The Program on Preparing Minorities for Academic Careers was launched in 1989 with a grant from the Charles A. Dana Foundation to Duke University and five historically black colleges and universities: Spelman College, Xavier University, Morehouse College, Hampton University, and Tuskegee University. The program's purpose was to increase the number of minority undergraduate students preparing for careers as college and university professors.

The collection contains material pertaining to the program's operations and activities at Duke University as well as at the historically black colleges and universities that participated. Present are reports, correspondence, printed material, clippings, and financial records documenting the various facets of the five year effort to educate minority undergraduate students in preparation for careers in college teaching and research. Throughout the records attention is paid to the impact of the program, primarily measured by the students' post-graduate activities. Correspondence and proposals originating from Duke and the Dana Foundation, as well as press releases and clippings provide summary information on the creation and activities of the program.

Student identifiable information is present throughout the majority of the collection and is restricted under FERPA. However, researchers may access the material for use in research as long they agree not to release personally identifiable student information without the prior written consent of the student, and to destroy all student-identifying information at the completion of their research.

Dr. Samuel DuBois Cook (1928-2017) was a political scientist who became Duke University's first African American professor in 1966. He also served as president of Dillard University from 1975 to 1997. The Samuel DuBois Cook Papers contains Cook's speech files, drafts and copies of Cook's writings, and other assorted papers including correspondence and subject folders for his research and writings on Benjamin Elijah Mays. Acquired as part of the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture.

The Samuel DuBois Cook Papers contains Cook's speech files, drafts and copies of Cook's writings, and other assorted papers including correspondence and subject folders for his research and writings on Benjamin Elijah Mays. The correspondence is scattered but dates as early as 1949 and includes some exchanges between Cook and Duke University contacts and administration, written during his tenure as professor in the political science department. Later correspondence discusses Dillard University administration, as well as other personal and professional exchanges. Cook's research on Benjamin E. Mays includes files from his editing of the volume "Benjamin E. Mays: His Life, Contribution, and Legacy," published in 2009, as well as other drafts and files collected by Cook about Mays' writings and philosophy. Cook's other writings include drafts compiled for his Ford Foundation appointment researching desegregation and racism in the 1970s; writings and essays about Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King Jr., and historically black colleges; and his reflections on black power and the strategies of the civil rights movement. The bulk of the collection consists of Cook's speeches, filed into Dillard University and Professional Speeches subseries and arranged alphabetically by topic or title of the speech. Many of these are administrative, including many introductions of various Dillard speakers or other remarks delivered by Cook as Dillard University president.