African & African American Studies Magazine Articles




November 25, 2021

Writer:

Corbie Hill

When Faulkner Fox planned her inaugural political-theater workshop for fall 2020, she didn’t predict an imminent summer of activism.

November 25, 2021

Writer:

Scott Huler

It’s been a while since the Great Recession, when millions of people lost jobs, homes, their savings, between late 2007 and mid 2009. Nobody has called the last decade the Great Recovery, but many people have managed to rebuild their wealth portfolios. Though not everyone.

Illustration of roots

December 8, 2020

In the spring of 2018, I joined a group of student leaders and student activists in a protest on the stage of Page Auditorium during Duke’s Reunions Weekend. This weekend was a gilded one, as newly inaugurated President Vincent E. Price welcomed generations of Duke graduates to revel in just how far the university had come on so many accounts. In fact, this was a special celebration of the legacy of student activism.

September 29, 2020

Writer:

Scott Huler

A few of our stories of realization came to us as spoken words, not as writing or images. We’re sharing them here as part of our podcast "The Devils' Share."

Two images by Fati Abubakar

July 22, 2020

Writer:

Fati Abubakar

From the minute I arrived in the United States from Nigeria as an international student, my instinct was to look for an African community—a restaurant, a mosque, an association. And in the African diasporic community, I found happiness, a sense of belonging. However, as a photojournalist, I wondered why so many of us Africans leave home. What was the pull to the United States or to Europe?

Economist Sandy Darity, teaching

May 16, 2019

Writer:

Lucas Hubbard

The clip lasts just five minutes, but little about it seems right. Sure, Sandy Darity is talking about one of his ideas to combat the racial wealth gap, but absent are his laidback nature, his ubiquitous laugh. It’s July 2018, and Darity’s the guest on Bloomberg’s What’d You Miss? His posture and movement— hunched; fidgety—reflect a man aware of the stage and of the fact that he has brought his ideas, at least briefly, to the center of it.

September 29, 2014

The establishment of The Duke Endowment in December 1924 kickstarted massive construction plans at the newly renamed Duke University. Several existing buildings were to be removed: the library, Alspaugh Hall, Craven Memorial Hall, and Crowell Science Building. W.G. Pearson, treasurer of Kittrell College, wrote to Robert L.

September 25, 2014

Writer:

Ryan Hoerger

Last March, in Muhuru Bay, Kenya, twenty-eight young women from the Women’s Institute for Secondary Education and Research (WISER) were honored as part of the school’s first graduating class. It was an emotional event, a long time in the making.

September 25, 2014

As NBC’s Parks and Recreation comes to an end, we asked the comedian, actress, and renowned Tweeter @unfoRETTAble to fill in our blanks.

When I first arrived at Duke, I was…

July 22, 2014

It’s a mid-April morning in Highland Park, a neighborhood just north of Richmond, Virginia, where historic Queen Anne-style homes the color of popsicles give way to boarded-up buildings along a slight Main Street.

July 18, 2014

Fall 1974. Late again. Waiting for the bus on East Campus. Why aren’t there enough buses when it’s time for class—all right, a little past time for class—but there should be more buses! Finally arriving on West and then running through the woods to get to Gross Chem. Could any building be more appropriately named?

The education of Ida Owens youtube thumbnail

April 29, 2014

In the spring of 1961, Ida Stephens Owens graduated summa cum laude from North Carolina College—now North Carolina Central University— with a major in biology. Just a few months earlier, Duke University’s board of trustees voted to integrate its graduate and professional schools. Owens came to the attention of Daniel C. Tosteson, then chair of the physiology department, who was recruiting accomplished students from black colleges to pursue advanced degrees in the sciences.

© ER Productions/CORBIS.

July 24, 2013

Writer:

Damon Tweedy

One of my first patients as a medical intern was an avowed racist. Chester (a pseudonym) was a lifelong smoker and fan of Southern cuisine whose bad habits finally caught up with him. His body failing, he turned to our hospital for help only to find me, a black man, as one of the doctors entrusted to extend his life. The year was 2003, but for a time, it felt more like 1963.

November 5, 2012

Duke has cemented its place as the primary keeper of John Hope Franklin’s legacy with the acquisition of the late historian and former Duke professor’s personal papers.

[Credit: Megan Morr]

August 9, 2012

Writer:

Cherry Crayton

In the summer of 2010, Nyuol Tong ’14 returned to his home village of Ayeit in what is now South Sudan for the first time since he was five years old. He saw the remnants of war. Destroyed houses. Scorched land. Scarred people. Scarce jobs. A young population. And no schools. “Not even a single school,” Tong says. “That was a horrifying fact.”

Honored: Gene Kendall, Wilhelmina Reuben-Cooke, and Nathaniel "Nat" White, the three surviving members of the first five undergraduates to integrate Duke in 1963. [Credit: Les Todd]

August 8, 2012

 

When Wilhelmina Reuben-Cooke ’67, Gene Kendall ’67, and Nathaniel White ’67 arrived at Page Auditorium on Reunions Weekend in April, they assumed they would be watching the usual presentation of class gifts. But the three surviving members of Duke’s first cohort of African-American undergraduate students were in for a surprise.