The experiences of African American professors reach back nearly 150 years beginning with their pioneering efforts to educate Africans in Liberia. With the gradual racial integration of the American professoriate in the post-World War II era and the redoubled effort of the federal government and private agencies, along with the support of colleges and universities, African Americans too would have opportunities to travel, teach, and study abroad that previously they had rarely enjoyed. Institutional funding, it was thought, would establish ties between Americans and foreigners that could lead to a more peaceful, tolerant, and enlightened world. Not relying on institutional backing, increasingly black professors seeking to expand their horizons with international experiences have through their own initiative found the means to bring their longer term goals to fruition. An impressionistic survey of the variety of their experiences is presented in this paper.