The BAM I strike was one of the most successful protests in campus history as it made a great impact on university policy. On April 1, 1970, the University President, Robbin Fleming announced an agreement with BAM that brought an end to the 18-day strike. In response to BAM’s demands, President Fleming agreed to increase Black student enrollment in the University to 10% by the beginning of the 1973-1974 school year and to establish the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies (CAAS) as proposed by the BAM committee led by Psychology graduate student J. Frank Yates. According to the BAM proposal, CAAS was to be an interdisciplinary program of research, instruction, and community outreach whose intellectual mission would focus on the diverse cultures, experiences and societies of the African continent and diaspora. In 1995, CAAS expanded its mission by adopting a tripartite structure that included Caribbean Studies to African American and African Studies on the expectation that, “the study of Africa, Afroamerica, and the Caribbean within a single intellectual framework represented the future direction of Black Studies.” This “diasporic perspective” has defined the framework for study and teaching conducted by CAAS faculty throughout the center’s history. CAAS was thus one of the first programs in the country to combine African Studies with African American and African Diasporic Studies. Throughout its fifty-year history, the Center, which became a full-fledged academic department in 2011, has sought to meet the following objectives:
- Provide undergraduate, graduate, & community educational experience in African, African-American and African Diasporic history as well as general issues of race relations in the United States and beyond
- Expand knowledge & understanding in the areas mentioned above through coordinated and systematic research
- Provide direct services to persons and groups who can affect the radical changes needed for a more racially equitable social order in the United States and across Africa and the African Diaspora
