Wake Forest University Receives $1M Gift Toward African American Studies

Wake Forest University has received a $1 million anonymous gift to support a new African American Studies program that begins this fall. 

The gift will establish a fund named for Dr. Dolly A. McPherson, a long-time Wake Forest English professor who made significant contributions to African American literary studies. McPherson came to Wake Forest in the 1970s as the first full-time Black female faculty member. She died in 2011.

The fund will help support the overall development of new courses, faculty research and collaboration, and a variety of programs addressing public social concerns. 

Corey D.B. Walker is a Wake Forest Humanities professor who will be the inaugural director of the program. Walker says in a news release that African American Studies is “a way in which we begin to construct and reconstruct knowledge and broaden our ideas of what it means to be human in the world."