EDITOR'S NOTE: A video interview with professor Andrew Smallwood is available.

February 25, 2004

By Leticia Konigsberg
Staff writer

February might mark Black History Month, but for the University of Houston’s African American Studies Program (AAS) black history is celebrated all year round.

Bold images of Malcolm X, W.E.B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass and other historical figures decorate the office of AAS visiting scholar Reiland Rabaka. For Rabaka and fellow visiting scholar Andrew Smallwood, UH is their home away from home, for now.

Each year, the program selects at least two scholars from across the nation to participate in a one-year appointment in which they teach a course of their own design while working toward the completion of a research project.

“This program is part of a much larger initiative,” said James Conyers, the program’s director. “We are looking to recruit and retain high-quality minority faculty and students, not only to increase diversity on campus, but to advance the program to an autonomous departmental unit, which will ultimately enable us to introduce a baccalaureate degree in the African-American studies discipline.”

This year’s chosen scholars, Rabaka, assistant professor of Africana philosophy at the Department of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach; and Smallwood, assistant professor of black studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, might come from very different backgrounds, but they share many similar beliefs and passions.

Born in Dallas to a struggling, single mother and the second of three sons, Rabaka was immediately interested in the candid discussion of racism and black spirituality in Du Bois’ “The Souls of Black Folk.”

“It was during Black History Month, nearly two decades ago, that I met the writings of my ‘intellectual father figure,’” Rabaka said. “I found myself thinking that finally I had found someone who lived through the horror and harrowing experience of what it means to be black in an utterly anti-black world.”

It is for this reason that Rabaka believes the study of black history is indispensable not only for black Americans, but all Americans.

“Black History Month, at its best, represents a move closer to multicultural democracy, to the kind of country that resembles the collective dreams and aspirations of humans from all over the world,” he said.

Smallwood hails from the upper west side of Manhattan and is the youngest of three sons. His father, a social worker, and his mother, a guidance counselor, planted the seeds of education from early on.

“I was lucky to have been brought up in a place where exposure to diversity and arts and culture were at my fingertips,” Smallwood said.

Smallwood achieved his doctoral degree in education after completing his master’s degree in counselor education and a bachelor’s degree in community studies.

As author of “An Afro Centric Study of the Intellectual Development, Leadership Praxis and Pedagogy of Malcolm X” and co-editor of “Malcolm X: A Historical Reader,” Smallwood has his own thoughts on black history and the AAS program.

“The fact that many schools like the University of Houston celebrate Black History Month with activities demonstrates, at the very least, their engagement in the celebratory aspects that founder Dr. Carter Woodson sought,” Smallwood said. “The challenge in continuing these efforts beyond February still lies in the manner in which institutions support the research of faculty and students in the Africana studies departments and programs, as part of their ongoing mission for providing a quality educational experience for students.”