What Should We Learn from the Black Studies Experience?

Abstract

The field of Black Studies has changed in profound ways since its inception in the late 1960s. The field was initiated by students, scholars, and activists associated with the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. As time passed, adjusting to the university environment proved to be a daunting task. Drawing on prior research by the authors and other scholars, this article summarizes the evolution of Black Studies and what might be learned from the experience.

Keywords:

• academic departments and programs
• African American Studies
• Africana Studies
• Black Studies
• higher education
• institutional change
• social movements

Notes

Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 45–92. William Orrrick, Shut it Down! A College in Crisis (Aurora, IL: Aurora Press, 1970). Abdul Alkalimat, Africana Studies in the US (www.eblackstudies.com, 2007). http://eblackstudies.org/su/complete.pdf

Fabio Rojas, “Social Movement Tactics, Organizational Change, and the Spread of African-American Studies,” Social Forces 84 (2006): 2147–2166.

Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). Carlene Young, “The Academy as an Institution,” in Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies, eds. Delores P. Aldridge and Carlene Young (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000). Mario J. Small, “Departmental Conditions and the Emergence of New Disciplines: Two Cases in the Legitimation of Black Studies,” Theory and Society 18 (1999): 659–710. Jo Ann Cunningham, “Black Studies Programs: Reasons for Their Success and Non-Success from Inception to Present,” National Journal of Sociology 5 (1991):19–41.

Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 167–206.

Ibid., 76. Fabio Rojas, “Social Movement Tactics, Organizational Change, and the Spread of African-American Studies,” Social Forces 84 (2006): 2147–2166.

Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 93–129. See also: Elias Blake and Henry Cobb, Black Studies: Issues in their Institutional Survival (U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1976).

Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 171.

Ibid., 93–129.

Mario J. Small, “Departmental Conditions and the Emergence of New Disciplines: Two Cases in the Legitimation of Black Studies,” Theory and Society 18 (1999): 659–710.

Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 109–112.

Ibid., 190.

Ibid., 192.

Donald Shaffer and Fabio Rojas, Survey of Students Enrolled in Selected Black Studies Courses at Three Universities (Bloomington: Department of Sociology, Indiana University, 2007).

See Darlene Clark Hine, “The Black Studies Movement: Afrocentric-Traditionalist-Feminist Paradigms for the Next Stage,” The African American Studies Reader, Second Edition, ed. Nathaniel Norment, Jr. (Durham: eq Carolina Academic Press, 2007), 311–320.

Molefi Kete Asante coined this expression to refer to the practice of some Black Studies scholars (including himself) who reject the assumptions and values of their traditional discipline of training in order to fully commit themselves to the discipline of Black Studies.