The Kwame Ture Award

The Kwame Ture Award is granted to the AAS major who has performed exemplary activism or civic engagement. (The GPA must be a minimum of 3.0 and the student must be in good standing in their current courses. One cannot receive this more than once.)

The John Henrik Clarke Award

The John Henrik Clarke Award is granted to a graduating AAS major senior who has performed exemplary service to the department or Africana Studies more broadly. (The GPA must be a minimum of 3.0 and the student must be in good standing in their current courses.)

The Asa Hilliard Award

The Asa Hilliard Award is granted to a second-year M.A. student who exemplifies academic achievement and service to Africana Studies. (The GPA must be a minimum of 3.5 and the student must be in good standing in their current courses.)

The AAS Graduate Award

The AAS Graduate Award for Academic Achievement is granted to a second-year M.A. student with the highest GPA. (The GPA must be a minimum of 3.8 and the student must be in good standing in their current courses.)

The AAS Undergraduate Research Award

The AAS Undergraduate Research Award is granted to an outstanding undergraduate who participates in the annual departmental colloquium. (The student must be in good standing in their current courses.)

The Lucille Adams Scholarship

The Lucille Adams Scholarship is granted to an Africana Studies major who is a rising senior with a minimum 3.0 overall GPA and a minimum 3.5 GPA in the major. Awardees must have unmet financial need. Service to the community, campus and particularly the department of Africana Studies will be taken into consideration in awarding the scholarship. All applications require a letter of recommendation from a core faculty member of the department of Africana Studies

Renata Hicks-Jamila Maat-Nation Award

Renata Hicks-Jamila Maat-Nation Award for Outstanding Alumni Award is given to Alumni Africana Studies majors* on an annual basis who fulfill the following:

1. Continued service to Africana Studies
2. Achievement in professional life.
3. Significant civic engagement
4. Academic contributions to the field of Africana Studies
   1. *Students who participated in the 1992 sit-in or the development of AAS at Georgia State University are also eligible for consideration.

The LeVoyd L. Carter, II Esq. Memorial Scholarship

In 2022 The LeVoyd L. Carter, II Esq. Memorial Scholarship was established by Sherry Carter to posthumously honor her husband’s life and legacy by helping both current and future generations of students at his alma mater Georgia State University to earn their degree. An Atlanta native, LeVoyd L. Carter, II Esq. graduated from North Clayton High School and attended Morehouse College before transferring to Georgia State University where he graduated with a degree in Criminal Justice. In 1997 he completed law school at the Fredric G. Levin College of Law at the University of Florida and became a highly regarded corporate attorney. Prior to becoming only the third black student to win a Georgia State University school-wide election to become Student Government Association President in 1994, LeVoyd served as Vice-President of the Georgia State University Black Student Alliance.

In November of 1992 LeVoyd and other student leaders led a protest against racism, sexism, and homophobia on campus that started with a protest in the President’s office and culminated in a Sparks Hall sit-in. The protest drew support of students, community activists, and the Atlanta branch of the NAACP and the local chapter of the ACLU, and resulted in a number of reforms and new initiatives including the Board of Regent’s agreement to develop and fund the Department of African American Studies at Georgia State University.

Eligibility criteria follow below:

• Minimum 2.75 GPA
• Current junior or senior in Africana Studies
• Demonstrate financial need as determined by the Office of Financial Aid
• Submit an essay on the impact that this scholarship will have on the applicant
• Each recipient may only receive the scholarship one time

The Jacqueline Rouse-Doris Derby Africana Studies Fellowship

The Jacqueline Rouse-Doris Derby Africana Studies Fellowship is granted to an outstanding graduate student in Africana Studies that demonstrates a commitment to academic rigor and social justice. How to contribute to this fellowship.

