"I and other progressive minded academics here in the late 1960s--like Professor Stuart Hughes and Professor Henry Rosovsky--recognized that activist pressures represented a major opportunity to open up the academic establishment to... Afro-American Studies."

Hall says he believes that the same factors that led to Afro-Am's troubled origins have not changed. "Inertia still prevails," Hall says. "These problems are complicated by the peculiar problems of the history department at Harvard, its inbred quality that self-selects from its own graduate school."

Hall says that the consistent weakness of the department is a function of the University's traditions of hiring rather than of purposeful scheming on the part of administrators. "There are people who feel that purposeful neglect led to the decline of the department. But I believe it could have happened otherwise. I admit it does look suspicious but I don't subscribe to the theory of an explicit conspiracy."

Administrators and concentrators alike say that last week's appointment of Duke's Henry Louis Gates, Jr.--one of the nation's preeminent Afro-Am scholars--may herald a new era for the department. If the administration's optimistic assessment is correct, Gates stands at the core of a new generation of Afro-Am scholars, many of whom they hope to attract to Harvard.

Administrators acknowledge that Gates's appointment places the Afro-Am department at a crucial juncture. But student supporters of Afro-Am point to the department's troubled roots as proof that such difficult challenges will need to be addressed both persistently and passionately.

The appointment of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. promises a new future for Afro-Am. But the challenge of escaping the struggles of the past is causing some, including a former student activist, to look back to...