About Us
In 1996, Dr. Maceo Crenshaw Dailey, Jr. was selected as the first director of the African American Studies Program; a position he held until his passing in 2015. For the past twenty years the African American Studies Program has remained true to its vision of exploring and understanding old and new scholarship, maintaining a distinct and collaborative presence in the community and training special research attention upon questions and issues arising and radiating, first and foremost, from the southwestern African American experience. Through our courses, programs, community engagement activities and dedicated faculty, African American Studies provides a humanistic lens and course of study for individuals of all backgrounds to examine the African American experience and the attendant complexities of racial relations in the American Southwest, the state of Texas, the nation, and the Diaspora. It is our mission to train and prepare the next generation of activist-inspired servant leaders to not only face the challenges of the day, but to do so with the expressed mandate of providing meaningful and humanistic solutions to the national and global challenges we face.