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.
Witness to Three Decades
Randy Stakeman (left) came to Bowdoin in 1978 to teach African history in the History department. He was a member of CAAS through the program’s major milestones: its battle with the administration to retain John Walter; its curricular expansion under Lynn Bolles; its twentieth anniversary (which prompted AAS and the Society to reconcile with its underfunding and stunted progress); a comprehensive self study and external evaluation that identified the program as in a state of emergency due, in part, to the loss of black faculty to larger, more diverse colleges; and its transition to “Africana Studies.” Many of these milestones occurred during Stakeman’s tenure as director of the program, a position he held from 1988 - 2006.