Students and alumni are demanding that St. Louis University not eliminate or downsize its African American Studies department, just five years after its creation. The university had put the department under review in September, along with 10 other arts and sciences majors.
Over 150 students, staff, faculty and alumni gathered on campus Monday night for an African American Studies town hall and teach-in to affirm the importance of the department's existence and to warn university leaders that community members and students are activating accordingly.
The threat to dismantle African American Studies sends a clear message to the community and students that Black life is not valuable to St. Louis University, said CJ Summers, a junior African American Studies major.
"This principle of displacement is being performed by SLU right now when they have African American Studies under review, when they're trying to displace our professors from the suite that we have within the African American Studies office, when we see that they may try to displace students into other majors and force us to study other things," Summers said. "I want to study African American Studies."
Monday night's teach-in was standing room only as a panel of students and alumni discussed how SLU's African American Studies department and major changed their lives for the better. The panel also encouraged other concerned students, faculty and staff to continue to push back against the university as it moves forward with the department's review.
Once students learned of the university's call to review its African American Studies department, they began holding informational meetings, and the university's Society of African American Studies began posting social media messages about the threat to dismantle it. They called on the community and students to rally around the department to help save it. They also created a petition, which has garnered over 2,500 signatures, calling on the university to uphold its Jesuit mission and not destroy or restructure its African American Studies department. The university cites budget shortfalls for program and department reviews, which is also being conducted for nearly 30 programs across the university. The African American Studies department's fate is to be decided by the end of the year.
The department's review could examine a number of measures, such as graduation rates, the number of majors and minors and class enrollment numbers.
St. Louis University's African American Studies department teaches critical thinking and helps students navigate a hostile world; it is not the dead weight of the university, said Christopher Tinson, chair of the African American Studies department.
"A healthy Black Studies or African American Studies department, wherever they exist, have an impact on the general well-being and health of the faculty of color at that university," Tinson said. "If we are concerned about retention, if we are concerned about the promotion and tenure and just feeling of belonging at universities, that often relies on a healthy African American Studies department."
Isaiah Banks, a mechanical engineering junior, said the department is more than just an academic division of the school; it is a second home for some students.
"Once I found out about it [the department], and once I started coming into the office more, and once I started meeting all the faculty and the students within the office, I felt a lot more like I belonged on campus," Banks said. "I felt like I really created a family within the Black community at SLU, which I did not have before I came into the [African American Studies] office."
Many students said the university does not do a good job of exposing students to what the African American Studies department offers academically.
"A lot of the STEM and engineering majors know that our department is very secluded from the African American Studies department as a whole … and coming to SLU as a freshman, we're not really aware of all of the opportunities that are on this side of campus because we're on the other side of campus pretty much all day.
"We aren't really exposed to these things unless someone tells us to come to this side of campus, and a lot of the time our academic advisers do not really tell us about these opportunities," said Banks, who is also the student senator for SLU's chapter of National Society of Black Engineers.
Students said if it were not for conversations with friends, meetings with African American Studies faculty members or talking with Black faculty with ties to the department, they could have gone their entire college careers without knowing about the department.
Since the federal government's push to rid colleges and universities of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, many universities that offer courses on African Americans and their history have either quietly eliminated them, drastically cut department funding or have placed them under review. St. Louis Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier told the crowd that the national efforts to erase Black history concerned her, so she spoke with SLU's leadership about their position on African American Studies.
"As soon as I found out that the department was under review, I was actually shocked because just a few months prior, I had been told by leadership that African American Studies or Women and Gender Studies were some departments that were not on the table for consideration of being cut; they were looked at as being essential to the university fulfilling its Jesuit mission of higher good, greater truth," Sonnier said.
While at the university, Sonnier majored in African American Studies. She told the crowd that she would not be an elected official or an activist without the department's guidance.
"I remember very distinctly at the time when I was here, similar to just first learning about Black movements, Black struggle, really learning that a lot of my experiences were not unique," she said. "Many of the things that I was advocating for and fighting for and felt strongly for, so too did the class before me, so too did the class 10 years before me, so too did people 20 years before me, so too did my ancestors before we were even allowed to be admitted to the institution, even though we built it."
Descendants of the enslaved people who built St. Louis University were also among the crowd. Students lifted their stories, as did those families in the former Mill Creek Valley community, who were forced to leave their homes in the mid-to-late 1900s to make room for parts of St. Louis University. Students and alumni brought their existence to the forefront, so leadership can remember that Black people have been erased from the university's history before and that they do not want it to continue.
Robin Proudie, the executive director of Descendants of the St. Louis University Enslaved, told engaged students and faculty that the nearly 200 known ancestors and their descendants are foundational to the university and should be treated as such.
"It's two communities central to the founding of this university: the Jesuits — the Society of Jesus — who have core curriculum classes … but there's another community, my ancestors and the Black community to which SLU sits on, who is also foundational," said Proudie, a junior. "How can you be built off the backs of Black people, and then don't want to have a place or the academic arm to where you're going to teach about that Black experience."
Black Studies history
African American students have been at the center of the push for change from SLU's leadership to advance their academic freedom and equality on campus. Over the past five decades, they have been demanding the university step up and provide racial and economic equity for Black students, faculty and staff.
The nation's first Black Studies department was created at San Francisco State University in 1968. In 1973, Black veterans organized a student sit-in on SLU's campus and demanded an academic program be offered that reflected the Black experience. Through the protest, students gained an institute that offered a certificate program in which students could develop their own major. The university finally declared African American Studies a major in 2010.
It was not until 2021 that the university accelerated the approval for the program to become a department. It was because of the students' demands for racial and economic equity in October 2020 after police killed George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. However, students had been pushing for the department since 2014 after the police killings of Michael Brown Jr. and VonDerrit Myers Jr. Students occupied campus and demanded leaders to make the school more equitable for Black students, staff and faculty. The occupation produced the Clock Tower Accords. The first accord was to increase the African American Studies program's budget.
Alumni say the strenuous efforts they have made over the decades to bolster the African American Studies department and advance racial equity on campus should be enough for SLU's leadership to see the department's importance.
"I have four degrees from the school (SLU), and the other degrees are worthless if it was not for the African American Studies degree, because it is a centering degree that aims you so that you can use your superpowers in the most appropriate of ways," said SLU alumnus Etefia Umana.
Umana, who attended the university in the 1980s and '90s, said that if the university is serious about its commitment to the Jesuit mission, it will recognize that the establishment and longevity of the African American Studies department are central to that mission.
"It's all about what the institution values. I'm assuming that theology and philosophy don't have a ton of majors, not pulling in a ton of money, probably don't even have the most renowned scholars in their field, but they wouldn't dare touch that pillar because it's part of the Jesuit curriculum," he said. "There's a value there that they see above and beyond the fiscal resource that it brings to the institution."
Students said they are willing to work with leadership to find ways to better support the department and attract more students without disrupting it or students' academic achievement.
Ending the African American Studies department or even downsizing it is not negotiable, said Sonnier.
"If St. Louis University is to dismantle or decline African American Studies, you are doing something that's to the antithesis of your mission. All departments are important, but only so many groups' literal blood, sweat and enslavement aided to the building of the institution," she said. "It should be hands off African American Studies if the institution is to acknowledge its sin … if it's to be honest about who built this campus, if to be honest about who had to be displaced in order for the campus to further be built and expanded, then it should honor African American Studies."
Copyright 2026 St. Louis Public Radio
