Ebony Accents in the Ivory Tower.

The only two historically black university presses in the U.S. have aggressive plans despite tough times for general academic presses

While academic books do not often make best-seller lists, they are the titles that push the intellectual envelope and challenge what we know or believe about the world. Their ideas resonate in scholarly circles and eventually penetrate the general media. University presses have provided initial exposure to leading academic stars such as Cornel West, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and historian Darlene Clark Hine.

Indeed university presses have been the primary incubators for much of the important scholarship and research by and about African Americans. The 1970s boom in black studies encouraged major presses at predominantly white universities to publish a wealth of course materials. And in 1972, Howard University became the first historically black institution to launch an academic press to serve this niche. (Charles F. Harris, later to make his mark in commercial publishing when he founded Amistad Press, was Howard University Press's first director and led it for 15 years.) But interest in African American studies declined in the 1980s only to be renewed in the 1990s. But despite the fact that the financial year ending in June 2001 has been reported to be the worst in recent memory for university press publishing in general, African-American studies titles are expected to remain strong sellers in the foreseeable future.

Consequently, although Howard University Press has experienced a hiatus in recent years under an interim director, it is reviving and relaunching its publications program under a recently appointed and energetic new permanent director, D. Kamili Anderson. And in the last two years another leading black campus, Clark Atlanta University, has created a new press from the ground up with plans for a gradually expanding list.

One of the trend-watchers for academic presses overall is Peter Givler, executive director of the Association of American University Presses (AAUP), which represents 119 member/publishers. "Our members have done a very strong job in publishing books about the whole range of African American studies," Givler says. "I started in textbook publishing in the early 1970s, when there was a kind of boom in African American studies departments, and many commercial publishers jumped in with textbooks. Then the enrollments began to sag in those courses, and most of the commercial publishers pulled out. The university presses, however, have continued right on through market ups and downs."

Givler cites the buzz on a controversial work like Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985) by Martin Bernal (Rutgers University Press, 1989) as a early marker of reviving broader interest in African American titles during the `90s.

Among recent African American books generating buzz in the academic world, Givler cites plans by the University of Missouri Press for the sixteen-volume Collected Works of Langston Hughes, a series begun in the spring of 2000. He also points to The Harvard Guide to African-American History by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (editor), et. al.; and Ira Berlin's Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, both from Harvard University Press.

University presses turn out about 700 scholarly journals, and between 9,000 to 10,000 books per year, or ten percent of the books published in the United States annually. According to AAUP, their combined gross sales adds up to $400 million. The AAUP has received a grant from the Mellon Foundation to work with Fordham University's Graduate School of Business on a study of issues facing their presses, including a survey of titles and categories being published. One question the AAUP hopes the study will answer is to better measure recent university press book output in various categories including African-American studies and general literary fiction.

The Black Campus Presses

Most University presses produce books that are largely read by other academics, often for adoption as textbooks. They are usually printed in small batches--editions of a few thousand copies, not the millions that best-sellers or even commercially published, general textbooks may yield. The presses themselves are nonprofit entities, heavily subsidized by their universities.

Strong financial backing from their respective universities is the main reason Howard University Press is able to start up again after years of limited operation, and Clark Atlanta's operation could begin from scratch.

D. Kamili Anderson, the new director of the Howard University Press, took over in December 2000, after the death of its previous director, Ed Gordon. Only a handful of books have been produced in recent years through Gordon's illness and death. "Our future will be about starting over and rebuilding'" said Anderson.

"Back in the 1970s, when Howard University Press was first established, the idea of scholarly presses seriously focussing on a list of books about issues that affect black people and other minorities was not a widely subscribed idea. We felt that it was important to put ourselves out there in the scholarly realm."

Over the years, Howard has published 130 books and continues to sell many of them, according to Adrienne Mallard, former marketing director, who functioned as interim director of the press before moving over to the bookstore operation.

"We have lost our niche," explained Anderson. "Other presses actively seek to acquire books by African American scholars and other scholars who are addressing the three C's--the conditions, concerns and contributions of African Americans. We are not in a position to aggressively do that and we need to be. The mainstream press has opened up to some extent; I'm not saying it is as open as it needs to be, but it has opened up. The opportunities for scholars of color and for people who address issues that interest and affect us have expanded.

"We need to renew our commitment to present books that address the breadth of issues that affect people of color around the world, not just in the United States, and also publish books on those issues with depth that other presses might not be prepared to do," Anderson said. "That's the historical legacy of the press."

Clark Atlanta University first approved plans for a new press in 1996 and obtained funding for it in 1998. Its debut publication was Freedom's Odyssey: African American History Essays from Phylon, edited by Alexa Benson Henderson and Janice Sumler-Edmond, a collection of scholarly work first published in Phylon: A Review of Race and Culture, founded by W.E.B. Du Bois in 1939 at Atlanta University. It has also published The Craft of Thinking: Logic, Scientific Method and the Pursuit of Truth by Ralph D. Ellis and Anibal Bueno, a textbook that has already been adopted for use in several universities.

"Phylon had started here. One of the things we want to [do is] ... publish scholarly and other works from this university," says Bob Holmes, managing editor of the Clark Atlanta University Press and a member of the editorial board. (Holmes is also a professor of political science at Clark Atlanta and director of the Southern Center for Studies in Public Policy.) Charles Duncan, the editor of Clark Atlanta University Press, adds that its mission will be to encourage multicultural, not just black scholarship. One of the next publications will be a book of six classic Chinese plays with an introduction by one of the University's professors, Dr. Quin May. Clark Atlanta plans to publish about four books a year, increasing to ten within five years.

