Issue link: http://tcnj.uberflip.com/i/1500729
20 The College of New Jersey Magazine TCNJ. In the past five years, they've steadily increased the number of students who have declared it as their major. Now, with an introductory course, the department will feel more complete. "Our students can get a full program of study, not one that starts with just history, but also exam- ines what Black studies is," Adair says. "It will help us answer students' questions about the field early on and help them understand its activist beginnings." The department's impact in its 50 years can best be observed in its students and alumni. Jada Grisson '21 majored in African American studies and is now completing a master's degree in English at TCNJ with a focus on African American literature. She's had to over- come the stigma of her major — the idea that the course work is easier than other disciplines, or that it's just an additive. "I spent a lot of time thinking that my intellectual interests weren't meaningful, when in fact, they were," "I wanted to write into the gaps that existed in my own education," says Clint Smith, the New York Times best-selling author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, who spoke in Mayo Concert Hall in March. Dubbed "a person we need to hear from now," Smith was the first guest invited to campus for the Kathryn A. Foster Distinguished Visitor series, in honor of the African American studies department's 50th anniversary. He sat with Professor Michael Mitchell, and as he did in his book, spoke of how the story of slavery (especially in places with nuanced histories of it) is told in our country. One place Smith talks about is the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola prison, where 75% of the incarcerated men are Black and must work in fields — the same fields slaves were once forced to work — sometimes picking cotton or other crops. Smith describes his experience at the prison museum, the start of a guided tour for visitors, in How the Word Is Passed, excerpted here. Going places Author Clint Smith reckons with slavery's complicated story, one landmark at a time. African American studies' rocky road at TCNJ mirrors the turbulent path that's catapulted the AP course in the subject into America's hyperpolarized discourse. CALVIN GAVION Clint Smith