PLACE IN RETURN Box to remove this checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due.
MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested.

 

DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6/01 cJClRC/DateDuopGS-sz

THE REVOLUTION \MLL NOT BE TELEVISED:
BLACK STUDIES AND THE TRANSFORMATION
OF AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION 1967-1972

By

Stephen Alan Jones

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Program in American Studies

2003

ABSTRACT
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED:

BLACK STUDIES AND THE TRANSFORMATION
OF AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION 1967-1972

By

Stephen Alan Jones

This dissertation examines the emergence of the Black Studies movement
in the late 19603 and explores the impact that movement had on American
higher education. It seeks to place the Black Studies movement in the context
of the long history of higher education in the United States and explore how the
movement was influenced by, and in turn influenced, the patterns of
institutional change. It argues that the depth and significance of the
movement’s impact was obscured by the intensity and political nature of the
turmoil that surrounded the creation of Black Studies programs. It also argues
that while the turmoil of protest and confrontation and the clamoring rhetoric of
political revolution captured the attention of the news media and the American
public, the Black Studies movement actually led a less obvious, ‘untelevised"
revolution in awareness that changed the patterns of intellectual activity in

academia.

Copyright by
STEPHEN ALAN JONES
2003

Dedicated
to my parents,

Vernon H. and Violet E. Jones,
who introduced me to
and taught me to love
the path of Ieaming,
and to
Dr. Charles D. Moody,
whose patience and generosity of spirit

helped me to see the value
of exploring this part of that path.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I complete this dissertation with a keen awareness of and deepest gratitude
for the help and support of the many people who made this undertaking
possible. I could not have done this alone.

I am particularly grateful to the members of my committee, Dr. David Bailey,
Dr. Stephen Lacy, Dr. Hany Reed and Dr. Geneva Smitherrnan. All of them were
extremely generous with their time and their encouragement, and all of them
provided valuable suggestions and insights that made my task much easier.

Also, I am indebted to Dr. Linda Susan Beard and Dr. Kathryn Moore, who
inspired me, in the classroom and as members of my master’s degree
committee, to pursue this line of study; and to Dr. James McClintock, former
director of Michigan State University’s program in American Studies who got
me off to a good start and was always generous with his help and
encouragement.

Most of all, however, I want to thank my family, especially my wife, Colette
Gilewicz, and our son, Alexander Jones, for their paticence, their forbearance,

their sacrifice and their love.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
THE UNTELEVISED REVOLUTION OF BLACK STUDIES

CHAPTER 1
A CHANGE IS GONNA COME

CHAPTER 2
THE OLD GUARD IN THE IVORY TOWER

CHAPTER 3
WHITE CAMPUS, BLACK STUDIES

CHAPTER 4
STANDARDS, STRUCTURE AND CURRICULUM

CHAPTER 5
THE SOUL OF BLACK STUDIES

CHAPTER 6
ACCEPTANCE AND APPEASEMENT

CHAPTER 7
FRAMED: THE MEDIA AND THE MESSAGE

CHAPTER 8
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY

11

30

61

91

139

174

218

249

265

288

Introduction

The Untelevised Revolution of Black Studies

In Zen Buddhism, there is a proverb that goes something like this: Before I
studied Zen, a tree was just a tree and a mountain was just a mountain. After I
began to study Zen, however, a tree was no longer just a tree and a mountain
was no longer just a mountain. But then I became enlightened, and I saw that a
tree was just a tree and a mountain was just a mountain.

Many people are puzzled or even repelled by Zen because of proverbs like
that, sayings that appear, on the surface, to be self-contradictory or just plain
goofy. But that proverb points to a fundamental truth that underties all of the
intellectual activity of the academy: awareness matters. Despite the identical
words, the tree and mountain seen at the end of the proverb represent
something very different from the tree and mountain seen at the proverb's
beginning. But what has changed is not the tree and the mountain. It is the
observer who is different, who is now fully aware, who now views the tree and
mountain in their complete and proper context, giving them neither too little
importance nor too much.

I have sought in this dissertation to perform a similar function: to point

1

toward a different awareness of the Black Studies movement that seeks a
deeper understanding of the movement's context, not just in the social and
political turmoil of 19605 America but in the long and complex history of
intellectual endeavor and institutional structure in higher education. My aim has
been to explore how the Black Studies movement shifted the institutional and
social consciousness of academia. I began from the strong impression I
developed as a professional journalist covering higher education that
discussions of Black Studies tended to focus overwhelmingly on issues of
institutional and social politics, almost to the exclusion of broader
epistemological questions that Black Studies raised about what we know, how
we know it, and how we organize and apply that knowledge.

In April 1989, while I was covering higher education for theDetmitELee
Etess. I sat down to interview a white student at Wayne State University's
Student Center. I was preparing to write a profile of the campus for the
newspaper's annual WW3, and I wanted to hear the
student's opinions about the quality of education at Wayne State, the
university's strengths and weaknesses, and his assessment of the overall
campus atmosphere. We were both keenly aware, however, that at that
moment, a group of black students was occupying the building next door to
press their demand that the university's Center for Black Studies be elevated to
full departmental status. The sit-in had already lasted nearly a week and would
continue for a total of eleven days before the university administration agreed to

the students' core demands. Near the end of our interview, I asked the white
2

student what he thought of the black students' protest. He said he was not
troubled by the protest and had no objection to the university granting the
students' demands. But he confessed to a certain confusion. "Why do they
need Black Studies?" he asked. "We don't have white studies."

I was struck, first of all, by the offhand sincerity in the student's tone. He
wasn't objecting to Black Studies, he simply didn't understand the reasons
behind Black Studies. But I also saw immediately that his question was more
than just evidence of the need for Black Studies. As a journalist, I began to
question the effectiveness of my own profession in explaining a complex and
important issue to the public. After all, here was a reasonably intelligent student
at a major university in a black-majority city where the news media regularly
and extensively reported on racial issues and he was unaware that Black
Studies programs existed precisely because most black scholars -- and a
growing number of white scholars -- considered the traditional curriculum
(especially in social studies and the humanities) to be "white studies." Perhaps
he was merely young and ignorant of what had been going on in society and
higher education for the previous twenty years. Perhaps he simply did not read
the newspapers or pay attention to television and radio news broadcasts. But
as I examined my own experience and recognized how my awareness had
been heightened and my understanding deepened by the professional
demands of reporting on racial issues in higher education, I began to ask
questions about how journalists carried out the task of explaining Black

Studies — and other difficult issues -- to the American public. Eventually, those
3

questions brought me to this work.

It seemed to me that Black Studies, because of its roots in social protest,
often was disregarded or even dismissed by most journalists (and many
academicians) as a merely political —- as opposed to scholarly —
phenomenon. That attitude, of course, not only ignores how thoroughly
intertwined politics is with all scholarly pursuits, but also gives only superficial
attention to the intellectual challenges with which Black Studies confronted
higher education. On one level, that is understandable because the political
assault on higher education embodied in the Black Studies movement was so
powerful and emotionally charged. Black Studies always was, and remains
today, intensely political. But Black Studies has always been about something
more. It has also been about awareness: awareness of how narrow and
limiting our accepted assumptions about the world can be. The battle over
Black Studies was not merely about pacifying angry black students with
promises that more black students would be enrolled, more black faculty would
be hired, and more African American authors would be added to the approved
literary canon and course syllabi. All of those issues were involved, but at its
core, the real battle was about what it meant for African Americans to be a full
and accepted part of the scholarly enterprise.

That question generated enormous, intense and passionate debates over
difficult and sensitive issues. What is Black Studies? ls Black Studies a
legitimate academic discipline? Who is qualified to teach Black Studies? What

role, if any, should Black Studies have in programs aimed at economic,
4

political, social and cultural development in the off-campus black community?
Does the creation of Black Studies programs advance the participation of
African Americans in higher education or does it merely establish an academic
ghetto that marginalizes African Americans, their history, their culture and their
concerns, and assures that they will not be taken seriously by institutions of
higher education?

To a great extent, however, such questions and the heated debates that
surrounded them, obscured a deeper impact of the Black Studies movement.
Black Studies opened up the university by confronting it with a powerful critique
of what the university was and what its purpose should be. Black Studies
challenged the university to reconsider crucial questions: What and who
constitute knowledge? How is knowledge organized; does specialization
produce knowledge that is increasingly abstract and sterile or, alternatively, is a
broad, interdisciplinary/approach to knowledge even possible in an age when
our base of information is expanding exponentially? What is the purpose of
seeking knowledge; do pragmatic concerns inevitably taint the purity of
intellectual pursuits or do scholars have a moral responsibility to work for the
improvement of the society in which they live?

I have sought to examine those challenges in the broader context of the
university’s long and complex history. The Black Studies movement was not an
aberration caused by the political and social turmoil of the 1960s. Rather, it
was part of a long continuum of institutional transformation wrought by internal

and external tensions that had been dramatically reshaping American
5

universities for more than a century before Black Studies programs appeared
on the scene. In 1930, for example, Abraham Flexner chided American colleges
and universities for their steadily increasing enrollments and growing
emphasis on such distastefully practical trappings as business, nursing and
journalism schools. Nearly a century earlier, however, Ralph Waldo Emerson
had urged scholars, just as passionately as Flexner, to embrace the idea that
intellectual inquiry and practical action were not only not antithetical, but
mutually beneficial. Black Studies continued that debate and transformation,
opening up the university to new possibilities and providing an inspirational
model for similar programs, such as Women's Studies, Chicano Studies,
Native American Studies and others that quickly followed.

I believe that transformation has helped produce a subtle but pivotal
revolution in consciousness whereby we no longer discuss race in America
strictly in terms of black and white -- which was common throughout the 1960s
and well beyond. We are no longer, as a society, even comfortable with what
David Hollinger has called the ethno-racial pentagon —- the demographic
categories of black, white, Hispanic, Native American and Asian that have been
fairly standard since the 19703. Hollinger argues that we are moving toward a
post-ethnic America where racial and ethnic boundaries are increasingly
blurred and affiliation with racial and ethnic identities is increasingly a matter of
choice. If that is so — and Hollinger’s argument is compelling — I believe that
shift in cultural consciousness is, in significant part, the result of the

challenges Black Studies presented to the university in the late 19603.
6

The Black Studies movement forced the university — the intellectual engine
of society -— to open up the American mind to new perspectives on higher
edumtion and American society, and to new visions of what the future might
hold for both. Black Studies forced white institutions and their white
administrators to look beyond old models of integration and assimilation and
to confront radical ideas about the true nature of existing institutions and the
scope of change required to make those institutions serve the entire American
society. Many of the advocates of Black Studies saw themselves engaged in a
revolution of black empowerment, and many of their demands on educational
institutions were cast in fiery, rebellious rhetoric that often castigated and called
for the destruction of existing institutional structures. The revolutionary rhetoric
was accompanied often by impassioned demonstrations — marches, rallies,
sit-ins and the like -— and occasionally by violence, either actual or threatened.
In the most dramatic incident linked to Black Studies, black students at Cornell
University took over a campus building in 1969 to emphasize their concerns on
a number of issues. Such sit-ins had by that time become commonplace, but
many Americans were stunned when news coverage of the students ending
their sit-in showed pictures of the students leaving the building in a military-
style formation with some of the young men brandishing rifles, shotguns and
ammunition bandoliers.

Small wonder, then, that revolutionary rhetoric, confrontation and violence
came — in the minds of many, and not all of them white — to define the Black

Studies movement. This was the political challenge, dramatic and visceral, that

7

Black Studies presented, questioning in some cases whether university
administrations would be able to continue governing their institutions. This was
the challenge that captured media attention and dominated the public debate
— the struggle over the political power to control the direction of the university.
This was the televised revolution.

But another revolution -— a quieter, subtler, more profound revolution —- was
occurring at the same time. It was a revolution that in some ways was so
obvious that it was all but ignored. It was an untelevised revolution -— a sea
change in the collective consciousness of people in academia, and in
American society generally, brought about, in part, by the very presence of Black
Studies programs on predominantly white campuses. Black Studies did not
accomplish this revolution alone, of course, but Black Studies programs
became a focal point for a changing awareness of what a modern university
needed to be and who it needed to include. Debates still rage over the relative
scholarly merits of Black Studies programs, but the question of whether Black
Studies would be a part of the university was decided in a very short time.

The first Black Studies department to emerge on a predominantly white
college campus was established in 1968; by 1973, only five years later, at least
300 to 500 Black Studies programs had been established. Some were strong,
some were weak; some thrived, some did not. But the very presence of Black
Studies in academia reshaped the way scholars thought about their institutions
and their scholarship. White social scientists, for example, were challenged to

consider whether they had sought far too often to describe African American
8

culture and society in terms of pathology, of something African American
society lacked, relative to European American society. Later debates over
‘political correctness' notwithstanding, Black Studies programs added new or
previously ignored perspectives to the realm of intellectual debate in academia.
The intellectual balance of the university had been shifted.

Receme I had occasion to discuss this point with a white professor who
wondered aloud how much had really changed on American college
campuses. He said he was teaching a course on American intellectual history,
and that he was, that week, beginning a series of lectures on W.E.B. Du Bois
and other African American intellectuals. He noted, however, that all thirty of the
students in his class were white. I replied that while that might be evidence that
there had been relatively little demographic change within the university, it was,
at the same time, evidence that there had been a significant change in
awareness. In 1965, I said, it is likely that some other white professor was
teaching another intellectual history course filled with thirty other white
students. It is quite unlikely, however, that that white professor was spending
much, if any, time exposing those white students to the thoughts of Du Bois or
any other African American writer. That is the untelevised revolution.

It is possible to make too much of this transformation. But it is possible, as
well, to make too little of it, and I think that is what has happened over the last
thirty-five years. That is why I took my title from Gil Scott-Heron’s poem. Heron’s
Poem is double—edged. On the one hand, it ridicules the tendency of mass

media to focus on sensational images, thereby trivializing the significance of

9

—n..

 

social turmoil and the desire for change. On the other, it reminds the activist
that social transformation is not accomplished merely by defiant rhetoric and
flamboyant gestures designed to capture media attention. Real revolution —
the revolution that seldom makes it onto television — is a long, often obscure
and always demanding struggle to make people aware of the unspoken
assumptions that have limited them, and to get them to open their minds.

l have sought in this work to shed light and attention on that untelevised
revolution, in hope that we might, as scholars and as a society, become more
fully aware of the path we have traveled over the last thirty-five years, of the path

that we are walking now, and of the trees and mountains that lie before us.

10

Chapter 1

The Ivory Tower and the WII'IdS of Change

The 1960s earned their reputation for social turmoil. Nearly every institution
of American society was being stretched in new and disconcerting ways.
starting with the family, which was still in the throes of the post-World War II
baby boom. That population explosion, in turn, had swelled elementary and
secondary schools to the bursting point throughout the 19508, and by the mid-
’60s, the first wave of that tidal surge was crashing onto the shores of higher
education.

This new generation of college students was coming of age in an era of
agitation, violence and confrontation. On an international level, the cold war,
with its superpower tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union,
dominated world affairs and set a chilling tone for the decade with the Cuban
Missile Crisis of 1962. By late 1964, the United States was deeply enmeshed
in the Vietnam War and an energetic and vocal anti-war movement was
growing quickly. Divisions over the war intensified as the decade — and the
war - progressed. Eventually, the dissension shook the country’s political

structure, prompting President Lyndon Johnson to drop his bid for reelection,

11

sparking insurgent candidacies on the left (Eugene McCarthy and Robert
Kennedy) and the right (George Wallace), and reviving the political career of
Richard Nixon.

Violence shook America on the domestic front as well. The assassination of
President John F. Kennedy in 1963 was the nation’s first truly galvanizing public
event of the television era. Although the gruesome images of Kennedy’s death,
captured on film by Abraham Zapruder, were not shown publicly for some time,
millions of Americans did witness the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack
Ruby on live television. Millions more saw the seemingly endless replays of the
killing that followed on network news broadcasts, and were transfixed through
that long weekend by coverage of the nation’s mourning and the slain
president’s funeral. That shared experience did several things. First, it
transformed Kennedy, whose energy, charisma and idealistic rhetoric had
already established him as a hero for many young people, into a martyr for the
cause of youthful idealism. Second, it established the power of television to
shape what Marshall McLuhan called the “global village,“ a world where
information and images of dramatic events were transmitted almost
everywhere almost instantly. The importance of this development grew in clarity
and magnitude later in the decade as campus anti-war protesters were able to
use television to keep track of distant events, not only fighting in the war zone
10,000 miles away, but also strikes and demonstrations by their fellow
Protesters at colleges and universities across the United States. And third, it

bagan the process of immersing American culture in a sea of vivid images of

12

real violence. From the murder of Oswald to the urban riots in Watts, Newark,
Detroit and other cities, to the assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King
Jr., and Robert Kennedy, to the daily chronicles of blood, burning villages and
body counts from Vietnam on the evening news, television thrust violence and
confrontation into the face of the American public.

In the process, television began to alter radically Americans' sense of their
world and themselves. Before television, at most a few thousand people were
direct, immediate witnesses to the earth-shaking events of history. The
newsreel images of Japan's devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, which we now
take for granted, took days to make their way before the American public, and
even then, Americans who wanted to see them, generally had to leave their
homes and pay to get into movie theaters where the newsreels were shown.
People who relied on written news reports of world — or even national, state
and local - events, were limited by their own experience and imaginations in
perceiving the visceral reality of life outside their neighborhoods. Often, that
reality was entirely beyond the experience, and even the imagination, of most
Americans, as in the case of Pearl Harbor — or Hiroshima. In contrast, the
filmed images of fire hoses and attack dogs being loosed on peaceful civil
rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama, were broadcast nationwide

within a day, and anyone who had a television in his or her home -— by 1960
that was more than 86 percent of American households — could see them
without charge and without leaving the living room sofa.

No longer did Americans have to imagine a distant triumph or tragedy, they
1 3

could see it played out before them, if not live, then usually —-— even in the case
of combat footage from Vietnam — within just a day of the actual events.
Sometimes these new images of the world were uplifting and inspirational,
such as King's powerful speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 or the moon
landing in 1969. But more often —- the nature of the news business being what
it is — the events were shocking, disturbing and sometimes disillusioning. It
became much harder for Americans to avoid unpleasant realities because
television piped them directly into America's living rooms. Watching peaceful
and unarmed civil rights marchers being attacked by police with hoses, dogs
and clubs, it was hard not to perceive that an injustice was being done.
Watching Buddhist monks protest the South Vietnamese government by setting
themselves on fire on the streets of Saigon, it was hard not to wonder whether
the United States was truly on the side of the angels in that conflict. Watching
the growing size and scope of civil rights and anti-war protests it was
impossible to avoid the realization that increasing numbers of Americans were
dissatisfied with the society's institutions and leaders.

Many Americans were stunned and confused by the upheaval around them.
Many recoiled in shock and anger. Some adopted a defensive, Archie Bunker,
love-it-or-leave-it mentality, a resentment of protest that fueled the police

attacks on demonstrators — and even journalists — during the Democratic
National Convention in Chicago in 1968. Many others turned their shock and
anger in the opposite direction and joined the ranks of those who were

challenging the social power structure. Confrontation and defiance of authority
14

quickly became matters of personal style as well as political identity. People
marched, rallied, boycotted, chanted, shouted, sang, burned flags, burned
bras, burned draft cards, smoked pot, dropped acid, turned on, tuned in,
dropped out and sat in, all to express their independence from and rejection of
a social order they had come to see as decadent and oppressive. It was a time
of flamboyant and grand gestures — long hair, short skirts, loud music, topless
swimsuits, paisley ties, bell-bottom jeans, psychedelically painted VW
microbuses, actors and actresses standing naked on the Broadway stage, and
hippies putting daisies in the barrels of National Guard rifles. it was a time of
angry, extreme and inflammatory rhetoric on both ends of the political

spectrum: "Hell no, we won’t go!” “America, love it or leave it.’ 'Bum, baby,
burn.’ ‘Nuke ‘em back to the stone age.”

It was also a time of social movements, large numbers of people brought
together by shared desire for change. Movements merged the individual
impulse to rebellion with the idealistic belief in the possibility of social
improvement and transformation. The anti-war movement was the largest,
most visible and most widely recognized in the latter half of the decade but it
was far from the only one. The Civil Rights Movement remained active, though
its shift in focus -— after victories of the 19503 and early 19603 had knocked

down ‘whites only‘ signs across the south -- made its aims harder to grasp for
many white Americans, even if they were sympathetic. Some attention also was
diverted from King and his followers by the rise of the more militant and more

strident —- and to white America, more shocking — Black Power movement.

15

Other movements also were emerging around the efforts of women, Hispanics,
Native Americans and other groups to change the ways they were treated by
society. In California, for example, Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers
Association transformed a local effort to win better wages and working
conditions for predominantly Mexican and Mexican American workers at
Delano-area farms into a national crusade by launching a nationwide boycott of
California grapes.1 Native Americans, especially young, urban Indians
disillusioned with the traditional, reservation-based tribal leadership, began
organizing radical activism. The American Indian Movement, which grew out of
an anti-poverty program in Minneapolis, consciously patterned its social
programs and its militant style after the Black Panthers, and American Indians
United, a West Coast organization, dramatized its resistance to the federal
government's history of treaty violations by seizing the abandoned federal
prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay in November 1969 and holding
it for eighteen months.2 Each new movement aimed, in one way or another, to
challenge the existing social structure and its underlying assumptions, and
each adopted, to one extent or another, the tactics of mass protest, civil
disobedience and confrontation with authority.

All of those movements had been inspired by, and to a great extent copied
the tactics of, the Civil Rights Movement, the dominant American social action
movement of the 19503 and early 19603. The Civil Rights Movement burst into
the public consciousness in December 1955 with the Montgomery bus boycott3

and continued to capture intense public attention through the lunch counter sit-

16

ins, freedom rides and voting rights campaigns of the early and mid-’603. The
confrontations with injustice drew a lot of attention to the protesters’ tactics, and
the righteousness of protest and confrontation was reinforced by the brutality —
the police dogs, fire hoses, billy clubs, beatings and killings —- with which the
demands of the civil rights activists were met. The televised images of that
brutality contributed significantly to the atmosphere of violence that suffused
American life through the decade, but they also helped turn public opinion
against the segregation in the South; and as segregation crumbled, as buses,
lunch counters and schools were slowly integrated, idealism and faith in the
potential for a just society grew. Even President Johnson embraced the
idealistic optimism, pushing for landmark civil rights legislation in 1964 and
1965 and proposing a vast web of social programs he said would produce
"The Great Society."

The Civil Rights Movement was an inspiration to many idealistic young
people, white and black, but it also was in Important measure, a product of
idealistic youth. The wave of lunch counter sit-ins that swept across the South
in 1960, for example, was conceived and carried out primarily by black college
students‘ That burst of student activism eventually led to creation of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which was the driving
force in the Mississippi Summer Project voter registration drive of 1964. That

project was a compelling and deeply influential training ground for many of the
student activists -— white and black —- who led later on-campus and off-

campus movements.5 For example, many of the leaders of the Free Speech
1 7

Movement at the University of Califomia’s Berkeley campus in the fall of 1964
—— the first major white radical student protest -— had participated in, and been
inspired by, the Mississippi Summer Project. Black student activists, in turn,
Ieamed a lot about the tactics of confronting the academic power structure by
observing and analyzing the Free Speech Movement and other white student
protests. All of these forces were churning the atmosphere of academia in
1968 when the Black Studies movement erupted on predominantly white
college and university campuses across the United States. Present in
significant numbers on white campuses for the first time, inspired by the
preceding decade of Civil Rights activism in the South, radicalized by growing
urban racial rebellion in the North, and galvanized by King’s assassination,
black students began with growing determination and intensity to demand that
white institutions of higher education integrate intellectually as well as
demographically.

True to the spirit of the times, the rhetoric employed by black students
demanding Black Studies was often heated and suffused with the revolutionary
tones of the Black Power movement, which had grown out of SNCC after its
divergence in 1965 from the integrationist Civil Rights Movement led by King.
Black students denounced white universities as political, rather than
educational, institutions and castigated them for their failure to enroll more
black students, hire more black faculty and staff, and offer curricula that

examined -— or even recognized -— the experience, achievements and

contributions of African Americans. Like the nations of Africa that were gaining
1 8

independence from European control throughout the 19603, many black
students at white American universities saw themselves as rebellious subjects
of a colonial power. As such, they demanded respect, a say in the allocation of
university resources and autonomy that sometimes struck at the heart of the
university's system of governance. If the truth of their criticisms was
embarrassing — administrators were relatively quick to admit that university
research and cunicula gave only scant attention, at best, to blacks — the tone
of the criticism was often even more unsettling.

'I see no difference between white universities and white people,” Maulana
Karenga told a national conference at Yale University in the spring of 1968,
where predominantly white college officials, university administrators and
foundation directors had come to discuss with black students and scholars the
role of Black Studies in academia. “We have three roles for white people as
well as for white universities. . . . There are three things: nonintervention,
foreign aid, and civilizing committees." Nonintervention, he said, meant
autonomy for blacks — outside and inside the university. Foreign aid meant
financial resources provided by the university to support Black Studies and
outreach programs for the black community off-campus. And the committees,
Karenga said, were to civilize white students, faculty and administrators, to help
them understand the depth and scope of their own racism.‘5 The Black Panther
Party want even farther than Karenga’s demand for white non-intervention,

calling for profound, radical change of white institutions, on-campus and off. In

a 1969 article on "Education and Revolution” in Wat. Eldridge
1 9

Cleaver, the Panthers’ minister of information, said the white power structure
must be smashed.
We have to destroy their power in the community, and
we’re not reformists, we’re not in the movement to reform
the curriculum of a given university or a given college or to
have a Black Students Union recognized at a given high
school. We are revolutionaries, and as revolutionaries, our
goal is the transformation of the American social order.7
Compounding the abrasive atmosphere and raw feelings were a series of
highly charged and widely publicized incidents in late 1968 and 1969 that
permanently cast a cloud of suspicion, resentment and political taint over the
issue of Black Studies. The most polarizing of the events took place in the
spring of 1969, when black students demanding a Black Studies program,
among other changes in the university, took over a building at Cornell
University. When white fraternity members threatened to eject the protesters,
the black students armed themselves with shotguns, rifles and other firearms.
Although the situation was resolved without shots being fired, the photographic
images of the black students brandishing guns became indelibly linked to the
Black Studies issue. The image of Black Studies was further clouded by an
incident at the University of California at Los Angeles, also in 1969, when a
dispute over Black Studies between two radical black student factions erupted
into gunfire that left two people dead. On top of that, throughout the 1968-69
amdemic year, the Black Studies program at San Francisco State College --

the first such program at a predominantly white college in the United States —

was at the center of heated, and occasionally violent, disruptions that engulfed

20

the campus and led, in the spring of 1969, to the dismissal of Nathan Hare, the
program's first director.
Academia was ill-prepared to deal with such turmoil. For twenty years,

American institutions of higher education had been struggling just to keep up
with the flood of new students enrolling at colleges and universities. In 1939-
40, at the onset of World War II, just under 1.5 million students were enrolled in
degree programs at colleges and universities in the United States,
representing about 15 percent of the nation's population in the 18-21 age
group. But beginning in the late 19403, college enrollments skyrocketed, driven
first by a wave of World War II military veterans taking advantage of educational
benefits under the GI. Bill, and then, in the early 19603, by the arrival of their
eldest children on college and university campuses. By the fall of 1968, as the
Black Studies debate was erupting in academia, 6.6 million students were
enrolled in degree programs — more than double the number just a decade
earlier and amounting for nearly 46 percent of the nation's population in the 18-
21 age group. Many colleges and universities were overwhelmed, immersed in
a frenzy of construction as they rushed to build new classrooms and
dormitories, and struggling to hire scores of additional faculty needed to teach
all the new students. Hundreds of entirely new colleges were established to
handle the swelling student population. In 1939, the nation had a little over

1 .700 institutions of higher education; by 1969, that number had grown to more

than 2,500.

But beyond the complicated logistical pressures of handling this
' 21

demographic deluge, academia was neither philosophically nor
psychologically attuned to the implications of absorbing all those new students.
Administrators were so busy making physical room for the newcomers that
little thought was given to whether a curriculum based on nineteenth century
assumptions about how best to educate the nation's intellectual elite — which
until about 1930 had always been less than 10 percent of the traditional 18-21
age group — was appropriate to the late-twentieth century education of
students drawn from a much broader cross-section of American society. And
even less thought was given to the implications of the increasing numbers of
African American students and other ethnic minorities on college campuses.
White scholars and administrators, raised and educated in a white society,
were comfortable with the traditional curriculum and assumed that educating
more students was simply a matter of doing more of what had always been
done. If they considered at all the matter of an increasing African American
student population, any potential problems were seen in terms of black
students adjusting and assimilating themselves to the existing campus
environment and curriculum. Rare indeed was the white administrator who
considered the possibility that white academia might have to adjust itself to the
black students. As white historian David Brion Davis put it after attending the
conference at Yale in the spring of 1968:

We have assumed that we could admit increasing

numbers of Negro students without modifying our

traditional educational standards and our ideal of the

educated man; we expected Negroes to assimilate our
culture and to integrate on our terms. . . . Once universities

22

have committed themselves to admit more than a token
number of blacks, they cannot evade the consequences.8

As black students enrolled in increasing numbers on white campuses, they
found themselves deeply alienated, not just by racism and insensitivity they
experienced at the hands of white students, faculty, administrators and
bureaucratic institutional procedures, but by a curriculum that virtually ignored
the lives and experience of African Americans. And so, raised on the Civil
Rights Movement, inspired by the rising rhetoric of cultural nationalism and
Black Power, enraged by the murder of King, black students began with
increasing urgency to demand Black Studies programs.

The demands posed painful and complicated challenges for college and
university administrations, and some of those challenges were only dimly
perceived at first. It did not help that the situation was so thoroughly enmeshed
in social politics, for academia had always seen itself as an oasis of thoughtful
relief from the bruising and bloody arena of political action. That is what the
time-wom metaphor of the Ivory Tower was all about. The scholarly ideal was
one of detachment and intellectual objectivity. Most scholars perceived their job
as analyzing society, not changing it. If society was an arena, scholars were not
the players or coaches or even the referees; they were those serious,
bespectacled statisticians in the distant upper reaches of the press box whose

job it is simply to keep track of the gains and losses, the mundane details of
the victories and defeats that are played out on the field far below.

But the Black Studies movement was having none of that. Black Studies

challenged everything about the university that most academics held sacred,
23

starting with the article of faith that a university is an educational institution. No
30, said many Black Studies advocates, who saw colleges and universities as
political institutions for indoctrination of the dominant white-European culture
with the aim of perpetuating the status quo of American society. Black Studies
challenged the canon of accepted knowledge and the process by which it had
been amassed over the preceding centuries. When white scholars asserted
their commitment to the ideal of objective detachment in intellectual inquiry,
black militants scorned the assertion as both untrue (How objective had it been
to exclude blacks from the scholarly record of American society?) and
unrealistic (How can a university be unconcerned with the ongoing life of the
society around it?) Black Studies didn't just criticize academia for failing to live
up to its ideal of objective detachment, it charged that the ideal itself was
flawed. \M'iere white academicians generally saw the university as being above
ideology, the proponents of Black Studies asserted that any attempt to organize
and purvey knowledge was inherently ideological. Black Studies also
challenged the very nature and process of academic organization by seeking to
create an entirely new discipline — outside the traditional structure of accepted
departmental disciplines -— through revolutionary demand rather than through
intellectual evolution. That had never been done before, and the suggestion
both frightened and offended many white administrators and scholars. Black
Studies snatched white (and sometimes black) administrators and scholars
out of their remote press-box perches and dragged them, often kicking and

screaming, down onto the torn and bloody field of social responsibility.
24

Resistance to Black Studies took many forms. Sometimes it was overtly
racist, as in some commentaries from critics (often non-academics) who
dismissed Black Studies as illegitimate and not worthy of scholarly
examination. More often, given academia's genteel traditions, the resistance
(and racism) was couched in low-key discussions of academic rigor and in
bureaucratic manipulations that quietly crippled Black Studies programs. It was
easy enough for institutions that were not committed to, or even scorned, Black
Studies to set up a minimal program with a minimal budget and an academic
structure that virtually guaranteed that the program would wither away within a
few years -— after the heat of protest and confrontation had waned. But
resistance could be purely structural, too. Creating a new program or
department with new faculty, support staff, equipment, office space, supplies
and other expenses, required real money, and in the zero-sum world of
academic budgets, a gain for Black Studies — or any program — usually
meant a loss for someone or some program elsewhere in the university.
Bureaucrats -— whether they be academic, governmental or corporate — are
known for their tenacity in protecting their budgetary turf.

And sometimes resistance was the result of principled disagreement. Black
Studies advocates, especially militant black students, often demanded things
that administrators — as matters of conscience, and sometimes as matters of
law — could not accept. Student control of autonomous Black Studies
programs or departments was one such issue, where administrators believed

they could not give in or even compromise to a great extent. Proposals that

25

included blacks-only courses or centers or dormitories also generated heated
resistance, and not just from white administrators. Kenneth B. Clark, the
famous African American sociologist whose research had been central to the
court challenge that struck down school segregation as unconstitutional,
resigned from the Antioch College Board of Directors in protest after the college
set up set up a Black Studies institute that excluded whites.

The challenges with which Black Studies confronted higher education were
complex, and the results were profound and long-lasting. But to a great extent,
the significance of the changes wrought by academia’s struggle over Black
Studies has been obscured by the intense politics and inflammatory rhetoric
that surrounded the debate. The supercharged word of that debate -- and of
that time -- was revolution. In an era of indisputably intense social conflict, the
word, 'revolution," frequently was cast about like seed on a farrner’s field. It was
an incendiary word, romantically inspiring to some, repugnant and terrifying to
others. But often the critics of social activism mistook agitation and strident
rhetoric for true revolutionary intent; and often the self-professed revolutionaries
failed to understand that social transformation required something more
complicated and sustained than the provocative disruptions and slogans
designed to put their cause on the evening television news.

Gil Scott-Heron, an African American poet and musician, engaged the
ironies on both sides of the conflict in a wry, sardonic rap called, ”The
Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” Artfully blending late 19603 politics with

television and pop culture icons, Heron ridiculed the tendency of the mass

26

media to trivialize important issues, particulariy when it came to matters of
social conflict and reform.

The revolution will not be brought to you

by the Schaefer Award Theatre,

and will not star Natalie Wood as Steve McQueen

or Bullwinkle as Julia.

The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.

The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.

The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner

because the revolution will not be televised. brother.9
But Heron's poem wasn't just a critique of the media's trivialization of social
change. It was also a critique of traditional reformists who sometimes seemed
more interested in their public stature than in accomplishing substantive
improvements in the lives of everyday people. And it was also a critique of self-
styled revolutionaries who were more interested in the superficial, attention-
getting value of the revolutionary style than in the down-and-dirty, long-tenn
work needed to accomplish real revolution. He was reminding activists that the
real work of social reform wasn’t what took place in front of television cameras.
And his words remind us, looking back at that period, now many years distant,
that it is important not to be so distracted by the flash and smoke of the surface
conflicts -— no matter how dramatic or important they appear -- that we fail to
perceive what was going on underneath the surface.
Judged by the objectives set in their own extravagant declarations, the

revolution sought by Cleaver, Hare and others among the most radical militants

was a failure. The universities were not smashed. Power relationships within

the institutions were not turned on their heads. Black students never won any

27

lasting autonomous authority over academic programs. Separatist, blacks-only
facilities and programs on college campuses were never established or
sustained in significant numbers. And despite some increase in outreach
programs, universities were never transformed into tools for the organization
and economic development of black urban neighborhoods.