Upcoming books include a biography of Judge Horace T. Ward, a leader in the desegregation of the University of Georgia, a reprint of Charles W. Chesnutt's biography of Frederick Douglass, and an autobiography of Dr. Samuel Nabrit, a 97-year-old unsung hero in education. An African-centered text for teaching French is presently under discussion.

One of Clark Atlanta Press' missions is to encourage emerging scholars. "There ought to be more presses that publish good books," says Duncan. "We are putting our oar in the water to make that happen."

Black Books From Other University Presses

Presses at other universities have had their transitions, too, but are renewing commitments to African American studies. Joan Catapano, associate director and editor-in-chief of the University of Illinois Press recalls, "I was a graduate student in the 1970s, so I was aware of all this black studies scholarship, especially as it grew out of all the social ferment on campuses. Then it seemed in the '80s that there wasn't anything happening. I was surprised by this, and I thought we really should be doing something." As a new acquisitions editor at Indiana, she was not sure at first how to address the gap. Eventually, at a conference she met the scholar Darlene Clark Hine, who has written or contributed to scores of books on black history. They later collaborated with David Barry Gaspar and John McCluskey on Blacks in the Diaspora, a series on African American studies.

Catapano says that she was drawn to Illinois because of its reputation for having had one of the first and largest African American studies list. In 1971, it began the series Blacks in the New World, edited by August Meier and then press director Richard Wentworth, now retired. The series eventually produced many titles that are still selling. Catapano is planning a new series, yet untitled, with Hine and others with whom she worked on the Indiana series. "We plan to look at who is doing interesting work and to develop books with young scholars," she says. "We are more concerned with quality than quantity."

The Illinois press also helped to reintroduce Zora Neale Hurston to the world about twenty years ago by buying the reprint rights and republishing her fiction for a number of years. The work sold well enough that a commercial publisher eventually took back the rights, Catapano says.

New Black Studies Trends

The nature of black-interest scholarship that university presses publish has changed over the years, said Ann-Marie Anderson, assistant director and marketing director for Temple University Press in a Philadelphia. "I'd say there were three periods: In the 1970s, there was history; in the 1980s, literature, music and theology--the period of Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates Jr.; and then, in the 1990s, the heavy cultural stuff--multiculturalism, [the deconstruction of] whiteness, critical race theory." Some scholars are calling this the era of "white studies," she continued. "It's an outgrowth of black studies.

"Now we're moving into mixed race" observes Temple's Anderson. "Next February we will publish More Than Black: Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order, by G. Reginald Daniel." Of course, specifically black-interest titles continue to be a staple at Temple. One that Ann-Marie Anderson is especially excited about is The Black Female Body: A Photographic History by MacArthur "genius award" recipient Deborah Willis (see BIBR, July/August 2000 and September/October 2000 issues) and Carla Williams, to be published this fall.

Ann-Marie Anderson agrees that competition for African American titles has grown. "Commercial publishers have seen that blacks buy books. So, the pool of what university presses can publish is smaller. Now the authors are going to the major houses," she said. "Now the competition is real thick and when you don't have African American editors who have contacts, you get the last of the bunch or you get the very new people."

D. Kamili Anderson of Howard says, "We need acquisition editors. Their job is to look at what our needs are, and go out and engage in discussions and negotiations with authors to get their work. You can't fault scholars for going into the avenues most able to actually bring their works to fruition. As a historically black institution, we need to be just as capable and just as committed to acquiring those manuscripts as other presses--probably even more so."

Climbing the Ivy-Covered Walls

Black editors, marketers and managers are gaining a foothold in the academic publishing world, and the presses are actively seeking African American talent. An AAUP survey found that of the 2,007 people employed by 64 university presses responding for the year 2000, 11 percent were of minority groups and 66 percent were women. The organization's diversity committee has undertaken a number of projects to attract people from varied backgrounds.

Among the African American professionals who are making a career of university book publishing:

Shana Foster, assistant director and director of advertising and sales, University of Georgia Press:

"The challenge as an African American in publishing is that this is a wide open field, and it's a good field to be in. I love the books, and because I am a people person, I love working with the authors and I love visiting bookstores and actually selling and pitching our books."

Alison Reeves, director of marketing and sales, Wayne State University Press:

"I just love books and love being involved in a scholarly community--being at a university, dealing with professors and important subject matter that is making a difference in the lives of students and scholars as well as general readers."

Ann-Marie Anderson, marketing director and assistant director, Temple University Press:

"Every new book introduces me to a new perspective, a new world. I am always fascinated by someone who can keep a focus on something for 300 pages or so and pull out every little detail. I admire people who have the time and wherewithal to do it for me. Fifteen, twenty years later, I am still as enthralled by that as ever."

D. Kamili Anderson, director, Howard University Press:

"The first day I stepped into Howard University Press I knew that was what I really wanted to do. What I really enjoy is the opportunities you have to address ideas and to bring ideas into reality. That's what books are--a lasting artifact, a lasting representation of your ideas. I think books have power and meaning."

Raphael Allen, acquisitions editor, Duke University Press:

"Good university publishers can function as an outrigger by helping to keep something afloat that might not have found its way into the literature otherwise. Being an editor is one way to contribute to that. I'm taking a chance that what I send through the pipeline is going to matter to someone three and four years from now. Publishing offers some alternative ways of being an intellectual."

Angela Dodson is a BIBR contributing editor. In this issue she reports on the challenge of relaunching Howard University Press and growing the fledgling Clark Atlanta University Press--the nation's only two academic houses run by historically black universities--following the worst financial year for all university presses in some time. See page 66.