Vision Beyond Sight

Contents: About the Collection | About the About Page | Tech

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About the author

Dhakir Abdullah is a PhD candidate in the department of African American and African Diaspora Studies; he minors in sociololgy. His research focuses on the Black Studies Movement at IUB in the late 1960s and early 1970s and how that movement, in conjunction with the administrative efforts of Herman C. Hudson, led to the founding of the Black Studies department at Indiana University Bloomington. Dhakir is also a Master of Library Science student in the Luddy School where he specializes in digital humanties. He is also a 2023-24 HASTAC Fellow with the Institute of Digital Arts and Humanities and organzation that provided him with his first introduction to the intersections of the humanties with the digital sphere as a academic enterprise.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Dr. John Walsh for providing fervent instruction in how to become competent with these tools. I would like to thank Alex Wingate as well for the same reason, but also because on of her Metadata Application profiles (MAP) help be better format and Documentaton. Also, a big thanks to the IU Archives staff, the Lilly Library Staff for going above and beyond in helping me get closer to the completion of this project. Lastly, a big thank you to Dr. Gloria Howell for allowing me to utilize the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center Archive (in its early stages of being built) to acqurie sources I could not anywhere else.

About the Collection

This digital collection of materials as it stands is a launching pad to an eventual larger project which will seek to foreground history which chronicles Herman C. Hudson’s role as Vice Chancellor of Afro-American Affairs, specifically from the years 1970-1975, where he helped to create a unique and academically sound Black Studies department through administrative savvy and institution building. Particularly, he founded the department of African American, the Black Culture Center, and the African American Arts Institute between the years 1970-1975. Strategically he insured that all of the former institutions were linked in a mutually supporting “academic triumvirate’ that was deeply entrenched into the University’s structure and substantially resistant to academic dismantle. The evidence of the effectiveness of this triumvirate is made manifest by the fact that all of those institutions stand today, and all have celebrated approximately, and in the case of the department, beyond 50 years of existence.

On this background, at this time, this project seeks to provide a visual narrative of the ways in which Hudson became the first Vice Chancellor for Afro-American Affairs in 1970 while simultaneously becoming the founding chair of the then Afro-American Studies department. It is the author’s hope to preserve this important history through the digital sphere as an open educational resource which will make this history more accessible to those within and beyond the university walls. In providing this visual journey, the author places primary sources from different repositories in conversation with each other. For example, materials utilized were discovered at the Indiana University Archives, the Lilly Library, the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center Archives and more in an effort to provide a more robust story of the aforestated happenings

With that said however, there were also three key women who supported Hudson during the formative years of the deparment as he formed this academic triumvarate: Professors, Portia Maultsby,Irisa Rosa, Mellonee Burnim, and . These outstanding women would be the founding Directors/Professors of the African American Soul Revue,the African American Dance Company, and the African American Choral Ensemble respectively. Tap on the button below to here them recount that history and state the importance of those entities in the present moment.

Button to First Ladies of AAAI

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