That does not mean, however, that there was no revolution. The revolution
American higher education saw simply was not the revolution American higher
education got. The revolution American higher education saw was an attempt
to overthrow institutional structure, to transfer power from administrators and
faculty to the students, to replace scholarly analysis with mere propaganda; in
short, to turn the whole academic world upside down. The revolution American
higher education got was a revolution of awareness, a revolution of
consciousness, a slow and subtle but profound change in the attitudes and
assumptions on which the entire structure of the scholarly enterprise is based.

The visible revolution was over quickly. From that first program in 1968 at
San Francisco State, the number of Black Studies programs on predominantly
white campuses swelled to well over 200 (more than 500 according to one
estimate) by 1973. The militant black students had won on the issue of
program creation, though few of the programs were actually set up in the way
the militants would have desired: autonomy and separatism were
overwhelmingly rejected by university administrations. And real acceptance
was another matter altogether. Not all of the programs that were established

thrived or even survived. Some critics dismissed Black Studies as an academic

28

ghetto, an intellectually unnecessary 30p to militant black students motivated by
bleeding-heart liberalism, fear, or, at best, a pragmatic desire to assure
campus tranquillity.

But the furor over the social politics of the Black Studies movement —- the
militants’ demands were indisputably and intensely political -— and the
excruciating sensitivity of racial issues in America have obscured the real
contribution of Black Studies to higher education. The struggle over Black
Studies forced America’s colleges and universities to thoroughly reevaluate
what they taught and why. It forced academia to reassess the role of the
university in modern society and it prodded scholars to examine more closely
the assumptions on which their research and teaching were based. It also
forced scholars and academic administrators to reconsider the process by
which knowledge is gathered, organized and sorted into disciplines. The result
was a transformation of the modern university that did not approach the
revolution of the black militants’ demands but went well beyond what most
white administrators could have anticipated. It was a quiet revolution, obscured
by the noisy protest and conflict that surrounded it, which irrevocably altered the
way scholars — and most Americans — think about America’s history and
culture. To understand this untelevised revolution, it is necessary to begin by
examining the institutions whose barricades the radicals began to storm in the

mid-19603, to consider the history of academia’s Ivory Tower.

29

Chapter 2

The Old Guard in the Ivory Tower

The Ivory Tower, as a description of the university, dates back at least to the
nineteenth century. That the metaphor has endured so long in the public
consciousness is due in part to the grace and economy of the phrase itself.
The visual image it evokes is simple, elegant and concrete. But the metaphor
works — and continues to be used - because it captures with great accuracy
the university's sense of itself. The Ivory Tower is austere and dignified in its
beauty, with a sweeping view of the vast world it surveys. It is serious in its
demeanor, solid and imposing, not easily assailed by the storms of change. It
is aloof in its outlook, rising above (and holding itself apart from) the tawdry
turmoil of social strife that rages far below. It is also white.

Often, this last quality is only dimly recognized or acknowledged, even by
those most fond of using the phrase. If it is noticed at all, the whiteness implicit
in the ivory image tends to be interpreted as the symbolic color of purity and
innocence, or regarded simply as an incidental, natural attribute of the ivory,
whose glistening smoothness gives the tower its classic beauty. The
whiteness is assumed.

The advocates of Black Studies set out to change that assumption. They did

30

not perceive the whiteness of the tower as mere accident. Nor did they consider
it natural — or innocent. Ivory may be white by nature. But the design and
construction of a tower is a human act, a matter of intent and the result of
choices. Nature did not dictate that the tower be built of ivory (or at all, for that
matter). And nature had no law against remodeling the tower or adding ebony
to the design. The proponents of Black Studies challenged the whiteness of the
Ivory Tower, starting with its foundations.

When Black Studies emerged as a campus issue in 1967, it was only the
most recent in a series-of powerful forces that had been shaking the Ivory
Tower for nearly twenty years. By that time, the fabric of American higher
education was being stretched and torn in ways that were transforming
academia into something that scholars of just a generation before would have
found almost unrecognizable. But even that previous generation of scholars
had inherited an institution that was in the midst of profound change. To
understand the scope and nature and complexity of the challenges that Black
Studies brought to higher education, it is necessary to examine what the
American university in the mid 19603 was and how it got that way. It is
important to see the Black Studies movement in the context of a century-long
shift in the structure, size and aims of universities that paralleled the
revolutionary changes that had reshaped American society between the Civil
War and World War II and had been growing in intensity since the wars and in

1945.

The American university of 1965 had its roots in the medieval European

31

 

universities that emerged in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in such cities
as Bologna and Paris. Higher education —- advanced instruction in such
subjects as law, rhetoric and philosophy - had existed in the societies of the
ancient Greeks and Romans, but it was not institutionalized in the way that the
medieval European universities established permanent organizational forms.
Charles Homer Haskins argues in Ibeflsentflnixetsities:

A great scholar like Socrates gave no diplomas; if a

modern student sat at his feet for three months, he would

demand a certificate, something tangible and external to

show for it — an excellent theme, by the way, for a Socratic

dialogue. Only in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries do

there emerge in the world those features of organized

education with which we are most familiar, all that

machinery of instruction represented by faculties and

colleges and courses of study, examinations and

commencements and academic degrees. In all these

matters we are the heirs and successors, not of Athens

and Alexandria, but of Paris and Bologna.1
Heirs and successors, yes, but hardly mirror images. The earliest universities
owned no buildings. There was no overarching bureaucratic structure of
administrators or disciplinary departments. Faculty members generally offered
instruction in their own homes, or lacking sufficient space there, went out and
rented neighborhood halls in which to deliver their lectures. The universities
had no endowments and lacked the funds needed to create libraries,
classroom buildings, laboratories or dormitories for the students. "Such a
university had no board of trustees and published no catalogue; it had no

student societies — except so far as the university itself was fundamentally a

society of students . . . '3

32

The curriculum, too, was rudimentary by late twentieth century standards.
What had survived the Dark Ages in cathedral and monastery schools were the
simplified remnants of the ancient Roman curriculum: the trivium, which
included grammar, logic and rhetoric; and the quadrivium, which included
arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. These subjects were known as
the liberal arts. "It was almost wholly as formulated in a few standard texts that
the learning of the ancient world was transmitted to medieval times . . . It was a
bookish age, with great reverence for standard authorities, and its instruction
followed closely the written word."3 Instructors were required — by student-
dictated regulations — to present course material systematically, without
skipping chapters of the text.

But while they shared this fundamental curriculum with the schools that had
preceded them, what lifted the early universities from the ranks of the cathedral
and monastery schools was the rediscovery by western Europe in the twelfth
century of large and important sources of knowledge that had long been
obscured. This rediscovery, accomplished mainly by Arab scholars in Spain,
reintroduced western Europe to "the works of Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy, and the
Greek physicians, the new arithmetic, and those texts of the Roman law which
had lain hidden through the Dark Ages."4 The introduction of Arabic numbers,
replacing the cumbersome Roman numerals, also made mathematics much
easier, and all the new knowledge led to the creation of advanced schools that

specialized in medicine and the law.

In law and medicine men now possessed the fulness of
33

ancient leaming. This new knowledge burst the bonds of

the cathedral and monastery schools and created the

Ieamed professions; it drew over mountains and across

the narrow seas eager youths . . . to form in Paris and

Bologna those academic gilds which have given us our first

and our best definition of a university, a society of masters

and scholars.5
For the next seven centuries, that idea of a university as a society of masters
and scholars defined the role of the higher education in Europe and in America.
The university was simply and purely about the transmission of knowledge; it
was about teaching and learning. Research was seen as something separate
from scholastic activity, and eventually separate scientific societies grew up,
independent of the universities, to promote and pursue scientific research.
Application of knowledge to the practical problems of government or business
or agriculture was not seen as a proper concern of a university. A scholar might
leave the university and apply the knowledge he had gained in academia to the
problems of business or government, but that was seen as an entirely
separate activity; the scholar had ceased to be a scholar and had become a
merchant or a public official or a lawyer or a physician. It was the university's
aim to produce educated men. It was assumed, of course, that many of those
men would become leaders in every sort of social endeavor, but that was
beyond the university's purview. The university was about the transmission, not
the application, of knowledge. Even the advanced degrees that came, in the
twentieth century, to be so prized as credentials outside academia began

solely as a way of indicating that the holder of the degree was qualified to

teach. The degree was not initially intended to have any practical application

34

outside the university. The essence of the medieval university was the
glorification of knowledge and learning for its own sake, and the education to
be obtained in the university was available only to the sons of the aristocracy or
wealthy merchants.

When the earliest American colonial colleges were established in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they were modeled after the constituent
colleges of the great English universities at Oxford and Cambridge. The
English universities had diverged, in their organizational structure, from the
continental universities; Oxford and Cambridge were loose associations of
residential colleges while the continental universities were mostly nonresident
graduate schools that offered advanced training in theology, medicine, law and
the arts. Scottish universities also influenced the early colonial colleges, most
notably in the tendency to give control of the institution to lay community
representatives instead of the college's faculty. But while there had come to be
some structural variation in European and American higher education, the core
of the university curriculum had changed very little. In the American colleges, a
few additional subjects were being taught, such as physics, Hebrew, politics
and botany, but the heart of the college curriculum still rested on the trivium and
quadrivium that harkened back to the ancient Romans. John S. Brubacher and

“fills Rudy assert in BigneLEducatianuransitm

This course, which was the only one leading to a
bachelor‘s degree, was rigidly prescribed for all. There was
no concept that the varying interests or professional plans
of the individual student should be taken into account in
constructing a curriculum. It was felt that there was a fixed

35

and known body of knowledge — the "liberal arts" as they

came down from antiquity via the Middle Ages,

Renaissance, and Reformation. This constituted absolute

and immutable truth, and it was important that it be

absorbed — not criticized or questioned — by every

student.6
The purpose of the university was essentially unchanged, as well: to transmit
knowledge and produce educated men who would serve society. The precise
nature of that service or the specific technical problems those educated men
would encounter in that service were not the concern of the colonial colleges,
and did not generally make their way into the curriculum. It was enough that the
college teach its students those immutable truths, the wisdom of the ages, with
the faith that the properly educated man would be wise enough to apply his
knowledge appropriately to the circumstances of the world outside of
academia.

Such a reliance on faith in the value of knowledge as immutable truth should
come as no surprise, given that many of the early American colleges were
established by religious denominations that wanted to ensure themselves an
educated clergy. But as Brubacher and Rudy argue, the colleges intended the
same basic education for other professionals and lay students. The founders
of the early colleges did not draw fine distinctions between spiritual and
intellectual enterprises.

The view that the advancement and preservation of
learning was one and the same thing as the training of
literate ministers came easily to the New England Puritans;
together with Presbyterians, Anglicans, and Lutherans, they
accepted and carried on the traditions of the medieval

Schoolmen. Like the Scholastics they took for granted the
fact that piety could not be separated from intellect; that

36

religious faith should be rationalized. The Grace of God

was indispensible, but not enough; philosophy and reason

were also important, while knowledge of the arts and

sciences was very useful.7
By the middle of the nineteenth century, American higher education was 200
years old and it was flourishing. More than 180 permanent colleges and
universities had been founded.8 And still, despite administrative and
organizational variation necessitated by the patterns of growth and
development of the colonies and the young nation, the curriculum and
philosophical underpinnings of American institutions of higher learning were
little different from the medieval universities 700 years earlier. Although he was
speaking to a new Catholic university in Dublin, Cardinal John Henry Newman
spoke for the vast majority of scholars in Europe and America when he
described the scholarly ideal in the 18503. His discourses, brought together in
Wren, defined the university's role very clearly and discretely.
The university, he said,

is a place of teaching universal knowledge. This implies

that its object is, on the one hand, intellectual, not moral;

and, on the other, that it is the diffusion and extension of

knowledge rather than the advancement. If its object were

scientific and philosophical discovery, I do not see why a

University should have students; if religious training, I do

not see how it can be the seat of literature and science.

(emphasis in original)9
Teaching and research, Newman wrote, are different functions and require
different skills. Each is demanding in its own right, he asserted; the person

who teaches all day would have little time or energy to conduct research, and

the reverse is true of the scientific researcher. The university, he said, should

37

leave the advancement of knowledge to the literary and scientific societies and
academies that had been set up specifically to pursue such inquiries. The
university must focus on the fundamental task of producing educated men.

Our desideratum is, not the manners and habits of
gentlemen; — these can be, and are, acquired in various
other ways, by good society, by foreign travel, by the innate
grace and dignity of the Catholic mind; -- but by the force,
the steadiness, the comprehensiveness and the versatility
of intellect. the command over our own powers, the
instinctive just estimate of things as they pass before us,
which sometimes indeed is a natural gift, but commonly is
not gained without much effort and the exercise of years. . . .

When the intellect has once been properly trained and
formed to have a connected view or grasp of things, it will
display its powers with more or less effect according to its
particular quality and capacity in the individual. In the case
of most men it makes itself felt in the good sense, sobriety
of thought, reasonableness, candour, self-command, and
steadiness of view, which characterize it. In some it will
have developed habits of business, power of influencing
others, and sagacity. In others it will elicit the talent of
philosophical speculation, and lead the mind forward to
eminence in this or that intellectual department. In all it will
be a faculty of entering with comparative ease into any
subject of thought, and of taking up with aptitude any
science or profession.10

But such a clear and narrow definition of the university's role was already
beginning to change as Western society was radically altered by the industrial
revolution. The United States was growing rapidly, both in territory and
papulation. The rise of industrial manufacturing, which gave the northern states
a powerful advantage during the Civil War, was accelerated by the war and
continued well into the twentieth century. In the process, the balance of the
nation's population began shifting toward urban centers and the entire society

became increasingly reliant on the advances in technology. And the whole
38

 

system, which was rapidly consolidating small companies into large
combinations, increasingly demanded people who were trained in the
professional and managerial skills to handle it all.
Beginning with the railroads and the federal government,
bureaucratic organization spread to these combines.
American business and manufacturing corporations began
to hire new kinds of employees: a vast army of white-collar
workers, such as bookkeepers and clerks, and a smaller
number of professionals, such as corporate lawyers,
accountants, engineers, and architects. Growing urban
populations and greater wealth meant the increasing need
of goods and services of all kinds and the more frequent
resort to experts — doctors, dentists, architects, and
lawyers. In the four decades after 1870 the number of
professionals increased over four times to total 1,150,000
by 1910. In the same period, those in finance, real estate,

and trade more than trebeled, amounting by 1910 to
2,760,000.11

Gradually, America's colleges and universities were drawn into this
transformation, both as providers of professional workers with specialized
skills to handle the technical problems of the new industrialized economy and
as centers for research on which many of the necessary technological
advances were based. The shift threw academia into an intense conflict
between the old ideals of moral education and intellectual purity and the
increasingly pragmatic demands of the industrial age.

Even before the Civil War the intellectual battle lines were being drawn. Ina.
Xalefiepcct of 1828 was a staunch defense of the liberal arts tradition. While it
did not reject the idea of advanced, specialized training, it argued that the

purpose of an undergraduate education was to teach the student the core of

knowtedge -— which was the same for everyone, and essentially unchanged
39

since medieval times -— that would enable him to succeed in whatever field of
endeavor he pursued.

But, why, it is asked, should all the students in a college
be required to tread in the same steps? Why should not
each one be allowed to select those branches of study
which are most to his taste, which are best adapted to his
peculiar talents, and which are most nearly connected with
his intended profession? To this we answer, that our
prescribed course contains those subjects only which
ought to be understood, as we think, by every one who
aims at a thorough education. They are not the peculiarities
of any profession or art. These are to be Ieamed in the
professional and practical schools. But the principles of
sciences are the common foundation of all high intellectual
attainments. As in our primary schools, reading, writing,
and arithmetic are taught to all, however different their
prospects; so in a college, all should be instructed in those
branches of knowledge of which no one destined to the
higher walks of life ought to be ignorant.12

But less than a decade later, in 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson gave voice to a
growing cultural nationalism that called, among other things, for significant
reimagination of the scholariy ideal. In "The American Scholar," Emerson
challenged America’s intellectuals to throw off the cultural domination of
Europe. and rely on their own abilities and judgments. "We have listened too
long to the courtly muses of Europe," Emerson wrote. "The spirit of the
American free-man is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. . . . We will
walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own
minds."13 This declaration of intellectual independence called on educational
institutions to adjust themselves to the needs of their students, recognizing
each as an individual, and to discard European traditions and models of

knOWIedge and the role of the scholar -- traditions and models that were
40

 

centuries old. Emerson said colleges must broaden their vision of education
and recognize that scholars learn as well from nature and from taking action as
they do from books. He said that colleges must look beyond their traditional
curricula to inspire their students.

Colleges . . . can only highly serve us when they aim not to

drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of

various genius to their hospitable halls, and by the

concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame. . . .

Gowns and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold,

can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit.

Forget this, and our American colleges will recede in their

public importance, whilst they grow richer every year.14

After the Civil War, higher education in America began to swing decidedly

away from the old model, although American educators still locked to Europe
for ideas. The German universities, which increasingly emphasized advanced
graduate study and scientific research had a big influence in the United States,
most notably in the establishment of Johns Hopkins University as a
predominantly graduate, research-oriented institution. And following the lead of
Harvard, an increasing number of American colleges and universities began
making portions of the old, classical curriculum optional and increased the
ability of students to shape their own academic programs. Harvard made such
courses as Latin and Greek optional for juniors and seniors in 1867, and at his
inauguration as president of the university in 1869, Charles W. Eliot made it
clear that he was committed to an expanded elective system of coursework for

students.” By the end of the nineteenth century, these changes had brought

about a fundamental transformation of American higher education. Brubacher

41

and Rudy observed that over a period of about fifty years, academia in America
had expanded vertically, through the addition of graduate schools, and
horizontally, through the broadening of the undergraduate curriculum.16
This expansion of the university — in both directions — was intertwined with

an increasing specialization and compartmentalization of knowledge. As the
old, broad categories of knowledge broke down new, more specific categories
emerged, focusing on particular areas of knowledge such as history, physics,
economics or chemistry. Gradually, these categories, and many others,
became established in the academic structure as disciplinary departments,
which also were strengthened by a growing sense of academics as
professionals.

As the modern university took shape, disciplinarity was

reinforced in two major ways: industries demanded and

received specialists, and disciplines recruited students to

their ranks. The trend toward specialization was further

propelled by increasingly more expensive and

sophisticated instrumentation within individual fields. . . .

Although the "Renaissance Man" may have remained an

ideal for the well-educated baccalaureate, it was not the

model for the new professional, specialized research

scholar. Formalization of the pursuit of knowledge in

various fields —- history in 1884, economics in 1885,

political science in 1903, and sociology in 1905 -— paved

the way for the "professionalization" of knowledge in the

twentieth century.17

As the connections between academia and industry grew — through the

advancements of research and the training of specialized professionals for
roles in industry -— and as scholars themselves came to be seen as

professionals, the public's attitudes toward the university began to change. No

42

longer was a university education solely an esthetic, esoteric luxury for the
social and cultural elite. By the start of the twentieth century, it had begun to
carry practical implications that were not lost on the traditionally pragmatic
American mind.

Once institutions like Johns Hopkins and MIT developed

national reputations, they attracted intellectually ambitious

young men who wanted to do what nobody had yet done or

yet knew how to do. In due course, moreover, their

graduates began to win preference in competition for

certain kinds of work, so that attending a place like Hopkins

or MIT became advantageous for the most pragmatic

careerist as well as idealists.“
Still, a broad acceptance by the American public of the practical value of a
college education did not really begin to show itself until after World War I.
Before that war, the model of grand entrepreneurial success set by such
tycoons as John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford -— which did not include college
— continued to have a strong hold on the public imagination. Although a
college degree might ensure one of a job, that job was not necessarily the key
to rising to the top of the business world. After World War I, however, American
business began to rely more on managerial and professional expertise than
on raw entrepreneurial determination. And Americans fairly quickly perceived
the shift and its implications for those considering college.

More and more people saw college as a place to meet "the

right people." Since success in business (and indeed in

American life) was widely believed to depend on "contacts,"

colleges came to seem relevant in a way they previously

had not. This trend was exploited by many educators. new

business curricula were established for students who

found the traditional academic fare indigestible, and
corporations began to consider college graduates as

43

potential junior management material. Conversely, the idea
of a non-college man's either starting at the bottom and
working up, or going into business for himself and
expanding, seemed less realistic. The Depression
compounded doubts about such possibilities, giving
millions of young men the feeling that it was better to
acquire credentials and work for a big, safe organization
than to gamble in the open market.19

Of course, this growing view of the university as a practical tool for economic
and social advancement was not universally accepted. Some scholars still
clung to the old ideal of the university. In 1930, when he published Universities.
his classic critique of higher education in the United States, England and
Germany, Abraham Flexner decried the trend he saw in the American academy
of enrolling increasing numbers of students in a rapidly growing array of
programs that he considered inappropriate in a university; programs like
business and journalism that he believed had little to do with the refinement of
the intellect that was the purpose of a university and belonged more tightly in
trade schools. He blamed this trend on the democratic cultural ideals that
made Americans reluctant to sort people according to their abilities. The
resulting problems were endemic to all levels of the nation’s educational
system.

The high school used to be a sieve of a certain kind. But
American democracy objects to sieves. Would not selection
and distribution of students on the basis of industry, ability,
and capacity to go forward on intellectual lines be
democratic? Most certainly, yes. Yet the high school cannot
be democratic in this sense. It is, on the contrary, a kind of
bargain-counter on which a generous public and an
overworked and underpaid teaching staff display every
variety of merchandise . . . leaving the student . . . free to

piece together, under restrictions that sometimes amount
to much and sometimes to little, a course of study that by

44

the end of four years will yield "counts" or "units of credit”
enough to win a diploma or to enable him to satisfy the
entrance requirements of the college of his choice.20

Education, he feared, was becoming a sort of academic assembly line where
poorly taught students were churned out of the nation’s high schools and
funneled along into colleges and universities to receive the sort of instruction
they should have gotten in high school and, having obtained their bachelor’s
degrees, passed on into graduate schools that should have been reserved for
only the most capable and serious scholars. The students’ mOtives, he
charged, often were pecuniary, not intellectual.

In vast throngs, American boys and girls go to college for

social or prudential reasons; and so for prudential reasons

they pass on to the graduate schools — for an AM. or a

Ph.D. degree is a merchantable asset in the educational

market, because with higher degrees go higher salaries.

The mere seekers for degrees throng the graduate school;

and in order to meet the needs of the unfit, the graduate

school has adopted a type of organization and

administration that is quite irrelevant to higher education. in

so far as this body of students is concerned, the graduate

school is merely a kind of advanced teachers college with

courses, requirements, methods of instruction and

accounting, just as the college is something of an
advanced high school.21

It is tempting to consider Flexner’s dismay merely quaint and amusing, a
relic of a bygone elitist age. But his criticisms were not without reason. Higher
education was already undergoing major changes as Flexner issued his
critique in 1930, and the transformation only accelerated over the next thirty
years. College and university campuses in 1930 were indeed being flooded
with students, compared with the preceding decades. The percentage of

America’s 18-to—21-year-olds enrolled in college degree programs had
45

increased by half in just the decade from 1920 to 1930, and the percentage had
tripled since 1900. When Flexner first enrolled as an undergraduate at Johns
Hopkins University in 1884, a little over 3 percent of Americans in the 18-21 age
group were pursuing college degrees. By 1900, that number had risen to 4
percent, but higher education was still enrolling only that small group of elite
students who had the academic skills, financial resources and intellectual
interest to pursue the sort of advanced education that beyond medicine, the law
and the clergy, bore little direct connection to specific professional pursuits.
Over the next thirty years, however, that pattern began to change as enrollments
increased steadily and universities expanded their curricula into areas — such
as business, journalism, home economics, nursing, physical education,
agriculture, pharmacy, advertising, and others -— that were far more practical
than abstract. Many of those changes had their roots in the establishment of
land-grant colleges, starting in the 18503, which emphasized agricultural and
mechanical training and increased, through service, connections with the off-
campus community, but by the early decades of the twentieth century, the focus
on practicality was expanding to even the nation’s elite universities, such as
Harvard, Columbia and the University of Chicago.

As higher education came to be seen as more utilitarian, growing numbers
of high school graduates began to pursue college degrees as a path to
professional and financial success. By 1920, more than 8 percent of
Americans in the 18-21 age group were enrolled in college degree programs;

by 1930, the number stood at nearly 12.5 percent. Such dynamic growth was
46

putting an enormous strain on universities, Flexner wrote, because "expansion
means increase of professors and students — the former difficult to obtain, the
latter likely through sheer size to destroy the organic character of the
institution."22 But the flood of students was just beginning. It is illuminating to
consider how Flexner might have assessed the impact of the next thirty years of
campus growth; by 1960, the nation’s colleges and universities were enrolling
nearly 35 percent of America’s college-age youth, almost three times the
percentage Flexner considered so problematic in 1930. Moreover, the array of
academic courses and programs that Flexner disparaged as unscholarly, the
distractions of research and community service that he considered detrimental
to the true purpose of the university continued to multiply and expand.

\Miat F lexner failed to understand — or at least, refused to accept -— was
that the "organic character” of the university was, in fact, changing, for good or
for ill -— or perhaps for good and ill. Although he acknowledged that the
university, like any social institution, is always "an expression of the age," he
did not recognize how profoundly the age was changing, and with it the
fundamental nature of American life. In the decades between 1930 and 1970,
the United States suffered through the Great Depression, three major wars,
and twenty-five years of nuclear fear. Technological advancements made
automobiles standard equipment for the typical American, established
commercial air transportation as common, put televisions in nearly every home
and enabled the United States to land men on the moon. Americans' sense of

themselves and all their institutions were changing dramatically, especially
47

following World War II, as affluence reigned, civil rights were expanded and the
nation was thrust -— as one of two superpowers — into a dominant role in
world affairs. It is scarcely imaginable that in an era of such monumental
change Americans’ views and expectations of the university would have
remained unchanged.

Flexner was correct, at least, in his perception that the dramatic change that
was beginning to engulf higher education in 1930 had a lot to do with
America’s democratic ideals. Education -— particularly a college education —
had come to be seen as the key to improving one’s circumstances in an
increasingly urbanized and industrialized America. And America, from its
beginnings, has always been about upward mobility. While the nation’s
popular mythology tends to emphasize the Puritans and their quest for
religious freedom, the vast majority of colonists — including some Puritans —
were at least as interested in economic advancement. They came to America
because the social and economic structures of England and other European
countries had boxed them in and prevented them from improving their
circumstances. Land, which had always been a source and emblem of wealth,
was extremely difficult to obtain in Europe, and the customs of primogeniture
meant that even many of the second and third sons of rich families had to
migrate to the colonies to get land of their own. Land was abundant in America,
as were Opportunities to make one’s fortune from amassing sizable tracts and
exploiting the land’s resources. In the minds of some, improvement and

development of the New World rose to the level of moral imperative, as John
48

 

Frederick Martin argued in EmfltsinibeJMIdamess
Wildemess and garden thus were powerful symbols in

Puritan cosmology, standing for the danger posed by

idleness, the hope offered by improvement. But they were

more than symbols. In the minds of seventeenth-century

Englishmen, the wilderness was not only a metaphor for

waste; it was a wasteland — without cultivation, fences,

property lines, laws, morality, and all the other trappings of

civilization — badly in need of improvement. Puritan divines

spoke so often of the evil of wasting land and the good of

improvement that these propositions acquired a unique

cultural stature as self-evident truths?3
For European colonists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, America
was the place to go to rise in wealth and status; to improve not only the land,
but the self. It is a pattern of hope and ambition that has endured even into the
twenty-first century, though the points of origin of the countless succeeding
waves of immigration have shifted dramatically. People from all over the world
still come to America seeking to improve their fortunes because America is all
about getting ahead.

From the 19203 onward, getting ahead increasingly meant getting a college
degree. The nation’s economy was coming to depend less on agriculture and
more on the burgeoning industrial corporations that were feeding America’s
growing appetite for automobiles and other manufactured consumer goods.
Although some colleges — notably the land grant institutions — had been
emphasizing agricultural science since the 18503, few farmers needed or
wanted a college degree. Technological innovations coming out of the

university through its extension agents might be useful, but on a family-owned

farm, no one needed a college degree to advance; what the farmer needed
49

was land and the techniques to make it as productive as possible. As the
American economy came to be dominated by industrial corporations, however,
a college degree began to carry more benefits. People still spoke of the
Ieamed professions -- law, medicine, clergy -— but for those engaged in the
world of business, employment was increasingly described not in terms of
jobs, but in terms of a career. A job was for someone interested in merely
making a living. A career was for someone on the rise.

In the boom of industrial and corporate growth that followed World War I, a
college degree became a marketable commodity. Not only did it indicate a
preferred social status —- because of the economic and, often, social barriers
that limited college education mainly to the sons (and a few daughters) of the
wealthy elite — it also suggested a high level of intellectual skill possessed by
the degree-holder. As college graduates advanced in the business world, their
success — whether it was because of the skills they gained in college or the
social connections they and their families possessed even before they enrolled
-- inspired ambitious young people to view the college degree as the key to
success in business; the college degree opened the door to a business
career.

The problem was opening the door to college. Higher education remained a
prohibitively expensive proposition for the vast majority of Americans until the
G. I. Bill blasted those doors off their hinges at the end of World War II. Flush

with confidence and optimism after its triumph over the forces of fascism,

America sought to reward the sacrifice of its returning war veterans by giving
50

them a shot at that key to social and economic advancement, the college
diploma. Money was no longer a barrier to higher education for the veterans,
thanks to the generous educational benefits of the GI. Bill. Men, and to a lesser
degree women, who before the war would have expected to spend their lives
as farmers, auto mechanics, restaurant cooks or factory workers, suddenly had
the opportunity to see how far an advanced education might get them. They
enrolled in colleges and universities by the tens and hundreds of thousands.
Enrollments, which had dipped sharply during the war, jumped dramatically at
the war’s end. In 1945, 17.5 percent of the nation’s 18-21-year-olds were
enrolled in a college degree program, up from 15.6 percent in 1940, and 11.9
percent in 1944. By 1950, enrollments had swelled to 29.6 percent of the age
group and by 1960 to 34.9 percent.

No longer was higher education the sole reserve of America’s social and
financial elite. The elites may have remained dominant, particularly at the most
selective private colleges and universities, but clearly, the "organic character” of
the Ivory Tower had been irrevocably altered by rising middle-class
expectations. An educational system that admits one of every three 18-21-year-
olds unquestionably rests on a more democratic sense of academia’s role
than does a system that admits only one in twenty-five. And the middle class,
which was growing rapidly both in numbers and affluence, increasingly had the
ambition, the collegiate experience, and the financial resources to ensure the
expansion of their children's opportunities. For the sons and daughters of

college graduates, college ceased to be a dream and became an expectation.
51

By the middle 19603, more than a century of open combat between the
competing academic ideals of intellectual purity and practical application had
transformed the leading institutions of American higher education into
enormous and incredibly complex entities. Campuses across the nation were
spending billions of dollars to build new dormitories to house the flood of new
students, new classroom buildings in which to instruct them, new office
buildings to house the growing faculty needed to teach thousands of new
courses, new laboratories where those faculty members could conduct their
research, and new administration buildings to house the swelling bureaucracy
needed to manage it all. In a 1963 series of lectures at Harvard, later published
as IbaflsasmtbaJlniyarsitx. Clark Kerr, president of the University of
California at Berkeley, described the vast expanse of his state's university
system:

The University of California last year had operating

expenditures from all sources of needy half a billion

dollars, with almost another 100 million for construction; a

total employment of over 40,000 people, more than IBM and

in a far greater variety of endeavors; operations in over a

hundred locations, counting campuses, experiment

stations, agricultural and urban extension centers, and

projects abroad involving more than fifty countries; nearly

10,000 courses in its catalogues; some form of contact

with nearly every industry, nearly every level of government,

nearly every person in its regionfi‘
More than 4,000 babies had been born in the university's hospitals, he said.
The university's research functions had prodded it to become the world's

largest breeder and seller of white mice and was on the way to giving it the

world's largest colony of primates. "It will soon also have 100,000 students -—
52

30,000 of them at the graduate level; yet much less than one third of its
expenditures are directly related to teaching."25

Kerr called this mammoth type of institution, which merged so many different
functions, the "multiversity." And while the very title of his book suggests that
practical considerations had gained dominance, Kerr saw three major threads
of intellectual history still alive in this multiversity. He traced those threads back
to ancient Greece, to Plato who was "devoted to truth largely for its own sake,"
the Sophists, who "were more interested in attainable success than they were
in unattainable truth," and the Pythagoreans, who were concerned with such
scientific pursuits as mathematics and astronomy. Those threads had come to
be exemplified in three distinct styles of academic structure and emphasis: the
British, the American and the German.

Out of all these fragments, experiments, and conflicts a
kind of unlikely consensus has been reached.
Undergraduate life seeks to follow the British, who have
done the best with it, and an historical line that goes back
to Plato; the humanists often find their sympathies here.
Graduate life and research follow the Germans, who once
did best with them, and an historical line that goes back to
Pythagoras; the scientists lend their support to all this. The
"lesser" professions (lesser than law and medicine) and
the service activities follow the American pattern, since the
Americans have been best at them, and an historical line
that goes back to the Sophists; the social scientists are
most likely to be sympathetic. . . . A university anywhere can
aim no higher than to be as British as possible for the sake
of the undergraduates, as German as possible for the sake
of the graduates and the research personnel, as American
as possible for the sake of the public at large - and as
confused as possible for the sake of the preservation of the
whole uneasy balance?“3

This, then, was the Ivory Tower that rose so grandly at the apex of American
53

culture in the middle 19603. The American university was at once idealistic and
pragmatic; aloof and engaged; a citadel of the old and a laboratory of the new; a
promoter of democracy and a defender of the status quo. "The university," Kerr
wrote, "is so many things to so many different people that it must, of necessity,
be partially at war with itself."27 How volatile that war could become Kerr would
begin to discover the following year with the eruption of the Free Speech
Movement at Berkeley. But the internal conflict over the ideals and purposes of
the university would rise to new levels of intensity with the emergence of the
Black Studies movement in late 1967.

The emergence of Black Studies as an issue on American college
campuses challenged the Ivory Tower in three important ways. First and
foremost, Black Studies challenged American higher education to open itself to
real — not merely token -— participation by African Americans. In this regard,
Black Studies was an extension of the Civil Rights Movement, pressing
colleges and universities to live up to the nation's democratic ideals, ideals of
opportunity for advancement that had played such a key role in the tremendous
expansion of college enrollments since the end of World War I. Black
enrollment on white campuses had begun to grow after 1960 but the growth
was painfully slow. The Black Studies movement provided a focal point for
black activists’ demands that white campuses recruit and retain increased
numbers of African American students and faculty. Colleges and universities
were forced to rethink who they admitted as students and by what standards

they made their admission decisions. They were forced to reexamine how they
54

hired faculty and to consider whether the prevailing notions of scholarly
qualifications were adequate.

