America.” Over time, all of the classes Hyera requested in the article have found a home here at Drew. This article features interviews with the professors who teach these classes today. These members of our community are preserving Hyera’s legacy and ensuring a well-rounded education for the students of the future.
While classes pertaining to the Black stories of our society have been part of the course catalog since the 1970s, it was not until 1992 that Dr. Lillian J. Edwards introduced the Pan-African Studies department to Drew. According to the department’s website, their goal is to provide an “extensive study of the history, cultures, politics and socioeconomic structures of Africa and the African Diaspora.” Edwards offered classes within the program and served as the only full-time faculty member of the department until she retired in 2016.
In 2023, the department was renamed Africana Studies. Upon her arrival at Drew, Dr. Tami Navarro took on the position of department chair. Navarro’s goal is to expand the department’s focus to include the African diaspora. Her training in anthropology and academic interests in race and gender have added useful interdisciplinary learning opportunities to the classroom. This semester, Navarro is teaching “Black Women in Anthropology” as a cross-listed course between the Anthropology department and the Africana Studies department. She noted that these cross-listings are important for providing a well-rounded education and supporting collaboration within the Drew community.
Navarro has worked tirelessly to intertwine Africana Studies into the Drew community, both inside and outside the classroom. She constantly asks herself “what is more meaningful to students” and allows for their voices to be a part of the conversation. Navarro has collaborated with the University Archives to introduce her students to the complicated racial history of Drew University, taken her students on walking tours focused on the Black history of Madison and co-sponsored events that help foster conversations about what students would like to see from her department. Recently, she worked with students to offer Black History Month programming such as the flag dedication ceremony and Black Hair Magic. These extracurricular experiences foster a space for the Drew community to come together to celebrate the Black identity on a more personal level.
Dr. James Carter, the chair of the history department, offers a course entitled “African American Intellectual and Social History in the Twentieth Century.” The class was previously taught by Edwards but Carter began offering it following her departure from Drew. Starting with the end of America’s reconstruction period, the class moves into discussions of the modern day. The syllabus begins exploring the work of W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X and ends with modern Black writers such as Michelle Alexander, Cornel West and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Engaging with these writers also allows the class to interact with the “rich social history of the Black experience in the United States.” Carter’s class depends on class discussion in which students are asked to engage with longer texts, something that can be difficult for large undergraduate classes to take on. When asked how previous students responded to the structure of the course, Carter said, “the students met me… they did their part and it came out really well.”
Carter pursued his education at the University of Houston, where he was able to immerse himself in courses focused on Black history and taught by scholars of Black history such as Dr. Linda Reed and Dr. Tyrone Tillery. He took these courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Engagement with Black history in the college environment would have been impossible prior to the activism of the late 1960s, as “civil rights used the infrastructure of the college to flourish,” Carter noted. Carter makes sure to interact with this history in his classroom today.
Dr. Trevor Weston, the chair of Drew’s music department, teaches “Black Music in America.” This is one of the classes that Hyera specifically demanded in their 1968 article. Weston taught the class for over a decade before introducing the course to Drew in 2011. The syllabus covers more than four centuries of musical influence, beginning with the legacy of slavery as Weston works to address things that are missing from a larger understanding of music history. The course progresses through history to the present and engages students with historical documents, recordings and discussion. Throughout the class, students analyze a wide range of music, from traditional African drumming to jazz and blues. Weston expressed the value of lessons about Black culture, as the content covered in collegiate classrooms represents “what is important about [our] society.” Having conversations about Black music in such contexts permits further academic exploration of the topic.
Weston noted that he had a “very unique experience in undergrad” because he studied under Black professors of history and music at Tufts University, a predominantly white institution. There, he had the chance to engage with Black music history specifically. At UC Berkeley, another predominantly white institution, Weston completed his graduate studies under a Black composer’s mentorship. The fact that Weston shared his racial identity with his educators was pure happenstance. The wealth of knowledge he now shares with the Drew community was shaped by his advisors and mentors, who shared an academic interest in understanding Black culture and Black music in both historical and present-day contexts. Weston brings this academic focus to Drew and works to inspire the next generation of learners “to better our understanding of the world we live in” and seek out productive change.
