Stanford's Black Community Services Center to honor St. Clair Drake

The legacy of the late St. Clair Drake, one of the nation's foremost scholars of the African diaspora and the first chair of the Program in African and African American Studies at Stanford, will be honored with a panel discussion at 2 p.m. Friday, Oct. 21, at the Stanford Humanities Center. The event is sponsored by the Black Community Services Center (BCSC).

Drake, who was a professor in Stanford's Anthropology Department from 1969 until 1976, also will be inducted into the Alumni Hall of Fame at 4 p.m. that day in McCaw Hall at the Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center. The events are part of the university's Reunion Homecoming Weekend.

The panel discussion, titled "St. Clair Drake: Scholar, Mentor, Friend," will be moderated by Charles Ogletree, the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard University and a Stanford alumnus. President Emeritus Richard W. Lyman will give opening remarks.

Panelists will include Ronald Bailey, professor of African American studies and history at Northeastern University; Lawrence Bobo, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor and director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and chair of the Program in African and African American Studies at Stanford; and Aguibou Yansane, professor of international relations and of African and Africana studies and director of the African Area Studies Program at San Francisco State University.

Drake's children, Sandra, associate professor emerita of English at Stanford, and Karl, a research associate at Vassar College, will give closing remarks.

St. Clair Drake, who died in 1990, was renowned for his research on African people in Africa and other parts of the world, including the American South, the urban American North, the Caribbean and Wales. He taught at Roosevelt University in Chicago and the University of Ghana before joining the Stanford faculty. His books include Black Metropolis, published in 1945, and Black Folk Here and There, a two-volume work published in 1987 and 1990.

At 6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 22, the BCSC will hold an informal groundbreaking ceremony for the renovated and expanded facility. The project will include renovation of the existing building at 418 Santa Teresa St. and the construction of a new 2,500-square-foot building and deck that will be located next door.

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