The Black Studies movement also challenged deeply ingrained traditions of
institutional process. It challenged the way academia decides what knowledge
is worthy of being included in the curriculum, and it challenged the way that
knowledge is pursued, organized and taught. Black Studies advocates looked
at the curriculum of American higher education in the mid 19603 and found it
singulaity lacking in recognition of African American culture. In music, art,
literature, sociology, history and other fields, the curriculum virtually ignored the
contributions of African Americans and their role in American society. Advocates
of Black Studies argued that African Americans had been ignored because all
of the assumptions of academia — like the institution of the university itself —
was deeply rooted in white, European culture. Black Studies challenged those
assumptions and challenged academia to be more inclusive in the canons
from which course syllabi and reading lists were drawn; Black Studies forced
scholars to rethink the process and criteria by which literary works and other
materials are selected for college curricula.

But the challenge to institutional process went well beyond the issue of
canon development and selection. Black Studies also forced a rethinking of the
academic structure of the university. Although the departmental structure that
followed the emergence of specialized academic disciplines was a relatively
new development in the nearly BOO-year history of higher education. by 1967,

the oldest disciplines had been established for sixty to eighty years, and
’ 55

increased specialization had been the name of the game in higher education
throughout the twentieth century. Advocates of Black Studies were seeking to
establish an entirely new discipline that, because of its interdisciplinary nature,
not only ran counter to the prevailing currents of increasing specialization but
also impinged on the bureaucratic territory of several other established
disciplines. Compounding the problems of inter-discipline and bureaucratic
politics was the fact that even strong supporters of Black Studies disagreed on
how the discipline should be defined -— or whether it even constituted a
separate discipline. And the norms of institutional process were further
challenged by the fact that the movement for this new discipline was built on
the power of political pressure brought to bear by black students, often through
emotionally charged campus protests. Notwithstanding the fact that the earliest
universities had been established by students -— who dictated their faculty’s
terms of employment — since the advent of disciplinary departments, new
disciplines had always been established through consensus, by groups of
scholars who shared an interest in a particular area of specialization
organizing and defining their own field of study. Departments had always grown
out of the intellectual interests of the faculty; they had not previously been
imposed by student demand. In short, Black Studies challenged the
foundations of university process by questioning the entire structure of
scholarly endeavor: what is researched, what is taught, and how the whole
intellectual undertaking is organized.

In doing all this, Black Studies, confronted higher education with a third
56

profound challenge, a philosophical challenge: What is a university for? From
the earliest European universities in the twelfth century until the early
nineteenth century, the purpose of the university had generally been accepted
to be simply the transmission of knowledge. The early university was where the
children of the aristocracy and the economic elite — often the same thing -—
were sent to be taught the core knowledge, the established, immutable truths,
they needed to know to lead society in their turn. The modern university that
arose in the nineteenth century extended its sense of purpose to include the
pursuit and discovery of new knowledge, though the thrust of higher education
was still to prepare the children of the elite (which was expanding slightly to
include the upper echelon of an emerging middle class) to lead society.

But Black Studies, at least as many of its advocates imagined the field,
suggested a radical new possibility of purpose: to intentionally and
aggressively work to change society. Whether its aim had been simply to
transmit settled knowledge or to discover new knowledge, the university had
generally held itself outside and above the fray of social action. That was, in
essence, what made it the Ivory Tower. Black Studies advocates were unwilling
to accept such aloofness as a given any longer. Regardless of the scholar’s
attempts at objectivity, they argued, the university was not so distanced and
detached from the machinery of social policy as scholars wanted to believe.
And the attempt to maintain distance and detachment worked to reinforce the
social status quo and sustain the white European assumptions, values and

traditions that had brought African slaves to America in the first place and had
57

excluded their descendants from a full share in American society for more than
350 years. The university, Black Studies advocates asserted, was inherently
political; it was a full and active part of the society that had given it life, and could
not be separated from that society. The question, they argued, was not whether
the university should be political, but rather what should its politics be: to
bolster and sustain the status quo, or to consciously work to build a better and
more inclusive society? Black Studies challenged American colleges and
universities to reexamine their entire mission: who they were for, how they
operated and the very purpose of their existence.

The confrontations that arose over those questions were difficult,
disconcerting and often painful, and many of the debates continue, more than
thirty years later. But regardless of how specific issues that arose in those
confrontations were resolved -— or whether they persist, unresolved -— the very
act of struggling with them transformed the university in a profound way. The
emergence of the Black Studies movement changed the intellectual calculus of
academia. It became impossible any longer for colleges and universities to
ignore the lack of scholarly attention that had been paid to African Americans.
Arguments might rage over what constituted the best approach to correcting
that problem or whether the efforts of one university or another were adequate;
but on one level, it was almost irrelevant what solution a given institution chose.

The dramatic, but often overlooked, transformation came in the way that the
demands raised by the black students who called for Black Studies prompted

the vast majority of American colleges and universities to accept -— in an
58

astonishingly short period of time — the proposition that something needed to
be done. Moreover, that something clearly had to involve the intellectual core of
the university’s activities, not just the surface demographics of enrollments and
employment; merely hiring more black faculty or admitting more black students
to teach and be taught the same old white curriculum would not be enough.
Some institutions did more than others. Some created independent Black
Studies departments while others established more limited centers or
programs; some sought to integrate intellectually by adding new courses in
existing disciplines or simply by expanding the variety of texts and other
materials used in their classes. Many scholars were inspired to devote new or
reinvigorated efforts to research in the history and culture of African Americans.
Few scholars could hold themselves completely aloof from the changing dialog
and atmosphere on campus, and few institutions could afford the luxury of
remaining entirely resistant to change.

Furor over the disruptive tactics of protest, inflammatory rhetoric suffused
with rage and revolution, and provocative proposals that would have
established blacks-only programs captured the attention of the media and the
public. Anger, confrontation and chaos made for good television — engrossing,
if not always edifying. But the untelevised revolution was the breathtaking and
rapid shift in the fundamental assumptions of academia whereby African
Americans (and thereafter other groups) could not only legitimately make
demands on the university, but lay claim to the university. The Black Studies

movement did not guarantee a particular role for African Americans in the

59

intellectual enterprise of higher education, but it did ensure that African
Americans would occupy a distinct place in the awareness of the university.
That such a profound change got little attention is not surprising given the
tumult of the era. A farmer besieged by rising river waters may notice little but
the strain of his battle to keep his home intact. Only after the torrents have
receded — if then -— is he apt to notice that the flood also brought with it

renewed substance and fertility to the fields from which he draws his life.

60

Chapter 3

White Campus, Black Studies

To many white students, scholars and university administrators, Black
Studies seemed to come almost out of nowhere in late 1968 and 1969. One
day Black Studies was not even a blip on their radar screens, and the next,
black students were demonstrating, occupying campus buildings, and
demanding that colleges and universities establish Black Studies programs;
not simply courses that included material about the African American
experience, mind you, but full-fledged academic departments that would stand
on equal footing with the established, traditional disciplines. Even well-
meaning, white liberals on campus were taken aback by the vehemence of
some of the protests, and many, if not most, were confused by the very concept
of Black Studies. What did the term mean? What did it include? Wasn’t it just a
matter of inserting more material about African Americans in the traditional
courses already being taught — acknowledging the 54th Massachusetts
Infantry in Civil War history courses, for example, or adding more works by the
likes of Phillis Wheatley, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes and

Richard Wright in literature classes? Or were the advocates serious that Black

61

Studies represented a legitimate intellectual enterprise distinct from the
traditional disciplines?

Even proponents were not in agreement about the definition of Black
Studies, which added to the confusion. And the emergence of Black Studies
from the field of student protest raised suspicions among many whites in
academia that Black Studies was more about the demographics and
diplomacy of racial integration than it was about scholarly endeavor. Even
without the intense and emotionally charged influence of racial politics, few
administrators and faculty members were prepared to take advice — much
less direction ---— from students on what constituted a legitimate academic
discipline or how the university's scholarly endeavors should be organized.
Militant black students, for their part, tended to be impatient with any delay in
institutional response to their demands, regardless of whether it stemmed
from racist resistance or a genuine confusion about aims and means. The
impatience was no surprise, of course, and not simply because the militant
black students were young or unfamiliar with the traditional needs of
institutional process. In truth, it was often impossible to tell the difference
between racist resistance and genuine confusion, and beyond that, many of the
militants saw the distinction as irrelevant because they considered the
institutions inherently racist anyway and believed that any delay worked to the
disadvantage of black people and to the advantage of the status quo. The
militants were unwilling to have their dreams deferred any longer; they had no

intention of becoming raisins in the sun.
62

But while many whites saw the demand for Black Studies as the fruit of
recent developments in social protest, the roots of the Black Studies movement
went much deeper and much farther back than the lunch counter sit-ins of the
early 19603 or even the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott. African Americans
had long placed great emphasis on education in general and on education
about their own history and culture in particular. For well over half a century —
inside and outside of academia — black intellectuals following the lead of such
scholars as W.E.B. DuBois and Carter G. Woodson, had struggled to expand
the body of knowledge about black history and to infuse that endeavor with a
discipline that would achieve acceptance and respect in the intellectual wortd.

DuBois, who was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard,
began his groundbreaking studies of the history and sociology of African
Americans in the 18903, while still in graduate school. His doctoral

dissertation,

 

America—1638:1810. was an expansion of his master's thesis and earned him
his doctorate in 1895. His faculty advisor, Albert Bushnell Hart, made
arrangements to have the dissertation published in 1896 as the first volume in
the Harvard Historical Studies series.1 In 1899, DuBois published Ina.
Ebiladalmuegto. a study of African American life in Philadelphia that
provided statistics and analysis on such wide-ranging matters as crime, death
rates, marital status and occupation. It was one of the first scientific
sociological studies to be written by an American.2 Hart was a strong supporter

of DuBois, engineering his appearances at two conventions of the American

63

Historical Association and arranging for the publication of DuBois' work in the
WSW Those appearances and publications
"established precedents that would have no sequels for decades. But they
symbolized the importance of the role of this black scholar in the emergence of
Negro history as a research specialty."3 DuBois continued his examination of
the African American life and history and continued to write passionately
against the forces of racial oppression virtually until his death in 1963 at the
age of 95.

Woodson was the second African American to earn a Ph.D. in history from
Harvard — in 1912, seventeen years after DuBois. Though his research in
graduate school did not focus on the history of African Americans, Woodson
quickly turned his efforts in that direction after receiving his degree. In 1915, he
published a monograph,Iba.Edumtion_of_tbe.Nagm_Echto_186.L which
testified not only to his interest in the history of African Americans, but also to
the length and the difficulty of the struggle African Americans had faced in
obtaining education in the United States. In the fall of that same year, on Sept.
9, 1915, Woodson took a huge step forward in the study of African American
history and culture by organizing the Association for the Study of Negro Life and
History.4 Within four months, by January of 1916, the association was
publishing a quarterly scholarly journal, the .IcumaLotflegmfiistcgi. which
became an important forum for the publication of scholars interested in the
nascent field of black history. In establishing the ASNLH and launching its

journal, ”Woodson created the black history movement."5

64

But before DuBois and Woodson, even before the Civil War, blacks had
written about the African American history and culture. Some were former
slaves, whose narratives of their personal experiences offered a detailed
portrait of the realities of slave life and provided a perspective that was missing
in the debates between Northern abolitionists and Southern apologists. Many
of the early writers were ministers and much of their writing, especially in the
antebellum period, was intended to justify emancipation. Few had significant
scholarly training, and their work tended to be aimed more at building self-
esteem among blacks and informing whites about the contributions and
achievements of blacks than at scholarly investigation and analysis of the
African American experience. But some of the works made important
contributions to serious scholarship, most notably George Washington
Williams' WWW which was
published in 1882 and has been called "the first scholarly account of the history
of black Americans."6 And in 1913, just two years before Woodson organized
the ASNLH, Arthur Schomburg, a self-trained historian and avid collector of
documents, manuscripts and other materials bearing on African American
history, called for colleges and universities to recognize and acknowledge the
importance of the field:

We have reached the crucial period of our educational
existence. . . . We have chairs of almost everything, and
believe we lack nothing, but we sadly need a chair of Negro
history. The white institutions have their chair of history; it is
the history of their people and whenever the Negro is

mentioned in the text books it dwindles down to a foot note.
The white scholar's mind and heart is fired, because in the

65

temple of Ieaming he is told how on the 5th of March, 1770,

the Americans were able to beat the English; but to find

Crispus Attucks it is necessary to go deep into special

books. . .

Where is our historian to give us, our side view and our

chair of Negro History to teach our people our own history.

We are at the mercy of the "flotsam and jetsam" of the white

writers.7

The efforts of DuBois and Woodson, particularly Woodson, paved the way for

younger generations of black scholars -— and some white scholars —— to
continue and expand the exploration of the African American experience. The
years from 1920 to 1960 saw the emergence of a number of significant black
historians, such as Rayford W. Logan, \Mlliam Sherman Savage, Lorenzo
Johnston Gmene, Luther Porter Jackson, Alrutheus Ambush Taylor, Benjamin
Quarles, Eric E. Vihlliams and John Hope Franklin. Some notable white
historians, such as Herbert Aptheker, C. Vann Woodward, Kenneth Stampp,
David Brion Davis and Eugene Genovese also focused or began focusing their
research on African Americans during this period.a And yet, even as the
numbers of scholars researching black history and their body of work were
growing, little attention was being paid in white academia. Until the 19603,
acceptance of the idea that black history, black literature and black culture were
subjects worthy of scholarly examination in the curriculum of higher education
was limited mainly to traditionally black college campuses. Even there, material
on African Americans generally was included in traditional classes, or became
the focus of a few specialized courses, but was not organized into distinct

programs or departments. In fact, the historically black colleges and

universities have often taken sharp criticism from Black Studies advocates who
66

charged that those schools too thoroughly absorbed the patterns of white
academia. Nathan Hare, who was the first director of the Black Studies
Department at San Francisco State, wrote sarcastically in 1970 about the role
of the historically black institutions. He mocked the wony, expressed by some,
that the efforts of white universities to find qualified instructors for Black Studies
programs would create a "brain drain” at black colleges and universities. "Just
what brains they refer to I do not know,” Hare wrote. "It is conceivable that these
brains have been lying dormant all this time, but it is not likely in any case that
they will suddenly come alive and function in an altogether different manner just
because they migrate North to a white college."

Negro colleges should be setting the pace and providing
models of scholarly excellence and inquiry into the
problems of color . . . comprising laboratories for
experimentation in the techniques and tactics of
revolutionary change. But we do not believe in miracles.
The Negro college is glued to the mores of its missionary
origins. It is located invariably in the South, cemented to the
prevailing cake of conservatism, and less free politically
even than the typical white college there. Rather than
address itself seriously to the solution of the problems of
academia, the Negro college has been more inclined to
ape and compound white trivia and miseducation.9

And in an analysis written twenty years after the Black Studies movement
began, William E. Nelson Jr. charged that the historically black institutions were
still lagging.

The institutionalization of the values, assumptions and
methods of white social science has not been limited to the
educational environment of predominatly white universities.
Historically Black institutions have slavishly imitated the
Eurocentric emphasis of white dominated social science.
In both public and private historically Black institutions,

67

curriculum programs in the social sciences have been,

almost uniformly, mirror images of the curriculum designs

emerging within the broader context of white social science

inquiry and teaching.10
A few white universities had established African Studies centers, but as a rule
those did not draw any direct connection between Africa and African Americans.
It took nearly five decades after Woodson's creation of ASNLH for the dominant
institutions and disciplines of white higher education to begin accepting the
importance of African American history and culture. "For until well after mid-
century — when the mainstream journals began to recognize the significance
of the black past -- the ASNLH and the JNH were the preeminent outlets for
scholarly expression and institutionally personified the field."11

The rise of the Civil Rights Movement in the 19503 began to change all that.

The movement challenged discrimination against African Americans in all of
the nation's social institutions. Many of the most noticeable and most violent
battles of that struggle revolved around lunch-counter sit-ins, Freedom Riders,
the Montgomery bus boycott -- disputes involving matters of public
accommodation. But from the beginning, education also was an important
focal point for the movement. Starting with the US. Supreme Court's landmark
ruling inBtmunJLs_Bcatd_cLEducaticn in 1954, public school integration
became a central and volatile issue. In 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower
underscored the importance of integrating the educational system by sending
federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to guarantee the right of black students

to attend a previously all-white school. And it was not long before colleges and

universities in the South — and across the country -— were under intense

68

pressure to remove barriers that had long kept blacks out of higher education.
In the South, campus integration was met with overt defiance and violence
by whites. Mississippi’s white power structure, led by Governor Ross Barnett,
struggled long and hard to prevent the enrollment of James Meredith at the
University of Mississippi. US. Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent federal
marshals to protect Meredith when he finally entered the university in the fall of
1962, but the campus erupted in rioting so severe that two people were killed
and more than 100 of the marshals were injured. National Guard troops had to
be called in to reinforce the marshals and ensure Meredith’s enrollment. The
following year, Alabama Governor George Wallace personally stood in the
doonivay of the University of Alabama’s registration building to block two blacks
from enrolling, despite a federal court order that they be admitted to the
university. Wallace had mobilized his state’s National Guard to support his act
of defiance, but President John F. Kennedy federalized the Guard units and
ordered them to enforce the court’s ruling and protect the campus from
disruptions. In the North, resistance was not so high-profile, but progress on
integrating campuses was slow. In the fall of 1964, for example, the University
of Michigan enrolled approximately 20,000 students, of whom about one
percent were black. Nellie Vamer, who later became a regent of the university,
was one of 203 black students on the campus when she enrolled in a doctoral
program in the fall of 1964.
There were so few black students on campus at that time

that when we saw each other we’d speak. We didn’t have to
know each other. It was kind of like a country town. You

69

walked across campus or anywhere on the street and you

saw another black student, you always said hi, you know. It

was like, "Glad to see you here." . . .

In my graduate school . . . I was the black person, you
know, in my classes. There just weren’t many of us at that
time. There were even fewer black faculty.12
Still, progress did occur, as the numbers and percentages of black students

on white campuses grew slowly throughout the 19603. Coherent, useful,
national figures on enrollments of black college students — particularly at
predominantly white institutions -— are hard to come by for the 19603 and
earlier periods. In large part, that is because until the debates over civil rights
and minority enrollments of the mid-'603, statistics were seldom gathered or
kept in a way that reflected racial percentages on campus. Some extrapolation
from various tabulations published by the US. Census Bureau, are needed to
approximate the prevailing circumstances on white campuses in 1960.
According to the 1980 edition of the W5.
published by the US. Bureau of the Census, 227,000 black students were
enrolled in degree-credit programs at the nation's colleges and universities in
1960. A footnote to that figure, however, indicates that the "black" category also
included "races other than White," though there is no indication of how many
Native Americans, Asians, Hispanics or others might be included in that
number. 13 Even if we assume that all 227,000 were indeed African American,
other Census figures indicate that nearly 89,000 of those students were
enrolled at predominantly black colleges and universities. That would mean

there were, to estimate generously, about 138,000 black students at the

nation's predominantly white colleges and universities in 1960. With a total

70

national college student population of about 3.5 million (not including the
traditionally black institutions), that would mean black students accounted for a
little less than four percent of the enrollments at predominantly white
institutions in 1960. By the 1970 Census, statistics were being kept more
clearly by racial groups. In that year, 522,000 black students were enrolled at
colleges and universities nationwide, of whom about 208,000 were at
predominantly black institutions. That means the number of black students at
predominantly white institutions had more than doubled, to about 314,000. But
because overall enrollments had swelled so dramatically, to a student
population of more than 7.2 million (again, not including the traditionally black
institutions), the enrollment of blacks on white campuses had risen only to
about 4.4 percent of the total."

But in addition to opening up educational institutions and pressing them to
enroll more black students, the Civil Rights Movement also raised awareness
— on both sides of the racial divide — of African Americans, their history and
their culture. During the 19503 and on into the 19603, black intellectuals began
increasingly to express a black cultural nationalism —- which also had long and
deep cultural roots, through such figures as Marcus Garvey and Martin Delaney
-- that not only emphasized the study and appreciation of African American
history and culture but called on African Americans to build self-reliance and to
demand the greatest levels of independence and autonomy that could be
achieved within American society. By the mid 19603, the most radical black

nationalists were advocating that white institutions be smashed to make true
‘ 71

liberation of black people possible. Although the publicity surrounding the Civil
Rights Movement and the gains it had achieved had contributed much to
increased awareness of and interest in African American culture, the
nationalists increasingly rejected the integrationist ideals on which the Civil
Rights Movement was based. The nationalists were not interested in
assimilation because, in their view, assimilation necessarily meant that blacks
had to give up parts of their culture to accept the forms and assumptions of the
dominant white culture. Not only was that undesirable, in their view, but as a
practical matter they considered it an impossibility because African Americans
could never give up the central fact of existence that had always defined them
and their place in American society — the darkness of their skin. No amount of
embracing or copying white speech patterns, modes of dress, artistic tastes —-
or even educational attainment — could truly and fully assimilate African
Ammicans into white society, because they could, in fact, never make
themselves white. Nor should they want to. The black nationalists argued —-
often with revolutionary rhetoric and zeal — that the only true path for African
Americans was to embrace themselves, their history and their culture and to
insist that their culture be considered on and respected for its own merits. "To
solve the problems of American society, Afro-Americans must first blackwash
-- revamp - the existing educational system and revolutionize America's youth
— black, yellow, brown, and white," wrote Hare.

A black education which is not revolutionary in the

current day is both irrelevant and useless. To remain
impartial in the educational arena is to allow the current

72

partiality to whiteness to faster. Black education must be
based on both ideological and pedagogical blackness. To
implement a relevant black education we must overthrow
and eliminate the bulk of current college and school
officials who are unable to move with tidal change and shift
the traditional gears of a business-as-usual complex. The
racism rampant in America's schools, white and Negro,
must be blacked out.15

For many of the militant black nationalists, the need to unify African Americans
around their own cultural values and traditions and to reject white social
structures and institutions was much more than a simple matter of bolstering
self-esteem or achieving increased self-determination. For many it was a
fundamental matter of survival. Michele Russell criticized even the revered
DuBois for having such a "veneration for knowledge" that he accepted, and
aspired to, the white view of what a classical education should be. She
continued:
The contemporary articulation of this hope is that
Harvard institute open admissions so that everyone will be
allowed to participate in white ruling class culture. In
DuBois’s resolution, the part of ourselves we show white
Americans to convince them that our use of time, air, and
space won’t be a threat is that part which strives to be like
them at their best. Very flattering to the rulers. But what
about the masses of black people who have neither
leisure, nor reasonableness, nor shared ruling class
tastes with which to bargain? How can we survive
publicly?16
In terms of American institutions of higher education — especially the
historically white colleges and universities, which was the vast majority - the
black nationalists called for African Americans to insist on Black Studies
programs that took the history and culture of black people seriously and that

pursued knowledge about the African American experience with energy and
’ 73

intellectual rigor. Perhaps even more important, the nationalists believed, was
that such programs be given the respect, autonomy and resources that would
put them on a par with other academic units within the university. Supporters of
Black Studies often disagreed philosophically about the purpose of Black
Studies and differed over structural matters and approaches to organizing
Black Studies programs. The more conservative or integrationist supporters
tended to emphasize the kind of scholariy approach that would win Black
Studies respect in the academic world. Militant nationalists argued that the real
purpose of Black Studies should be to uplift black people, and that Black
Studies programs should be seen as a source of new, young black activists
who would return to the off-campus black community with the organizational
and technical skills needed to improve the quality of life in the ghettoes of
America. The most radical nationalists went so far as to assert that white
scholars could not legitimately teach Black Studies courses and to insist on
programs that excluded whites altogether. But all of the advocates were agreed
that Black Studies programs would serve little purpose if they were not given
the academic status and financial resources needed to assure their survival.
The willingness of white institutions to grant that status and guarantee those
resources were seen by black students, faculty and community supporters as
benchmarks by which to judge a university's commitment, not just to Black
Studies, but to the very presence of blacks in higher education.

By the mid 19603, a few white colleges, sensitized by the Civil Rights

Movement, were beginning to include more information about African

74

Americans or works by African American authors in their courses, though the
effort was fraught with issues of sensitivity. At Michigan State University in the
fall of 1968, for example, an introductory sociology course included on its
reading list WWW not because the book offered
insight into the Nation of Islam or Malcolm X‘s black nationalist philosophy, but
because the chapters covering his youthful criminal career were a compelling
description of deviant social behavior.17 A few white universities had begun to
offer a handful of courses concerning black people and their history. But it was
not until 1968, when San Francisco State College established a Black Studies
Department, that a formal program in Black Studies appeared on a
predominantly white US. college campus.18

Given the fact that Black Studies - not to mention black students — were so
new to the nation’s white campuses, it is remarkable how quickly such
programs took root. The debate over Black Studies was just beginning to take
shape in late 1967 as newly organized black student groups at campuses
such as San Francisco State and Yale started pressing administrations to
institute Black Studies programs. Black students, who only recently had begun
enrolling in significant numbers at predominantly white colleges and
universities, often found themselves isolated within the institutions and
alienated by curricula that took almost no cognizance of black people. Black
students organized for a sense of community and support under names like,
Black Student Association and Black Students Union, and began demanding

that those institutions expand their curriculum to reflect a broader world, a world

75

that included African Americans, their literature, culture and history. The
movement took on greater intensity and urgency in the spring of 1968, following
the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.19 A few schools, such as San
Francisco State, the University of Michigan,” and Yale,21 adopted or began
designing Black Studies programs in the fall of 1968, but the great profusion of
such programs did not occur until 1969.

Within a scant five years, however, the number of Black Studies programs on
American college campuses had swelled into the hundreds. In Blamfludies;
InteamLCbalIengal, a survey of Black Studies programs published in 1973,
Nick Aaron Ford produced a list of 218 colleges and universities that had
established Black Studies programs. The list, which Ford carefully identifies as
incomplete, includes a variety of major universities (such as UCLA, Rutgers,
Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Indiana, Yale, Michigan, North Carolina, Mississippi
and Ohio State), but also a range of smaller four-year colleges (such as Ball
State, Bowling Green State, Colgate, Dartmouth, Iowa State, Western Michigan,
and Montana-Missoula), and even some two-year colleges (such as Wayne
County Community College in Detroit; Antelope Valley College in California;
and Manhattan Community College in New York). The programs also were
widely distributed around the country.22 Other estimates pegged the numbers of
Black Studies programs even higher. Robert L. Allen reported that by 1971,
"some 500 schools provided full-scale Black Studies programs," and cited
another researchers estimate that needy 1,300 colleges offered at least one

Black Studies course.m Yet another estimate suggested that as many as 800
76

Black Studies programs were in operation by the early 19703.24
The number of programs, obviously, can vary dramatically, depending on

how a Black Studies program is defined. A university could — and some did —
simply pull together a handful of courses that were already being taught, add
more content about African Americans, rename the courses to reflect the new
emphasis and call that a Black Studies program. At the other end of the
spectrum were programs that constituted stand-alone academic departments
offering dozens of newly designed courses and enabling students to pursue an
academic major, or at least a concentration, in Black Studies. Some programs
focused entirely on academic study and research, while other programs
emphasized involvement with the off-campus black community. Definitions of
Black Studies abounded in the early years of program development (and
definition debates continue to rage), as did forms of organizational structure.
Because there were few established models to draw from, and because each
campus was responding to the needs of its own political situation, institutional
character and academic structure, the result was chaotic and the impact was
enduring. As Darlene Clark Hine reported in her analysis of the Black Studies
movement published in 1990 by the Ford Foundation:

Few of these early endeavors were the result of careful and

deliberate planning and analysis. Typically, they were

established in response to political exigencies rather than

intellectual and academic imperatives. These and other

factors contributed to ongoing structural and organizational

diversity. Today it seems that no two Black Studies

programs are alike. Their diversity is evidenced in faculty

size and composition, relations with university
administrators and more traditional departments,

77

curriculum, degrees offered, budgets, spatial resources,

range of special programs, and the nature of their

community outreachfi
A few of the programs were established as full-fledged departments, most
notably at Harvard. Most, however, were set up as some form of research
center or interdisciplinary academic program. Some had a great deal of
authority and control over the faculty who taught within their programs; others
had to rely on existing departments to loan faculty to the program — faculty
whose advancement and tenure prospects usually depended on the lending
department.

Interwoven with the questions of how quickly and in what form Black Studies
programs emerged are questions about what motivated white university
administrators in their handling of the Black Studies issue. Many white
administrators clearly were sympathetic to the aims of the Civil Rights
Movement, and oftentimes they agreed with the critique of black students that
academia had ignored black people — in enrollment, in instruction and in
research. Some were not merely willing but eager to increase the openness of
their institutions and saw that as a way of strengthening the entire society.
William R. Keast, for example, who was president of Wayne State University in
Detroit when the issue of Black Studies arose on that campus following the
devastating Detroit riot of 1967, worked long and hard to make the university
more reflective of the nation’s and the world’s cultural diversity. Even after
negotiations to establish a Black Studies college within the university

foundered over black students’ demands that they retain control, Keast

78

cooperated and supported the students’ efforts to setup an independent
program off-campus.

[Wje had all this ferment of interest in correcting our

university's — most universities’ -— woeful inattention to the

most salient aspects of the life and history of blacks in

American and in the world generally. It was, and indeed

remains, a pretty sparsely populated area, and every step

forward is still taken against a hell of a lot of pressure . . .

I make no effort whatsoever to conceal my enthusiasm

for this whole business. The testimony to that is the

amount oftime I spent on it. . . . Iwanted to see something

done, something happen. We had an enormous amount of

energy and interest and there was a need. The question

was what are you going to do and how are you going to do

it.?2l6

Other whites in academe were intensely skeptical of, if not outright opposed

to the efforts of students to make the university campus a focal point for social
reform, though it is often difficult to be certain of the reasons. Bureaucracy is
naturally resistant to change, and even well-meaning white officials,
ecculturated by white society to accept the foundational assumptions of white
academic institutions, had difficulty perceiving the biases that were built into the
system. White scholars, for example, who defended the university’s need to
support academic "standards," seemed not to recognize that there was a
sound basis for questioning the objectivity and fairness of those standards.
Whether the lack of recognition was sincere —- perceiving our own, deeply
internalized assumptions can be extraordinarily difficult -— or a ploy to deflect
the demand for Black Studies, the result was the same: resistance. There were
enough plausible and/or legitimate objections stemming from university

tradition and administrative process that racist attitudes did not lack for
79

respectable disguise. It is impossible to imagine that racial prejudice did not
play a significant role, though most white administrators, regardless of their
private views, were certainly aware enough and politically astute enough to
avoid overtly racist language in their public statements.

And yet, for all the resistance, Black Studies programs quickly proliferated.
Notwithstanding the genuine idealism of some administrators, the dominant
reason for the rapid growth of the programs was politics. Even the most
sincere of college presidents shuddered at the thought of armed student
protests, like the highly publicized black student sit-in at Cornell, and was
eager to avert the sort of tumult that disrupted San Francisco State for an entire
academic year. That eagerness to avoid confrontation and ease conflict led to
the creation of many programs that were poorly planned, ill-defined and
inadequately supported — both financially and philosophically — within the
institutions. In a 1982 postscript to IbeJlsascflbeJJnixerSitv. Clark Kerr —
who was president of the University of California at Berkeley at the height of the
student protest movement —- dismissed Black Studies and similar programs
as failures imposed on academia by politics.

Some changes of the 1960’s were based not on
academic but on political concerns and were forced into
practice by student pressure, changes such as programs
in Black studies, Native American studies, and Hispanic
studies. Faculty members generally never liked them; in
fact, barely tolerated them. 80m in the passion of student
activism, they have mostly withered, or at least wilted, in the

silent embrace of faculty committees.27

In later editions of the book, Kerr revised his assessment of the endurance of

80

Black Studies, but not his appraisal of initial institutional response. The lack of
commitment was not invisible to the supporters of Black Studies. And they did
not chalk up that lack of commitment to the obtuseness of white administrators
or to mere indifference. The noted African American scholar of slavery, John W.
Blessingeme, far from a radical on the Black Studies issue, wrote:
"The reasoning behind many of the black studies

programs is more sinister than I have indicated. It is clear

that in many cases predominantly white schools have

deliberately organized ill-conceived programs because they

are intended solely for Negro students. In short, a number

of institutions are not seriously committed to Afro-American

studies.”
Kenneth B. Clark noted the potential for administrative manipulation even as he
attacked what he considered the misguided efforts of militant black students
who were demanding blacks-only Black Studies programs.

If a university administration can restore harmony and the

image of innovation by a no-strings-attached financial grant

to a separate black studies program that may cover a few

salaries or subsidize a gas station, it need not move to

transform itself into a genuinely nonracial institution

dedicated to developing human beings and to helping

them develop effective strategies for fundamental social

change. No more power is granted than is necessary to
yield.all

But however many Black Studies programs there were, and however they
may have been organized, they owed their existence in great measure to the
strength of black student organization and protest. Although 1969 often is
remembered as a year when America's consciousness was dominated by the
war in Vietnam and the anti-war protests that convulsed campuses across the

United States, at least one study indicates that demonstrations demanding

81

Black Studies programs were much more common. According to a survey by
the Urban Research Corporation, there were 292 major student protests on
232 campuses in the first six months of 1969. Black recognition issues were
raised in 49 percent of those protests, compared with war-related issues,
which were raised in 22 percent of the protests. And while those black
recognition issues covered a range of specifics, from increasing numbers of
black students and faculty, to ending discrimination on campus, to general
demands that blacks be honored by the institutions, 32 percent of the protests
called specifically for more Black Studies courses or Black Studies centers.30
The black students who led those demonstrations had Ieamed well the
lessons of social activism; in many cases, long before they ever set foot on a
college campus. Many black students had already been active in civil rights
protests, some before they even reached their teens. Stephen Lythcott, a
student at Antioch College, who took on Kenneth B. Clark — a trustee of the
college and an important figure in the Civil Rights Movement — during the
debate over Antioch's Black Studies institute, took part in lunch-counter sit-ins
in Oklahoma City in 1958, when he was 8 years old. By the time he was 12 he
was attending NAACP conventions."1 If they had not all marched or rallied or
sat-in at lunch counters, or participated in Freedom Rides, nearly all were
related to or knew someone who had. They had Ieamed from watching their
elders how to organize protests and present demands, and how to dramatize
and publicize their efforts. They had also Ieamed from observing the campus

protests of white radical students just a few years earlier, as Roger A. Fischer
82

argues in "Ghetto and Gown: The Birth of Black Studies."

The wave of campus confrontations that began at the
Berkeley campus of the University of California in 1964 was
essentially a white phenomenon, but it provided watchful
black militants with an excellent practical education in the
tactics of disruption. From such white radicals as Mario
Savio, they Ieamed that a great university could be literally
immobilized by boycotts, sit-ins, and the "liberation" of
administration buildings. They discovered the awesome
secret of student power, that the university was pathetically
vulnerable to the pressures that could be brought to bear
upon it by a relatively small cadre of well organized, deeply
dedicated student revolutionaries. Blacks began to
organize, and soon groups known by such titles as the
United Black Students, the Association of African and Afro-
American Students, the Onyx Society, the Soul Students
Advisory Council, and the Black Students Union appeared
on campus after campus.32

By the fall of 1967, those black student organizations on campuses as varied
as Yale, San Francisco State and Wayne State University in Detroit were
beginning to pressure white administrations to create black studies programs.

