Alumna Establishes Endowed Professorship in African American and Africana Studies
Singleton McAllister ’75 Makes a $1 Million Commitment to Helping the Department Recruit and Retain Top Scholars
The Department of African American and Africana Studies has a new endowed professorship that will be used to support existing and future faculty, thanks to Singleton McAllister ’75.
McAllister graduated from the University of Maryland with dual degrees in African American studies and government and politics. She said that now is the time to offer support to the former department, and an endowed professorship felt like the right way for her to do so.
“Educating the world about Africa today is extremely important, now more than ever before. Africa continues to shape global conversations and make contributions in a very positive way,” she said. “I know that Harvard and other universities have spent a lot of resources in developing their African American studies programs, and I thought the professorship was a way in which I would be able to help the department bring in qualified scholars that have the wherewithal to enhance the program and make Maryland more competitive. After all, what’s a college without good professors?”
Early Years at UMD
When McAllister first came to UMD, she actually thought that she may want to become a doctor like her grandfather.
“However, when I took my first botany class in my freshman year, I said, ‘Wait a minute, if I can’t get the structure of plants, there is no way I am going to be able to work on people,’” she recalled with a laugh.
Still, McAllister had a hard time determining if she truly wanted to go into law one day — despite the encouragement of her insistent father.
“He would take me to the courtroom as a young child to watch him litigate his cases, so while growing up it was one of those situations where I was not sure if I wanted to become a lawyer, or if I wanted to become a lawyer because my attorney father wanted me to do it,” McAllister recalled.
A single, senior-year internship made everything much clearer.
Laying the Groundwork for Her Career
When McAllister decided to major in African American Studies, the department had just developed. She recalls the department’s first graduating class consisting of six or seven students and being the lone member of the department’s second graduating class.
“Since there weren’t a lot of us at the time, we were like a little family,” McAllister said about her fellow African American studies majors.
With those peers, McAllister worked with the Black Student Union on campus, and at The Black Explosion newspaper. It was at The Black Explosion that a colleague of McAllister’s suggested she consider interning with the late Congressman Parren J. Mitchell, who filed a discrimination lawsuit against the University of Maryland and was accepted as a full-time graduate student in the Department of Sociology in October 1950. He went on to become the state of Maryland’s first African American congressman.
Mitchell was also a neighbor of McAllister’s family in Baltimore.
“My father and Parren knew each other, but it was because of the relationship that I had with DeWayne Wickham at The Black Explosion that I started thinking about an internship with Parren. DeWayne later became a founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists. It was a Maryland person that got me moving in that direction,” said McAllister. “I was thinking about going to go to law school right after leaving the University of Maryland, but Congressman Mitchell offered me a job as a legislative assistant after graduation, and working on Capitol Hill was a phenomenal experience. My dad used to say, ‘Why don't you go to law school?’ I would say, ‘Dad, I'm helping to make the law. You're litigating the law.’”
Drawing on the Past, Shaping the Future
Ultimately, McAllister did fulfill her father’s dream: She earned her J.D. in 1984 from Howard University Law School, which her father had also attended.
But, she did so only after gaining years of public policy experience alongside Congressman Mitchell — with whom she helped draft legislation to appropriate the first $25 million for the African Development Bank — and then Congressman William H. Gray, with whom she helped draft legislation to create the African Development Foundation, whose advisory board she later served on for 10 years.
This work served her well after law school. McAllister served as federal district law clerk to the late Judge Jack E. Tanne; as senior counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Budget; and as the General Counsel to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), representing 72 missions worldwide, a position that President Bill Clinton appointed McAllister to.
McAllister also went on to work in the private sector, in which she is currently an attorney at Husch Blackwell LLP. There, she is harkening back to some of the lessons she learned in her government and politics and African American studies classes, developing an Africa-focused practice within the firm that can work with clients on policy, regulatory, trade, and project finance matters that cross borders.
“We are developing a good clientele, and there is so much opportunity with Maryland being an organization that can train young minds and broaden perspectives, I felt called to give back in this way,” McAllister said. “We live in a global society, and I want to make sure that Maryland is producing some brilliant and industrious students who can go out there and make a difference in our global community.”
McAllister also gives back to the University of Maryland by dedicating her time and talents to the University of Maryland College Park Foundation Board of Trustees. Prior to taking on that role, she served as a member of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences Board of Visitors for nine years.
Singleton McAllister’s philanthropic gift to the Department of African American and Africana Studies supports Forward: The University of Maryland Campaign for the Fearless, a $2.5 billion fundraising initiative in support of expanding access to UMD's top-tier education, accelerating groundbreaking research and building stronger communities.
The College of Behavioral and Social Sciences aims to raise at least $100M as part of the Forward campaign in an effort to support priorities that include creating the BSOS Undergraduate Fellows Program, investing in our faculty and academic department leaders by establishing endowed professorships and chairs, creating the Maryland Center for Autism and Neurodiversity to transform how our state supports people with ASD and ADHD, supporting the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, and recruiting world-class scholars who will tackle urgent issues of fairness, ethics and governance in AI. Those interested in learning more about how they can support BSOS during the Forward campaign are encouraged to click HERE or contact the Chief Development Officer Kenny Beaver at beaver@umd.edu.
Published on Tue, Oct 6, 2026 - 4:24PM