SAGE Publishing will endow a $100,000 Africology and African American Studies' graduate research scholarship to Temple University’s College of Liberal Arts. Known as the SAGE Asante Award, the scholarship will honor Journal of Black Studies’ (JBS) 50 years shaping the scholarly discourse on the Black experience. 

The idea of JBS was born in 1968 when a young academic named Molefi Kete Asante approached SAGE founder Sara Miller McCune with an idea for a journal that would respond to the Black studies movement as well as a public call for equality, justice, and nonviolence. At the time there was no comparable journal, and Sara saw this new publication as a vital addition to social science scholarship. The first full volume was completed in 1971. 

“What a wonderful 50 years it has been working with Sara, Blaise, JBS, and the SAGE Family!” says Dr. Asante. “We forged new territories, brought to the world new avenues for inquiry, supported the novices in the field, established the intellectual stars who made a difference, gave younger scholars a platform for discourse and encouraged the quality promotions of our authors. I have not met any greater friends or accomplices in excellence than the SAGE editors and staff I have known over the past 50 years. Onward!”

Asante would go on to push Africology research forward at Temple’s College of Liberal Arts, joining their faculty as Chair of the Department of African American Studies in 1984 and starting the nation’s first doctoral program in African American studies there in 1988. The journal and the Temple program solidified a foundation for the field leading to the creation of more than 350 U.S. degree programs, including 17 doctoral programs. The SAGE Asante Award will help push Africology research forward in the future. 

“The SAGE Asante Award will become a standard by which we evaluate graduate student scholarship in the discipline of Africology,” says Dr. Asante. “SAGE’s audacious move in this direction captures the journal’s visionary spirit.”

“For SAGE, this is representative of continuing support in the field of Black studies, but also as a way to commemorate and celebrate Molefi Asante’s amazing commitment to the field,” says SAGE Publishing CEO Blaise Simqu. “Dr. Asante did change the world with the Journal of Black Studies, and SAGE was his partner. It’s important to us, particularly given the injustices and challenges of race spotlighted in America right now, to commemorate that as we approach the twilight of Dr. Asante’s career.”

A new SAGE site honoring the work of Dr. Asante JBS shares:

• Video messages from leading scholars in the field

• Free-to-read research articles from the journal that have been pivotal in the history of JBS, including a virtual, thematic editor's selection of 11 of the most notable articles published in the journal's first 50 years on the topics of policing, injustice, and inequity

• A Social Science Bites podcast interview with Dr. Asante on centering African people in their own stories

• A history of the genesis of the journal, which has been shaped by such world-changing events as the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 and the murder of George Floyd and many others, leading to a resurgence of Black Lives Matter in recent years and the journal’s role as the scholarly voice of activism.

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About SAGE Publishing  

SAGE is a global academic publisher of books, journals, and a growing suite of library products and services.   

Driven by the belief that social and behavioral science has the power to improve society, we focus on publishing impactful research and enabling robust research methodology. We produce high quality educational resources that support instructors to prepare the citizens, policymakers, educators, and researchers of the future. We publish more than 1,000 journals and 900 new books globally each year, as well as library products and services that include archives, data, case studies, and video. SAGE is majority owned by our founder, Sara Miller McCune, and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company’s continued independence.