History

The College has played a remarkable role in abolitionism, the Civil War, the civil rights movement, and the development of African American culture in all spheres—education, science, business, and the arts.

John B. Russwurm, Bowdoin’s first African American graduate (class of 1826), after whom the John Brown Russwurm African American Center is named, was among the nation’s first three African Americans to graduate from institutions of higher education. In 1827, Russwurm went on to found the Freedom’s Journal, the country’s first black newspaper. He later became mayor of the Maryland section of Liberia, a colony in Africa for freed slaves.

In the years leading up to the Civil War, several of the College’s current properties—including the Russwurm Center—served as stops on the Underground Railroad. Many faculty at the time were well-known abolitionists, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose 1851 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin is often considered the first “shot” of the great war, wrote the book at her house on Federal Street in Brunswick (now owned by the College) while her husband served on the Bowdoin faculty. Civil War general Oliver Otis Howard, who fought in many major battles of the war, was a member of the class of 1850. He then became the first steward of the Freedmen’s Bureau, before the 1866 founding of his namesake, Howard University, of which he was the first president.

During these tumultuous years, Bowdoin became the second medical school in the country to graduate African Americans, with John Van S. de Grasse and Thomas J. White both in the class of 1849. De Grasse was the first African American to serve as a regimental surgeon in the field in the Union Army. In 1854, in recognition of his extraordinary abilities, de Grasse also became the first African American to be admitted to the Boston Medical Society. Among the African American students at the Medical School was Benjamin A. Bosemon Jr., who attended lectures in 1864. During the Civil War, Bosemon served as a surgeon in the Union Army, ending the Civil War in South Carolina. He went on to participate in the short-lived but remarkable Reconstruction experiment in biracial democracy, serving three terms in the South Carolina State House of Representatives.

Moving into the twentieth century, Bowdoin was also an important stopping point for many prominent figures in the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. came to campus in May 1964, speaking to an audience of more than a thousand. Later visitors included Bayard Rustin, Dr. King’s advisor and the primary organizer of the March on Washington, and Stokely Carmichael (also known as Kwame Ture), the leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and subsequent prime minister of the Black Panther Party.

In 1969, the Bowdoin faculty voted to establish the Africana Studies Program as a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the history, politics, culture, and experiences of people of African origin in Africa and the African diaspora. With the establishment of the program, the College hosted a range of prominent poets, novelists, artists, and political figures by inaugurating the John B. Russwurm Speakers' Series. Under its auspices, Africana Studies has hosted a broad range of writers and performers from writers such as Maya Angelou, Edwidge Danticat, Paule Marshall, Ntozake Shange, Derek Walcott, Sonia Sanchez and Angela Y. Davis to Sweet Honey in the Rock, Craig Wilder, Robert Levine and Nell Painter.

On March 9, 2021, Africana Studies shifted its status from Program to Department. The Department now holds four full-time faculty members as well as dozens of majors and minors.

For information concerning graduates of Africana Studies, please visit our alumni page.

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Images courtesy of the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, Bowdoin College.