African studies in the United States were still in their infancy in 1958 when the National Defense Education Act was passed. One instructional program -- at Hartford Seminary -- had a long history. And numbers of anthropologists were notably active in field research on African topics by that date. But as compared with the venerable tradition of oriental studies, or even with pre-World War II area instruction and research on Latin America, the African field was only just opening up as a subject of concerted academic attention.

At the same time, it was clear that the postwar burgeoning of area studies programs had as much relevance to Africa as to Russia or India, and a few programs -- notably those at Northwestern and Boston -- had by this time displayed a serious intention of developing offerings of a scope comparable to those of the older fields. Indeed, the area approach had special pertinence for African studies, for with the exception of anthropology virtually none of the conventional departments inmost institutions included African specialists. The area approach was not an alternative to disciplinary modes of university organization, but rather a means of both focusing and reinforcing disciplinary competence with reference to a particular world region. The device helped to strengthen departments by reminding them of neglected fields and opportunities, and its corollary of multi-disciplinary emphasis helped to enable the social sciences and humanities to address themselves more effectively to the many contemporary scholarly problems lying on the periphery of individual disciplines. Thus, if East Asian or East European subjects of instruction and research could gain by the use of the area approach, the still more neglected African field was the more in need of such fortification. Moreover, African studies could, in the usual fashion of relative latecomers, avoid some of the pitfalls of the earliest area programs, e.g., needless tension between disciplinary and area interest or loyalty.

Under the auspices of the United States Department of State, The Ford Foundation, Georgetown University, and the African-American Institute, more than 75 scholars and other specialists convened at the Shoreham Hotel, Washington, D. C., from August 17 to 21, 1964, to exchange views on problems of political and social change in francophonic Africa. The program was organized and directed by Dr. William H. Lewis of Georgetown University. The first such conclave ever to be convened in the United States, it brought together more than 500 scholars, government officials, and diplomatic personnel from Africa, Western Europe, Canada, and the United States.

The basic purpose of this special program was to stimulate greater interest among American scholars and graduate students in the unfolding problems of francophonic Africa -- extending from Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia in the north to the Congo (Leopoldville) and the Malagasy Republic to the south. To this end, the sponsors established a four-week graduate Institute which preceded the Congress. Conducted at Georgetown University, the Institute brought together a faculty of leading African and American scholars, as well as a student body comprising Africans, Europeans, and Americans. The Institute offered a program of instruction in African history, problems of economic development, parameters of social change, West African politics, and nationalism in North and sub-Saharan Africa.

A small conference was held in New York on March 19 to 20, 1964, concerning the general position of the teaching of African Languages in the United States at the present moment.

The conference, called at the joint request of the National Defense Education Act Language and Area Centers and Columbia University's Institute of African Studies, was attended by the directors and teachers of African language of the major centers of African studies in the United States.

In the course of the two-day meeting the directors reported in some detail on the position of African language teaching in their respective universities and a number of clarifications of NDEA policy were presented by Mr. Donald Bigelow.

The question of a summer session on African languages was discussed at length and a variety of suggestions were offered for possible changes in the format of the existing summer session sponsored by NDEA. In this connection, a resolution was passed urging the establishment of a summer Institute of African Languages, to be located at a permanent site, and under the sponsorship of the African Studies Association.

The African Studies Association of the United Kingdom held its first Conference at the University of Birmingham from 14 to 17 September, 1964, when about a hundred members came together with a number of guests and observers, including representatives of the African Studies Association of the United States, the Africa-Studiecentrum of the Netherlands, the Scandinavian African Institute, and the German Afrika Gesellschaft. Most of those attending the Conference were accommodated at University House.

The Conference opened on the evening of 14 September with a speech of welcome by the Vice-Chancellor of Birmingham University, Sir Robert Aitken, and a Presidential Address by Dr. Margery Perham, C.B.E., President of the Association.