The Atlanta School of Black Political Science: An Oral History
Knowles Hall, Circa 1884
Dr. Jewel Prestage, Dr. Samuel DuBois Cook & a New Doctoral Program
Pioneering political scientist, Dr. Jewel Lamar Prestage (pictured above), played an important role in the establishment of the Doctoral Program in Political Science at Atlanta University. Considered by many to be the "mother of Black political science," Dr. Prestage was the first Black woman to earn the doctoral degree in political science in the United States. In 1971, Dr. Prestage, along with Dr. Samuel DuBois Cook, who previously served as Chair of Political Science at Atlanta University and President of Dillard University, collaborated in the establishment of a new and unique doctoral program in political science at Atlanta University, becoming one of only two such programs at HBCUs.
The story of the vision and founding of our doctoral program is captured in the oral history audio interviews featured below. Interviews were recorded by Dr. Jewel Prestage and Dr. Twiley Barker as a part of the APSA/Pi Sigma Alpha: African American Political Scientists Oral History Project. The collection is preserved by the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History located in the University of Kentucky Libraries.
Atlanta University Political Science Oral History Interviews
The DuBoisian Tradition
Dr. Joseph Silver, then CAU Provost, describes how the graduate program created at CAU was grounded in W.E.B. Du Bois’s “Black paradigm.” “The varied roles Du Bois assumed throughout his life as a scholar, educator, agitator, provocateur, and nation builder” still serves as a philosophical and pedagogical model for the Dr. Mack Henry Jones Department of Political Science.
