From Nkrumah’s Black Star to the African Diaspora: Ghanaian Intellectual Activists and the Development of Black Studies in the Americas Bright Gyamfi In 1973, Dovi Afesi, a Ghanaian professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst), launched an effort to move the papers of W.E.B. Du Bois from the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences in Accra to Amherst. 1 Afesi thought this was important because the political and intellectual environ- ment of the United States at the time was more aligned with Du Bois’s vision of African diasporic unity and liberation than it was with Ghana. Indeed, Afesi was teaching in the Afro-American Studies Department at UMass Amherst, created in 1972, which was named after Du Bois. 2 The department was part Bright Gyamfi is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at Northwestern University, Ev- anston, IL (USA). I would like to thank Sean Hanretta, Barnor Hesse, Martha Biondi, David Schoenbrun, Kwasi Konadu, Sara Maza, Jean Allman, Elizabeth Schmidt, Nana Kobina Nketsia V, Azmar Williams, Nana Quashie, Robin Bates, Sherwin Bryant, Reginald Hildebrand, Jeffery Ahlman, Hermann Von- Hesse, Seyi Adedoyin, Betelhem Hailu, Esmeralda Kale, Judith Boateng, George Gyesaw, and guest editors Keisha N. Blain, and Quito Swan for their feedback and assistance on this article. 1. Dovi Afesi, curriculum vitae (1992), personal papers, Easthampton, MA. 2. UMass Amherst approved the establishment of the department in 1970, but it did not begin its operation until the fall of 1972; see https://www.umass.edu/afroam/sites/default/files/assets /afroam/deptapproved.pdf. The Journal of African American History, volume 106, number 4, fall 2021. © 2021 asalh. All rights reserved. Published by The University of Chicago Press for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. https://doi.org/10.1086/716492