For more on Dr. Rouse’s Legacy, visit the tribute written by the Southern Association of Women Historians. For an extended bio of Dr. Derby written by some of her former students, click here (internal site with the text below?):

Doris Adelaide Derby was born on November 11, 1939, to Hubert Allen and Lucille Theresa Johnson Derby in Bronx, New York. Her father was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (Civil Engineering), and her mother Lucille was a fulltime homemaker. Lucille Derby later became an educator at St. Joseph’s School for the Deaf. Both parents had strong family ties and her formative years were shaped by her upbringing which reinforced her strong sense of purpose and solidified her trajectory as a leader. From an early age, Doris studied music and dance. Her mother came from a family of eleven and all the children in her mother’s family played musical instruments. Her mother studied dance as did Doris and her older sister Pauline from elementary school through college. Her (paternal) Great “Aunt Jesse’ was a missionary in Monrovia, Liberia who wrote letters to her grandparents about her experiences, while sending photographs and stories home of her work as well. As a teenager, Doris found out about auditions for a scholarship to the Katherine Dunham school at the Harlem YMCA. She was successful in her audition and took classes on Saturdays throughout her adolescent years. Later, she studied African and Caribbean dance throughout her college years. Her father Hubert gave Doris and her sister Pauline each a brownie camera while in elementary school. From that moment on, Doris documented her life’s journey every step of the way. Coming from a family of activists, her maternal grandmother Edith Delaney Johnson and uncle were founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Bangor, Maine in 1920. This motivated Doris as an activist and she became a lifetime member of the NAACP at the age of 16. For Doris, Bangor Maine was full of treasures, and she fondly spent her memorable summertime there as a youth. In addition to dance and photography, Doris and Pauline were both taught how to sew by their mother, and she made her own clothes from the fifth grade on. Her acculturation in the arts included painting – which she later translated into photography. She was also an avid writer and spent a lot of time at the Schomburg Library (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture) in Manhattan, New York. The Schomburg Library had a collection of African, and African American heritage that provided context while fueling her interest and devotion to the preservation of Black studies. She later was co-founder (along with John O’Neal and Gilbert Moses) of the Free Southern Theater (FST) in 1964 as an integrated drama workshop at Tougaloo, Mississippi.

Her professional career was that of an educational administrator, documentary photographer and author. She earned her BA Degree from Hunter College, NYC in 1962. She later received her MA and Ph.D. in Cultural/Social Anthropology, specializing in African American Studies, at the University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana in 1980. Throughout her life she was a supporter and initiator of the creative arts. After graduating from college, and teaching school in Yonkers, New York, she joined the southern Civil Rights Movement in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. During the period in which she served as a ten year (1962 – 1972) Civil Rights Veteran in Mississippi and Georgia, with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Derby served as Field Secretary, Community Organizer, Administrator, Adult Literacy Teacher, Head Resource Teacher/ Trainer with the Child Development Group (CDGM) of Mississippi Head Start, and Public Relations, Media/Marketing Rep, Crafts Teacher, with the Poor Peoples Corporation (PPC). Derby was also a documentary photographer and filmmaker with Southern Media, Inc. (SMI).

Dr. Derby left Mississippi in 1972 to enter graduate school at the University of Illinois. She worked in the Wisconsin University System of Higher Education in Madison and Milwaukee from 1980 to 1990. She then took a position at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Derby founded and became Georgia State University’s Director of the Office of African American Student Services and Programs (OAASS&P), Division of Student Affairs, from 1990 through 2012. She also served as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Anthropology Department. During her tenure in this position, Dr. Doris Derby designed a model department which provided co-curricular support for the Retention, Progression, and Graduation (RPG) of African American students. In fact, in the spring 2012, Diverse Issues in Higher Education Magazine reported (using IPED submitted data) that Georgia State University (GSU) was the nation’s top provider of Undergraduate degrees to African American students. Dr. Derby published articles and Civil Rights documentary photographs in books and films. She produced documentary films and exhibited numerous examples of her work. Her photographs, focused on the everyday life of struggling Americans, have been exhibited throughout the nation’s museums, galleries, univ