It is interesting to note, however, that even though Fischer is correct that the
Free Speech Movement at Berkeley and many of the campus disruptions that
soon followed were, at heart, the activities of white students, those white
students drew much of their inspiration -— and in some cases, experience ~—
from the Civil Rights Movement. In Wt. Doug McAdam
describes the influence that the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964 had on
the events at Berkeley the ensuing fall. First of all, McAdam writes, most of the
white students from Berkeley who participated in the summer project were
active in Berkeley's Free Speech Movement.

Of the twenty-one volunteers known to have returned to Cal
83

for the fall semester, twelve show up on the list of those
arrested in connection with the December 2-3 sit-in in
Sproul Hall. Moreover, two of the returning volunteers
played central roles in the unfolding conflict. Steven
Weissman emerged as one of the principal strategists of
the Free Speech forces. But it was Mario Savio, in his role
as principal spokesperson for the movement, who
emerged from the conflict as the first white activist "star" of
the Sixties.”

But beyond simple matters of personnel, McAdam draws key parallels between
the rhetoric and tactics used by the white students at Berkeley and the
approaches they had Ieamed in the summer voter registration project led by the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Although SNCC included both
black and white students (and non-students), it was led primarily by blacks and
had its origins on the historically black college campuses of the South. The
focus of SNCC’s efforts had been predominantly on waging battles for
desegregation and civil rights off-campus.34 In bringing the organizing
principles and tactics of SNCC to bear on campus issues, Berkeley’s white
students saw themselves consciously operating in the tradition of the Civil
Rights Movement. The Berkeley students set up "freedom classes," adopted a
decision-making style based on consensus similar to that used by SNCC, and
sang freedom songs from the Mississippi project during their own
demonstrations. And of course, the sit-in became a standard tactic.

That we now regard the sit-in as a kind of obligatory feature

of any serious demonstration obscures the fact that black

students reclaimed it as a tactic only four years prior to the

conflict at Berkeley. It is a measure of the Free Speech

forces’ identification with the civil rights movement, then,

that the sit-in was the principal tactic employed during the

events at Berkeley. . . . [Tjhere were five major sit-ins over
the course of the three-month conflict.“

84

Savio, himself, testified to the connection:
Last summer I went to Mississippi to join the struggle there
for civil rights. This fall I am engaged in another phase of
the same struggle, this time in Berkeley. . . . In Mississippi
an autocratic and powerful minority rules, through
organized violence, to suppress the vast, virtually
powerless majority. In California, the privileged minority
manipulates the university bureaucracy the suppress the
students’ political expression.36

Black students just beginning their own organizing efforts on predominantly
white college campuses took careful note of the Free Speech Movement and
subsequent campus protests by white students. They observed and analyzed
the weak points of university structure and gauged the relative effectiveness of
protest tactics. However, black student protest also was shaped significantly by
the students’ connections with the off-campus black community. At campuses
where black students were relatively isolated, with no substantial, nearby black
community, the influence was less noticeable. But at some universities in
urban settings, or where black students had ready access to an off-campus
black community and black institutions, the influence was important.

At Wayne State University in Detroit, for example, black campus activists
routinely consulted with leaders of the city’s black community. Lonnie Peek was
a founding co-chairman of the Association of Black Students at Wayne State in
the fall of 1967. He had just enrolled in a master’s degree program after two
years of teaching at Detroit high schools. Early that fall, Wayne State was

embroiled in a controversy over a symposium on racism that the university

sponsored as a response to the riot that had tom the city just three months

85

earlier. Strenuous objections arose, however, that the university had excluded
blacks in planning the symposium. The controversy led to creation of ABS, but
Peek recalled the controversy went well beyond the campus.

During the latter part of the summer of ‘67, it was decided

that there wasn’t any community input into the formation of

the Black Symposium, so community activists decided they

wanted to boycott it and they organized inside of Wayne

State. Right prior to me going on campus, a day prior, I had

a meeting with [community and labor activists] Grace and

Jimmy Boggs, Frank Joyce, several others, more

revolutionary type individuals and they told me about

boycotting the symposium. And I says, . . . when I get to

Wayne State, yeah, I'll do whatever I can (10.37
Peek was thrust into the spotlight while taking part in a demonstration against
the university’s symposium. A white student identified Peek to reporters as a
spokesman for the black students and in response to the reporters’ questions,
Peek said he represented the Association of Black Students with 700
members, a group he then felt compelled to start organizing.38 The symposium
protest was the launching pad.

[Wlhat happened was that that was the first negotiation with

the university. . . . And about two or three months later, we

had our own symposium. We brought in national people . . .

It was the first time black students at Wayne State had been

Involved in an event. That was the organizational catalyst.

That allowed me to organize ABS because we had an

issue.39
An issue that had been defined, at least initially, by off-campus black
community leaders.

Intense conflict and confrontation were not the pattern everywhere, of course.

Those campuses where major protests did play out tended to get the lion’s

86

share of the attention, but many of the nation’s smaller colleges and
universities established Black Studies programs without violence or great
disruptions. Manning Marable, who was founding director of Colgate
University’s Africana and Hispanic Studies Program from 1983 to 1986 and

was chairman of the Department of Black Studies at Ohio State University from

1987 to 1989, observed in his introduction to DispatchesIQmJbeEbcny.
Ionian.

In truth, the militant student confrontations experienced at
Cornell, Harvard, Berkeley, and other major research
universities that initiated black studies departments was
not always the norm. At many private liberal arts colleges
and smaller state universities modest African American
studies interdisciplinary programs were frequently started
without controversy or conflict. Most liberal white faculty in
the late 19603 and early 19703 were prepared to accept
black studies as a legitimate part of the college curriculum.
However, they opposed the notion that the black experience
could only be researched or taught by African Americans or
that whites should be excluded from black studies classes
or black cultural centers. They rejected what they felt was
the highly political content of black studies and sought to
steer the new programs toward traditional standards of
white scholarship.‘0

And yet, that does not diminish the impact of those black students who did
protest. The images of black protest carried by the mass media — especially
incendiary situations like the gun-carrying black students at Cornell - left a
powerful impression even at small institutions. No college president was
eager to see similar protests on his own campus, and the black students were
quick to recognize and use the administrators’ fears to keep the university’s

feet to the fire. Peek, for example, did not shy away from manipulating

87

institutional fears in his negotiations with Wayne State. He told the campus
newspaper in January 1969 that the university needed occasional prodding:
"Whenever they balk at one of our proposals . . . We just say, ‘Now look, you
guys just had a riot here and none of us wants a new one, do we?”41 Moreover,
the leadership in academia of major research universities —- such as Harvard,
Yale, Michigan and Cornell - that were prodded by black student activists to
establish Black Studies programs is undeniable. Once institutions such as
those had established programs, it not only became harder to argue that Black
Studies was academically illegitimate, it became more likely that other
institutions would establish programs to keep up with the latest developments
in higher education. In any event, the influence of the militant black students
who pushed for the creation of Black Studies programs went far beyond the
confines of their own campuses.

The establishment of Black Studies on white campuses did not come easily.
Launched in protest and confrontation, Black Studies generated heated
opposition on both sides of the racial divide. White opponents often challenged
the legitimacy of Black Studies as an academic discipline, arguing that it was
merely a clumsy combination of such existing disciplines as history, sociology,
anthropology and English; information on black culture and history, they
argued, should simply be added to existing courses in the traditional
disciplines. Some black scholars also opposed Black Studies -— at least in
some of its manifestations -— fearing that such programs would lead to

renewed segregation, shift black scholars into academic ghettoes, and
88

undercut the struggles and gains of the Civil Rights Movement. Even on
campuses that quickly agreed to do something in the area of Black Studies,
agreement over the precise nature and shape of a Black Studies program was
much harder to come by. Issues of academic structure and status for Black
Studies generated intense conflict throughout the organizational period
between 1968 and 1973 — and on many campuses lingered to become a focal
point of renewed black student protest twenty years later. But the debate over
whether Black Studies programs would be created was settled, in effect, in
1969 when Harvard, Yale, Michigan, Cornell and other influential institutions
accepted — and acted on -- the fundamental proposition that something
needed to be done.

Arguments over what that something was or should be raged for years, and
re-erupted periodically over the ensuing decades; that was the televised
revolution, the political turmoil and confrontation that imprinted itself so deeply
on public perceptions of the issue. Often lost in the uproar, however, was the
untelevised revolution — the recognition that a profound watershed had been
crossed. However inadequate, wrong-headed, underfunded or perfunctory their
responses may have been, America’s colleges and universities were, at last,
recognizing and addressing an important void in the intellectual fabric of higher
education. The establishment of Black Studies programs —- however limited

their resources and however grudging their acceptance by the white academic
community -- constituted an acknowledgment that African Americans had been

excluded from and largely ignored by America’s scholarly institutions for three
89

hundred years. Creation of Black Studies programs marked a profound change
in the intellectual calculus of American higher education. By their very presence
as a focal point for scholarship and political debate, Black Studies programs
ensured that the concerns and interests of African Americans could no longer
be so easily and comfortably ignored by academia. A noticeable and clearly
identifiable portion (however meager) of the university’s intellectual and
financial resources was now devoted (however unwillingly) to the examination
(however enthusiastic) of African American history and culture.

There was no going back. In fact, Black Studies became the leading edge of
an even broader wedge that pried open the mental door of the Ivory Tower to
include Women’s Studies, Chicano Studies, Native American Studies, Gay and
Lesbian Studies and other such programs. It is a truism — but one worth
recalling - that a mind, once stretched to accommodate a new idea never
returns to its original shape. Black Studies changed the shape of the
university’s mind, a fact easily overlooked amid the emotional strains of the

stretching.

90

Chapter 4

Standards, Structure and Curriculum

Once the question of including Black Studies was resolved — and it tended
to be resolved in the affirmative fairly quickly -- colleges and universities began
to grapple in earnest with the practical considerations raised by that resolution.
The simple presence of Black Studies challenged the old patterns of academic
business in a variety of ways. First of all, while Black Studies was not directly
connected to the admissions process, it did underscore the question of who
would be accepted as part of the university — both as students and as faculty.
Black Studies programs were sometimes seen as a way of attracting greater
numbers of black students and faculty to universities that were eager to
demonstrate their social responsibility and responsiveness. At other times,
Black Studies programs became focal points - as a critical mass of black
students and faculty coalesced around the programs — for pressuring
universities to do more to attract and enroll increasing numbers black students
and to hire more black faculty. The programs also became lightning rods for
the debate over who was qualified to be a student or faculty member. Militant
black students and faculty members charged that traditional measures of
qualification — for both students and faculty — were often unfair or even racist

91

and limited the ability of the university to both attract students and hire faculty
who truly understood what was necessary to teach Black Studies courses.

Beyond the question of who could be a part of the university, Black Studies
programs also forced scholars to rethink the scope of what was being taught in
courses throughout the curriculum. Some institutions responded first by
dusting off old courses in literature or sociology or history and giving them a
Black Studies spin by simply adding new material. That was clearly the
quickest and cheapest way into Black Studies. But it also required scholars ——
many of them white and many unfamiliar with African American culture — to
think about and identify those new materials. The process generated
enormous debates that continue to the present day, particularly in the
humanities, over what should be included in the literary canon taught by
institutions of higher education. It also generated enormous amounts of new
scholarship as researchers, both black and white, turned their attention to
areas of African American culture that had long been ignored by white
academia.

Black Studies also challenged academia to reconsider its traditional notions
of disciplinary and departmental structure. The frequent demands of militant
advocates that Black Studies programs be established as departments — as
intellectual and structural equals of the established disciplines — forced the
university to reexamine the idea of what constitutes a discipline and to
reconsider how knowledge is accepted and formalized in the administrative

structure of the institution. In the case of Black Studies, that process was
92

complicated by the fact that Black Studies advocates often saw themselves as
standing intentionally outside the existing pattern of disciplinary formation.
While the existing disciplines had developed over decades through a process
of increasing specialization, Black Studies advocates demanded immediate
recognition of their field and sought to define it as an interdisciplinary endeavor,
an undertaking that aimed to break down barriers between the traditional
disciplines by working against the prevailing trend toward more specialized
intellectual inquiry.

So the advent of Black Studies posed at least three general challenges to
the intellectual and administrative processes of the university. Black Studies
questioned how the university decides who can study or teach there. Black
Studies questioned what is taught and how decisions about what is taught are
made and justified. And Black Studies questioned how the university
recognizes and reifies knowledge through its structural processes of
disciplinary differentiation and endorsement.

lnIbeAmdamLRemluticn, Christopher Jencks and David Riesman
describe the rise of modern American universities in the context of an
"organizational revolution" that for the first time generated truly national
institutions. These institutions - whether in business, government, education,
social affiliation or other areas - were far more expensive than those that had
existed before. They tended to centralize power, allowing a small number of
individuals in key positions to exercise control over increasing numbers of

people. These new institutions both resulted from and reinforced a broad
93

social trend toward an increasingly specialized division of labor. The
development of the university, for example, was intimately connected with the
differentiation, in the 18803 and 18903, of academic disciplines and the
establishment of the departmental structure that still dominates university
organization. With these new institutions emerged new ways of sorting and
grouping people for the purposes of institutional organization and
management, which evolved into the idea of the meritocracy.

The old nineteenth-century divisions between Irish and

Yankee, Baptist and Episcopalian, North and South, country

and city seem to be losing their significance. Even the

struggles between Negroes and whites and between

Catholics and non-Catholics, while certainly far from

settled, strike us as legacies of a vanishing past rather

than as necessary features of the contemporary American

system. This system is increasingly meritocratic. . . It tries

to divide people according to competence, interest, and

achievement rather than according to origin. . . . While there

are still plenty of exceptions to the general meritocratic rule,

and plenty of reasons for ambivalence about its increasing

acceptance, it seems to us an inevitable feature of highly

organized societies with a very specialized division of

labor.1
Jencks and Riesman argued that the increasing influence of the meritocratic
ideal also emphasized and reinforced what they called "the national upper-
middle class style: cosmopolitan, moderate, universalistic, somewhat
legalistic, concerned with equity and fair play, aspiring to neutrality between
regions, religions and ethnic groups." They acknowledged that those values
were far from uniformly accepted or practiced, and that there were serious
weaknesses in the meritocratic ideal itself, exemplified by "poor people's

failure to meet 'objective' middle-class standards." But, they argued, "the ethic
94

we are describing, like the institutions which encourage it, is growing stronger
rather than weaker."2

Black Studies offered a powerful critique of the meritocratic ideal and the
middle-class values on which it was built. Black Studies advocates were quick
to point out that the meritocracy's values weren't merely middle-class, they were
white middle-class, and black students and scholars were at a decided
disadvantage when it came to being judged by the "standards" derived from
those values. At the 1968 Yale symposium, for example, Gerald A. McWorter
argued that the ideal of scholarly detachment was based on white values and
assumptions that blacks did not share.

I find here that people have different sets of assumptions
and are asking black intellectuals rather than to rationalize
positions on basic assumptions black people hold, you’re
asking that black people make rationalizations of positions
based on the assumptions that white people hold. I could
also make the same point when we raised the whole
question of science and ideology: the "race relations"
debate that white people carry on about "science” and
"ideology" is something that we feel, basically, is a closed
question. Whatever you do, the fact is that this is a racist
country and that the scientists who have operated in this
country, by and large, have been racists. Intentionally or
unintentionally, the fact is that they have functioned as such
and so have their theories. This is something that we have
reacted to on the basis of survival needs. So, when black
social scientists speak, if white people are confused as to
whether or not they are speaking ideologically or as
"detached scientists," that’s not something that black
people are concerned with.3

At the entry level of admissions policy, those white assumptions and standards
tended to reinforce the status quo, enabling white students whose cultural

experiences had immersed them in those middle—class values easier entry
95

than black students who came from different cultural backgrounds.
Standardized admissions tests, such as the SAT and ACT, which had been
increasingly used in the admissions process since the 19503 as an "objective"
criterion, came under attack by critics who said the tests were culturally biased
and an inaccurate measure of students' abilities. And if those middle—class
values did, as Jencks and Riesman argued, "aspire to neutrality" in racial
matters, it was clearly an aspiration, not an accomplishment. Universities,
Eldon L. Johnson argued in "Race and Reform," had "sown the whirlwind —
generally without malice but surely with colossal indifference. Their record in
educating black youth is scandalous. If black youth were not often enough
'qualified' for admission, the universities, as vaunted social critics, said little
enough about it and did even less."4

Johnson pointed out that blacks accounted for slightly more than 2 percent
of enrollments in predominantly white colleges and universities and only 1
percent of graduate school enrollments, whereas they accounted for 12 percent
of the "college-eligible age group." Half of all black college students still
attended predominantly black institutions, he wrote, and there were "more
foreign students than native blacks in the predominantly white American
universities."5 The problem was not the abilities of black students, he said, but
the standards of an admissions process whose assumptions guaranteed that
only those who already exemplified the system would be chosen to participate
in it. The Black Studies movement confronted higher education with the

necessity of rethinking that process. Johnson asserted:
96

[T'jhe black presence challenges the university as no other

criticism has. It challenges the idea that an institution of

higher education derives its uniqueness from being a

meritocracy. Merit, yes, but by what standard? Grades?

Tests? Conventionality? The challenge is twofold: whether

there are not other equally or more relevant criteria which

should at least be combined with time-honored tradition

and whether the right objective is being served. . . .

Awareness is at last fixed on the circularity of confining the

system to those who already fit the system, thus educating

the risk-free.t5

But while the students and faculty members involved with Black Studies

programs frequently engaged in debates and protests aimed at forcing their
universities to admit more black students, Black Studies was not, essentially a
tool or function of the admissions process. By providing a unifying focal point
for black students and faculty, Black Studies programs supported the drive to
challenge admissions standards, but the programs became much more
directly involved in the question of standards when it came to the hiring of new
faculty members. From the outset, faculty selection for Black Studies programs
was problematic. White universities generally had few faculty members who
specialized in African American history or culture, and many of the existing
specialists were white, which diminished their ability to gain acceptance from
the militant black students who were demanding that Black Studies programs
be established. Moreover, many of those specialists -— black as well as white
— were reluctant to give up their existing positions or risk damaging their
career advancement in their current disciplines to commit themselves to a new,

poorly defined field that as yet offered little security or assurance of substantial

development. Black Studies programs were generally being given little
97

budgetary support and even less institutional stature. Only a handful were
established as full academic departments, and a young ambitious scholar who
accepted a joint appointment between his home department and a Black
Studies program ran the risk of splitting his or her focus in ways that could
damage prospects for advancement and tenure.

And if the existing, internal supply of faculty was small, the external market of
new doctorates with appropriate specialties was extremely tight — in absolute
numbers, but especially relative to the swelling demand for Black Studies
instructors. African American scholars were at a particular premium; demand
for black scholars in general was growing as white institutions sought to
integrate their faculties, but the demand was especially intense when it came
to Black Studies programs. The black students whose protests had launched
the programs in the first place often demanded that black instructors teach
Black Studies courses. The students regularly disputed the ability of white
instructors to teach about — or even understand -— the experience of African
Americans. For the university, then, the hiring of African American faculty for
Black Studies programs was important for two reasons: African American
scholars were a key source of expertise and interest in the academic subject
matter that was the basis for the programs, and African American faculty were
necessary to establish the programs’ credibility with black students, thereby
reducing the likelihood of student-led disruptions of the university.

But the supply of African American scholars was seveme limited. As

Johnson pointed out, the numbers of blacks in graduate schools was
98

extremely small, and as those young scholars received their doctorates they
found themselves increasingly sought after by business and government, not
just by institutions of higher education. All of America’s institutions were under
pressure to integrate, to recruit and promote African Americans in areas where
they had historically been excluded, so the competition to hire African
Americans with advanced degrees was often intense. That meant that the
demand for Black Studies faculty far exceeded the ready supply. Some white
institutions worked to recruit African American professors from historically black
colleges and universities, to the point where some observers raised concerns
about a "brain drain" that was harming the black institutions.7 But the pressure
to find and hire black faculty for Black Studies programs also forced colleges
and universities to hire — or consider hiring -- instructors whose credentials
did not include the traditionally expected terminal degree. This had an impact
on not just the make-up of the faculty, but also on efforts to develop standard
curricula for Black Studies programs, as Darlene Clark Hine described in her
report for the Ford Foundation:

In the late 19603 and early 19703, Black Studies units

simply drew into [their] domain whoever happened to be

available and willing to join them. Thus, little uniformity in

curriculum could be achieved across the country. With the

economic difficulties and retrenchment of the late 19703,

many Black Studies faculties declined in size, producing an

even more fragmented curriculum. To ensure that existing

courses were offered on a reasonable and routine basis,

Black Studies administrators had to rely heavily on part-

time, visiting, or temporary appointees. Most often those

available to accept such positions were in the creative arts
-- musicians, dancers, poets, and fiction writers.ti

99

The debate over what constituted adequate credentials for teaching in a
Black Studies program was often heated. Black student militants and
nationalist intellectuals argued that the insistence by universities on strictly
academic credentials not only excluded from consideration many potential
teachers who were extremely knowledgeable about the African American
experience, but also put blacks in the position of having to win a questionable
stamp of approval from racist white institutions before they could teach about
subject matter they knew intimately from personal experience. One of the black
student organizers of the Yale symposium in 1969 explained what many of the
students had in mind:

We want an opportunity to learn about things that are
relevant to our existence and we want to learn in the best
possible ways, experiencing the expertise of all those who
have something to offer. This means exposure in the
classroom to men of controversial qualification — on the
one hand, eminently qualified to instruct because of what
they know, yet, on the other hand, grossly underqualified
because of how they came to know it. Perhaps faculties
and administrations will view demands for such men as
less of a dilemma if they realize this one central fact: as
much as black students repudiate those "academically
qualified" purveyors of the traditional white racist
perspective, they do not want to see the void which is
perpetuated by these "scholars" existence filled with black
Charlatans who have little to offer besides their "front." We
look for no pedants, either black or white, with magic
formulas; instead we look for men who can offer a range of
information and insight that effectively provides alternatives
from which we can choose. Since we are dealing with
matters which have been long ignored or abused by
whites, while being studied and experienced by blacks, it
should be no surprise that most of the experts — though
without degrees - whom we find will be black. If
knowledge is as important to the university as the "Ph.D.
count" of its faculty, then it will work with its black students

100

on this issue rather than raise unreasoned and
overemotional objections.9

Debates over suggestions that universities hire individuals without the usual
academic credentials raised the thorny issue of what standards are used to
evaluate a person's qualifications and who determines the standards are. But
those debates also took place in an atmosphere charged by black students’
distrust of the white institutions and the values embodied in the institutional
process, and by university administrators’ resistance to students’ demands for
power and control. The students did not trust the university to select the
appropriate faculty; the university was unwilling to let students make the
selections. At the Yale symposium, Nathan Hare described one such dispute:

At San Francisco State College recently there arose a
contention between the black students and the white
administrators because the white department of history
wanted a white boy with a Ph.D. from a major university and
a string of scholarly publications in "Ieamed joumals' (as
they kept stressing), whereas the black students wanted a
black fellow who hadn’t any degrees at all but who knew
more about African history than the white historian. This
much was admitted by the white professor himself and it
was known that the black applicant had spent two years, for
example, searching through the Schomburg Collection: So
there was a lightweight confrontation, with both sides
calling the other’s applicant "unqualified." The black
students felt that if a white professor of history couldn’t
understand that it’s anachronistic in the present day — just
now anyway at this particular point in the black-
consciousness movement, though maybe not ten or twenty
years from now -— for a white professor to teach black
militant students black history, than this white professor
doesn’t quite understand the recent black movement.
Consequently he doesn’t understand black history, and
therefore he’s unqualified to teach black history, regardless
of how many Ph.D.s and publications he has in Ieamed
journals.1o

101

But the insistence of the more militant nationalists that traditional academic
credentials not be considered necessary met strong resistance among black
as well as white scholars. Most administrators and faculty acknowledged that
in some cases, where the potential instructor had specific and significant non-
academic expertise, lack of an advanced degree should not bar an individual
from teaching at the university. But the exceptions were limited and generally fit
into familiar categories -- such as artists, musicians, literary writers, and
journalists -— where such exceptions had been made in the past. To expand
that practice, in the way and to the degree the students demanded, cut to the
core of the university's notion of scholarship. Established scholars, black and
white, rejected the idea. Some, such as historian Eugene D. Genovese, argued
that radically changing the existing process of faculty qualification would have
undercut the effort of Black Studies programs to gain acceptance and respect
in the academic world.

Responsible black scholars have been working hard for
an end to raiding and to the scattering of the small number
of black professors across the country. Among other
obstacles, they face the effort of ostensibly nationalist black
students who seek to justify their decision to attend
predominantly white institutions, often of high prestige, by
fighting for a larger black teaching staff. The outcome of
these demands is the obscurantist nonsense that black
studies can and should be taught by people without
intellectual credentials since these credentials are ‘white’
anyway. It is true that many black men are capable of
teaching important college level courses even though they
do not have formal credentials. For example, the Afro-
American tradition in music, embracing slave songs,
spirituals, blues, jazz, and other forms, could probably be
taught best by a considerable number of articulate and
cultured, if sometimes self-taught, black musicians and

102

free-lance critics who are largely unknown to the white

community. But few good universities have ever refused to

waive formalities in any field when genuine intellectual

credentials of a nonacademic order could be provided.

What has to be resisted firmly is the insanity that claims, as

in one recent instance, that experience as a SNCC field

organizer should be considered more important than a

Ph.D. in the hiring of a professor of Afro-American history.

This assertion represents a general contempt for all

learning and a particular contempt for black studies as a

field of study requiring disciplined, serious intellectual effort

-- an attitude that reflects the influence of white racism,

even when brought forth by a black man.11

Far more volatile than the issue of non-traditional qualifications for a few

African American faculty members, however, was the demand of some black
students and nationalist intellectuals for Black Studies programs that would
enroll exclusively black students and/or be taught exclusively by black
instructors. The idea was embedded in the Black Power ideology articulated by
Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, which asserted that "Before a group
can enter the open society, it must first close ranks." The ideology was built
around the idea of "internal colonialism,” which saw African Americans in the
same sort of relationship with America as the newly independent nations of
Africa shared with the European colonial powers that had dominated them. In
that view, liberation was as important as education, or rather, education was
the means to liberation. But education would not lead to liberation if it were the
same education that for three hundred years had worked to reinforce the
subjugation of African Americans by white people, white institutions and white
values. Liberation meant standing on one’s own and finding the strength to do

that through unity within the African American community. Separatist programs,

103

it was argued, would help black students overcome the alienation they often felt
on overwhelmingly white campuses by giving them a source of unity and
mutual support. Such programs would encourage black students to throw off
the shackles of white-oriented thinking and analysis, and help them build the
self-confidence and awareness they would need to improve the circumstances
of the African American community. But the idea of racially separate programs
for black students outraged many in academia and much of the established off-
campus African American community leadership. Separatist Black Studies
programs were attacked furiously as a return to segregation, which the Civil
Rights Movement had fought so passionately to end. Separatist programs,
opponents argued, would not only undercut fifteen years of gains by the Civil
Rights Movement, but guarantee that the black students enrolled in the
programs would receive an inferior education and ensure that Black Studies
was not taken seriously by academia.

Perhaps the most notable separatist program to be established was the
Afro-American Studies Institute at Antioch College. The institute, which included
a blacks-only residence on campus, touched off an intense controversy that led
to the resignation of the noted black sociologist Kenneth B. Clark from the
college’s board of directors. The students who pushed for and supported the
program rejected the idea that a separate program for black students
constituted a return to segregation. One of the students, Stephen Lythcott,
argued that in at least one respect, the Civil Rights Movement had done a

disservice because not all of the integration activists were truly committed to
1 04

black liberation.

The most regrettable consequence of this protest
movement is that Black people, during the nineteen-fifties
and sixties, were effectively conditioned to think in terms of
a dualism. Their responses were polarized between two
concepts: Segregation and/or Integration. Most Black
people, and whites too, came to be incapable of conceiving
alternatives to this situation. The Antioch Afro-American
Studies Institute does not intend to become entrapped by
this kind of polarized mentality}?

Black students were unmoved, he said, by arguments that pleaded the case for
opening Black Studies to whites as a way of promoting a better society. That
was not the responsibility of black students, he argued; the quest for liberation
required that black students focus on obtaining the kind of education that would
best serve their needs, not the needs or desires of the dominant white society.

It is often argued that white people need to learn about
Black people more than do Black people themselves.
Although I could not endorse this formulation of the
problem, I will say that white people have a vast ignorance
of the Black man and his history and burdens in America.
However, the fact remains that the major task of reorienting
the Black college student, creating a new value system for
him, and additionally putting his knowledge and skills at
the disposal of the people he has forgotten in the Black
community -- these claims have the highest priority for us,
are far more pertinent to our situation

AASI does not presume to have either the time or the
resources to meet the cultural needs, minister to the
residual guilt, or deal with the subtle inbred racism of
hundreds of white students within the Antioch community.
Neither does it wish to participate in the paternalistic white
effort to redeem the ghettos of this country with generous
infusions of suburban values. . . . Black students have their
hands full already, without assuming the extra burdens of
white educationl‘3

Clark and others repudiated the argument as impractical at best and

105

profoundly dangerous at worst. In his letter of resignation from the Antioch
board, Clark said he opposed creation of the blacks-only program for the same
reasons he had fought public school segregation in the Brown vs. Board of
Education case. Segregation and racial prejudice always hurt people, he said,
regardless of who was doing the discriminating, and regardless of the
reasoning used to defend the practice. There was no valid rationale by which
educational institutions could justify making decisions that were based on race
or color, he said.
To exclude someone of one race -— or to admit that it

would be appropriate to do so — on the grounds that his

background or experience are irrelevant, that they render

him unable to achieve is precisely what white

segregationists have been doing to blacks for centuries.

Yet this seems to be the burden of rationalization at Antioch

for a black separatist policy.“
Roy Wilkins, executive director of the NAACP, sympathized with the black
students in their desire to smash racism and cultivate strength and unity
among African Americans, but he was adamant that in seeking to achieve
those goals through establishment of blacks-only Black Studies programs, the
students were making a serious mistake.

Who can declare them completely wrong? Certainly they

are right about the strength that comes from being with

their brothers. Certainly they are right about the usefulness

of a study of Afro-American history and culture. They are

right, also, in calling for increased enrollment of Negro

students and in requesting more black faculty members.

But in demanding a black Jim Crow studies building within

a campus and exclusively black dormitories or wings of

dormitories, they are opening the door to a dungeon.15

Wilkins said blacks-only programs were a return to the racial segregation that
1 06

had hurt African Americans so severely in the past. He cited a situation he had
witnessed in the 19203 in Kansas City, Mo., in which the city’s school board
spent $985,000 for athletic facilities for a junior high for white students while
allocating only $27,500 to convert a factory into an elementary school for black
children. "This was the ugly face of segregated education," Wilkins wrote. "The
system must not be revived. It must not be invited back at the request, nay, the
ultimatum of black students themselves.”5 Moreover, he said, separatist
programs were bound to fail for a variety of practical reasons.
The key word in the current spate of similarly worded
demands of black students is "autonomous." No university
administration faithful to its trust can grant this. There is
substantial informed opinion that tax money cannot be
used to setup racial enclaves within campuses. . . . And all
this is apart from the practical difficulty that it costs more
money to establish real studies centers than most colleges
can afford and that the qualified personnel — black or white
—- is simply not available at this time.
The demanding students might well find themselves
saddled with a poor substitute for a center, foisted on them
by an administration ready to buy peace at any price. Thus
would segregated education once more run true to form.17
In a 1971 article, "Ghetto and Gown: The Birth of Black Studies," Roger A.
Fischer provided a trenchant analysis of the integrationist/separatist debate
that was dividing the Civil Rights Movement as well as complicating the efforts
to establish Black Studies on white college campuses. The controversy at
Antioch, he said, was emblematic of the dilemma confronting Black Studies
and underscored the need for compromise among the various factions that
supported Black Studies but held radically different views of what Black Studies

should be.
107

If it is ever going to develop into a meaningful academic
discipline, traditionalists and black militants must
somehow reach understandings on such basic issues as
curriculum, control, and interracial participation.
Accommodation will probably be difficult to achieve, for the
rhetoric of revolution is seldom conducive to the realities of
compromise. If confrontation is allowed to escalate beyond
the point where reasonable debate remains possible,
black studies will be the inevitable victim. . . . Every
indication points to a rising tide of social reaction, to a
climate in which repression would be welcomed by
regents, legislators and a public which remembers too
vividly the guns of Cornell. If reaction and repression ever
become the order of the day, black studies will surely die
the death of a sacrificial lamb.

It is most unlikely that many colleges will permit the
militants to define the curriculum in terms of the philosophy
of black revolution. To grant any ideology such privileged
status would be a gross violation of the traditional concept
of the university as a laissez-faire marketplace for the free
exchange of ideas. . . . It seems equally unlikely that black
autonomy will be taken very seriously by most college
administrations. Most regents and administrators believe
that their surrender of control would lead to out-and-out
anarchy. Few of them, needless to say, are anarchists.

The militants must also abandon the notion that white
students and professors should be excluded from
participation in black studies programs. This latter-day
apartheid is legally questionable and morally indefensible.
Moreover, separatism could well prove suicidal to the black
studies program. . . . Black studies programs also need
qualified white professors, for such programs will need all
of the academic talent they can muster to survive their
infancy and justify their existence as a discipline.18

But, Fischer said, it wasn’t just the militants who needed to compromise.

Despite the faults and weaknesses of their proposals, he said, the sense of

urgency they conveyed was both rare and important in academia. The militants

were saying things that needed to be heard: "Autonomy may be unrealistic, but

black students certainly deserve a meaningful voice in determining the faculty

108

and curriculum of black studies programs. Above all, the courses must attempt
to meet contemporary needs)"9

As polarizing as the issue of separatist Black Studies programs was,
however, it had little structural impact on higher education. That is because few
separatist programs were actually established -- despite the frequency of
militants’ demands — and the few that were did not long sustain their
exclusivity. University officials were overwhelmingly unwilling, and perhaps
legally unable, to grant the sort of autonomy that separatist programs
demanded or implied. And the idea of establishing segregation in an
educational setting when the entire nation had been in turmoil for nearly two
decades over efforts to and school segregation was more than most colleges
could even contemplate. There may have been weaknesses in the
integrationist ethic, as Harold Cruse argued, and the integration/segregation
dichotomy may not have described the full range of social possibility, as
Stephen Lythcott maintained, but their arguments were not persuasive at the
vast majority of institutions. Add to that the growing pressure from a federal
government that promised to withhold money from institutions that practiced
racial discrimination, and few college administrators were willing to face the
legal and financial risks, even if they were otherwise disposed to grant
separatist demands for the sake of campus peace.

