A major public groundbreaking ceremony for the renovation and new construction of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell will be held Saturday, June 12, from 2 to 3 p.m. at the 310 N. Triphammer Road center. Held in conjunction with Cornell's Reunion 2004 Weekend, the ceremony features speakers including Cornell President Jeffrey Lehman; Provost Biddy Martin; Salah Hassan, the Africana Center's acting director; James Turner, the center's founding director; and university trustee Dwight Bush '79.

Also attending will be Africana Center administrators and faculty, members of the Cornell Black Alumni Association (CBAA), current students and distinguished guests (including an ensemble of live drummers), as well as many members of the returning Cornell Reunion classes of 1969 and 1974, the class that holds the record for the largest number of matriculated black students enrolled at Cornell.

The occasion celebrates the renovation and expansion of the existing Africana Center and the construction of an additional building to house the center's John Henrik Clarke Library and a multipurpose room. The new building, taking up roughly 5,480 square feet, will stand in front of the older structure. Ralph T. Jackson, principal architect for the project, will attend the ceremony. Jackson is with the Boston-based architecture firm of Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott.

The groundbreaking coincides with the 35th anniversaries of the center's founding, in the fall of 1969, and the Willard Straight Hall takeover at Cornell, the previous spring. Although the center was approved prior to the student occupation of the university's student union, the Africana studies program was, in large part, a response to demands from African-American students for representative studies and facilities.

Speakers at the groundbreaking also will include David E. Jackson II '04, who, as Class of '04 senior convocation chair, recently shared the stage with former U.S. President Bill Clinton during Cornell's Senior Convocation ceremonies, May 29.

For more information about Cornell's Africana studies program and the Africana Center, visit the center's Web site: http://www.asrc.cornell.edu/ .