The Afro-American Society was founded in 1967 by 30 Mount Holyoke students to address the struggles of Mount Holyoke women within the Black diaspora. Founding members hoped it would serve many purposes – as a discussion group, an educational group, a forum to air problems, and to serve as a political pressure group.
The group was renamed the African-American Association in 1976 and in 1980 became the Association of Pan-African Unity (APAU), open to all Black and Latinx students.
Since its beginnings over 50 years ago, this group has continued to serve its original mission, being involved in events, education, and recruitment within and beyond the Mount Holyoke community. They have hosted cultural weekends, dinners, gospel Sundays, Black alumnae conferences, lectures, recruitment conferences, a Black parents weekend, graduation events, faculty teas, and social events.
“Afro-Am is more than just official representation, for the sisters, Afro-Am is a support structure, a link “back-home,” a line of communication to each other, and to our people in the neighboring cities – Holyoke and Springfield. It is for real – it is the US.” ‘It’s the Black Experience at Mount Holyoke and we want and need you, sister’, Gloria Maxwell ‘72, July 28, 1971.
“The Afro-American Society immediately gratifies the personal needs of the black student through a process of communion. By activating one’s blackness the Afro-American Society reflects Mount Holyoke positively…White students question the good of Afro-Am in a multi-racial community. The fact remains, from a black point of view, that no community is totally multi-racial to the point of being un-racial.” – Sharyn Ainsworth ‘69
“As Black women here you meet with the realization that you occupy a minority status and the other realization that you must defy certain differences in a community that is groping for understanding or suffering from a lack of it. We all in some way or another encounter an insurmountable peak in one of our four years here, but there has always been, for most of us, a rope to cling to. For most Black women, and collectively it has been the Afro-American Association.
The Afro-American Association is an institution, a support group, and whatever we as Black women want it to be. It represents a community of Black people – of Black women. … Through the Association Black womanhood is nurtured and given a chance to grow” – Becoming a Black Woman at Mount Holyoke – Cassandra West ‘79