The debate over whether whites could teach Black Studies courses was as
intense as the debate over blacks-only programs for students. Black students

demanded black professors because white professors were responsible, in
1 09

the students’ view, for the disregard, even animosity, with which academia had
always treated African American culture. How, the black students asked, could
whites now be expected to fairly and accurately teach about a subject they had
so long ignored and disparaged? Besides, they argued, white professors
could not adequately understand either black culture or black students.
Sometimes, as in the case at San Francisco State described by Nathan Here,
the arguments could become a sort of Catch-22. If a white professor couldn’t
understand that it was inappropriate for a white professor to be teaching black
history to black students, then he clearly did not understand contemporary
developments in African American thought and therefore, just as clearly, did not
understand black history. if he didn’t understand it, he shouldn’t be teaching it.
Put another way: Any white professor who was aware enough to teach Black
Studies courses must be aware enough to willingly refrain from teaching them.
It was not just the teaching of whites that was under attack. Radical black
intellectuals sometimes challenged whether white scholars had any business
conducting research into African American culture. The issue was especially
heated in the field of history because it collided with the desire of many African
Americans to rescue their history from the distortions of white scholarship.
History is crucial because it is so fundamentally connected with identity. African
Americans were struggling mightily to reshape and assert their own identity, as
a group and as individuals. Establishing a new, black perspective on the
history of African Americans was central to that task Blacks were tired of being

defined by whites, and to many, white scholars exploring black history would
110

only reinforce and extend the distortions.

Resentment toward white scholars investigating and writing about African
American history erupted into heated public exchanges on a number of
occasions. At a May 1969 event at Wayne State University in Detroit, the
Convocation on the Black Man, white historian Kenneth Stampp was assailed

by black militants "insisting that because he was a white man he had no right

 

to do IbiEaculiaLlnatitufinn.’ When another white historian, Robert Starobin,
presented a paper on slaves who had served as houseservants and drivers,
the radical black historian Vincent Harding walked out and two others black
scholars, Julius Lester and Sterling Stuckey, delivered stinging critiques of
Starobin's work. And in October of the same year, at the convention of the
Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, black militants shouted
down whites who tried to speak "on the grounds that [the whites] could not
understand what it felt like to be black.” Also in 1969, at the convention of the
Organization of American Historians, Harding, Lester and Stuckey delivered
papers of their own, "insisting that blacks alone were the ones to interpret their
own past."21 The organization’s president, white historian C. Vann Woodward,
delivered a speech entitled, "Clio With Soul," that addressed the issue.
Woodward acknowledged that white scholarship, marked by "moral neutrality
and obtuseness," had contributed to distortions of African American history.
Instead of the history of Negroes, he said, white historians had frequently
Written "what the white man believed, thought . . . and did about the Negro." But

while he agreed that a reclamation by blacks of their African heritage could
1 1 1

 

provide a valuable correction to American history and have a healing effect for
African Americans and the whole nation, Woodward worried about the effects of
radical black nationalism on the process. The separatist tendency could lead to
"an inverted segregation, a black apartheid" as damaging as the white racism it
sought to overthrow. And, he said, the militants’ insistence that only blacks

write and teach about black history was flat-out wrong.

They cannot have it both ways. Either black history is an
essential part of American history and must be included by
all American historians, or it is unessential and can be
segregated and left to black historians. But Negro history is
too important to be left entirely to Negro historians. To
disqualify historians from writing Negro history on the
grounds of race is to subscribe to an extreme brand of

racism.22

John W. Blessingeme, a black historian, said the rejection of white scholars
by black students and radical intellectuals would ultimately damage black
studies and posed a threat to all black intellectuals. In "Black Studies: An
Intellectual Crisis," he said he sympathized with the black students. "It is
certainly asking a lot," he wrote, "to expect one to accept cheerfully a man who
has continuously embezzled from him his pride, culture, history and manhood
for more than four hundred years." But in his view, the black students went too
far, and were imposing an ideological tyranny that could cripple Black Studies

Programs.

All white teachers are not racists. I submit that some of
them have more "soul" than some blacks. "Blackness," in
all its shades, represents no mystical guarantee of an
"understanding" of the black man’s problems, life or
culture. Neither color nor earnestness but training must be

the test applied to any teacher. . . .
1 12

The threat to black intellectuals is real. Not only do the

black students demand that the teachers in black studies

programs be Negroes, they also want them to have the

right shade of "blackness." In essence, this means that the

black scholar must have the right ideological leanings. As

some of us succumb to the persuasive arguments to hop

on the treadmill and try to keep up with the mercurial

changes in the black "party line," serious scholarship is

likely to suffer. It is in this regard that the control of black

studies programs by black students is most dangerous.”
But as with the debate over separatism in student programs and facilities, the
debate over excluding whites from teaching and scholarship about African
Americans dissipated relatively quickly. In the short term, many white scholars
who had been interested in teaching Black Studies courses backed off rather
than face the tension and outright animosity from black students in the
classroom. And the pressure -— as well as desire —- to increase overall
numbers of black faculty prompted some institutions to see new Black Studies
positions as an opportunity to accomplish that goal by hiring almost exclusively
blacks for those jobs. But eventually, the demand for exclusivity fell victim to the
practical reality that there were simply not enough African American doctorates
to go around. That meant that whites were still needed to contribute to the
growing field.

The larger impact of the separatist controversy was psychological. Few
schools were ever able — or even had realistic prospects -— to achieve an all-
black faculty for their Black Studies programs. Few were willing, in the end, to

exclude white students from Black Studies courses. Some did experiment with

separatist dormitories, or black floors within individual dorms, or with cultural

centers for black students, but separatism, as a structural policy matter, was
113

neither extensive nor long-lasting. The passions stirred by the separatist
debate, however, were widespread and enduring. The intensity and often
outright hostility of the separatists’ demands caused most whites, and not a
few blacks, to recoil. It hardly mattered that the militants were responding to
what they perceived as the hostility of white institutions. Whites, inside and
outside academia, did not perceive themselves or their institutions as hostile,
even when they acknowledged that blacks had been hurt by racism. In white
eyes, the separatist agenda appeared irrational, bigoted, potentially violent, and
frightening, and those perceptions have lingered, shaping and perpetuating the
attitude of many people -— especially among the general public outside the
academy -— that Black Studies is not a legitimate intellectual enterprise.

That attitude was further underscored by debates that arose over what
should be taught, particularly in the humanities -- the debate over the literary
canon. Actually, the canon debate did not fully emerge until more than a decade
after the first Black Studies programs were established.24 When it did erupt, at
the beginning of the 19803, it quickly developed into what came to be called the
culture wars, which captivated not just academics but politicians as well for
most of the next two decades. Though the intensity has abated in recent years,

the debates continue over what sort of society America should be: a nation
devoted to the core values and traditions of the white western European culture
from which it emerged, in which newcomers and members of minority groups
are expected to assimilate themselves to the dominant culture; or a nation that

is constantly remaking itself to include, reflect and make room for the traditions

114

and values of the diverse cultures represented among the nation’s population.
It is a profound question, and the answer will shape America’s future in
fundamental ways.

The debate goes far beyond disputes over the canonical literature accepted
by academia and owes a great deal to another developing intellectual current
— the matacriticism that emerged from the work of Roland Barthes, Michel
Foucault, Jacques Derrida and others — and it came to the foreground of
national consciousness well after Black Studies was established in higher
education. But Black Studies lit the flame. By insisting that African American
culture be considered seriously by academia, Black Studies forced the
dominant white culture of the academy to reconsider whether the familiar
literature of the accepted Western canon was an adequate representation of
the complexity and diversity of contemporary American culture. Black Studies
challenged the conventional notion that the "classics" of Western literature
captured the essence of all true wisdom and knowledge.

The chief curricular target of militant black students, wrote Nathan l. Huggins
in a 1985 Ford Foundation report, "was the parochial character of the

humanities as taught. They saw the humanities as exclusive rather than
universal. They saw humanists as arrogant white men in self-congratulatory
identification with a grand European culture."25 They wanted to see something
they could identify as being part of themselves in the curriculum. The response
0f scholars in the humanities was often dogmatic and defensive. For them, the

liberal arts curriculum represented the best ideas that can be taught, ideas that
115

disciplined the mind, ideas that embodied the greatest achievements of
Western culture. And the humanities scholars already felt as though they were
under siege after nearly a century of academic change that had increasingly
acceded to utilitarian demands and diminished the role of the liberal arts.

To the embattled humanists, black students arguing for

courses "relevant to our blackness" sounded much like

engineering students demanding that they be exempted

from courses not "relevant" to their professional training.

Humanists thus saw themselves as holding the line

against a new wave of Philistinesfis
The attitude could still be seen clearly much later, as the canon controversy
flowered in the 19803 and 19903, in the despairing analysis of Allan Bloom’s,
Ibe_Clnsing_nf_tbe.Amnncan.Mind: "It is difficult to imagine that there is either
the wherewithal or the energy within the university to constitute or reconstitute
the idea of an educated human being and establish a liberal education
again."27 Or in the beleaguered tone of William Casement’s description in Ina.
.GtaaLCanchnnttnveLsy;

At most schools there is only a minimal place in the

curriculum for a smattering of great works. A few schools

and programs, however, operating out of the mainstream,

have kept the tradition alive, and a few prominent educators

and promoters have managed to bring it occasional

visibility within academia and among the intellectually

inclined elements of the general public.28

But that was much later. It took a decade or more for the canon debate to

erupt into the national consciousness for several reasons. First, because the

field of African American culture had been so widely ignored, the ready supply

of literature and critical publications with which to challenge the established

116

canon was relatively small, and it took time for scholars who had not
specialized in the area to become aware of it. Second, for the first decade at
least, Black Studies programs were just getting established, and the focus of
their efforts was, of necessity, more on organizational and instructional issues
than on research and the gathering or production of literature. That is not to say
that research and publication were insubstantial, only that the emphasis on
that part of scholarship was diminished while organizational issues took the
top priority. And third, it took some years for the intellectual critique represented
by Black Studies, similar critiques offered by other ethnic studies and Women’s
Studies programs, and the growth of metacriticism to combine into the
intellectual force that so threatened the cultural standards and values that
Bloom and other conservative intellectuals revered.

One way to gauge the impact of the Black Studies movement on the content
of curriculum and the literary canon is to look at the publication of new books
and articles that bear on a particular field of scholarship. Most scholarly
publications, particularly in social studies and the humanities, are produced by
schola rs who also teach. New scholarly publications, therefore, not only
provide potential new material to be included in course reading assignments,
but also give some insight into where the attention of scholars is focused; if
scholars are writing about particular topics, the chances are good that at least

some of that material is going to make it into their teaching.

006 area where the shifting interests of scholars in the late 19603 and early

19708 are clearly evident is in the field of African American literature, a core
1 17

element of Black Studies. In 1965, for example, the annual bibliography of new
scholarship published by the Modern Languages Association identified 818
new books and articles that had been published in the field of 20th Century
American literature. Of those books and articles, only twenty-seven — about 3.3
percent of the total — were clearly identifiable as focusing on African American
literature or African American authors.” The 20th Century American literature
section, which covered fourteen pages in small type, began with a listing of
articles and books on thematic topics. That was followed by a listing of articles
relating to particular authors — with bold-faced subheads organized in
alphabetical order. The usual suspects dominated the list. Eighty articles and
books were devoted to William Faulkner and his writings. Ernest Hemingway
was the subject of thirty-eight articles and books, while F. Scott Fitzgerald was
the topic of twenty-eight. At least nine other white authors — Willa Cather, J. D.
Salinger, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, William Carols Vihlliams,
Robert Frost, John Steinbeck, Edith Wharton and Katherine Anne Porter — had
been the subject often or more articles and books. Only four African American
authors - James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison and Countee Cullen
— made the alphabetical list, and only Baldwin, with eleven citations, was the
subject of more than ten books and articles. The other three authors were the
subjects of four or fewer articles each.

By 1975, however, the situation had changed significantly. The total number
of books and articles in the field of 20th Century American literature had more

than doubled; the total number of publications that were clearly about African
118

Americans or African American literature had nearly quintupled; and the portion
of the total publications that were about African Americans or African American
literature had nearly doubled to 6.4 percent.30 White authors still dominated the
list. Faulkner scholarship, for example, had swelled to 119 books and articles;
ninety-one were about Hemingway; sixty were about Fitzgerald; Cather, Frost,
Steinbeck, Flannery O'Connor, John Berryman, and Saul Bellow all were the
subjects of twenty-five or more books and articles. But of the 2,042 books and
articles listed, at least 131 were about African American authors or literature.
And while only two African American authors — Jean Toomer and Richard
Wright —- were subjects of ten or more articles and books, at least twenty—four
other African American authors had been the subjects of at least a single article
each. In addition to Baldwin and Ellison, the subject listing included such
African American authors as Arne Bontemps, Gwendolyn Brooks, W.E.B.
DuBois, Lorraine Hansberry, Robert Hayden, Langston Hughes, LeRoi Jones,
Malcolm X, Paule Marshall, Claude McKay, Toni Morrison, Gordon Parks,
Ishmael Reed and Alice Walker.

As with the enrollment of black students in white universities, the growth in
scholarship about African Americans and their culture was slow and the
percentages —- relative to total production of scholarship — remained small,
but change was evident. Precisely how much of the change can be directly
attributed to Black Studies is unclear, though as Darlene Clark Hine made
clear in her 1990 study for the Ford Foundation, the production of scholarship

by Black Studies professionals was substantial.
119

[O]ne fact deserves underscoring. Black Studies
departments and their faculties have proven to be a
continuing source of intellectual stimulation on many
American campuses. Black Studies has opened up vast
and exciting new areas of scholarship, especially in
American history and literature, and has spurred
intellectual inquiry into diverse social problems affecting
the lives of significant portions of the total population.31
Many of the new scholarly publications were the work of Black Studies scholars
themselves. Some were the work of scholars in traditional academic
disciplines; and given the dramatic rise in the numbers of people going into
academic life, it could be assumed that even a few white scholars would have
9 ravitated toward the study of African American culture in any event. But the
Black Studies movement had laid down the challenge in a dramatic and
i resistant way, and in less than a decade, the African American experience was
claiming an increasing share of scholars' attention.
Beyond the problem of what was to be studied and taught in the field of
8 lack Studies, however, was the equally problematic consideration of where
the field would fit into the academic structure of the university. By the mid
1 9603, the established academic disciplines often exuded an aura that
8 ug gested they existed by natural law. No one seriously questioned whether
the history department, say, or the physics department deserved a place in
academia or constituted a discrete and fairly well-defined area of intellectual
i “Cl u iry. For most scholars, it would have been difficult — as it is today — to

i magi-1e a university without such departments. The departments are familiar,

the“ I" boundaries are reasonably clear and their legitimacy is accepted. In fact,

120

those departmental distinctions provided an important function by giving people
—-—-— outside as well as inside the academy — an intellectual framework with
which to organize, absorb, understand and manage the constantly expanding
body of knowledge about the world.

But the comfortable — and comforting —- solidity of the disciplinary structure
that existed in 1965 was deceiving. The oldest of the specialized disciplines
had only been around for about 80 years, and many of the familiar disciplines
were much younger. They had emerged slowly, almost imperceptibly to the vast
majority of people, and by the mid 19603, there was no one still active in higher
ed ucation who could remember when the core departments did not exist. They
had also emerged through consensus, defined by academicians who
perceived through their own analysis an area of inquiry that was interesting and
worthy and would support -— by yielding substantial insight on valuable topics
— the research of numerous scholars. Disciplines were defined by identifying
and gradually refining the limits of intellectual territory and methodology that
would differentiate one from another, but that process had consumed decades.

Black Studies turned that entire model on its head. It was sudden and new;
confrontationally, defiantly so. It did not assert its claim to legitimacy merely by
describi ng the intellectual benefits of focusing and intensifying scholarly inquiry
On a particular area of human experience; in part, Black Studies' claim to
'egitimacy was based on an intense critique and rejection of the deficiencies of
the existing disciplines. Advocates were, in essence, saying to academia: We

need Black Studies because you other disciplines haven't been doing your job.
121

As Armstead L. Robinson put it at the Yale symposium in 1968:
"[Bllack students and black parents all over the country are
tired of an educational system which is fundamentally
racist and which does not speak to their needs. More than
being tired, however, they are refusing to accept passively
the continuation of an educational policy which excludes
their legitimate concerns from decisions which vitally affect
them. As a result, colleges, universities, and school

systems across the country are facing escalating black
protests against curricular irrelevance, irresponsibility, and

negligence.”32
Black Studies did not emerge by consensus, it emerged by schism. At the
same time, while rejecting the adequacy of the existing disciplines, Black
Studies laid claim to parts of all of them, at least those disciplines in social
studies and the humanities. Rather than defining itself by narrowing
perspective, breaking off a more specialized chunk of a single existing
discipline, Black Studies defined itself as transcending the existing disciplines,
pulling them together to study facts and ideas that were connected by theme
rather than subject. Black Studies would not be a subspecialty but a
metaspecialty, a consciously interdisciplinary undertaking that sought to blend
the approaches and methods of history, literature, economics, sociology,
anthropology, art, music and other disciplines into a single discipline. It would
be organized not around examining one part of a culture, but around examining
one culture in all of its parts. In its move toward interdisciplinarity, Black Studies
went directly counter to the trend of increasing specialization and disciplinary
differentiation that had dominated higher education for almost a century.

Despite the ascendancy of specialization, however, the Black Studies

122

emphasis on interdisciplinarity did draw on a significant and long-standing
altemative vein of philosophy in higher education. Specialization began to
dominate academic organization in the last half of the 19th Century, but the
conflict between specialization and interdisciplinarity in higher education
predates the 19th Century by a millennium or two. Even among the ancient
Romans, the issue generated debate.
Although rhetoric prevailed at the core of Roman higher
education, some doubted whether one discipline was in
and of itself a satisfactory form of advanced education, and
Quintilian openly advocated more advanced studies over
the whole range of the traditional curriculum. As the
modem university evolved from the medieval cathedral
schools, a unified whole had come to include both letters
and sciences in the customary divisions of the trivium
(grammar, logic and rhetoric) and the quadrivium
(arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy). The idea
was not that a student should study everything and forgo
specialization but that specialization would occur in a
community of general studies . . .33
By the 12th and 13th centuries, when the medieval universities emerged, the
term ”discipline" was generally used to describe one of three areas: medicine,
law or theology. Those disciplines were responsible for producing the
specie l ized professionals -— doctors, lawyers, and clergy — demanded by the
society outside the university. In contrast, the powerful shift toward
Specialization in academia in the latter half of the 19th and early 20th centuries
was driven as much by the expansion of knowledge that grew out of scholarly
research. though the industrial revolution added plenty of its own demands for

University production of specialists.“ In intendiscipfinanmflistnmlnem

Emotion. Julie Thompson Klein argues that the efforts of many scholars to
1 23

pursue and define systems of thought that were capable of integrating all
knowledge was an established vein of academic development well into the

1 9th Century. However, she notes, the drive "to achieve scientific and value-
neutral theories in the nineteenth century only accelerated the movement away

from grand philosophical systems" that sought to emphasize integrated

knowledge.35

The modem connotation of disciplinarity is a product of
the nineteenth century and is linked with several forces: the
evolution of the modern natural sciences, the general
"scientification" of knowledge, the industrial revolution,
technological advancements, and agrarian agitation. As the
modern university took shape, disciplinarity was reinforced
in two major ways: industries demanded and received
specialists, and disciplines recruited students to their
ranks. The trend toward specialization was further
propelled by increasingly more expensive and
sophisticated instrumentation within individual fields. . . .

Although the "Renaissance Man" may have remained an
ideal for the well-educated baccalaureate, it was not the
model for the new professional, specialized research
scholar. Formalization of the pursuit of knowledge in
various fields —— history in 1884, economics in 1885,
political science in 1903 and sociology in 1905 —— paved
the way for the "professionalization" of knowledge in the

twentieth century.36
Some 19th Century universities, such as the University of Berlin, tried to
emphasize the idea of universal education but ran into difficulty. The problems
of applying the concept, Klein points out, were the same ones interdisciplinary
programs face today: "the structural organization of universities, the politics of
individual disciplines, the question of whether connections can be made
beMeen individual disciplines, and the question of whether any one concept

Could be so general as to include all the disciplines."37
1 24

As the general pattern of increased specialization and disciplinary
differentiation continued to grow, many institutions — especially the liberal arts
colleges, but universities, too -- began developing general education
programs. The so-called "great books" curriculum at Columbia University was
one example. The aim was to balance the effects of the drive toward
specialization, particularly at the undergraduate level, and to educate the "whole
1:)erson."38 Organizations also began to emerge -—- such as the Social Science
Research Council, which was established in the 19203 —- for the purpose of
promoting the integration of knowledge across disciplines. And some scholars

began to discuss the idea of interdisciplinary research. The movement started
with the simple borrowing of techniques, such as quantitative methods, by one
discipline from another. But by the late 19303, seriously interdisciplinary
programs were beginning to emerge. American studies, which sought to
provide a new perspective on American culture by blending the approaches of
English and history disciplines, was the most notable. After World War II,
universities also began to experiment with "area studies," which focused on
particu ler geographic areas, such as Africa or Asia. The programs tended to be
small, research-oriented more than curriculum—oriented, and relatively few in
number. They suffered from resistance by the dominant disciplinary structure of
the university and also from the fact that because they were new, matters of
theory and methodology were ill-defined. Many of the scholars involved in

interdisciplinary studies also tended "to fall back on their disciplinary

perspectives instead of creating new synthetic perspectives. "39
125

World War II added to the drive for interdisciplinary studies in a very practical
way: by generating the demand for cooperation between university scientists
and the military. Because the military's goals were to solve problems and win
the war, the cooperation was problem-focused and research-oriented.

"The most famous mission was the Manhattan Project to
build an atomic bomb, a cooperative effort among science,
industry, and the United States Army. It was the beginning
of a mission focus that would, by the 19603 and 1970s,
create a visible interdisciplinary presence on campuses in
the form of organized research teams, institutes, and
centers. They focused, most often, on problems of defense,

aerospace, and industry."0

But while those programs were mainly focused on research — not
cu rriculum — by the 1960s, interdisciplinary programs were coming to be seen

as a way of reforming the university in terms of curriculum as well.
Dissatisfaction with the increasingly specialized academic structure merged

with a broader unhappiness over the problems of American society to generate

an explosive increase in the number and nature of interdisciplinary programs

being established on the nation's campuses.

‘The majority were alternatives to the traditional curriculum.

They were ”telic" institutions in the sense that [Gerald]

Grant and [David] Riesman used the term to describe
purposive reforms charged with a sense of mission and
distinctiveness. Telic reforms approached the status of
social movements or generic protests against
contemporary life. They pointed towards a different
conception of the ends of undergraduate education, ends

that could not be met by simply reforming existing curricula
or inventing new instructional technology. New programs,

and, in some cases, entirely new institutions were
required!1

David Halliburton identified three broad categories of interdisciplinary
126

programs that were applied to curriculum reform. The first type, which he called
"Heritage-Based Curriculums," were based on cultural heritage, "with a
Western European emphasis." "This type of curriculum exists in an unusually
pure form at St. John's College, where students discuss great books on a well-
established reading list, and at Columbia University, where the problem of
'general education' is consciously linked to 'the reintegration of the university.""2
Another type of interdisciplinary program was the "Thematic Curriculum," such
as the curriculum at Alice Lloyd College, which focused on the study of
Appalachia or the Third College at the University of California, San Diego, which
dealt with urban problems. The third type of interdisciplinary program was the
"Future-Oriented Curriculum."
A 1974 survey discovered that more than 500 future-
oriented courses were being offered throughout the
country, and in view of the increasing attention given to
futuristics in education circles and the media, it is likely that
the number has grown. At Davis-Elkins, a course called
The Future provides the capstone to a four-year sequence
called The Liberated Life. At Pacific Lutheran University,
participants in Integrated Program Studies, which has
recently focused on The Dynamics of Change, may take as
one of their main "tracks" a future-oriented two-course
sequence.43
Halliburton argued that interdisciplinary programs are valuable because they
"can stimulate creativity in both students and educators."44 Interdisciplinary
programs, he said, also tend to be more flexible and problem-oriented than the
traditional academic structures. He also complained that interdisciplinary
programs are often held to stricter performance standards than are traditional

disciplines because of a bias toward the traditional disciplines.

127

Departments may draw their power from paradigms that
are unexamined and from rules that have less to do with
any public reality than with a discipline's internal history. . . .
To put it another way, a given discipline predicts the
phenomena it intends to handle. The methodologies it
employs, the language it speaks, the traditions it accepts
as legitimate -— all these largely predetermine the very
reality it sees. . . . A discipline held together by these
paradigms, rules and terminologies can be seen as a
reflection of reality. But precisely because it is something
made up — an invented set of assumptions and practices
— it selects reality; and selecting means leaving things out
-- perhaps a lot of things. Thus, while the discipline
reflects reality, it also deflects reality. That is why no single
discipline can claim to be equal to all tasks.“5

1 nterdisciplinary programs "all challenge the narrow disciplinary approach,"
Halllburton acknowledged. But, he argued, it should be the disciplines that are
required to demonstrate their ability to deal adequately with the questions
raised by the interdisciplinary programs.

That defiant challenge to the old disciplines and the old ways was implicit in
all the interdisciplinary programs — including Black Studies —- that proliferated
so quickly in the late 1960s. lnterdisciplinarity, by its nature, was an attack on
the intellectual status quo. And so, understandably, the entrenched disciplines
of the existing academic power structure were reluctant to acknowledge the
validity or accept the establishment of interdisciplinary programs. To some
degree, it was a simple turf battle; a program that crossed disciplinary borders
was Poaching on that discipline's intellectual territory. But it was also a war of
ideas, of paradigms by which we make sense of the world around us. As

\Nilliam v- Mayville asserted in W

lnterdisciplinarity does pose a threat to the idea that
128

knowledge can be divided into discrete paradigms that only
infrequently overlap; it also raises the issue of whether
disciplines can reasonably insist on the absoluteness of
their methodology or the uniqueness of the problems they
address. There is no doubt that interdisciplinarity has
proven to be a useful tool in confronting issues of national
and international significance, which usually require the
Opinions of individuals from a myriad of disciplines. It is
this reality that makes it urgent to consider how to build
interdisciplinary experiences for students that they can refer
to later when they assume responsibility for solving
problems beyond their discipline as it is now defined!6

The growth of these rebellious interdisciplinary programs was dramatic in
the late 1960s. Entirely new theme-based colleges were created. Universities
established experimental colleges or created new or updated core curricula for
undergraduates based on interdisciplinary approaches. Problem-focused
research sparked interdisciplinary cooperation, often with a view toward the
needs of industry or the military. Klein traced the extent of the growth spurt in a
survey of the literature on "interdisciplinary problem-focused research." Growth
in the literature was gradual, she said, from the early 19503 to the mid 1960s.

After 1969, however, the literature grew significantly:
doubling from 1969 to 1972, then growing 120 percent from
1973 to 1977, and an additional 95 percent from 1978 to
1982. There has been a corresponding increase in the
discussion of interdisciplinarity across disciplinary,
professional, and general literatures. The changing nature
of that literature is quite striking. Whereas earlier work
tended to focus primarily on educational programs, the
social sciences, and traditional ideas about unity, the focus
has now widened. Since 1970 scholars have been paying
closer attention to the problems of designing and
managing interdisciplinary curricula and research projects,
the practical and philosophical consequences of relations
between particular disciplines, the dynamics of
interdisciplinary problem-solving, and the nature of
interdisciplinary theory and method.

The momentum is undeniable. The discussion of

129

interdisciplinarity is becoming both broader and deeper.
However, the institutional obstacles to interdisciplinary
programs remain formidable."

Black Studies programs were a big part of that momentum. The hundreds of
Black Studies programs created on college campuses between 1968 and
1972 inspired the drives by other groups to establish Women's Studies,
Chicano Studies, Native American Studies, and other similar interdisciplinary
programs. A survey of ethnic studies programs and scholarly literature in the
field conducted by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities
in 1972 found that 477 institutions of higher Ieaming offered some kind of Black
Studies program. Black Studies was by far the largest specialty among the
ethnic studies programs. Jewish Studies, the second most-numerous category
of program, was offered at 180 colleges and universities. Chicano Studies
programs were offered at 104 institutions; American Indian Studies were
offered at 62; Asian-American Studies were offered at 43; Puerto Rican studies
were offered at 14; and 45 institutions offered various types of multi-ethnic
programs.48 A solid majority (267) of the institutions offering Black Studies,
however, offered courses only. Another 141 of the colleges and universities
offered programs that enabled students to establish a major or minor
concentration in Black Studies. Fewer than 15 percent of the institutions (69)
granted degrees in Black Studies, and only a handful offered master's
degrees; none offered Ph.D programs.

Evaluating the scope of Black Studies programs in the early years of the

movement is difficult because of the lack of a common definition of Black

130

Studies, and because of the confusing array of organizational structures that
arose. Some schools established Black Studies departments, while others
created programs, centers or institutes. In her 1990 overview of the field for the
Ford Foundation, Darlene Clark Hine described the range of programs and
some of the problems related to program status:

Black studies "departments" are best characterized as
separate, autonomous units possessing an exclusive right
and privilege to hire and grant tenure to their faculty, certify
students, confer degrees, and administer a budget. Black
studies "programs" may offer majors and minors but rarely
confer degrees. And perhaps more importantly, all faculty
appointments in programs are of the "joint," "adjunct." or
"associate" variety. These professors are in the unenviable
position of having to please two masters to secure
appointment and tenure.

"Centers" and "institutes defy easy categorization. As a
rule, they tend to be administrative units more concerned
with the production and dissemination of scholarship and
with the professional development of teachers and
scholars in the field than with undergraduate teaching.
Unfortunately, considerable confusion surrounds the name
"center." Many people view centers as merely cultural or
social facilities designed to ease the adjustment of black
students to predominantly white campus life. Thus, centers
are often denigrated and dismissed as having little or no
relevance to black studies, which is imagined to be purely
an academic or intellectual endeavor, albeit with political-
advocacy overtones.“

That centers, institutes and programs greatly outnumbered departments as the
preferred structure for Black Studies is not surprising. Departmental status is
emblematic of full acceptance into the academic structure of the university. That
is why so many of the militants demanded it; anything less was, in their eyes,
second-class citizenship, and the refusal to accept a secondary position in

society was what the Civil Rights Movement had been all about. But that is also
1 31

why few institutions established departments; the idea of Black Studies was so
new, the definition was so vague, and the interdisciplinary approach was so
foreign to the prevailing disciplinary structure that administrators -— and the
established departments -— were reluctant to grant Black Studies full
departmental status. Moreover, establishing programs rather than departments
was both faster and cheaper. Universities could show their responsiveness to
the concerns of black students and faculty quickly, but without the large (and
long-term) commitment of financial resources associated with a full
department. And at a time when the demand was intense for a relatively short
supply of black faculty who could teach Black Studies, the smaller size of a
center or program, minimized the difficulty and expense of faculty searches. In
essence, universities dealt administratively with Black Studies in much the
same way they had with other, earlier interdisciplinary programs: start them
small, in both staff and budget, and establish them at the periphery or under
the control (directly or indirectly, through the allocation of loaned faculty) of
already established departments or other administrative units. That left Black
Studies programs, Carlos Brossard argued in "Classifying Black Studies
Programs," pretty much to struggle on their own with the complexities of
profession development and program organization.

The bedrock foundation for the emergence of contemporary

Black Studies was laid by Black urban, lower-class

students as they tried to get better Black Studies courses

from traditional departments. These departments and their

representatives, especially in sociology, refused to extend

manpower and built-up intellectual resources, forcing
protesting Black students to insist on alternative structures

132

for handling Black Studies. Consequently, allied disciplines

and professionals sparingly and grudgingly helped the

organizational, curricular and institutional building tasks of

the new academic specialization. Intellectual integration

and effective and efficient organization could have resulted

from cooperation with friendly disciplinary neighbors.

Instead, unexpected and unanticipated Black Studies

departments widened the social distance between allied

disciplines and professionals. New pioneers stood alone

in resolving intellectual integration and discovering

organizational building without shared support or prior role

modeling of professional peers.50

The missions of most of the early Black Studies programs were not even as

clear as the confusing structural variation. Many did not control their own
budgets and had to rely on the willingness of established disciplinary
departments to loan faculty. To the extent that they had their own budgets, they
were forced to compete for money with long-established departments, and
slim finances required Black Studies programs to rely more heavily on “the
cheaper labor of graduate students and new doctorates."51 Some programs,
such as the Center for Black Studies at Wayne State University, were not
authorized to offer their own courses, but served primarily as research centers
and clearinghouses for information about courses offered by other
departments in the university. Moreover, the faculty and administrators engaged
in Black Studies programs. who tended to be young and inexperienced, were
faced with the daunting task of building and operating programs while
simultaneously creating a field of study they were still struggling to define. As
Brossard points out, by beginning with a focus on undergraduate instruction

rather than graduate-level training and research, Black Studies programs were,

in yet another way, developing counter to the prevailing paradigm. Most
‘ 133

disciplines began with research scholars focusing their efforts on a particular
intellectual field, training graduate students for advanced degrees and
producing the scholarly articles and books that only later became the basis for
generating undergraduate curriculum. The process took time, but it built strong
foundations for the traditional disciplines. Black Studies, however, did not have
the luxury of time; the demands for substantive change in undergraduate
curriculum were powerful and immediate. The development of Black Studies
as a profession was made more difficult by the necessity of attending to
undergraduate instruction rather than devoting the full attention of Black Studies
scholars to graduate instruction and research. Black Studies programs also
were called upon to perform a variety of functions — such as student
counseling and support services — that strained the capacities of staff and
required fluid definitions of program mission. Brossard described the situation
as difficult and fragmented:

Considered from its functional roles, Black Studies, since

1968, has rarely been permitted to be a single-task, highly

goal-focused, exclusively academic enterprise.

Consequently, no single behavioral definition of Black

Studies prevails. At best, a collection of organizational

strategies, varied research goals, unsettled content

domains, and multiple formats crossing and cutting

humanities and social science permutations characterize

Black Studies programs today. Essentially, any definition of
Black Studies emerges from pluralistic praxis, not grand

theory.52
The competing demands of research, teaching, student services and
program-building put enormous strain on Black Studies faculty. The needs of

students — and the faculty’s desire to share knowledge of the African American
134

experience through teaching, often was at odds with the pressures to produce
the research needed to win advancement and tenure in the academic world.
And in programs where faculty members’ appointments were based in or
shared with other departments, Black Studies faculty often were faced with a
choice between sacrificing their own personal advancement for the good of the
Black Studies program, or sacrificing the strength of the Black Studies program
for the sake of assuring themselves tenure and career advancement. And the
needs of the students could be considerable, as Brossard pointed out.

[T]he dominant clientele imposed immediate needs for

compensatory education, since many poorly prepared

inner-city students came to Black Studies departments.

lpso facto, the mission of Black Studies departments had

to include support services, i.e., academic social work and

mediating embedded conflicts between students of poor

backgrounds and their often hostile reception in the

formerly segregated settings where Black Studies

programs were formed. In very few places, a division of

labor separated these tasks. lnvoluntarily, Black Studies

became a multi-task operation with added compensatory

education pressures extending the real domain of work.53

Black Studies presented awkward structural difficulties for the university. For

one thing, it was profoundly problem-focused; many supporters considered
one of its primary justifications to be that it would seek solutions to the
economic, social and political difficulties facing the African American
community. To the extent that the university previously had been involved in
such specific problem-solving, that kind of activity had been seen as something
happening at the periphery, not as a core disciplinary function. And despite the

fact that research responding to the specific needs of industry or govemment

135

might logically be seen as reinforcing the dominant social structure, it was not
considered by most academicians to be delving into social politics in the way
that Black Studies was perceived.

