Atlanta University, Clark College & CAU: An Exceptional History
Knowles Hall, 1884
The Dr. Mack Henry Jones Department of Political Science at Clark Atlanta University is a product of several historic events. Atlanta University’s (AU) Political Science Department had been dedicated to graduate education and, since its formation in 1948, focused on developing a cadre of Black political scientists who would go forth from Atlanta with the mission of developing a vision of political science oriented to promoting the development of Black people and persons and communities of color in the United States and around the world. In 1971, the Political Science Department at AU added a Ph.D. program to its existing M.A. program. This along with the consolidation of Atlanta University and Clark College in 1988, establishing Clark Atlanta University, produced a unique space for the study of political science. Currently, the Dr. Mack Henry Jones Department of Political Science is one of only two programs among Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) that offer the Ph.D. M.A. and the B.A.degrees in political science.
Graduate Study in Political Science at Atlanta University
Under the leadership of Drs. Samuel DuBois Cook, Mack Henry Jones, Alex Willingham, Shelby Lewis, Hanes Walton, Robert Holmes, Roy Kendrix and William Boone, Atlanta University’s Political Science Department became one of the centers of development of Black-oriented political science from the 1940s to the 1980s, and played a major role in transforming the discipline of political science. As such, AU played a prominent role in opening the discipline to new perspectives and new ideas both through the Department’s curriculum itself and by the promotion of the concept of a Black political science through the Department’s external impact such as the founding of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists in 1970. The doctoral program at AU was established with and supported by a Ford Foundation grant in 1971. Since then, the Department has been committed to a mission and vision that deliberately seeks to inject a Black perspective into the mainstream of political science at the local, national, and international levels.
The Political Science Program at Clark College
The tradition of the undergraduate political science program in the Clark College Social Science Department was reborn in the current Department’s commitment to promoting the personal and intellectual development of the student consonant with the principles enunciated in our mission. At the undergraduate level, the curriculum focuses on each of the major areas of political science study, with emphasis on American government, African politics, comparative politics, international relations, political theory, urban politics, and the Black political experience.
The "Atlanta School" of Black Political Science: A Unique Tradition
Proceeding from this history and tradition, the current graduate program in the Department mirrors AU’s focus on the politics of the historically disadvantaged in the United States and abroad, particularly on African-Americans; the urban setting; and on continental Africa, the Caribbean, and the African Diaspora. With this focus, the Department would commit itself to both localized Black political manifestations and to the politics of Pan-Africanism at the global level. The justification for a political science department (or any other program) beginning from this orientation rests on the fact that the Black condition, historically and contemporarily, domestically and globally, has been and continues to be significantly different from other groups. Consequently, a political science, which facilitates the anticipation and control functions for Blacks struggling for equal status, must perforce be different from that which serves the broader society and which is overly concentrated with maintaining a stable commonwealth. The result is a unique department oriented towards a rigorous commitment to both this critical perspective and to a curriculum encompassing the traditional scope, methods and subfields of the discipline.
