A&T Professors Co-author Book on Africana Studies

Dr. Margaret Dwight Barrett

GREENSBORO - Two North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University professors have co-authored a book that brings an interdisciplinary approach and ideology to the study of the African experience within the Diaspora. The book was published by Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company.

Dr. Margaret Dwight Barrett, an associate professor of American, African, and African American history and Dr. Phillip Carey, a sociology professor, co-authored “The Diaspora: Introduction to Africana Studies.”
“The Diaspora: Introduction to Africana Studies,” provides examples of the hidden nuggets and missing pages of the African, Caribbean, and African American experience. The book introduces various contemporary topics and debatable issues and explains the plight and achievement of Diaspora African people. Extensive research, interpretations, and

documentation went into the development and publication of the global experience.

“This book is not intended to be comprehensive or definitive because it would take a lifetime to put into print his-story and her-story, but it’s unique in that the authors answered many rhetorical and nonverbal queries about the African Diaspora,” said Barrett, a former senior Fulbright lecturer and Schomburg scholar. “The writers searched for and exposed the silent and invisible voices.”

Carey adds, “Our discussion in the book commenced with an assessment of African history, culture, and heritage, via African descendants crossing the Atlantic and high seas, and closed with their involvement in social and literary liberating movements. It is not limited in scope, theory, or personalities.”

Throughout the book there are photographs of African art and artifacts that can be found in the University’s Mattye Reed African Heritage Gallery, which is housed in the Dudley Building. The university photographer Charles Watkins took the photographs. Jackie Outley, the niece of Barrett and a pharmacist student at the University of Maryland Medical School, created the cover.
Some chapters in the book were written by A&T faculty members. The

publication is now being utilized by A&T and numerous universities across the country including Jackson State University, Southern University in Baton Rouge, Cleveland State University, the Virgin Islands and the Bahamas. A second edition is scheduled for publication in 2004.
Contributors to the book are A&T professors Joyce G. Dickerson, Stephen Alston, Syrulwa I. Somah, Teresa Styles, Conchita Ndege, Willie F. Hooker, LeAnder Canady, Kathy Cousins-Cooper and former professor and chairman of the theater department, Samuel Hay.

Five percent of the funds raised from the sale of the book will be designated for the Dwight-Lewis Scholarship in the College of Arts and Sciences. The scholarship is named in honor of Lula and Benton Wright, Sr., the parents of Barrett and the late Edna Lewis, mother of Carey. The authors also dedicated the book to the late Rufus Jackie Outley, the nephew of Barrett as well as the students, faculty, staff, and administration at A&T.