William Leo Hansberry and "Howard's Supreme Opportunity" 

Presenter: Mora McClean
Description: Like many of his early twentieth-century contemporaries, William Leo Hansberry hailed the retreat of “scientific" racism after the First World War. As a freshly-minted Harvard graduate student in 1922, he set out to position Howard University to be the first higher education institution anywhere in the United States to establish an African studies program. He envisioned that well-trained Black scholars equipped to properly research and teach the history of Africa in antiquity-that is, Africa long before enslavement and colonization by Europeans-would restore the people of Africa and its worldwide diaspora to their proper place in "world history."
This session was Part 2 of the 2023 African Studies Association Teachers' Workshop entitled: Education for Justice: Amplifying Voices when Histories are Silenced. Each session begins with a presentation and is followed by a reflection session with resources and lesson plan ideas for use in your classrooms. Learn more by visiting our website at asaoutreach.org.