The intensely political nature of the demand for Black Studies and its
challenge to the established disciplinary structure of academia was often
shocking, if not downright offensive, to many white administrators and scholars
who saw themselves as exemplifying and defending an honorable and virtuous
intellectual tradition. The black student activists who were demanding the
programs often rejected the traditional disciplines, in part, because they felt the
disciplines had rejected black people. As Donald H. Ogilvie put it at the 1968
Yale symposium: "[T]he bodies of knowledge of which we speak have been
criminally ignored by the majority of the intellectual community)” Distrust of the
existing academic structure also expressed itself in demands for student
control over Black Studies programs, demands that were anathema to
university administrators. At Wayne State University in 1972, for example, when
a new university president pushed through creation of a Black Studies center,
black students angrily protested the move. Even though students had been
demanding a Black Studies program at Wayne State for nearly four years, they
attacked the president's plan because the students were not consulted in
designing the program and would have no control over it. As one leader of the
Association of Black Students had told the campus newspaper in 1970: “ABS

believes that if the university controls the program it will provide nothing

important. . 3’55
136

In addition, as a matter of basic institutional process, Black Studies,
confounded the norms of disciplinary formation. It started from the bottom up
rather than from the top down, responding to demands for undergraduate
instruction before establishing the traditional, if sometimes esoteric, forms of
theory and methodology that traditionally had been generated through research
and scholarly writings before being introduced into the curriculum. The
discipline also was created by student demand, not by the long-considered
scholarly insight of the faculty.

Moreover, its interdisciplinary paradigm meant Black Studies faced a
particularly difficult path to follow in its quest for legitimacy, acceptance, and
respect within the academic structure. Nor did Black Studies have the support
of an outside industry clamoring for specialists in the field or seeking to
underwrite research. And to the extent that Black Studies had a supportive
constituency in the off-campus African American community, the connections
with the Civil Rights Movement added to the discomfort of white academics
who considered academia — or at least wanted it to be -— thoughtful, objective
and above the fray.

Higher education, generally, responded to this litany of problems in
predictable ways. If the demands and demonstrations of black students
became outrageous — as in the case of the gun-wielding protesters at Cornell
—- Black Studies could be disparaged as violent or merely political. If Black
Studies programs were forced to focus on remedial education for African

American students who had been ill-prepared for admission to the university,
137

the intellectual standards of the programs could be questioned. lf budgetary
constraints forced Black Studies programs to rely more heavily than other
departments on inexperienced faculty, and if those faculty members were
deflected from their research duties by their responsibilities to students, the
legitimacy and scholarly quality of the whole enterprise could be called into
doubt. People do not like to be put on the spot. Even academics. Some might
say especially academics. And Black Studies put the university squarely,
adamantly and most uncomfortably on the spot. The university responded — as
people tend to respond to that which makes them uncomfortable — by holding
Black Studies at arm’s length. But no matter how reluctant, restrained or
marginalizing the institutional response, the presence of Black Studies
programs ensured that the university would be forced, on a continuing basis, to
confront the challenges embodied in Black Studies. To most, the face of
revolution was defined by the nature, content and controversy of the challenges.
But the untelevised revolution was the simple and irreversible fact that Black
Studies had come to stay, establishing a permanent shift — however small or

overdue — in the intellectual and institutional processes of the university.

138

Chapter 5

The Soul of Black Studies

The political conflict surrounding the demand for Black Studies programs, to
a great extent, overpowered and obscured the deep philosophical challenge
with which Black Studies confronted the university. This is not surprising. As an
extension of the Civil Rights struggle, the Black Studies movement focused, of
necessity, on the concrete, quantifiable issues by which one could assess the
inclusion of African Americans in academia. A university's willingness (or
unwillingness) to establish a Black Studies center or program or department --
and the level of funding provided -— was a very visible measure of its
commitment, not just to Black Studies but to the acceptance of African
Americans, socially and intellectually, on campus. New courses bearing on the
concerns of African Americans could be counted, as could the texts and literary
works by and about African Americans that were being added to the
instructional canons of various disciplines. And all of this was inextricably
linked to the constant debates over university efforts to increase the enrollment
of African American students and the hiring of African American faculty — not to

mention the standards by which the enrollments and hirings would be

139

determined.

Though conflicts over these issues were often painful and intense, they were
at least relatively clear-cut and easy to frame in terms of numbers —
enrollments, faculty levels, budgets. And solutions, though not easily crafted,
were susceptible to political influence and negotiation. Protests could be
staged and demands presented. Administrators and governing boards could
be pressed by students and off-campus African American communities to
modify policies and budgets. Factions of supporters or opponents could be
defined on a familiar spectrum from conservative to moderate to liberal to
radical. Compromises could be forged through the sort of traditional political
mathematics that if not truly agreeable to all, was at least comprehensible to
all. In fact, it was the relative clarity of these political elements of the debate that
fed the lingering and dismissive view of Black Studies as an essentially
political enterprise.

It is true that from its emergence as a recognizable force in late 1967, the
Black Studies movement was a political enterprise. It had to be. The vast
majority of American colleges and universities in 1967 were as much in need
of desegregation as any lunch counters, city buses and elementary schools in
the Deep South. Fighting the political battles necessary simply to establish a
substantial African American presence in ovemhelmingly white institutions
was the first priority. But the Black Studies movement was always much more
than a political enterprise. lt was also an important intellectual effort to reform

the university's understanding of itself as an institution. Black Studies
140

challenged the prevailing — though often unexamined — philosophical
assumptions that governed academia. That debate was often complicated by
disagreements among supporters of Black Studies and the tendency —
common to the era — to focus on the incendiary rhetoric of the most radical
participants in any debate. But in their own way, the philosophical challenges
carried the most profound implications for the evolution of higher education in
America At its heart, the Black Studies movement was not about simply
making the university ethnically more diverse, including more people in the
existing scholarly enterprise. It was about radically changing the philosophical
vision that was the foundation of higher education in America.

To their credit, many white college and university administrators were
serious about making their institutions more open to African Americans. That is
why so many Black Studies programs were established so quickly. Certainly
there was resistance to Black Studies, just as there were cynical
administrators whose aim in establishing programs was appeasement, to
restore or ensure calm on their campuses. But many, like William Keast,
president at Wayne State University in Detroit, sincerely believed in the
objectives of the Civil Rights Movement and accepted the idea that intellectual
honesty required universities to give more attention in their curricula and
research to the history, contributions and concerns of African Americans. But
even the most supportive of white administrators generally came to the issue
from the integrationist or assimilationist perspective. In this view, the problem

was frequently defined as a matter of bringing more black students and black
‘ 141

faculty members into the university and including more material by and about

African Americans on course reading lists. Even sincere liberals, however,

often did not consider that merely increasing participation of African Americans

in the existing system might not be enough. In his reflection on the history and

development of the Black Studies movement, mtbeMnayachngin.
AfflcanAmeflcaoStudies. Perry A Hall observed:

The discourse around African American Studies was
often framed in terms of political ideology and/or
organizational structure; but it was, in fact, a set of
underlying epistemological issues -- determining what
(and who) constitutes valid knowledge about black people
and black communities -- that united the various groups of
the Black Studies movement opposing the integrated,
inclusionist model based on traditional disciplines and the
epistemological framework they embodied. For them, the
"epistemic renovation" that Russell [Adams] spoke of
required a totally restructured analytical framework. Mere
inclusionism and contributionism regarding the
experiences and achievements of blacks were insufficient
for these purposes.‘

William 5 Nelson Jr., in AfricologlLEmmSociaLMovemenUQAmdemlc.
Discipline. describes the philosophical challenge of Black Studies in stark

terms:

The demand for Black Studies was more than just a call for
construction of new courses. At bottom Black Studies
represented a powerful critique of traditional American
values, institutions and political arrangements. Black
Studies questioned both the methods and the
epistemological assumptions of traditional social
sciences. It called into question not only the content of
Specific courses, but the ideological network which
undergirded the fundamental approaches to human
questions of entire disciplines.2

To understand the nature of this epistemological challenge to the university,

142

it is useful to examine the debate that raged among supporters of Black
Studies over what, exactly, Black Studies was. Advocates of Black Studies
programs had profound disagreements over the nature, purpose and scope of
Black Studies. Those disagreements complicated, and often confused, the
broader debate between the advocates and college administrators because
they underscored the fact that there was no clear, single definition of Black
Studies. The lack of a clear definition was hardly surprising, given that the
whole concept was so new. But beyond complicating the practical negotiations
over program creation, the lack of definition also worked to obscure the full
scope of the philosophical challenge the university faced.

While they differed on matters of ideology, programatic focus and
organization, there was no disagreement among Black Studies advocates
about the value of education or the importance of including in that education a
full discussion of the contributions and achievements of black people. All of
them shared a certain degree of cultural nationalism. Martin Luther King Jr., for
example, had acknowledged the need for black awareness when he wrote,
“The tendency to ignore the Negro’s contribution to American life and strip him
of his personhood is as old as the earliest history books and as contemporary
as this morning's newspaper. To offset this cultural homicide, the Negro must
rise up with an affinnation of his own Olympian manhood. . . . As long as the
mind is enslaved the body can never be free."3 In that statement he does not
seem so far removed from Stokeley Carmichael and Charles Hamilton’s

assertion in BlackEnm that
143

Black people must redefine themselves, and only they can

do that. Throughout this country, vast segments of the black

communities are beginning to recognize the need to assert

their own definitions, to reclaim their history, their culture; to

create their own sense of community and togetherness.4
And neither position seems at odds with the proclamation on education
contained in the Black Panther Party's 1964 platform: "We believe in an
education system that will give to our peOple a knowledge of self. If a man does
not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then
he has little chance to relate to anything else."5

And yet, there developed a very strong ideological split among Black Studies
proponents, a split that separated reform-minded intellectuals and political
moderates from the militant advocates of Black Power and the radical
revolutionaries. All three factions understood the importance of education and
believed that black history and culture should have a prominent place in
academia. But whereas the reformers envisioned Black Studies as a vehicle to
bring black culture and black people into the mainstream of the existing social
and academic structure, the critics of integrationism and the radical
revolutionaries saw Black Studies as a way to entirely reshape academia or
eradicate that structure altogether.
In an article in Whole: in 1974, Robert L. Allen described three

competing visions of Black Studies.

One school of thought viewed Black Studies as a purely

academic field concerned with researching black history

and illuminating the contributions of blacks to American

society. Others, such as Harold Cruse, considered Black
Studies to be an instrument of cultural nationalism

144

specifically concerned with critiquing the “integrationist

ethic’ and providing a counterbalance to the dominant

Anglo—Saxon culture. Still a third viewpoint, best expressed

by Nathan Hare, saw Black Studies as a vehicle for social

change, with a functioning relationship to the black

community to break down the “ebony tower” syndrome of

alienated black intellectuals.6
In practical terms, this meant that the integrationist reformers generally
supported efforts to inject more African American content into existing
disciplines across the curriculum or new programs that emphasized research
and traditional models of intellectual rigor and achievement; they strenuously
opposed programs that were aimed at black students only as a new form of
segregation. Cultural nationalists, like Cruse, oflen agreed with the
integrationist reformers when it came to intellectual standards, but saw Black
Studies as a way to forge a new cultural awareness among African Americans
that would move the social debate away from the old concepts of integration
and assimilation and toward a more pluralistic model. The radicals, on the
other hand, were more interested in social revolution and believed that
traditional institutional models were useless and oppressive. They insisted
that Black Studies programs must transform society by liberating blacks and
other oppressed people, and to accomplish that must be committed to social
action through close links with the off-campus black community. In some
cases, they advocated programs on white campuses — centers, dormitories,
and specific courses, for example — that would be for black students only.

To some degree, the divisions among supporters of Black Studies mirrored

the divisions that had arisen within the Civil Rights Movement around 1964.

145

The older wing of that movement, led by King, was committed to the idea of
integrating African Americans into America’s existing socio-political system.
This was the movement of the Montgomery bus boycott, the Freedom Rides,
and the March on Washington. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln
Memorial resounded, not just with the cadences of the black Baptist church, but
also with the conventional symbology of American liberty. King was not
fomenting revolution or seeking a radical revision of the American Ideal; he was
calling on America to live up to that ideal and to become the nation it had
always promised to be. The answer to America’s problems, he said, was to let
everyone share in the nation’s political heritage and economic bounty.

But around 1964, a younger, more militant group that was disenchanted by
the movement’s lack of progress in improving the lives of African Americans
had split from King’s leadership. The group, led by the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee and following the black nationalist philosophy
articulated by Carmichael and Hamilton, formed the Black Power movement,
which rejected the assimilationist model of the older generation. Assimilation
was not possible, Black Power advocates argued, because the existing social
structure was built upon white ideals that would never accept black people.
Instead of seeking a token share of the existing system, they said, blacks
needed to demand and fight for autonomy in ways that would force the white
power structure to deal with black people on their own terms. In this view,
blacks needed to reject white values and definitions. embrace their own and

insist that the white society respect the light of blacks to define and control their
' 146

own lives by their own cultural values.

Other, more radical activists, also rejected any possibility of assimilation but
believed that even the self-reliance and assertiveness of the Black Power
movement did not go far enough. The most militant activists, exemplified by the
Black Panthers, called for outright revolution to overthrow repressive social
institutions. In the Panthers’ view, America was waging war on blacks and
blacks needed to organize to fight back, with violence if necessary. \Nnite-
dominated social and political institutions could not be reformed, they argued;
those institutions had to be destroyed and replaced. Dressed entirely in black
with black berets and sometimes brandishing firearms, the Panthers exuded a
calculatedly paramilitary aura —- as a symbol of power and to inspire fear in the
white society. Panthers aggressively monitored white police activities and
established a variety of programs aimed at improving the quality of life in the
black community.

The debate between the Black Studies factions closely paralleled the
broader political struggle between the reformist, integrationist forces of the
traditional Civil Rights Movement, the younger militants of the Black Power
Movement and the radical Panthers. In some cases, the players were the
same. For example, a pamphlet on Black Studies published in 1969 by the A.
Philip Randolph Educational Fund included an introduction by Bayard Rustin
and articles by Kenneth B. Clark and Roy Wllkins, among others. This group
supported the concept of Black Studies in broad terms, but generally defined

the concept in integrationist terms, whereby the history and culture of African
147

Americans would be merged into existing academic programs across the
university curriculum. Rustin, Clark and Wllkins were all important figures in the
Civil Rights Movement, and the pamphlet was consistently critical of the radical
approach to Black Studies. Rustin expressed the reformist perspective most
succinctly in his introduction when he described the nature of the debate
between the reformists and the radicals as a series of questions:

Is black studies an educational program or a forum for

ideological indoctrination? Is it designed to train qualified

scholars in a significant field of intellectual inquiry, or is it

hoped that its graduates will form political cadres prepared

to organize the impoverished residents of the black ghetto?

Is it a means to achieve psychological identity and strength,

or is it intended to provide a false and sheltered sense of

security, the fragility of which would be revealed by even the

slightest exposure to reality? And finally, does it offer the

possibility for better racial understanding, or is it a

regression to racial separatism? The power - and also

the danger -— of "black studies” as a slogan is that it can

mean any or all of these things to different people.7
Rustin’s last question is particularly significant because it underscores the fact
that Rustin and other reformists were committed — on the question of Black
Studies as on other issues -- to an integrationist philosophy.

Clark’s contribution to the pamphlet was his letter of resignation from the
Antioch College Board of Directors. Clark, whose groundbreaking sociological
studies laid the foundation for the successful legal challenge to the “separate
but equal” doctrine of school segregation, quit the board after the college
created and Afro-American Studies Institute for black students only. 'To
encourage or endorse a separate black program not academically equivalent

to the college curriculum in general, . . . is to reinforce the Negro's inability to
' 14s

compete with whites for real power in the real society,” Clark wrote. “It is no
excuse to justify the deed by citing the demand."8 And Wllkins, in a short essay,
also assailed the idea of separatist Black Studies programs as "Black Jim
Crow.” In demanding such programs or racially exclusive dormitories, he wrote,
black students 'are opening the door to a dungeon. They do not see that no
black history becomes significant and meaningful unless it is taught in the
context of world and national history. In its sealed-off black-studies centers, it
will be simply another exercise in racial breast-beating.”9 Far from advocating
the widespread creation of stand-alone Black Studies departments or centers,
Wllkins argued that to avoid the dilution of high-quality scholarship, only 'two
centers of genuine stature" should be established, one on the east coast, one
on the west; at the same time, all colleges should establish courses in Afro-
American history and culture "to the extent that qualified faculty, black or white,
can be found."10

But the integrationist ideal that drove the established Civil Rights Movement
was coming under increasing attack from intellectuals —- not all of them radical
revolutionaries -— who considered the ideal inadequate for dealing with the real
problems of American society. Harold Cruse, for example, argued that the ideal
of integrating blacks into the dominant white culture was actually
counterproductive because it "has subverted and blocked America's underlying
tendency toward what I would call a democratic ethnic pluralism in our society."
He continued:

This ethic has been a historical tendency stimulated both
' ‘ 149

by Anglo-Saxon political ideology, rampant industrialism,
racism and an Americanism whose implied goal has been
the nullification of all competing subcultures indigenous to
North America. . . . But the present internal social and racial
crisis we are experiencing proves beyond a doubt the
failure of this integrationist ethic. As a result of this failure,
at this present moment we have no viable black philosophy
on which to base much-needed black studies programs.11

Cruse argued that Black Studies should, from a base of cultural nationalism,
examine the development of black institutions "on all levels -- political,
economic, cultural and social." But while he rejected the concept of integration,
which was based on the value assumptions of the dominant white. culture, he
believed that there were problems inherent in focusing solely on black history,
culture and social institutions. While he criticized integrationism, he was not
advocating separatism. For Cruse, Black Studies was an intellectual
counterbalance to the prevailing biases of white scholarship.

Black studies must make the dominant particularism, the
dominant racial creed, more capable of dealing with the
internal crisis facing us all. . . . I think that those who would
institute the black studies program must not only
understand their own particular black history but must also
grapple with, and understand, the dual tradition that has
been nurtured in this society and that has given our society
its unique character. I think the question of a black studies
program is intrinsically a two-way street: a black studies
program — even if it expresses black particularism — is a
kind of particularism which understands its own limits and
its social function. Its social function is not to replace one
particularism with another particularism but to
counterbalance the historical effects and exaggeration of
particularism toward a more racially balanced society, a
society which would include expectations regarding the
democratic creed.12

Militant radical proponents also rejected the integrationist ethic as a basis

for Black Studies but were less worried about the problems of a black
150

particularism. Frustrated and angered by the intransigence of white academic
institutions and what they saw as the glacial pace of change achieved under
the integrationist model, the radicals increasingly defined their aims in
revolutionary terms and increasingly leaned toward the use of separatist
approaches they believed would promote social change by encouraging unity
and self—determination among blacks. If the Black Studies rhetoric of the
reformists echoed King’s criticism of Black Power in W
W the ideology of the radicals was infused with the
spirit of Carmichael and Hamilton’s assertion that,

The concept of Black Power rests on a fundamental

premise: W

W By this we mean that group solidarity is

necessary before a group can operate effectively from a

bargaining position of strength in a pluralistic society.13

(emphasis in original)

In BlacILEoweL Carmichael and Hamilton took the metaphor of internal
colonialism that had been devised by more moderate scholars - Cruse and
Clark14 — and transformed it into an activist philosophy. That philosophy put
great emphasis on group identity, unity and autonomous action in much the
same way that African independence movements had sought to shake off
European colonial rule. It was, after all, the African colonial experience that had
inspired the internal colonialism metaphor. Black revolutionaries like Eldridge
Cleaver and radical scholars like Maulana Karenga and Nathan Hare sought to

apply that philosophy to academia in concrete ways. Hare argued that Black

Studies programs had to connect directly with the off-campus African American

151

community and focus on community development.

Black education is black-community centered. At the
least, the educational process must involve the black
community, transforming the community while educating
and training the black student. For example, students in a
course in black history -- let alone black politics or black
economics -— might be required to put on a panel
discussion for younger children in church basements. A
course in black education would contain tutorial
assignments. . . .

This would tend to increase the commitment of black
students to the community while simultaneously permitting
them to "learn by doing." At the same time, their mere
presence in the community would provide role models not
generally available to black youths. Thus education is
made relevant to the student and his community while the
community is, so to speak, made relevant to education.15

Karenga told participants at a Yale symposium in 1968 that white universities
had three things to offer black people: “non-intervention, foreign aid, and
civilizing committees” that would encourage humanitarian values among
whites. Karenga’s analysis was blunt and direct:

What you have to understand is that you should not fool

yourselves by thinking that education is an academic thing;

it is basically a political thing, and it provides identity,

purpose, and direction within an American context. . . . We

say that we are another country — you have to accept that.

We are a colony ruled by a mother country — that’s the

outside world -— we live in another world. What we have to

do, then, is to try desperately to keep the outside world from

imposing its authority and its value system upon us."5

The Black Panther Party went even farther than Karenga’s demand for white

non-intervention, calling for fundamental, radical change of the white
institutions. In a 1969 article on “Education and Revolution" in Iba_BlaclL

Scholan, Eldridge Cleaver, the Panthers’ minister of information, said the white

152

power structure must be smashed.
We have to destroy their power in the community, and

we’re not reformists, we’re not in the movement to reform

the curriculum of a given university or a given college or to

have a Black Students Union recognized at a given high

school. We are revolutionaries, and as revolutionaries, our

goal is the transformation of the American social order.17
And in his own BlacLSdJolal‘. article the following month, Panthers Chairman
Bobby Seale urged black students to take themselves and their Black Studies
programs off-campus, 'to move out and be more a part of the community, to
educate the masses of people of the need to end the facist, brutal war that has
been going on against black people for hundreds of years."13

Black student activists tended to align themselves with the most radical

interpretations of Black Studies and demand that the programs have a strong
emphasis on community action. They also did not shy away from separatist
concepts when they believed separatism would benefit black people. Stephen
Lythcott, a black student at Antioch College, responded to Clark’s criticism of
the college’s blacksme program by rejecting the integrationist model that
Clark championed. Black students could not afford to worry about the benefits
that an integrated program might have for the whole society, he wrote, because
their first responsibility was to their own growth and development.

“[T]he major task of reorienting the Black college student,

creating a new value system for him, and additionally

putting his knowledge and skills at the disposal of the

people he has forgotten in the black community -- these

claims have the highest priority for us, are far more

pertinent to our situation. . . . Black students have their

hands full already without assuming the extra burdens of
white education!"19

153

Antioch’s program, Lythcott argued, was designed to break out of the either/or
dilemma posed by the 19503 segregationflntegration model. Clark, he said,
was trying to cope with 1969 problems while trapped in a 1954 mindset.

One obvious legacy of all this debate is that there still is no clear, consistent,
widely shared vision of what a Black Studies program should include, how it
should be structured, and what its role is within the university. That much Is
clear from the divergence of names -— Black, Afro-American, Africana -— and
the variety of structures -- departments, centers, programs — that characterize
the differing institutional approaches. And those programs have not unifome
thrived. In a survey of Black Studies programs undertaken for the Ford
Foundation in 1987, Darlene Clark Hine traced the programs’ structural
diversity to their origins as a "response to political exigencies rather than
intellectual and academic imperatives.” She continued:

Today it seems that no two black studies programs are
alike. Their diversity is evidenced in faculty size and
composition, relations with university administrators and
more traditional departments, curriculum, degrees offered,
budgets, spatial resources, range of special programs,
and the nature of their community outreach.”

Because Black Studies programs arose in an intensely political environment
and in response to political pressure from black students and faculty, the
programs’ diversity may be seen as an expression of the unique interactions of
individuals and institutional character that occurred on each campus. On

campuses where the black students and faculty members pressing for Black

Studies were influenced more heavily by the reformist ideal, Black Studies

154

reflected a more traditionally intellectual approach. Where the leading black
advocates were more radical, the Black Studies programs adopted a stronger
community orientation. Likewise, institutional character had an important
impact on Black Studies. Universities that saw themselves as intellectually elite
were more likely to adopt strongly academic programs, while those with a
tradition of greater openness and community service were more accepting of
programs with a significant community emphasis.

Of the two variables, however, institutional character was by far the more
dominant. After all, the relatively small numbers of black students and faculty on
white campuses in the late 1960s may have been able to influence
administrative policy but they did not have the power to control it. Nellie Vamer
helped design a Black Studies program at the University of Michigan in 1968 as
a young black faculty member and junior administrator. She later became a U-
M regent. In a 1992 interview, she said that U-M’s graduate research Center for
Afro-American and African Studies was designed to fit the university’s
traditional and academically elite mold. She recalled that there were strong
feelings, particularly among the activist black students, that the center should
be more community-oriented than it eventually became. But that vision of Black
Studies went beyond the university’s limits. "I think that the nature of the
institution and "what was possible’ at Michigan didn’t allow it to take that kind of
turn," Vamer said. "In other words, . . . it was a choice of, ‘You’re either going to
do something that was in the Michigan tradition or we can’t have it here.’ ’21

The white university administrators also controlled the effectiveness and

155

success of Black Studies programs through the allocation of institutional
resources. Regardless of what philosophical model a given college might
adopt, a program’s ability to grow and prove itself as an academic enterprise
depended in large part on the institution’s commitment to the program. With
adequate funding and staff, a Black Studies unit could attract high-quality
scholars and underwrite the high-quality programs that would win it acceptance
and respect in the academy. Vlfithout adequate funding and staff, the most
carefully conceived program could find itself diminished and marginalized.
Some of the reformists, who favored the approach of making existing

university curricula more inclusive, cited the potential for marginalization as a
strong argument against the radical approach. Wilkins worried about "the
practical difficulty that it costs more money to establish real studies centers
than most colleges can afford and that qualified personnel —- black or white —
is simply not available at this time." Activist students, he warned, "might well
find themselves saddled with a poor substitute for a center, foisted on them by
an administration ready to buy peace at any price."22 And Rustin assailed the
'patronization, self-flagellation, and pusillanimity' he perceived in many white
administrators.

Many of these would-be liberals feel that by submitting to

the wildest fantasies of Negro students they are doing

them a service, but in reality they only exhibit their lack of

concern for the education of those students. And by

permitting black studies to be opportunistically used for

political and propagandistic purposes, they reveal their

disdainful belief that the study of the Negro is not a subject
worthy of serious intellectual attention"!3

156

Nelson said the issue of financial resources also was an important
motivation for white scholars and administrators who opposed Black Studies.
In the highly developed, and very political bureaucracies of the university, he
said, Black Studies posed a very real threat to the financial turf of existing
departments and programs.

[Ojn a practical level, Black Studies threatened to siphon
away both students and financial resources from traditional
departments during the period of an emerging fiscal crisis
in higher education. Thus from the very beginning the
demand for Black Studies was met with strong resistance
by individuals deeply committed to preserving the historic
character of higher education. On many campuses the
resistance was designed to keep Black Studies from
coming into existence at all. On others, the strategy was to
establish a program to placate student demands, but limit
the reach and impact of the program. This was usually
accomplished by keeping the staff and the resources of the
programs small and maintaining the programs as
coordinating units rather than autonomous departments.“

In her examination of Black Studies programs, Hine found that many of
those programs had suffered from lack of institutional support or active
administrative efforts "to thwart growth and development." Some programs also
had been undermined, she said, by their origins as hasty responses to
campus unrest, which forced them to rely on untrained directors unable to build
academically challenging programs. Sensationalized media coverage of
shootings that erupted at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1969
during a dispute between two black radical groups over the school’s Black
Studies program and a campus protest by armed black students at Cornell

University that same year also hurt the image of Black Studies, she said.

157

"University administrators who valued ‘peace’ and "campus rest’ had little
inclination, courage or will to insist on quality," Hine wrote. "Thus, black studies
units seldom were held to the traditional modes of evaluation and scrutiny
observed elsewhere in the academy."215

And yet, it was precisely those traditional modes of evaluation and the
Eurocentric values they represented that were at the heart of Black Studies'
challenge to the university. Whether they accepted the integrationist ethic or
advocated social revolution, supporters of Black Studies were in agreement
that white institutions of higher education had excluded not just black people,
but black ideas, black cultural values and black philosophical perspectives.
They all agreed that that needed to be changed. They differed over the degree
of change that was necessary as well as over strategy and tactics for
accomplishing that change. But they shared the goal of remaking the cognitive
world of higher education.

As a practical matter, scholars who accepted the integrationist/reformist
ideals generally gravitated toward the traditional academic disciplines. They
aimed to make the entire university curriculum more reflective of the black
experience by broadening the scope of individual disciplines and making them
more inclusive. Some turned down opportunities to work in, or even lead, Black
Studies programs or departments.

That left the job of defining Black Studies, its philosophy and theoretical
underpinnings, to the more militant advocates who opposed the integrationist

ethic and who were charged with the institutional task of setting up Black
158

Studies programs. Although early scholars in the field regularly acknowledged
the need to examine and refine the theoretical and methodological parameters
of the discipline they were creating, efforts at disciplinary definition were
haphazard throughout the late 19603 and early 19703. That was largely
because the logistical demands of setting up programs and departments were
so overwhelming. Curricula had to be designed, courses identified and
planned; faculty had to be recruited; staff had to be hired; instructional materials
had to be assembled; bureaucratic resistance had to be overcome;
administrative procedures had to be developed and coordinated in keeping
with institutional mandates -— and often all of this had to be accomplished in a
very short time. Under such circumstances it is no surprise that theoretical
considerations were not the highest priority. In fact, it was not until the late
19703 and early 1980s, after the early organizational drive had established
Black Studies programs fairly widely in academia, that scholars in the
discipline began to engage in concerted debate to develop a theoretical
framework for Black Studies. The leading paradigm to emerge from that debate
was the concept of Afrocentricity, articulated in the work of Maulana Karenga
and Molefi Asante. In lntmductiommackfimdlas. first published in 1982,
Karenga discussed the need for Black Studies to establish a new intellectual
foundation for understanding and analyzing the experience of African
Americans. The existing structures and processes of Western scholarship
were so biased, he said, that they were programmed to exclude African

perspectives and could not shed useful insight on the reality that African
159

Americans faced. The aim of Black Studies, he wrote, was to provide an
intellectual alternative that was adequate and responsive to the needs of black
people.

This enterprise is self-consciously Afro-centric, critical and
corrective in response to the internal demands of the
discipline itself, whose subject matter and academic and
social mission clearly demand this approach. An Afro-
centric approach is essentially intellectual inquiry and
production centered on and in the image and interest of
African peoples. This responds to the early and continuing
demands for academic and social relevance of the
educational process and its contents. The critical thrust is
the advancing of severe and ongoing criticism of the
established order of things in order to negate myths,
mystifications and insubstantialities of traditional white
studies on blacks, society and the world.236

Asante has had somewhat more influence within the academic arena. In part,
that is because much of Karenga's energies, as befits a community activist,
were aimed at extra-academic activities, such as creating and promoting
Kwanza, an African American holiday that celebrates the heritage of African
peoples. But Asante also was responsible, as chair of the African American
Studies department at Temple University, for establishing the first Ph.D.
program in the field. He also produced a series of books that define his vision
of Afrocentricity. Asante argued for the need to analyze the history and
experience of African Americans from a consciously African-centered point of
view.

Wewalkthewayofa new level offreedom. Weseektono

longer be victimized by others as to our place in the center

of wortd history. We do this not because of arrogance but

because it is necessary to place Africa at the center of our
existential reality, else we will remain detached, isolated,

160

and spiritually lonely people in societies which constantly

bombard us with anti-Africa rhetoric and symbols,

sometimes from Africans themselves who have been

trained by the enemies of Africa.”
The concept of Afrocentricity attracted many avid supporters who saw it as a
foundation for shaking off the mistakes and distortions of Eurocentric
scholarship. It also has prompted critics to charge that some Afrocentric
formulations are based on questionable analyses of the African past and that
"the concept encourages racial chauvinism and inter—group conflict by
asserting the superiority of peoples of African descent relative to other
populations.” But whatever the strengths or weaknesses of particular
formulations of Afrocentric theory, the central point is that by 1980, little more
than a decade after the founding of the discipline, Black Studies scholars were
working hard to define a theoretical framework, rooted in African elements of
African American culture, that would provide a powerful, alternative perspective
for the examination and analysis of the African American experience.

The fundamental assumptions of Afrocentric theory were implicit, if not
clearly defined, in the early demands for Black Studies. From the outset,
militant Black Studies advocates criticized the entire scholarly enterprise of
higher education for operating on Eurocentric assumptions that could not
explain — and often seemed not even to perceive — the unique experience of
African Americans in American culture. The Eurocentric bias, especially in the
social sciences, always seemed to result in research and analyses that

measured black people against white standards and defined African

Americans in terms of pathology. Whether the issue was economic status,
1 61

academic achievement, family structure or social behaviors, blacks routinely
were defined in terms of what they lacked, relative to the norms of white society.
White scholars seemed most interested in expressing the situation of blacks in
terms of problems, as if the end of their research was to answer the question:
Why aren't blacks in sync with the overall society? The thrust of Black Studies
was to respond with another question: Why should they be?

Rather than looking to the assumptions of the dominant white culture, Black
Studies scholars looked to the cultural heritage of African Americans
themselves for models of understanding the African American experience. A
key touchstone for their analysis was W.E.B. DuBois' description of the "two
warring ideals" within the consciousness of black people: the conflict between
what it meant to be American and what it meant to be black. White scholarship
had never quite grasped this idea, but Black Studies scholars often looked to
DuBois' formulation as an organizing principle for their own research and
analysis. As Johnella E. Butler put it in BMW
Bemhnion. "Identity, the foundation of a pedagogy of Black Studies, is rooted in
a recognition of the sensibility of the two warring ideals, the adventure of
Blackness and Western culture, the modes created by the various interactions
between Black and White sensibility!” Being black in America, Black Studies
scholars asserted, gave African Americans a distinctly different world view from
that of the dominant white culture; any scholarship that did not take that into
account was inevitably flawed. "Black studies must be taught from a black

perspective," wrote Nathan Hare.
162

The spirit of blackness must pervade black education.

Many white professors — and consequently, of course,

professors at Negro colleges - are beginning to dust off

old race relations and Negro history courses and call them

black. These are collected, usually remaining scattered

under the control of existing —- and frequently racist —

departmental chairmen. Such programs are not black

studies; they are Negro studies or polka-dot studies. Nor is

the blackening of existing white courses or white-oriented

courses alone enough. Black education must be based on

both ideological and pedagogical blackness.30

This differing worid view was expressed in a number of ways. First and
foremost, Black Studies scholars tended to reject traditional ideals of objectivity
and detachment that were the foundation for the Western scientific method. Not
surprisingly, that rejection sparked considerable criticism from scholars who
argued that objectivity was necessary to keep ideology fiom obscuring the
search for truth that was the purpose of scientific research. But Black Studies
advocates responded that the scientific method itself was inherently
ideological, that it was suffused with the political and cultural assumptions of
the dominant white Western society. In fact, they charged, the scientific method
had worked to objectify black people and deprive them of their humanity. In an
examination of the development of theory in Black Studies, Philip T.K. Daniel
criticized analytical models based on the concept of objectivity because they
"expect members of the black family to be understood in terms of adjustment or
maladjustment to their surroundings." Moreover, he said, debates about
objectivity missed the point of Black Studies.
The whole emphasis on objectivity and empirical theory

as opposed to normative theory is out of place in Black
Studies and the arguments concerning it should be

163

dropped. We scnltinize as we live. Analysis in Black
Studies is a purposeful activity and the conditions of the
black community involve questions of right and wrong. To
emphasize only objective behavior or to resort only to
investigations that involve the scientific method is like trying
to equate human nature to the movements of a puppet. The
appendages only move when they are manipulated by
some outside force.

