Sara Lennox Black German Studies Endowment

Please join us with a contribution of any size in support of the UMass endowment in Black German Studies, named in honor of Professor Emerita Sara Lennox. The purpose of the fund is to sustain Black German Studies at the University, including undergraduate or graduate student support, research, and special events as well as to expand transnational and transcultural connections in Black German and Black Diaspora Studies and further the growth of Black German Studies in its global context.

From left, PhD student Kevina King, Vice President of the Black German Heritage and Research Association, and Sara Lennox

Black German Studies at UMass Amherst is based in the program of German and Scandinavian Studies. Its long and rich history builds on the University's wider dedication to African American and African Diaspora Studies, such as represented in the distinguished W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies and the W. E. B. Du Bois Center. Du Bois himself, a native of Great Barrington MA, studied in Germany as a young man and received an honorary doctorate from Berlin's Humboldt University in 1958.

The Sara Lennox Endowment for Black German Studies was created in 2023 by Dean Barbara Krauthamer in collaboration with Professor Emerita Sara Lennox and Professor Emeritus Barton Byg. Professor Emerita Sara Lennox has been a key figure for decades in establishing the field of Black German Studies in the U.S. and internationally. At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, she was involved in the landmark publication Showing our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out (1991) organized the pathbreaking conference at the University in 2006, “Remapping Black Germany: New Perspectives on Afro-German History, Politics, and Culture,” and edited the resulting book of the same title (also UMass Press).

In addition to advising and mentoring PhD candidates and scholars of Black German Studies at UMass and elsewhere, Sara Lennox has been a leader in making Black German Studies a prominent focus of the German Studies Association (of which she was president from 2007 to 2008) and of the Coalition of Women in German. She has been from the outset a close advisor to the Black German Heritage and Research Association and secured grant support for international research on Black German and Black European topics from both the Humboldt and Volkswagen Foundations. Professor Lennox also served as director of the UMass program in Social Thought and Political Economy (STPEC), from 1981 to 2012. 

* Image credit for the main image at the top of this page: "Brother Beethoven 08C02," a painting by Hampshire College Professor of Art Daniel Kojo Schrade. *