UNTIL LAST WEEK, the future of Harvard's Afro-American Studies department looked bleak. The department had only one full-time professor--and he was on leave. Harvard had made three recent tenure offers to scholars in the field--and all three had turned Harvard down.

But after striking out last spring, Harvard connected for a grand slam last Thursday when Duke's Henry Louis Gates, Jr., accepted a lifetime post at the University. This was no two-bit pickup--Gates is widely considered the top Afro-Am scholar the nation has to offer. If anyone can breathe new life into the dwindling department, Gates can.

Harvard lured this intellectual luminary to Cambridge by offering him the chairmanship of the Afro-Am Department, the directorship of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute and an undoubtedly substantial salary. Now the administration must prove it can attract lesser-known junior faculty in the field. Two professors do not a department make, even if one of them is among the best in the business. And Harvard has a responsibility to develop younger scholars in the field--not merely to raid the upper echelons of other universities' faculties.

However, the Harvard administration has demonstrated its good faith commitment to resurrecting this long-neglected department. In addition to the Gates coup, Harvard has offers outstanding to two scholars who could become the only junior professors in the Afro-Am department. After Gates agreed to head north, Acting Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky promised that Harvard would continue to press for improvements in Afro-Am: "One appointment is not the end of the story," he vowed.

The drive to raise Afro-Am from the ashes is far from over. But it has clearly begun.