1800s - Present
AAI Timeline
Co-founder William Leo Hansberry and the Winding Recovery of AAI’s Founding Vision
• People and events directly tied to AAI
1884
At the Berlin Conference convened by Otto von Bismarck, 13 European powers meet to commence the so-called “Scramble for Africa”—the process of carving up the African continent based on European imperial ambitions rather than existing political and ethnic boundaries.
1894
William Leo Hansberry is born on February 25, 1894, in Gloster, Mississippi—just 31 years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and less than 50 years after Liberia declared independence from the American Colonization Society, founded in 1816 by “a group of white Americans…to deal with the ‘problem’ of the growing number of free blacks in the United States” (U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian).
1900
European imperial powers rule roughly 90% of the African continent, up from what had been 10% in the 1870s.
1914
World War I begins.
1915
Filmmaker D.W. Griffith releases Birth of a Nation—a three-hour epic film that glorifies the Klu Klux Klan. President Woodrow Wilson hosts a screening at the White House, and the film is credited with the KKK’s twentieth-century revitalization. Black Americans across the U.S. demonstrate and protest against the film’s racists portrayals and distortions of Reconstruction. See "Fighting Lightning with Fire: Black Boston's Battle against 'The Birth of a Nation'” by Paul Polgar to learn more.
1916
In the summer after completing his freshman year at Atlanta University, Hansberry reads and is greatly inspired by The Negro (1915), W.E.B DuBois’s history of Africa in antiquity.
1916
Nannie H. Burroughs, founder and principal of the National Training School for Women and Girls (NTS) in Washington, D.C., who inventively incorporated black history—including precolonial Africa—into “unofficial curricula” for black school children, including “When Truth Gets a Hearing” a student pageant in which NTS students, on multiple occasions between 1916 and 1930, extoll the accomplishments Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia (Ethiopia) no less than those in Greece and Rome.
1916
Scholars identify this as the beginning of the Great Migration—the mass exodus of black Americans from the southern United States.
1917
After just two weeks into his sophomore year at Atlanta U, Hansberry heads to Cambridge to enroll at Harvard University.
1918
World War I ends.
1919
Red Summer – anti-black violence and race riots take place in 26 cities and towns across the United States.
1920
Within Our Gates, by black independent filmmaker Oscar Micheaux is released. The film, which examines white bigotry, is considered a rejoinder to Birth of Nation.
1920
Written by Langston Hughes when he was only 18 years-old, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”—a poem paying homage to the Mississippi, Euphrates, Congo and Nile— is published in The Crisis magazine.
1920
Under the direction of Jessie Redmon Fauset, novelist, former school teacher, and magazine literary editor, The Crisis launches the Brownies Book for children, a serialized publication with contributions that promote knowledge and respect for African culture.
1921
Hansberry earns his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University with a concentration on ancient and modern Africa.
1922
Hansberry designs, writes the textbook for, and launches a series of undergraduate courses on African Civilizations at Howard University.
1924
U.S. Congress passed a restrictive Immigration Act banning Asian immigration, except from the Philippines.
1925
KKK March on Washington where 40,000 gather on the Mall.
1925
At the age of 67, Anna Julia Cooper—founder of the Colored Women’s League in 1892, and the only female member of executive committee of the first Pan-African Conference (1900), and controversial principal of M Street High School (formerly Washington Colored High) in Washington DC—earned a PhD from the Sorbonne in France, after successfully defended her doctoral dissertation (written in French) on L'Attitude De La France A L'Egard De L'Esclavage Pendant La Revolution.
1925
The New Negro: An Interpretation, an anthology edited by Alain Locke, is published and is later regarded as a foundational text of the Harlem Renaissance.
1925
In his poem Heritage, Countee Cullen poses a question on the minds of African Americans and members of the African diaspora worldwide: “What is Africa to me?”
1929
The Stock Market Crash triggers the Great Depression.
1930s
African students, including Nnamdi Azikiwe and Kwame Nkrumah, who are studying in the US and Canada meet in Harlem, New York and other cities to strategize ways of supporting more African students to study in North America.
1932
Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected President of the United States.
1932
William Leo Hansberry earns his MA from Harvard.
1933
Adolf Hitler is elected Chancellor of Germany.
1935
Fascist Italy invades Ethiopia.
1935
Hansberry along with Howard U alumni William Steen and Melaku Bayan create the Ethiopian Research Council to protest and galvanize public opposition to Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia.
1941
Publisher Henry Luce argues for US "internationalsim" and expansion of U.S. global hegemony and dubs the 1900s “the American Century.”
1941
The United States enters World War II after Japan bombs Pearl Harbor.
1946
In his book The World and Africa W.E.B DuBois warns the United States and hobbled European powers against “the habit, long fostered, for forgetting and detracting from the thought and acts of the people of Africa.”
1948
Anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits creates the oldest recognized formal program of African Studies in the United States at Northwestern University with an initial six-figure grant from the Carnegie Foundation.
1949
The NAACP endeavors to help shape the Truman Administration’s Point Four “development” technical assistance program for decolonizing countries.
1950
Henrietta VanNoy’s letter to the Editor lambasting the subjection of African students to Jim Crow segregation practices in Washington DC is published by the Washington Post.
1953
African students convene at Howard University and shortly thereafter AAI is incorporated as a Washington DC non-profit.
1953
Howard University is awarded a $50,000 Ford Foundation grant to establish an MA program in African Studies under the leadership of E. Franklin Frazier, Professor and Chair of Howard’s Sociology Department. William Leo Hansberry first learns about the grant from a former student while traveling in Africa.
1954
US Supreme Court renders its decision in Brown v. Board of Education attracting global news headlines. The Justice Department’s amicus curiae quoted Secretary of State Dean Acheson who argued that U.S. race discrimination was damaging U.S. foreign relations.
