Dr. David A. Canton accepted the position of director of the African American studies program at the University of Florida.Photo courtesy of David Canton.
Two years in, Canton is preparing a proposal that outlines the reasons for making African American studies a department, and the benefit it would bring to the university, to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in which it is situated, and to the community. The college’s dean, Dr. David E. Richardson, will review the proposal and give comments and suggestions. There will be a university meeting in January to review the proposal.
“We were very fortunate to find someone with that kind of ambition and interest in building as David Canton,” says Richardson. “He saw that he had an opportunity to do something that he really wanted to do … take it from a program status to a department status, which represented a significant commitment.”
UF’s African American studies program was started in 1969. In the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., there were protests on campus.
“Students organized Black student unions demanding more African American studies courses, Black faculty and staff,” says Canton. “The campus movement helped open the space for Black studies, and Black studies as a discipline in return would provide the curriculum that looks at the African American perspective. Also, conducting programs in the community. These are still things that the African American studies program is doing in 2022.”
There had been previous conversations about transitioning the program to a department, but those had not moved forward. In 2020, that plan became concrete, and the search was on to find a director who could do that.
A graduate of Morehouse College, Canton earned a master’s degree in Black studies at The Ohio State University and a doctorate in history at Temple University. He joined the faculty of Connecticut College in 2003, and was an associate professor of history, director of the African American studies program as well as interim dean of institutional equity and inclusion, chair of the history department and director of the Center of the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity. He is the author of Raymond Pace Alexander: A New Negro Lawyer Fights for Civil Rights in Philadelphia. He is working on a biography, Lawrence Dunbar Reddick: Activist/Historian.
