In its first forty years, the Afro-American Studies program had five permanent directors each of whom faced their own obstacles while contributing to the program’s development and evolution. Retention of a director itself was a major issue—it was difficult to attract black scholars to Maine, where the black community has always occupied a sliver of the state’s population. And because the program could only support one professor, it was challenging to develop a community of black scholars.
Curricular Shift
Lynn Bolles, an anthropologist of the Carribbean, replaced Walter as director of AAS, and was the first woman to hold this position. Bolles arrived in 1980 and initiated a major change to the program, a change which would continue to evolve into the twenty-first century. AAS had always focused solely on African American culture and history, but under Bolles, its focus broadened to include the African diaspora, including Bolles’ specialty, the Afro-Carribbean diaspora.