1955
Representatives of 29 African and Asian countries meet in Bandung, Indonesia to declare opposition to both neocolonialism as well as colonialism, advocate decolonization, and promote African and Asian economic coalition-building.
1957
Ghana gains independence.
1957
The African Studies Association (ASA) is established as “the flagship membership organization devoted to enhancing the exchange of information about Africa.”
1959
Urged by Tom Mboya, a 28-year old Kenyan trade unionist and rising national political figure, Americans, including Jackie Robinson and the Kennedy Foundation provide supplemental financial support for the Kenya Airlifts which enable hundreds of Kenyan students to study in the United States.
1960
This was dubbed the “Year of Africa” in which 17 formerly colonized African countries gained independence.
1960s
On campuses across the U.S., diverse student-led protests demand the establishment of Black Studies programs.
1960
Nigeria gains Independence.
1963
Kenya gains independence.
1963
The U.S. government-sponsored, AAI-administered Africa Graduate Fellowship Program (AFGRAD) is launched to offer fellowships to select Africans for graduate study in the U.S. aimed at preparing them for positions in government service, universities, or the private sector in Africa.
1963
As president of Nigeria, Nnamdi Azikiwe establishes the Hansberry College of African Studies (now the Institute of African Studies) at the University of Nigeria at Nsukka.
1964
Nelson Mandela and officials of the African National Congress (ANC) are sentenced to life imprisonment for sabotage by the Nationalist, apartheid South African government.
1964
Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia gain independence.
1964
On the recommendation of Horace Mann Bond, William Leo Hansberry is awarded the first Haile Selassie African Prize.
1964
The United States directly enters the Vietnam War.
1965
The Gambia gains independence.
1966
Botswana And Lesotho gain independence.
1966
Hansberry dies while visiting family in Chicago, Illinois.
1967
Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere announces The Arusha Declaration calling for calling for a policy of self-reliance in Tanzania.
1968
Equatorial Guinea, Mauritius, and Swaziland gain independence.
1968
The first Black Studies (now known as the Africana Studies) Department is founded at San Francisco State College, now known as San Francisco State University (SFSC).
1969
Members and allies of the Black Caucus of the African Studies Association disrupt the Association’s annual conference in Montreal, Canada.
1969
Jet Magazine accuses AAI’s white male executive leadership of being part of the white elite foreign policy establishment that allegedly highjacked control of AAI from its original black co- founders, including William Leo Hansberry.
1969
In a special issue of the progressive journal Africa Today featuring articles on “The Crisis in African Studies,” the Washington D.C.-based Washington Task Force echoes Jet Magazine’s accusations and further accuses ASA, AAI and their foundation supporters of perpetuating “institutional racism” in African area studies.
1969
AAI launches School Services with grant support from the Carnegie Corporation.
1973
Guinea Bissau gains independence.
1970-74
School Services vigorously reaches out to black American educators and communities and flourishes under the leadership of Evelyn Jones Rich.
1974 & 77
At the behest of Myrtle Kelso Hansberry, William Leo Hansberry’s widow, historian Joseph Harris researches and produces an edited two-volume “handbook” based on materials in the family collection of professor Hansberry papers:The William Leo Hansberry African History Notebook—Pillars in African History (1974) and Africa and Africans as Seen by Classical Writers (1977).
1975
Angola, Cape Verde, Comoros Island, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe gain Independence.
1976
Seychelles gains independence.
1976
AAI launches the Southern African Training Program.
1977
Djibouti gains independence.
1977
AAI School Services program ends after Carnegie funding runs out.
1980
Zimbabwe gains independence.
1983
At AAI’s 13th African-American dialogue in Harare, Zimbabwe African leaders criticize the Reagan Administration’s policy of “constructive engagement,” and the Heritage Foundation takes issue with AAI’s role.
1990
Namibia gains independence.
1990s
USAID begins to wind down support for AAI-administered U.S. government-sponsored scholarship programs for Africans.
1995
AAI publishes its March-April issue of Africa Report posing the question “Should Africa Worry,” and ceases publication of the magazine in the same year.
1996
AAI hosts “Investment in Southern Africa” conference in Windhoek, Namibia in conjunction with the Keidanren, Japan, Federation of Economic Organizations, The Government of Japan, The Government of Namibia and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
1997
With the nominal sponsorship of the late Honorable Donald M. Payne (D-NJ), chair of the U.S. the House Subcommittee on Africa, AAI launches “Africa Thursday,” a series of congressional seminars designed to inform Members of Congress, their staff, administration officials, corporate leaders, and representatives of Africa-focused NGOs.
1999
Initiated and funded by the Namibian government, and administered by AAI, the Namibian Government Scholarship and Training Program (NGSTP) which offers advanced training and higher education fellowships to Namibians.
2000
Congress passes the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, and President Bill Clinton appoints Rosa Whitaker to serve as the first Assistant US Trade Representative for Africa.
2013
The AAI Board of Trustees accepts Archival Initiative report recommendations to relocate AAI’s historically-significant document collection from commercial warehouses to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, also the repository of the Horace Mann Bond and W.E. B DuBois collections.
2020
Based on additional archival research, AAI recovers School Services Program files and reconnects with Evelyn Jones Rich, Director of AAI School Services from the mid- to late 1970s and co-author (with Immanuel Wallerstein) of Africa Tradition and Change (1972) a widely praised high school textbook.
2020
The murder of George Floyd spurs the global Movement for Black Lives.
2020
AAI re-envisions and relaunches its School Services Program.
2024
The Africa America Institute modernises its mission: bridging Africa and its diaspora to catalyze a sustainable and equitable world. The organization focuses its work on four impact pillars: Liberatory Education, Economic Sovereignty, Healing and Repair, and Community Building.