Scholars of the black experience gather at Carnegie Mellon University beginning today for the three-day conference, "African Americans and the Post-Industrial Age: New Challenges of Urban History and Policy-Making."

The free conference celebrates the 10th anniversary of CMU's Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy, which is part of the school's History Department.

Lawrence D. Bobo, professor of sociology at Stanford University, will deliver the keynote address, "African Americans, Cities, and Policy-Making in a New Age," at 6 tonight. Bobo, the director of Stanford's Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, is the co-author of "Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations;" and "Racialized Politics: The Debate about Racism in America."

The center aims to link the historian's interest in race, work and economic change over time with contemporary analyses of politics, the urban labor force and employment policies. It develops programs of graduate and postdoctoral training, scholarly research, data collection, publications and education. Joe Trotter, head of the History Department and the Mellon Professor of History, is the director of the center.

During the conference, the center will announce a new multi-year oral history project to collect and preserve the memories of the first and second post-World War II generations of black Americans in Pittsburgh.