Dr. Hannah Wells of the English Department offers a course entitled “African American Literature,” another class that Hyera specifically requested. The course existed prior to Wells teaching it, but her academic focus on race and citizenship as represented in 19th-century literature brings expertise and nuance to the table through the way she teaches it now. Wells structures the 100-level class as an “exploratory course.” The syllabus includes significant Black historical authors and also allows students to engage with contemporary Black writers at various points. Toward the end of the semester, students are asked to bring in contemporary poems by Black poets, allowing them to share pieces they find interesting, relevant and meaningful. Wells noted that this activity is her favorite part of teaching the course.
While Wells doesn’t bring the Black identity to the table, she believes “literature provides a window into the parts of our history that are most important to understand” and allows readers to empathize with those who hold identities different from their own. Wells teaches literature by Black writers across the breadth of her courses, and she finds it important to “focus specifically on Black writers” in order to combat a “history of stigma and exclusion.” To understand American literature, Wells believes that it is important to understand the “way in which race has been central in our literature” here in the United States, not only for Black writers but for white writers as well. Wells also teaches literature by Black writers in a more advanced setting with a seminar dedicated to W.E.B. Du Bois. Higher-level classes help ensure that courses in these topics become integral to the Drew educational experience and are not solely seen as electives.
Professor Kimani Fowlin, director of the dance Department, offers a course entitled “Afro-Fusion Dance and Culture” at both introductory and intermediate levels. Fowlin’s course uses dance, music, film and more to bring Black voices of the past and present into her classroom. She aims to engage with the narratives of history that have previously been kept out of educational spaces. Fowlin also works to ensure that her student’s voices are well represented in her classroom; “making Black and Brown students feel a part of the community” is pivotal to her practice. She also teaches the Community Building Seminar for the Equal Opportunity Scholars program, integrating Black history into this class as well. Fowlin allows student interest and passion to drive her teaching in all of these courses because “we are all at the table together.”
Fowlin engages her students with Black history outside the classroom as well. This year, students took part in the Rodney M. Gilbert Salon and Lecture Series, an annual event dedicated to Gilbert, a former Drew theater professor who went on to work to make education in the arts more accessible to communities in Newark. Fowlin’s students had the chance to engage with various historical moments through the art of poetry, movement and acting. This included using poetry to respond to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and interacting with the story of Black suffragettes through two original pieces by Professor Judy Tate. While the RMG Salon always focuses on a different topic, Fowlin said that “for the past two years this lecture series has been one where [they] connect the historical dots.”
The courses listed above do not include every class at Drew that touches on the important Black stories of our society; as Navarro put it, all of the most important courses at Drew engage with Black stories in some form. The educational landscape has come a long way since the founding of Hyera during the late 1960s, and the political landscape of the wider world has changed as well. In the context of the Black Lives Matter movement, which directed massive amounts of public attention to systemic injustice and a lack of wider education on Black history, classes that provide space for Black stories become even more important. In the wake of this movement, teaching and learning are understood to be important kinds of activism.
Without the push for more diverse course listings across the United States, a generation of professors who provide Drew with the courses mentioned above may have never received the training that allows them to provide us with such important educational opportunities. In order to ensure that such courses continue, it is important that the student voice is sought out and acknowledged. At a small university such as Drew, education needs to remain collaborative. Students are a necessary part of the conversations and collaborations on campus, and they need to do their part to show up and voice their needs and wants both inside and outside the classroom.
The legacy of diversifying course listings at Drew is rooted in student activism. Today, this serves as an inspiring reminder that student voices matter in national conversations about race and education and that these conversations are happening on Drew’s campus. Our job, as students who are committed to their education and societal improvement, is to engage in these conversations and make our voices heard.
Jocelyn Freeman is a junior double-majoring in history and English with a minor in Chinese.
Featured image courtesy of Pexels.com.
