  Formal, professional recognition and sanctioning of these efforts, which had been pursued, with significant impact, through presentations of papers on and discussions of various topics in sessions during annual meetings of divisions of the American Philosophical Association (APA) and other organizations of professional philosophers and other organizations of teacher-scholars such as the Radical Philosophers Association (RPA) and the Society for Phenomenological and Existential Philosophy (SPEP), were achieved when, in 1987, the APA recognized the efforts as having established a legitimate sub-field of Philosophy and made “Africana philosophy” an officially listed specialty in the discipline. Across the years, the APA’s Committee on Blacks in Philosophy has been instrumental in organizing a number of these important sessions, though, of no less importance, many such sessions were hosted by other sympathetic and supportive committees of the APA as well as by other organizations of professional philosophers that held meetings concurrent with those of divisions of the Association. Thus, the recognition and sanction have come, to significant degrees, as results of long efforts led by philosophers Robert C. Williams (deceased), William Jones, Howard McGary, Jr., and La Verne Shelton, among others, each of whom gave years of service as chairpersons of the APA’s Committee on Blacks in Philosophy. Each also contributed early articulations that initiated the work of forging the sub-field.