This is no argument against scientific objectivity.
However, we must move away from the kind of objectivity
which tends to emphasize empty verbalization which is
characteristic of many of the present day social sciences.
They steer us into abstractions rather than practical
problems. We are told that a practical problem may bias an
investigation if it is carried out to provide justification for a
policy. But the determination to exclude from an
investigation the data and hypotheses pertaining to
practical conditions may be just as much an expression of
bias.31

Part of the humanity stolen by scientific objectivity, some believed, was the
idea of community that connects individuals with one another, that provides the
basis for all human activity. In glorifying scientific objectivity and valuing the
individual over the community, they asserted, the university had devalued
African American culture. The objective of Black Studies, in this view, was to
restore the humanity of African Americans, or, as June Jordan put it, "bring back
the person."

We, we know the individuality that isolates the man from
other men, the either/or, the lonely-one that leads the flesh
to clothing, jewelry, and land, the solitude of sight that
separates the people from the people, flesh from flesh, that
jams material between the spirit and the spirit. We have
suffered witness to these pitiful, and murdering,
masquerade extensions of the self.

Instead, we choose a real, a living enlargement of our
only life. We choose community: Black America, in white.
Here we began like objects chosen by the blind. And it is
here that we see fit to continue — as subjects of human
community. We will to bring back the person, alive and

164

sacrosanct; we mean to rescue the person from the
amorality of time and science.32

Butler identified the either/or approach to analysis — so fundamental to
Western science — as a central part of the problem facing African Americans. It
was, she said, at the root of the dilemma DuBois described as the two warring
ideals. American society presented black people with an either/or choice: be
black or be American. It was the dilemma of that choice, Butler argued, that had
kept African Americans in a position of colonial subservience. The way out of
the dilemma, she said, was to reject the duality assumed by the impossible
choice, reject the either/or world view and embrace a both/and world view.

[Ajn either/or world view (corresponds to Western
sensibility) maintains the dichotomized duality of matter
and spirit, feeling and intellect. A both/and world view
provides the perspective and the impetus for the unification
of the dichotomy . . . in the dialogical interaction of
contradictions. This dialogical interaction of contradictions
allows for resolution not through an either/or negation, but
through the interaction and the subsequent evolution of
generative themes . . . Built upon the recognition of equal
importance of the physical and the spiritual, and upon the
resultant entity of their constant interaction, it is a world view
that recognizes humankind's oneness with nature. It
diametrically opposes Western thought in its emphasis on
the intuitive, subjective, and communal and is essential to

a liberating pedagogy.33
This alternative world view represented by Black Studies went directly

counter to the prevailing world view of academia. Instead of objectivity and
detachment, it proposed subjectivity and engagement. Instead of emphasizing
the individual, it emphasized community. Instead of pursuing knowledge for the
sake of knowledge — abstract, "pure” research — it pursued knowledge for

consciously practical purposes. The main purpose was the liberation of black
165

people from the dominance of white society — and the intellectual structures
and processes that worked to sustain that dominance. This world view was
shared, at least in broad outline, by most scholars in Black Studies programs.
Certainly there were intense disagreements among Black Studies scholars
over ideology, modes of interpretation, methodology and theory, but black
scholars who did not share at least some affinity for the world view generally
gravitated toward the established disciplines, and many who went to those
disciplines did so as a matter of personal interest or professional practicality,
not because they objected to the Black Studies world view.

White scholars, even those who were sympathetic to the idea of Black
Studies, were often profoundly uncomfortable with such a view of the
university’s intellectual enterprise. Even when they recognized the political
power of the university and its tendency to reinforce the prevailing, Eurocentric
ideology, many whites opposed the idea that Black Studies could legitimately
inject its own Ideology into the academic mix. Historian David Brion Davis, for
example, in delivering his assessment of the Yale symposium on Black
Studies in the spring of 1968, acknowledged that the debate over Black Studies
had forced white scholars to recognize their own biases and the biases of the
university.

Clearly the liberal academician is caught in the middle
between militant blacks and a fearful white majority,
between his commitment to truth and scholarship and an
awakening feeling of social responsibility. While the
reputable scholar strives for objectivity, he knows that

knowledge represents power and often serves and
ideological function. It would appear that our greatest

166

danger is not from a black upsurge but from a potential
tidal wave of white reaction which could extinguish all the
values we live by. . . One cannot deny either the importance
or validity of black separatism, which has revealed our own
unconscious paternalism and smug ethnocentrism and
which is giving blacks a long-needed self-confidence and
sense of manhood. Nor can we warn the blacks of the
danger of backlash, since this is the very brickbat that has
always been used to defeat their aspirations.“

Black Studies scholars, of course, did not agree that there was a necessary
conflict between the commitment to truth and social responsibility. But white
scholars, schooled in the values of objectivity and detachment, were reluctant
to abandon those values. Sympathetic whites generally ascribed the
oppressive aspects of Eurocentric university systems to human weaknesses
rather than weaknesses in the values themselves. As Davis put it, "To charge
that universities are not living up to their ideals is not to say that they have no
ideals." He continued:

It is true, of course, that blacks have long been excluded
from our institutions of higher education. It is also true that
our curriculum, administrative framework, and educational
goals are reflections of white middle-class society, and as
such, strike many blacks as foreign and hostile. . . . Too
often, appeals to truth and objectivity have been used to
undermine legitimate aspirations. . . . Yet we must insist on
maintaining the distinction between political ideology and
education. There is a serious danger of allowing our
educational machinery to become an instrument of
propaganda. On this issue we must hold firm and not
retreat behind procedural and administrative evasions. It
will be all too easy for whites who are burdened by fear and
guilt to shrink from defending their essential beliefs and
values and to offer lame excuses about the proper
procedures for setting up courses or hiring professors.
One must be absolutely clear about distinguishing free
intellectual inquiry from a party line, no matter how justified
the party line may be.35

167

At the same symposium, McGeorge Bundy, chairman of the Ford
Foundation, which financially backed the symposium and eventually gave
considerable support to the examination of Black Studies, expressed his own
defense of objectivity. He said that the appropriateness of the African American
experience as a subject of study within the university was without question. But
the university needed to remain objective and detached, he argued, to perform
properly its social function as critic and generator of knowledge, without regard
to the practical value or purpose of that knowledge.

The university is not as political as radical critics suggest.

The university is not, for example, in its teachings about the

nature of the economic system, the instrument of large-

scale corporate organizations: their complaints about the

way their part of things are taught are noisy and continuous

and a reasonable test of the health of any economics

department. The university should give offense, at regular,

carefully chosen, reasonably paced intervals, to every

element in society -— including itself. . . Because if you are

going to study the black experience, you must expect the

university to study parts of it that you don’t like. To close it off

to the parts that serve immediate political purpose is to do

something else. You must also expect, if it is to be studied

in a university, that it will be studied by men and women

without regard to nationality or color or specific commitment

to a particular political causefi6
Bundy also appeared to be put off by the passion of black students and some
radical scholars who were pressing hard for the establishment of Black
Studies programs as a way to foster a sense of black identity. Clearly, he was
uncomfortable with the notion of purposefulness that drove so many Black
Studies advocates. Although Bundy acknowledged some value in encouraging

the "quest for identity,” he dismissed the idea of courses that were merely

168

"therapeutic." "If you undertake to study a subject because of the subject’s
importance, then at least you are doing something real," he said. "If you
undertake to study a subject because of the importance of the act to you, then
in the long run what you are doing is unreal."37 These concerns of the white
establishment about purposeful intellectual inquiry made little sense to the
black students and scholars who were pushing for Black Studies. As Perry
Hall, who was a black student activist during the period, explained in his
analysis of the symposium 30 years later.

First, a sense of purpose, identity, and direction . . . was
exactly what the university experience has always provided
for many of its students, in accordance with the dictates of a
white, middle-class, Anglo-American cultural framework. It
was not a perversion for black students coming from a
cultural nationalist perspective to expect similar forms of
education in curricula more attuned to their cultural
background. . . .

Second, the sense of major social crises in the world
outside the halls of academia was what created the need
for purpose and direction among the thousands of young
blacks "caught up” in these crises at this very critical stage
in their lives. The conditions of inequity and crises to which
Yale student Armstead Robinson spoke were too stark, too
immediate to be discarded, minimized, or even looked at
with so-called "objectivity.” For many, to study and pursue
some kind of ivory tower abstract knowledge without
concerning oneself with how that knowledge was related to
understanding, changing, overcoming, or even just
surviving such conditions would just be too "irrelevant. ’33

And not all white scholars found the notion of purposefulness anathema to
the academic enterprise. Eugene D. Genovese, a white historian who was
conducting extensive research into the lives of African Americans during the

period of slavery, had praise for the black student movement, which he called

169

 

"an authentic effort by young people to take a leading role in the liberation of an
oppressed people)” Genovese said the intellectual claim of Black Studies for
a place in the university was undeniable, based on "an awareness of the
unique and dual nature of the black experience in the United States.” His
concern with the purposefulness of some Black Studies advocates was not
that it would inject ideology into academia, but that if engaged in recklessly it
could degenerate into mere factionalism.

There is no such thing as a black ideology or a black point
of view. Rather there are various black-nationalist biases,
from left-wing versions such as that of the Panthers to right-
wing versions such as that of Ron Karenga and other
“cultural nationalists.’ There are also authentic sections of
the black community that retain conservative, liberal, or
radical integrationist and antinationalist positions. Both
integrationist and separatist tendencies can be militant or
moderate, radical or conservative (in the sense generally
applied to white politics in relation to social questions). The
separatists are riding high today, and the integrationists
are beating a retreat; but this has happened before and
may be reversed tomorrow.

All these elements have a right to participate in the
exploration of black historical and cultural themes. In one
sense, the whole point of black studies programs in a
liberal arts college or university ought to be to provide for
the widest and most vigorous exchange among all these
groups in an atmosphere of free discussion and mutual
toleration.‘0

Genovese identified two legitimate purposes he saw for Black Studies
programs beyond the simple pursuit of knowledge. Both involved social action
and a sense of the need to develop communities, white as well as black.

First, they can, by their very nature, provide a setting within

which black people can forge an intelligentsia equipped to

provide leadership on various levels of political and cultural
action. . . . [O]nly the emergence of a fully developed

170

intelligentsia, with training in every field of knowledge, can
ultimately meet the deepest needs of the black community.

' . . Second, black studies can help immeasurably to
combat the racism of white students.“

To some extent, this debate over the willingness of Black Studies advocates
to reject objectivity and detachment, and to emphasize purposeful inquiry
contributed to the dismissive attitude toward Black Studies of many white
scholars, administrators and the broader public. The willingness — even
insistence -— of black scholars to discuss Black Studies in terms of ideology
and political power suggested to some whites that Black Studies was only
about politics and ideology. That being the case, whites could easily put down
Black Studies as illegitimate because their concept of the university did not
recognize a legitimate place for politics and ideology — except, of course. as an
object of detached study by political scientists.

But seen in another way, Black Studies simply underscored the extent to
which politics and ideology had always been a function of the university. In the
view of many black scholars, ideology was intextricably interwoven with the
experience of African Americans. Acknowledging a role for ideology in the study
of that experience was merely a recognition of reality. The concerns about the
propriety of injecting purposeful inquiry into the scholarly process also need to
be seen in the context of a movement toward increasingly pragmatic higher
education that by the mid-1960s extended back more than 125 years —— at least
as far as Emerson’s call in "The American Scholar" for the integration of

intellect and action. Abraham F lexner had been appalled by the willingness of

171

universities to add such practical programs as business and journalism
schools. But in a society that increasingly saw a college education as the key to
advancement and success, the university had, for decades, been busily
expanding programs because they had practical applications beyond the mere
pursuit of abstract knowledge. What was different about Black Studies as a

discipline was that it sought to apply that practicality to the lives of an entire

 

community within the overall society. In its concern with a community (not
merely individuals) that did not fit the prevailing Eurocentric mold, a community
that had always been looked upon by white scholarship as something to be
examined and evaluated by its deficiencies relative to white society, Black
Studies programs challenged the dominant paradigm of higher education in
America.

Black Studies forced the university to open its mind. In finding a place,
however grudgingly, for people and ideas that refused to fit neatly into the
Western traditions of scholariy activity and organization, the university was
unavoidably and irreversibly changed. Black Studies set the stage for the
creation of other programs that emphasized the history and cultures of other
ethnic minorities and women. The pump was primed for the post-modemist
debate over the possibility of objectivity. No longer could the university be so
totally Eurocentric in its values, philosophy, research and institutional process.
This is certainly not to say that Eurocentric attitudes have disappeared. The
university remains deeply rooted in its white European values and traditions.

But since Black Studies came to the university, the university has become more
1 72

aware of its institutional biases than it ever was before. The awareness — as
expressed in campus and scholarly discourse — became so acute that in just
two decades a renewed debate emerged that disparaged that awareness as
"political correctness.” Many Black Studies advocates sought to rescue the
university from what they saw as the dehumanizing tendencies of Eurocentric
science. Some aimed at intellectual and cultural transformation. The extent of
their success is open to debate, but not the fact of it. Black Studies may not
have achieved the political and social revolution that some of the most ardent
supporters desired. But by forcing higher education to find a place for —- to
accept as a legitimate part of the intellectual enterprise — a different paradigm
of scholarly activity, Black Studies accomplished a less obvious revolution in

the university’s awareness, and thereby changed the character of the university.

173

Chapter 6

Acceptance and Appeasement

Many issues and problems were common to any college or university that
created, or considered creating, a Black Studies program. Likewise, there were
similarities of structure and approach among many of the programs that were
created. But the Black Studies programs that emerged so rapidly on American
college campuses in the late 1960s and early 19703 were anything but carbon
copies of each other, or even approximations of some standard model of what
Black Studies should be. There was no such model. Each university was
essentially on its own to figure out what Black Studies was — or was supposed
to be — and each had to fashion its own solution to the philosOphical,
pedagogical and political problems that Black Studies presented. As Darlene
Clark Hine noted in her 1990 examination of Black Studies programs for the
Ford Foundation, almost no two programs were alike because each campus
had to deal with its own unique circumstances, considering such matters as
location, student and faculty demographics, institutional nature, community
relationships, and the susceptibility of the university to political pressure, both
from within and without.‘

Variation in those circumstances was huge, and seldom was there time for

174

the extended studies and discussions so common to policy debates in
academia. Pressure was often intense. Because the movement for Black
Studies programs was driven by black student demands — often involving
public protests and disruptions of university functions -- questions about
academic or intellectual matters often took a back seat to political
considerations. University administrations faced heated criticism from elected
officials and the public if they did not maintain peace and quiet on campus -— or
if they were perceived as giving in to rebellious students. At the same time,
black students, who were alienated by white academia and were thoroughly
schooled in the techniques of the Civil Rights Movement, were not easily
mollified. They were extremely suspicious of administrators’ motives -— often
with good reason -- and were determined to change the character of the
institutions they attended. It was not an atmosphere that encouraged calm and
reasoned discourse. Even sympathetic administrators encountered difficult
philosophical conflicts with the students, whose demands sometimes went
beyond the bounds of what a university president — particularly at a public
institution — could legally agree to. And not all university officials were
sympathetic. Some were willing to make a show of creating a Black Studies
program to restore campus peace, knowing that it could easily be eliminated,
or restricted to the point of irrelevance, through budgetary processes that were
often hidden from public view and in any event would do the deed after the furor
had died down.

To understand how these real-world considerations affected the emergence
1 75

of Black Studies it is necessary to examine several of the early programs.
Because each university’s situation was unique, there is no way to select a truly
representative sample of the great diversity of programming created by the
several hundred colleges and universities that set up programs between 1967
and 1972. But by looking at three institutions - San Francisco State College,
which established the first Black Studies program at a predominantly white
college and suffered through tremendous turmoil in the process; Harvard
University, a major private university and a policy leader in higher education;
and Wayne State University, a midwestem, urban university that established its
program late in the period -— we may gain some perspective on how the range
of political, social, academic and intellectual variables shaped Black Studies

programs.

San Francisco State College

Amid the chaos that surrounded the creation of San Francisco State
College’s Black Studies Department in 1968 can be seen all of the elements
that influenced the Black Studies debate at campuses across the country —
black student protest; concerns about enrollment levels of black students and
hiring of black faculty; intensified and sometimes inflammatory rhetoric; acid
philosophical critiques of the university and its role in perpetuating the power of
the dominant white culture; the association with violence that tainted public
perceptions; demands for departmental standing to give the program structural

status equivalent to other disciplines; demands for student control and black

176

exclusivity; the emphasis on community connection and activism; and the
inextricability of the Black Studies movement from the'broader atmosphere of
political confrontation that engulfed the campus. As the first predominantly
white institution to establish such a program, San Francisco State set much of
the agenda and the tone of the public debate over Black Studies. Unfortunately,
that tone was set largely by a bitter strike that forced the college to close for
significant periods of time, generated hundreds of arrests and began the
association in the public mind between Black Studies and violent protest.

As on most campuses, the movement to establish Black Studies at San
Francisco State began with the black students. Black students at the college
began organizing much earlier than their counterparts at most other
campuses. Many predominantly white colleges and universities did not have
active black student organizations until 1965, 1966 or even later, but black
students at San Francisco State established the Negro Students Association in
September 1963. By the spring of 1966, the organization had changed its name
to the Black Students Union, reflecting an important change in the group's
philos0phical and political orientation, and by December of the same year, the
BSU had submitted a formal request that the college establish a Black Studies
department.2 Even before that, in the 1965-66 academic year, a number of
courses on African American culture had been offered in San Francisco State's
Experimental College. The Experimental College -— the first successful
program of its kind in the nation —- was a student-initiated, studentoontrolled

program that offered a variety of (mostly non-credit) courses designed to
1 77

respond to student concerns and interests that were not addressed in the
course offerings of the traditional departments. Most of the Experimental
College courses were taught by the students themselves.3

Ironically, the initial response of faculty and administration to the proposal for
a Black Studies department was fairly positive - despite some questions and
concerns that were not unusual, considering that the idea was so new. In fact,
to go from first proposal to establishment of a new academic program in less
than two years is quick action, in institutional terms. But students do not
operate on the same time scale as administration and faculty; what seemed
fast action to adults accustomed to bureaucratic process seemed
unreasonably slow to students who proposed the department when they were
freshmen and still did not see it implemented as they began their junior year. In
addition, a variety of factors, many of which had nothing directly to do with Black
Studies, combined to generate confusion and discord that rapidly degenerated
into confrontation and violence. The result was that the new department, once it
was launched, was immediately cast into a long period of turmoil, and Black
Studies came to be seen by the public at large — and by many on campus —
as a political, rather than an educational or intellectual undertaking.

The problems began with the fact that by 1968, San Francisco State College
was an administrative shambles. Between 1960 and 1970, the college had
seven presidents, two of them only acting presidents, and in the crucial year of
1 968, there were three presidents in a span of six months. The lack of

continuity made it extremely difficult to get anything accomplished at the
178

college, especially a project as large and resource-intensive as the creation of
a new academic department. Moreover, it weakened top administrators at a
time when they faced increasing pressure for action to deal with matters of
dissent and student protest on the campus. In addition, the college's faculty
was deeply divided, with six different organizations vying to represent the faculty
in collective bargaining. The competition added to the general confusion on the
campus, reduced the effectiveness of faculty input on college policy, and
inhibited resolution of such faculty concerns as compensation rates, academic
freedom, disciplinary procedures and course loads.

All of those problems of the local San Francisco State campus were
magnified by a 1960 master plan, adopted by the California legislature, that set
up a three-tiered system of higher education for the state. Under that plan, the
multi—campus University of California would have primary responsibility for
research, graduate instruction, professional programs in such fields as
medicine and the law, and undergraduate education for elite students - those
who were among the top eighth of the state's high school graduates. The
eighteen state colleges —— of which San Francisco State was one — were
designated as primarily undergraduate institutions for the top third of high
scth graduates, though they were allowed to offer limited graduate
programs. California's public junior colleges would offer two-year programs
and would have open-door admissions. The plan was logical, in theory, but
had some uncomfortable consequences in practice. For one thing, it generated

great dissatisfaction among state college faculty members, many of whom felt
179

that the plan assigned them to second-class status and deprived them of the
opportunity to conduct research and teach at the graduate level. It also undercut
the authority of the local campus presidents by making them subject to a
statewide board that often did not fully appreciate the significance of an
individual campus' unique circumstances. That particular aspect of the

problem intensified, as student protest accelerated, because of the influence of
statewide politics on the board's decisions.

One particular — and disturbing -- consequence of the statewide
reorganization plan, at least for San Francisco State, was a dramatic reduction
in black student enrollment at the college. For some years, black students had
enrolled at San Francisco State at a rate significantly higher than at most other
predominantly white colleges in the country. Before the master plan, the
student body at San Francisco State was about 12 percent black. After the plan
-— and the more restrictive enrollment criteria it imposed on the college —-
black enrollment dropped to about 4 percent. White administrators at the
college were slow to notice the change, but black students and leaders in the
African American community of San Francisco were not.

The reason may have been the inferior education provided
for blacks in ghetto high schools, but to the blacks it
seemed that the establishment had deliberately erected a
barrier against them. No longer could they attend the state
college that was within commuting distance of their homes.
Furthermore, they did not like being relegated to the junior
colleges, which were regarded as providing inferior

education; they had had enough of that.4

The concerns of the black students about access to the college, and the quality

180

of education offered to black students at San Francisco State —— and in the
public schools of the surrounding city — were an important spark to the
increasing activism and militancy of the Black Students Union. The
organization's name change signaled an increasingly nationalistic orientation,
and the creation of a tutorial program for public school students off-campus -—
organized through the Experimental College - symbolized the BSU's
commitment to community service. Both were key elements in the Black
Studies movement. In "Black Studies at San Francisco State,” John H. Bunzel
noted that after the adoption of the new name in the summer of 1966, the BSU

. . . almost immediately became a major force in the

student government. During the following year, it turned its

attention to the educational problem of black and other

minority students on the campus, which they saw in its

broadest terms as the problem of relevance,

estrangement, and identity. The high drop-out rate, low

grades, and general lack of motivation among large

numbers of these students was due, they said, not only to a

general feeling of separateness, but to the more

compelling fact that education from kindergarten through

college under the authority of the white community fails to

focus on subject matter that is germane to the life

experiences of the people in the minority community.5

Accompanying the new sense of organizational identity and the commitment

to community was increasingly heated rhetoric, used by black student leaders
to confront institutions, and whites generally, with their demands for change.
"We see ourselves being basically servants of the community," 1968-69 BSU
Chairman Ben Stewart said in an interview with the campus newspaper.

That is to say, we go to a college campus and we Ieam

academic skills and we see ourselves as returning back to
that community to enhance the progress of that community

181

rather than to exploit or misuse it as the traditional Third

World lackey, Uncle Tom bootlicker students have done in

the past. . . . We will return to our communities and by our

struggle we will achieve liberation for all our people.6
The revolutionary and defiant tone intensified as black students became
increasingly impatient over the slow pace of progress and the resistance they
perceived from the college. After the BSU proposal for a Black Studies
department in December 1966, it took six months to get a resolution passed by
the college’s Council of Academic Deans that the college accepted "the
judgment of a significant number of its students and faculty that the present
curriculum does not adequately meet the needs of black students and other
minority group students nor adequately confront and comprehend the history
and present realities of the cultures and communities of Negro-Americans and
other minority groups in the United States and the world."7 The resolution
appeared to anticipate the creation of a Black Studies department, but by the
following fall semester, no specific action had yet been taken to create the
department. A report on the events at San Francisco State prepared by the staff
of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Vlolence noted:
"[I]t took a year for any substantive progress toward the department the BSU
wanted. During that year, the polite demeanor of the BSU on this issue slipped
away."'1

And the overall atmosphere of the campus was steadily descending into

perpetual discord. White students were focused primarily on protest against
the war in Vietnam in the fall of 1967. That concern expressed itself in anti-war

protest rallies, but also in protests against on-campus recruiting by the military,
182

the CIA and corporations, such as Dow Chemical Co., that were seen as
important supporters of the war. But racial issues also were emerging. A
particularly inflammatory incident occurred on November 6, 1967, when a group
of black students went to the offices of the college's daily student newspaper,
the Gater, to protest articles that they charged had included racial slurs and to
complain about several other newspaper actions they charged were racist. The
paper's editor was beaten and kicked, touching off a melee that wrecked the
paper’s offices. A few days later, President John Summerskill suspended four
of the black students, including George Murray, a graduate student and part-
time instructor in the English department. Murray was an especially
controversial figure because he was also the education minister for the Black
Panther Party, traveled to Cuba, and had a habit of making incendiary
speeches, such as one in which he reportedly encouraged minority students
on campus to carry guns for self-defense. Murray’s performance as a teacher
was generally accepted to have been good, but over the next year, the state
board pressed for his removal and eventually demanded that he be fired.

A few weeks after the newspaper melee, black students charged the college
with racism when several white students were suspended, then immediately
reinstated, after they published a poem and a photograph that the
administration considered lewd. A protest demanding that Murray and the other
suspended black students also be reinstated resulted in some highly
publicized property damage but no arrests or injuries. The incident prompted

the state board to hold a very public review of President Summerskill’s
183

handling of the incident; Summerskill announced in February 1968 that he
would resign, effective the following September.9 But despite his lame duck
status, Summerskill accelerated the pace of action on Black Studies. Also in
February, he hired Dr. Nathan Hare, a sociologist who had been fired by
Howard University for his militant activities. The appointment, which was
recommended by the leader of the BSU but was opposed by Summerskill’s
staff and other academic officials, was made without consulting anyone in the
college’s sociology department. Summerskill said he had to take fast action "if
we are going to keep the lid on this place.”10 Hare was an intense, and
sometimes strident, advocate for Black Studies. He was not averse to using
language that implied violence and his attitude toward Black Studies was
strongly nationalistic. "Black people must declare void what the white slave
masters have written and must begin to write their own history and direct their
destiny," Hare said in a speech at Stanford University. "Black historians,
presenting other than the white viewpoint, are foced into copious footnoting and
must accept the conventions of the white academic overlords in order to make
our history valid and get it published in white journals." He also advocated a
separatist approach to teaching Black Studies. "It is anachronistic for white
men to teach black history to black militant students," he said. "The white man
is unqualified to teach black history because he does not understand it."11 Hare
was soon on campus, developing a two-phase plan for creation of the Black
Studies department. Phase one would pull together the various courses

offered through the Experimental College into a separate department by
184

September 1968. Phase two, scheduled for implementation in September
1969, would enable students to major in Black Studies. The department would
begin with three faculty members in September 1969 and expand to at least
eleven faculty positions in succeeding years.

But Summerskill left abruptly in May, forcing Robert Smith, a former head of
the school’s education department who had been appointed to replace him, to
take over earlier than expected. As a result, many things did not get done over
the summer, and development of the Black Studies department was one area
that suffered. There were eighteen Black Studies courses assembled from the
Experimental College and approval had been given to offer a degree in Black
Studies starting the next academic year, but as the students saw it, there was
no concrete department in place. And Hare, who was the one visible
advancement toward the department the students wanted, had been working
without even a secretary for months. The black students, accusing the college
of engaging in delay tactics, declared a strike on November 6, 1968 -- the
anniversary of the campus newspaper incident — issued a list of ten demands
and launched efforts to shut the college down. Four of the ten student
demands, including the first three, were aimed directly at solidifying the status
of the Black Studies department. Three more demands were aimed at
increasing black student enrollment and financial aid. The students also
demanded that Murray be allowed to keep his teaching position, that students
not be punished for taking part in the strike, and that the state board be

prevented from dissolving any black programs, on or off the college’s
' 185

12
campus.

Several weeks after the strike began, the college issued a list of the steps it
had taken toward establishing a Black Studies department and insisted that
the school’s administration favored its creation. But, as the violence
commission’s staff report noted:

By that time . . . neither the BSU nor the black community

was listening. They were not laying all blame on the

administration. Both academic senate faculty committees

and the Board of Trustees, dominated by appointees loyal

to Governor Reagan, were given a larger share in many

cases. Their argument, however, was that 2 years of

approaches to a problem which they knew to be so crucial

was either inexcusable inefficiency or racism, depending

on how radical you were.13
And the black students were growing increasingly radical. The first week of the
strike saw escalating violence with rampant vandalism, dozens of small fires,
on minor bombing, and efforts by strikers to intimidate other students who
continued to attend classes. But a violent confrontation between police and
striking students on November 13 prompted President Smith to close the
campus. The school remained closed for the next two weeks despite intense
and growing pressure on Smith from the state board. A convocation called by
Smith in an attempt to reopen the campus accomplished little, other than to
make clear the inflamed feelings of the black students, in rhetoric even more
strident than they had previously employed. Joe Alexis, a BSU leader, told the
assembled crowd that a Black Studies department was essential to develop "a
whole new education, so that we can begin to have education that is relevant to

US.

186

Education for the elite is not relevant for us. . . . If a
structure is decadent, you must destroy it before you can
build. The role of black people is to build. That’s what black
studies is all about. Black studies must be controlled by
black pe0ple in a large role because it’s our thing, it’s our
baby. Maybe in a couple of years we’ll be able to open it up
to everybody. Our objectives are to contrive to define and
refine the expressions of our community and to contrive to
explore ways of integrating the community into our
activities.“

Another BSU member, Leroy Goodwin, emphasized that the students weren’t
just demanding a program, they were demanding power. The students weren’t
interested in perpetuating the existing structure, he said, in language that
suggested even further escallations of violence if the students’ demands were
not met.
Our major objective is the seizure of power. . . . As things

now stand you must present your program to the pigs in

power and they must approve it. Until we have power,

everything else is bullshit. The dog believes we want to

participate in his political games and that if we demand 10

things all the niggers really want is five. Each day the

demands are delayed we will escalate our tactics. If armed

struggle is what is needed for us to control our lives and

our educating, then that is what we will use. Peace and

order are bullshit issues.15
Efforts to achieve legitimate goals through peaceful means, he said, had
accomplished nothing. At least two black administrators spoke at the
convocation and issued sharp criticism of their own against the college’s
practices. Elmer Cooper, who was dean of student activities, responded to
concerns raised by the state board about the Black Studies department having
an all-black faculty.

They didn’t mention that there are departments with all-
' 187

white faculties. These people are scared of giving black

people control over their own destinies. Does the college

plan to do something about institutional racism or is it just

going to fire black power advocates? I haven’t seen

anybody fired for being a racist.16
And Joseph White, dean of undergraduate studies, spoke to an entrenched
attitude that he said was blocking progress for blacks at the college. "The
machinery of the college is not set up to deal with black demands, it is set up to
deal with white reality," White said. But he added that the reality was being
irrevocably changed. "We will never return to normal," he said. "You can forget
about that."17

Finding himself unable to calm the protests and under increasing pressure

to reopen the campus, Smith abruptly resigned on November 26, 1968. He was
replaced immediately by S.I. Hayakawa, a well-known expert in semantics and
a part-time English professor at the college. Hayakawa took a more hard-
nosed approach than Smith or Summerskill had, at one point climbing onto a
sound truck at a rally and pulling out wires to kill the sound system. He banned
rallies on campus and was much more willing to use police force to open the
campus and keep it open. After police arrested 457 people, including Professor
} Hare, at a defiant rally on January 23, 1969, much of the strike’s strength
dissipated. Eventually, on March 21, Hayakawa announced that the college and
the BSU had reached a settlement to end the strike. The administration agreed
to establish a School of Ethnic Studies, of which the Black Studies department

would be part, insisting that the hiring of staff would be non—discriminatory.

Hayakawa also agreed to student demands for the admission of more minority

188

students. But Hare was let go, and Hayakawa refused to rehire Murray, who
had been fired.”

The strike was over and the violence done. San Francisco State and
President Hayakawa had publicly committed themselves to the continued
existence of the Black Studies department that Summerskill and Hare had
established in such chaotic fashion the previous fall. But damage caused by
the confrontation was serious and long-lasting. The images that emerged in
the media from San Francisco State focused overwhelmingly on the violence --
the closing of the campus, the vandalism, the bombs and fires, the incendiary
and revolutionary rhetoric, the demonstrations and confrontations between
students and police. Little insight into the intellectual rationale for Black Studies
made it through the clamoring conflict. And after the glare of publicity had
passed on to other campuses -— most notably Cornell, with the gun-
brandishing black students -— residual bitterness continued to taint the
atmosphere at San Francisco State. In June 1969, just three months after the
agreement was announced, four of the six black administrators at the college
accused Hayakawa of racism and resigned. For his part, Hayakawa threatened
at least twice in the late fall of 1969 to dissolve the Black Studies department,
charging that it had engaged in a "reign of terror." And in March 1970, the

department’s entire faculty was dismissed."9

Harvard University

Compared with the conflict that engulfed San Francisco State College, the

189

early stages of Black Studies development at Harvard University appear
positively sedate. In part, that is due to the fact that Harvard was more typical of
large white universities in its low level of black student enrollment when Black
Studies emerged as an issue. At San Francisco State, a long-standing pattern
of higher-than-average black enrollment had been broken by structural
changes in the California higher education system, which left blacks at the
college feeling like they were being pushed out. Harvard’s black student
population was much smaller, even compared to the reduced levels at San
Francisco State, but it was growing not shrinking.

Harvard's debate over Black Studies also was moderated, at least in the
beginning, by the unique academic atmosphere of the university. As an
institution, Harvard has always prided itself on being an intellectual icon of
American culture. One recent history of Harvard is subtitled, '"I’he Rise of
America's University."20 The grandiosity of the claim may rankle academics at
other outstanding universities — in much the same way that the Dallas
Cowboys' claim to be "America‘s Team" irritates fans of other professional
football franchises -- but the irritation only serves to underscore the significant
element of truth in the claim. Harvard's place atop the hierarchy of America's
higher education system is built not merely on seniority, but on a nearly
universal recognition that it is a university of, by and for the elites of the nation. It
can be an intimidating atmosphere for anyone. That was particularly true for
black Harvard students in the mid 1960s, when the university was just

beginning to increase minority enrollments. Most of those students were the
190

 

elite of the African American community, the children of affluent families that
had embraced at least some of the values and aspirations that Harvard
represented. They may have felt isolated and alienated in many ways, but they
also were willing to engage in reasoned discourse -— so central to Harvard's
self-image. Interestingly, the turmoil that reshaped Harvard's approach to Black
Studies emerged indirectly, from white students’ anti-war protests, not from
black students' anger over administrative inaction or intransigence; though the
perception of black students that they had been betrayed by the university at a
crucial point in the development of Black Studies compounded the tensions
and radically altered the shape of the program that emerged.

By the mid 19603, Harvard was making serious efforts to increase its
enrollment of black students and its hiring of black faculty. However
conservative the university may have been in a structural sense, it was socially
liberal and considered itself to have an obligation to promote justice, equality
and integration. Morton and Phyllis Keller assert in their history of Harvard:

By the mid—19508, genteel liberal integration was the norm.

The dormitories were integrated, Harvard teams did not

play against segregated colleges. . . . School spokesmen

concentrated on prejudice and discrimination outside, such

as Cambridge landlords who excluded black and Jewish

graduate students. In 1960 an antidiscrimination pledge

was required for all rentals listed with Harvard}?1
And yet, Harvard's black student population remained extremely small, no more
than 1.5 percent of undergraduates in 1964. Henry Rosovsky, an economics

professor who joined the Harvard faculty in 1965 and later chaired the Faculty

Committee on African and Afro-American Studies, recalled that one of his first
191

jobs at the university was to serve on the committee that chose which
candidates would be admitted to the economics department as graduate
students. The admissions committee, he discovered, selected relatively large
numbers of foreign students under what he called an "implicit quota" system.

