Professor of Afro-American Studies and of African American Religious History Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham is a top scholar of African-American religious history and thought. She is an expert in feminist history and the author of a well-received book on the women's movement in the Black Baptist Church.

She is also the only Black woman tenured in the Faculty of Art and Sciences.

And for both reasons, students say they are elated by her recent appointment to the faculties of Harvard's Afro-American Studies department and Divinity School.

"Thrilled is totally an understatement," says concentrator Monica A. Coleman '95. "I am so happy that Evelyn Higginbotham is coming, because if there are no role model."

Student activism, including a recent Junior Parents Weekend protest, often focuses on the need for more professors of color.

Higginbotham's arrival is cited b both students and administrators as evidence of progress in building a diverse faculty.

"There is no evidence that Harvard as an institution had made it a priority to hire minority faculty until recently," says Cynthia D. Johnson '96 a religion concentrator.

"It is always good to change a situation which is obviously anachronistic, to say the least," says Joy P. Gorham '95, an Afro-American Studies and Social Studies concentrator.

Higginbotham herself says the burden of being the sole Black woman on the Faculty will not be too much to handle.

"I have always enjoyed the mentoring role," she says. "I make a conscious effort to be especially helpful to students, but I have to balance that with the need to get my own work done. If there is a tension in my life it's because I have always tended to spend a lot of time with students, and I realize that I need to balance that with my right to do my work."

But she also says she is somewhat concerned about being the sole Black women professor.

"My biggest concern about coming to Harvard is that the Afro-American Studies Department is in the process of building itself, so I'll have to deal with the basic demands of that fact in conjunction with being the only Black women professor," Higginbotham says.

Higginbotham and her new colleagues in Afro-American Studies say she is coming to Harvard to be a scholar, not to meet a quota.

"We wanted a historian and Evelyn is the best in her Field," says DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis Gates Jr., chair of the Afro-American Studies Department.

"Higginbotham's research is so relevant," Afro-American Studies concentrator Caryn S. Rivers '94 says. "It's fabulous to have that in the department in light of the religious debates emerging in the Black community."