By this I mean two things: if students had been selected
simply on the basis of formal academic qualifications, far
fewer individuals from underdeveloped countries would
have gained admission; furthermore, we somehow
recognized our social obligation toward the less developed
world and set aside certain places for these students.
Another thing that became clear was that we had almost no
black American graduate students. (A subsequent survey
revealed that out of a total enrollment of over three
thousand, there were about twenty black graduate students
in the entire Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.)

In my opinion this was an absurd situation. If we had
social obligations to foreigners, clearly we had at least
equally urgent obligations toward American Negroes -—
sometimes described as foreigners in our own midst.22

Rosovsky and other faculty members began, about 1967, to push for the
establishment of special graduate fellowships for black students as a way "to
cut the vicious circle of black academic frustration: the only way to get more
black professors is to get more black graduate students?” And in spite of their
small numbers, black students were beginning to pressure the university to
accommodate more of their needs. A request in in April of 1963 to establish an
organization for African and Afro-American students at Harvard was initially
rejected by the students' Council for Undergraduate Activities because the
council considered its membership policy discriminatory. The issue sparked
eight months of intense debates, a similar rejection by a faculty committee and

a final agreement that gave the organization the same status as Harvard's
192

exclusive "final clubs" and enabled the group to admit members by invitation
only. At first, the organization was essentially a social and cultural discussion
group. Eventually, however, as black enrollment increased and the Black Power
movement began to exert its influence, the group became more assertive,
going so far as to publish IbeflanrandJoumaLoLNegmAflaim for the open
discussion of black issues.“ Black students pressed for change, in course
offerings, in institutional services and policies, and especially in admission
and hiring practices. As Keller and Keller described it: "The administration's
efforts to recruit black students, faculty, and employees fed on a steady diet of
white guilt and black pressure."25
Pressures on the university intensified in the spring of 1968, after the
assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the urban riots that followed. Black
student enrollments rose to about about 6 percent of the undergraduate
student body by 1970, but King’s assassination and pressure from the
Association of African and Afro-American Students (Afro) also prompted the
university to take a closer look at its curriculum. Afro members gathered
outside an April 9, 1968 campus memorial service for King (which was
attended almost exclusively by whites) in a demonstration that challenged the
university to act. "If they come out of there with tears in their eyes," said Afro
President Jeff Howard, "we want it to be plain that we don't want their tears. We
want black people to have a place here at Harvard."26 Later that same day, the

organization issued its first formal call for the university to establish a Black

Studies program. In May, Rosovsky was appointed chairman of the Faculty
193

Committee on African and Afro-American Studies, a nine-member panel that
worked for nearly a year to prepare its report. Only one committee member was
African American but the black students' group was active in the formation of
the faculty committee, and two black student representatives took part in all the
committee's deliberations. The black students were offered voting rights on
Rosovsky's committee but chose to remain observers.27
Rosovsky wrote that "the concerns of black undergraduates that led directly

to the creation of our committee . . . fell . . . into two broad categories: the quality
of black student life, and Afro-American or black studies.” The structure of the
committee's report reflects that emphasis, with the first two chapters focusing
on "The Quality of Black Student Life at Harvard" and "Afro-American Studies."
Two additional chapters, "African Studies" and "The Recruitment and Financing
of Black Graduate Students," rounded out the report, but clearly the emphasis
is on the first two chapters. It is clear, also, that the black students had
impressed the committee with the intensity of their desire for a Black Studies
courses.

Indeed, it seems likely that the absence of such offerings is

the single most potent source of the black students'

discontent at Harvard. The lack of such courses can strike

the black students as a negative judgment by Harvard

University on the importance of these areas of knowledge

and research, and, by inference, on the importance of the

black peOple themselves.

More pointedly, there is the problem faced by the black

student, who, coming to Harvard, may feel more or less

consciously, something of a dislocation from the black

community. Many students who addressed the committee

expressed the need to legitimize, inwardly as well as
publicly, their presence at Harvard while other blacks

194

remain in the ghetto, confronting its problems. Herein lies
one of the major sources of the demand for courses
"relevant" to the black experience. What the black student
wants is an opportunity to study the black experience and to
employ the intellectual resources of Harvard in seeking
solutions to the problems of the black community —- so that
he will be better prepared to assist the community in
solving these problems. Such educational opportunities at
Harvard would help the black student to justify his
separation from the larger black community -— and would
attest that the separation was by no means radical or
permanent.”

Here again we see the emphasis on community connection that was so
prominent in the thinking of Black Studies advocates, as well as the critique of
the traditional academic mindset that had for so long ignored African
Americans. The report also noted the desire of most black students for some
sort of "all-black experience" at the university, adding that "only a few are
presently urging a more separatist structure, such as a dormitory solely for
blacks)” That desire might be addressed, the report said, by creating an
African American social and cultural center similar to the Hillel House and the
Newman Center (both based on religious affiliation) and the lntemational
Center (for foreign students) that already existed at the university.
This center would be, it is assumed, independent of the

University, both in location and financing. But obviously

students cannot, by themselves, develop or maintain such

a center. . . . [I]t is recommended that the Dean urge all

appropriate elements of the University to use their good

offices in securing and financing a building and providing

continuing support to the activities of such a social and

cultural center}1

The black students who proposed the center, the report emphasized, saw the

center not as a means of withdrawing from the general life of the campus, but

195

as a way to help black students feel "more involved and less isolated." The
report also urged the university's residential houses to make a greater effort to
bring black speakers, artists and writers to campus.

But the heart of the report was its recommendation for the creation of
undergraduate and graduate degree programs in Afro-American Studies. The
committee found that many faculty members already included a substantial
amount of material about African Americans in their courses. But the
committee's report also noted that that material was generally included in the
context of broad issues in American society. Only one social science course
and a handful of tutorials in government and social relations were devoted
entirely to Afiican American culture and history.

Most departmental requirements for concentration
permit students to do considerable work in Afro-American
Studies. Head Tutors reported that courses, tutorial and
independent study dealing with Afro-American material
could, under present rules, be counted for concentration
and "related work." . . .
It should be noted, however, that the relative absence of
middle level courses dealing entirely or primarily with Afro-
American material makes it difficult for students to act on
the freedom implied by these rules. Moreover, there are at
present no special fields in Afro-American Studies within
existing departments or committees of instruction.”
The report called on the university to establish degree programs in Afro-
American Studies at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and to create
a research center or institute that would focus on Afro-American Studies. Under
the proposal, an undergraduate student could declare a "combined" major that

included a concentration in Afro-American Studies plus any other standard

196

concentration in the social sciences or the humanities. The university should
create at least ten new faculty positions to conduct the degree programs (with
at least five of the new faculty members in place by September 1969),
encourage greater emphasis on African Americans in courses across the
curriculum, stimulate more research into the African American experience, and
undertake the fundraising efforts necessary to implement the
recommendations, the report concluded.

In our Opinion, the status quo with respect to Aflo-
American Studies at Harvard is not satisfactory. Quite a
number of courses recognize the existence of black men in
the development of America; quite a bit of expertise is
already available. However, merely recognizing black men
as integral segments of certain overall social processes is
not good enough. We are dealing with 25 million of our own
people with a special history, culture, and range of
problems. It can hardly be doubted that the study of black
men in America is a legitimate and urgent academic
endeavor. If this be so and if we are determined to launch
this field of study successfully, farsighted goals and
programs are required. These goals and programs should
maintain and even raise academic standards; should avoid
considering the black experience in isolation; and finally,
should have meaning for all serious students - black and
white.33

Rosovsky's committee issued its report in January 1969 to general -—
though certainly not universal -— approval. There was criticism from some
members of the faculty and the general public who considered the report purely
political. The critics challenged the intellectual validity of Black Studies and
charged that the committee's report was aimed at political accommodation to
the demands of black students rather than at strengthening the university's

academic programs. Rosovsky answered the charge in an American Scholar
197

article.

Since the 19405 the United States has poured many

millions of dollars into Russian and Chinese studies. Is

this because our society had suddenly developed a

passion for Tolstoi, Dostoevski and/or Ming vases? Or is it

that we faced certain national needs in which the help of

the universities was essential? If this is the meaning of

political motivation, Afro-American studies undoubtedly fits

the bill. At the same time, I would conclude that more

political activity of this type would be highly desirable.31
Notwithstanding the criticism, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences adopted all the
report's recommendations on February 11, 1969. The report initially won praise
from students, as well; spokesmen for the black students said they were
satisfied by the faculty's action, and even the student newspaper, the Harvard
Crimson, expressed a positive reaction.35 But the agreement quickly faltered
through poor communications amid an atmosphere of confrontation and
violence that initially had nothing to do with Black Studies.

Shortly after the report of Rosovsky's committee was approved by the faculty,
Franklin Ford, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, appointed the seven-
member Standing Committee on Afro-American Studies called for in the report.
The standing committee, chaired by Ford, would oversee the Black Studies
program. The university, hoping to make the new degree available for the
current freshman class, which would graduate in 1972, also set up a
committee composed of three faculty members and three students to seek out
qualified individuals to fill the new faculty positions to be established for the
Black Studies program. But the pattern of extensive consultations with black

students that had characterized the work of Rosovsky's committee broke down

198

as the new standing committee began to develop its outline of the new Black
Studies major. What apparently began in early March 1969 as a simple
miscommunication between faculty members of the standing committee and
student representatives of Afro over "tentative" and "temporary" decisions about
the structure of the program left the black students feeling that they had been
excluded from the process of program design. Faculty members believed they
were only doing what they had committed themselves to do in February; Afro
members believed they had been deceived and betrayed.” When the
committee's outline of the Black Studies major was presented to a group of
black students on April 9, the students were incensed. Not only did the outline
include an unusually large list of program requirements — even by Harvard
standards — but many of the students considered the requirement that Black
Studies be tied to another traditional academic discipline an insult. As one
black Radcliffe sophomore later put it:

This communique presupposes that Afro-American

Studies is less than a legitimate and valid intellectual

endeavor. We reject this notion. Afro-American Studies

needs no prop from so-called allied fields.37
Black students began meeting and working furiously to devise strategy and
develop a proposal to counter the committee's plan. Afro began circulating
c0pies of the committee's outline and fliers calling for a meeting that bore the
heading: "Brothers and sisters -- We are being sold out!"38

Meanwhile, the campus around them was erupting. Earlier on April 9,

members of the white radical group Students for a Democratic Society

199

marched into University Hall and ejected the administrators whose offices were
there. The occupation of the building was the latest development in a campaign
by $03 to force the university to and immediately the military's Reserve Officer
Training Corps program and to halt university construction plans that would
displace low-income residents of surrounding neighborhoods. The protest had
nothing to do with Black Studies, but the entire campus atmosphere was
inflamed when, at 5 am. on April 10, nearly 400 state troopers and local police
stormed University Hall and forcibly removed the protesters. Even though many
students had not supported the SDS tactics in seizing the building, most
students — and many faculty members — were shocked by the violence of the
police action, in which dozens of students (including several black students
who were merely bystanders) were clubbed and beaten by police and some
were dragged from University Hall by their hair.39 In protest of the police raid,
SDS declared a strike against the university. Moderate students declared a
strike, too, and Afro announced its own strike. The University Hall incident
intensified the anger the black students felt over the actions of the Black
Studies committee, which was vented at an April 10 strike meeting.

The members of Afro were angry; they were ready to do

anything. Even the possibility of taking over a building was

considered. If the blacks had seized a building, they would

have taken guns with them to protect themselves from

"white racist cops." But few blacks were yet prepared to do

battle with police. Someone asked, "How many of you know

how to use guns?" Few did, and the idea was dropped.”

In the eyes of the black students, the betrayal of the faculty committee had

rendered negotiations meaningless, and Afro began to focus more on the
200

strategy of confrontation.

Afro drew up its own proposal for the structure of the Black Studies program.
Under the Afro plan, Afro-American Studies would be an independent
department, not just a programatic major allied with other disciplines. The plan
also called for guarantees of student representation, not just on the committee
charged with setting up the program (which would be expanded by adding
three Afro members and three students who intended to major in Black
Studies), but also in the permanent governing structure of the department.
Students would have an equal say in curriculum design and in the hiring of
faculty.

The Afro proposal was presented initially at a faculty meeting on April 17.
The issue was scheduled at the end of a lengthy agenda and was poorly
explained by the faculty member who agreed to sponsor the Afro proposal.
Given the complexity of the issue, the limited time for discussion, the
inadequate explanation and the emotional atmosphere on campus, it is not
surprising that the meeting descended into confusion. When the faculty
decided to defer action until its next meeting five days later, the black students
were further enraged.41 On April 22, when the faculty reconvened, the black
students came prepared to exert pressure, politically as well as intellectually.
About 7080 Afro members — one of them brandishing a meat cleaver for
dramatic effect -— gathered in the lobby of the Loeb Drama Center, where the
faculty was meeting. Several of the students were allowed to speak during the

faculty meeting. One of the students, Myles Lynk, addressed the students'
201

demand for representation in the governance of the Black Studies program.

Black people, students or otherwise, know more about
what a Black Studies program could be than most
members of this Harvard Faculty. And because a university
community should be less concerned with past precedents
that are inadequate to the present than with constructive
change applicable to the future, the Afro proposal should
be passed because it best meets the needs of the Afro-
American Studies Department. It must be passed if black
people are to maintain faith in this segment of white
America.42

Afro's president, Skip Griffin, took a different tack, speaking to the oppressive

atmosphere of confrontation and violence that had suffused the campus since
the SDS seizure of University Hall and the police raid that had ended the sit-in.
To some -— perhaps many —— in the meeting, Griffin's comments sounded like

a threat.

I think, and it wouldn't be unfair to say before this body and
before the world, that at one time this week we had the
power to seriously disrupt this university, and I don't think
we used it because that wasn't our goal, our goal was a
meaningful Black Studies program. I think we held off
because we wanted just such a program. . . . Not to make a
decision in favor of the proposal that we have put here
before you is to commit a serious mistake, to perhaps play
a part in creating a tragic situation which this university may
never be able to recover from. I just hope that you would
consider seriously the gravity of the situation before
acting.13

Whether the faculty was persuaded more by Lynk's appeal to reason or
Griffin's implied threat was unclear, but in the end, the faculty voted 251-158 to
approve the Afro proposal and establish an Afro-American Studies Department
with substantial student representation. In reality, the faculty's decision to

reverse itself and adopt the Afro plan was the result of a complicated blend of
202

motives. In Ibeflanmndfimke. four young reporters who covered the events for
WHRB-FM, an independent, student-operated campus radio station, asserted
that the faculty may have been as surprised as anyone by the results of their
April 22 decision.

Certainly, fear was an element in the vote. Just one day
before, professors had seen in the New York Times the
frightening picture of armed black students leaving a seized
building at Cornell. They could easily visualize the same
thing happening in Cambridge. Skip Griffin's speech to the
Faculty and the intimidating presence of 70 Afro members
in the lobby must have made that threat even more real. But
Afro also appealed to the Faculty's sense of reason and
fairness; for the most part Afro's presentation was clear,
calm, and rational, even in the Faculty's own terms. Clearly,
some faculty members were convinced that the Standing
Committee had broken its brittle covenant of faith with the
blacks. Others wanted to restore a sense of community to
Harvard by dramatically reasserling their faith in a group of
students. Finally, the actual vote showed a preponderance
of natural scientists voting in favor of the Afro resolution.
Natural scientists, always suspicious of social scientists,
were prepared to endorse such academic experimentation
precisely because they considered Black Studies to be
less than a legitimate field of intellectual endeavor.“

The black students were elated. Jeff Howard, a senior and a former president
of Afro, called the faculty's decision "a hell of a victory" for Harvard as well as for
Afro. "It's going to recreate a trust that was failing, and I hope that together the
faculty and students can move on and take control of this university.“5 But
Rosovsky was appalled. In his American Scholar article he described the
faculty's action as "an academic Munich," and criticized his colleagues for
caving in to threats. "In effect, black undergraduate students have been given

powers hitherto held only by Harvard senior faculty and denied to junior faculty,

203

graduate students and nonblack undergraduates," Rosovsky wrote. The
decision set a bad precedent that would provoke other students to demand
similar power, might hurt Afro-American studies and could "ultimately hinder
the progress of black people in this country."46 Rosovsky's fears proved to have
some validity, at least in terms of the impact of the April 1969 events on the
development of Black Studies. The turmoil surrounding the creation of the
department and problems raised by the department's structure helped
persuade John Hope Franklin, a distinguished African American historian, to
turn down an offer to head the program. Other prominent black scholars also
declined to join the department for similar reasons.“7 It took nearly thirty years

for the department to establish itself in a position of prominence at Harvard.

Wayne State University

Wayne State University's efforts to establish a Black Studies program were
complicated, protracted and frustrating. Although the university began to face
black students' demands for a Black Studies program in the spring of 1968,
and despite the fact that black enrollment at Wayne State was dramatically
higher than at the vast majority of America's predominantly white colleges, it
took the university nearly five years to get a program established. Even then, the
way it was created locked WSU's Center for Black Studies into a 17-year
decline that lasted until a major new black student protest in 1989 prodded the
university to grant the center full departmental status. The difficulties of Wayne

State's struggle with the issue of Black Studies stemmed from the university's
204

complex and delicate relationship with the city of Detroit. Black Studies
emerged at a time when the university's growth and evolving mission were
extending its focus well beyond its traditional urban base. At the same time,
Detroit was undergoing profound change and increasing racial tensions as the
departure of tens of thousands of white residents for new homes in
overwhelmingly white suburbs meant the city's population would soon be 70
percent black. It is a peculiar irony that in a majority-black city, a major public
university that had long been more open than most to African Americans had
such difficulty establishing a Black Studies program and ended up with a
program that nearly withered away. And yet, the experience of Wayne State
sheds some valuable light on how complicated the issue of Black Studies
could be.

To understand the process by which Wayne State arrived at the creation of a
Black Studies program, it is critical to understand the unique environment in
which the university functioned. Although Wayne State celebrated its centennial
in 1968, in reality, the university was created in 1933, when several unrelated
small local schools and colleges were united into a single institution under the
control of the Detroit Board of Education, which ran the city's public schools.
The university was operated by the school district until 1956, when it was given
a state charter and began shifting its emphasis to become, along with the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Michigan State University in East
Lansing, one of Michigan's so-called "Big Three" research universities. The

university's origins as a local institution had infused its atmosphere with

205

community interaction. The transformation from a city college to a major state
university that not only drew increasing numbers of students from outside the
city but was shifting its emphasis from its traditional teaching orientation
toward specialized research was not universally welcomed.

Wayne State had for years been unusual among predominantly white
colleges and universities in its relatively high levels of black student enrollment.
In a self-study Wayne State prepared in 1976 while seeking reaccreditation by
the North Central Association, the university reported the results of a fall 1974
survey of incoming freshmen, part of a national study.

"These data show that Wayne State University continues

to be exceptional in the percentage of black students

admitted. Of the 764 students who stated their ethnic

background, 21.1% are black. For freshman at other public

universities, this percentage was much smaller (3.1%).“
In 1968, black enrollment at the university was already at 10.5 percent. But even
as black enrollment was growing, the percentage of Wayne State students who
came from within the city was on the decline. In 1966, 52.3 percent of the
university's students were Detroit residents; by 1975, the number had fallen to
47.2 percent.49 To a great extent, this change simply reflected the shifting
realities of a growing and rapidly suburbanizing metropolitan area. But those
shifting realities were deeply infused with racial politics. The explosion of
suburban growth, which erupted in the 19503, was fed largely by the migration
of white residents -— and white-owned businesses —- from the city of Detroit.

Although the early waves of suburbanization may have been inspired by

dreams of an idyllic, semi-rural lifestyle, there was also a strong element of

206

racism. That was especially true in the wake of Detroit's devastating 1967 race
riot when the pace of migration accelerated and the phrase "white flight"
became a standard element of public discourse.

In this context, the shifting focus of Wayne State and the increasing
percentage of students from suburbia was looked at with considerable
suspicion by blacks in Detroit, despite the increasing percentage of black
enrollment. That suspicion was reflected in the attitude of black students, such
as V. Lonnie Peek, a co-founder of the Association of Black Students at Wayne
State in the fall of 1967. In a 1992 interview, Peek said that while the university
may have been more amenable to change than other white institutions, blacks
at the time definitely considered it part of the white power structure. "The
university was seen as an enemy," Peek said. "I can't downplay that. It was
seen as an oppressive, white-oriented, Eurocentric-valued institution . . . Wayne
State University was viewed just as the police department."50

The debate over Black Studies at Wayne State also was profoundly
influenced by the fact that the university was an overwhelmingly commuter
school. There was only one small dormitory on campus. Most of the university's
black students, who ultimately provided the impetus for Black Studies,
commuted from neighborhoods where they had grown up and thus retained
close ties with family, friends, churches, labor unions and other community
groups they had been involved with for years. Moreover, for smart, young,
energetic students with any interest in political or social activism, the black

community of Detroit offered a vast supply of opportunities. In a 1992 interview,
207

Patricia Coleman-Bums, a black Detroit native who received three degrees
from Wayne State, joined the Center for Black Studies as a graduate assistant
in 1976 and taught courses there as an instructor through the 19803,
remembered the atmosphere as intensely community-oriented:

Whether it was the League of Revolutionary Black Workers

or the rising Shrine of the Black Madonna or the Republican

[Republic of New Africa] rap of the Henry brothers, . . . all of

those, the Panther Party, all of those organizations were

strong. . . . My feeling was this university didn't have

anything to teach the youth. They were being taught in the

movement.

I mean, I think about all the meetings. . . . I never went to

hear Malcolm, but many of my peers did. Malcolm came

through here frequently, frequently. . . . Ed Vaughn and his

bookstore and the study groups. I mean, you were

politicized in the community. You didn't go to the university

to get politics. You went to study groups in the communityfit1
Because they were based in the community, rather than on campus, the
students were profoundly influenced and often directly guided by the activist
leaders of the city's black community. But the community orientation also
served, sometimes, to shift their focus away from campus, and in the end, that
had a profound impact on the issue of Black Studies at the university.

Although the first serious proposal for a Black Studies program at Wayne

State did not emerge until April of 1968, the university had been under
increasing pressure for at least three years to expand its curriculum to be more
representative of the African American experience. In October 1965, for
example, a group of black students gathered about 800 signatures on a
petition asking the university to establish a course on Afro—American and

African History.52 In the early fall of 1967 -— just a few weeks after the riot, which
208

had killed 45 people and burned large parts of the city very close to the Wayne
State campus — the university had been awash in controversy over a
symposium on racism that draw protests from Detroit's black community.
Community activists charged that the university had excluded blacks in
planning the symposium, and the dispute sparked the creation of the
Association of Black Students at Wayne State. The ABS organized its own
symposium, and in April 1968 approached President William R. Keast with a
proposal to establish a Black Studies program. What followed were four years
of discussions, negotiations, studies, leadership changes and dead ends until
Keast's successor, acting President George Gullen unilaterally ordered that the
Center for Black Studies be created.

The core of the problem was a fundamental disagreement between black
students, such as ABS leaders V. Lonnie Peek and Ozell Bonds, and Keast
over the nature of the program they wanted to create. The students' proposal
was astonishingly ambitious. In a sixteen-page document — followed quickly
by a request for $632,900 in funding — ABS called for creation of the WEB.
DuBois Institute of Black Studies, to be an entirely new college within the
university.m The proposal rested on "a radically different theory of education, a
theory that will prepare the student to be an effective servant of the community."
Under the plan, the institute would have been composed of six departments,
organized around concepts that were not constrained by traditional disciplinary
boundaries: Community Problems Department; Cultural Studies Department;

Development of American Institutions Department; Historical Department of
209

Radical and Political Thought and the Afro-American Department; the
Department of Applied Knowledge and Research; and the Department of
Education. Each department would offer a range of courses and/or workshops
and most of the proposed departments would cross traditional disciplinary
lines. The institute would have operated with a faculty of 60, and at least 30
other non-instructional staff positions (such as counselors, secretaries, payroll
clerks, an accountant and a full-time attorney) were included in the budget
request. Thus, the Black Studies institute conceived by the black students
would have cast aside the university's traditional disciplinary approach,
adopted a far more consciously community-oriented curriculum than the
university had ever contemplated, and required an enormous commitment of
financial resources.

Ultimately, however, it was not the community orientation or the radical
concept of departmental structure, or even the huge budgetary implications that
proved to be the biggest roadblock. From the beginning, President Keast's
response was generally favorable. Although he immediately perceived some
serious problems -- primarily the students' insistence that they retain control
over curriculum and faculty appointments — Keast publicly supported the
institute idea and encouraged an atmosphere of negotiation between the black
students and the university. He helped obtain private funds to send Peek and
four other black students on a fact-finding trip to California, where they
examined the efforts of several other colleges to design and implement Black

Studies programs. After the students' return, Keast arranged a seminar at
' 210

which the students shared their findings and proposals with members of the
faculty, administrators, other students and people from the community.5‘ABS
also obtained a $34,000 grant from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit
to underwrite planning for the institute. But in the and, negotiations over the
students’ proposal ran aground on the issue of control: the students
demanded it; the university would not give it up.

For almost nine months, all through the fall of 1968 and into the earty winter
of 1969, discussions continued. But in January 1969, when the black students
realized that Keast and the university would not budge on the issue of control
over finances and faculty hiring, they abruptly broke off negotiations and
announced that they would attempt to establish the DuBois Institute off-campus
in the community. Peek charged that both Wayne State and the University of
Detroit (where parallel negotiations had been under way) had been "dragging
their feet" on the issue of a Black Studies program.55 Keast issued a non-
committal statement expressing Wayne State's willingness to consider "the
question of possible relations between the University and the Institute."5'5 In
retrospect, Keast said, the students' decision to focus off-campus may have
been "a natural consequence" of the clash of differing traditions and attitudes,
"namely the traditional notion of the way in which the university operates . . . and
the perfectly understandable desire on the part of this group of activist students
to have a program they could call their own."57 Peek said the students' decision
was ideological, a choice to embrace the community self-determination

philosophy of black nationalism that was very much in step with Carmichael

211

and Hamilton's call in Black Power for black people to assert their own
definitions.58

But the students' efforts to establish a program off-campus soon fell into
disarray. The first director hired by ABS was fired within two months, and
personal differences led to Peek's departure from the effort. Bonds continued,
however, to push for the institute and Keast continued to look for ways to
encourage the effort and find points of cooperation. Black community leaders,
too, kept the pressure on the university; a group of 13 black state legislators, all
from Detroit, urged Keast to accept a series of guidelines toward establishing a
relationship between the university and the institute. But by early 1971, the
institute was a fading dream. The issue of control — and the financial
implications of that issue -- had never been resolved. No other source of
money had been found to pay for the institute. And Keast, who had always been
the institute's main supporter in the university administration, could do little
more to help because he had announced his resignation in September 1970.

Circumstances took a sharp turn in another direction, however, when
George Gullen took over as acting president of the university in July 1971.
Gullen came to the post after five years as Wayne State's vice president for
university relations. He was a Wayne State graduate and former president of
the WSU Alumni Association who joined the university's administration after a
30—year career in corporate labor negotiations. He shared, on a personal level,
Keast's genuine concern for social justice and institutional responsibility, but

his approach was dramatically different. vwiereas Keast was the philosophical
212

scholar, lending his discussions with black students the aura of an academic
seminar, Gullen was a mediator and arbitrator, steeped in the pragmatic art of
the contract negotiator. And he assumed his position amid a new upsurge in
black student activism. A new generation of student leaders had replaced Peek
and Bonds at ABS, and in the 1970-71 academic year ABS members had
managed to capture 13 of the 20 student seats on the university's Student-
Faculty Council. The black students recognized that the council had little real
power, but they were determined to use the council as a forum from which to
pressure the university for a Black Studies department. The students were
demanding that Wayne State establish an undergraduate degree program
similar to the ones that had been created at the University of Michigan and
Harvard, although they had not given up their insistence on student control and
community orientation.

Gullen soon began crafting an answer to the question of what the university
should do about Black Studies. The immediate call to action appears to have
been a frustrated memo from the chairman of the university's Sociology
Department, Alvin Rose, an African American who also chaired a committee
that had been meeting for more than three years in an attempt to design an
African Studies Center. The committee's efforts had focused mainly on
research and faculty exchanges with several universities in Africa, but the work
had been hampered by administrative inaction and a lack of money for
implementation. Shortly after taking over as acting president, Gullen saw a copy

of Rose's memo, written four months earlier, expressing frustration to the verge
213

of bitterness over the university's inaction. By late August, following a flurry of
memos and consultations involving Gullen, Rose and several other key
administrators, the proposal of Rose's committee had been transformed into a
proposal for a Black Studies Center. The plan called for substantial student
representation on the center's governing committee, but it appears that the
proposal was essentially Rose's alone.

By early December, university officials were beginning to consider Black
Studies as the first part of a more elaborate plan for ethnic studies at Wayne
State. But once again, budget problems intervened. State appropriations cuts
and a federal government ruling that blocked tuition increases forced the
university to release 115 faculty and staff members in early January 1972, and
to notify 281 more that they would be released in June. Still, Gullen was
determined to get a Black Studies center established. He took his proposal to a
meeting of the University Council Policy Committee on January 31, presented it
to the full council two days later, and won approval by Wayne State's Board of
Governors on February 10, a scant seven months after taking over as president
of the university. But while Rose praised Gullen's commitment to speedy action
at the govemors' meeting, the black students were not impressed. At a meeting
with Gullen two days before the board's action, black students angrily attacked
Gullen's proposal because students had not been involved in the planning and
because the center would be controlled by the university administration.
"Speaking for the Black population here at Wayne, This will not do, Mr. Gullen,"

said ABS Chairman Duane Lewis. "We will not accept this)”
214

 

 

V6
11ij

W.

And yet, the deed was done. The center was established, and though the
black students continued their protests and demonstrations throughout the
spring of 1972, the die had been cast. However well-intentioned Gullen's aims
— and their is considerable evidence that his motives were sincere — the
speed with which he rammed the Black Studies program through the
institutional process set the program up for failure. Gullen was a negotiator, a
contract bargainer. His impulse, when others disagreed on how to achieve a
goal he desired, was to split the difference, to get the issue resolved. When it
came to Black Studies, that meant taking an existing entity that had been
stagnating (Rose's African Studies Committee), giving it a new charge (Black
Studies), cranking a proposal out of a few quick ad hoc sessions, grafting on a
few organizational considerations the University Council had been working on
separately, and pushing it through the Board of Governors in less than seven
months.

But in his rush to bring the idea to fruition, Gullen made only superficial
efforts to involve students and faculty in the process. The students had almost
no input and Gullen's discussions with the University Council appear to have
been much more informative than consultative. It may have been easier and
faster to establish a program that way, but the result was a program that had
little organized support outside a few key administrators. The faculty had no
vested interest in a program that it had not helped create, and the center's first
true director, Edward Simpkins, had to spend considerable effort in gaining the

confidence of students alienated by their exclusion from the center's planning.
215

Gullen's action guaranteed the center's creation, but the lack of broader support
did little to ensure its survival beyond his tenure as president.

The centers isolation was compounded by its administrative structure. A
center was quick and easy to establish, but because it was prohibited from
offering its own courses and degree programs, it lacked academic stature. The
decision to create a center stemmed from the belief Gullen clearly held that
Black Studies was not an academic discipline in itself, but a force to influence
and provide supportive direction for the traditional disciplines. That underlying
assumption guaranteed the Center for Black Studies a place outside the
academic mainstream, making it far more difficult for the center to compete
with the established departments for money from the university budget. In
1989, for example, when a new generation of black student activists demanded
— and won - departmental status for the center, their chief evidence of
university neglect was that the center’s budget of $163,000 was only 9 percent
higher than the initial budget allocated in 1972. In that same 17-year period, the
Consumer Price Index had risen nearly 120 percent.

Black students, faculty and community observers were left with resentment
over the fact that on some levels, the center was not really theirs. It certainly
was not the center that they had envisioned and struggled for. And though
Gullen was acting from a need he perceived to be responsive to the black
community of the campus and the city that surrounded it, the creation of the
center did little to gain the confidence of African Americans. Simpkins said, in a

1992 interview, that Wayne State's Center for Black Studies "was a concession
21 6

to the times, and it was not a concession that was made because the university
believed in Black Studies programs."60 It was, he said, a concession that the
administration was very unsure of.

I believed that those people were doing the best they knew

how to do. But they didn't believe in Black Studies. They

didn't know what it was, and I don't blame them for not

believing in Black Studies because nobody knew what

Black Studies was. I didn't fault them for that. . . .

If you understand that, then you understand how you

fund programs that you're not sure of is you give it

something, you know, you put it out there. I believed that

after a year the program deserved to get additional funding,

but they started to cut it the second year. I think they cut it to

$140,000. And I think they continued to out, even after I left.61

Simpkins may have been closest to the heart of the matter when he said that

nobody knew what Black Studies was. ABS had one definition, but even that
was not shared by all, as the split between Peek and Bonds and the others
demonstrated. Keast had a different view, and Rose had a vision of his own.
Simpkins frankly opposed Black Studies, which raised doubts among black
students when he was chosen to direct the center. Gullen believed a Black
Studies program was needed and found himself in a position to impose the
definition he thought would be most expedient. But in his sincere effort to make
the university a more open and representative institution, he undercut the
progress he sought. Acting more like an arbitrator than a mediator, he cutoff
debate over the issue of control -— which was, after all, about who would define
Black Studies. By dictating a definition that lacked broad support within the

university, or in the surrounding community, Gullen assured the Center for

Black Studies a tentative existence for a long time to come.
217

Chapter 7

Framed: The Media and the Message

To accuse the news media of distorting the truth is a little like scolding the
grass for growing green. By its very nature, the journalistic process distorts
events -— selecting, sorting and prioritizing them to determine which ones will
receive more or less attention or none at all. Even the most cautious journalist
cannot avoid the truth discovered by physicists who set out to determine
whether light was a wave or a particle: the very act of observing affects what is
observed. During the summer of 2002, for example, the news media were
awash in reports involving the kidnap, and sometimes murder, of young girls. It
appeared that the nation was being swept by a swelling wave of violence
against defenseless children. The incidents were heart-rending: the
vulnerability and innocence of the victims; the desperate grief of their families.
As each new case came to light, it was hard not to be fearful and puzzle over
what was fueling this new trend. Except that when journalists finally got around
to interviewing experts in the field, it was discovered that there was no trend:
there had been no increase in child kidnappings, compared to previous years.

A year earlier, in the summer of 2001, the hot phenomenon had been shark

218

 

attacks. Scary reports of swimmers attacked in Florida and other Caribbean
locales began to sound like excerpts from a novel by Peter Benchley — or
Stephen King -— until, again, it was uncovered that there had been no real
increase in the frequency of shark attacks, only in the reporting of them. This
does not diminish the reality or seriousness of child kidnappings or shark
attacks. In either case, the suffering of the victim or victims is gut-wrenching
and severe. And telling the story of human experience in all of its
manifestations — grief as well as glory -— is the valid and valuable purpose of
journalism. In both cases, however, the truth was distorted, not because of
inaccurate reporting on specific incidents, but because the intensity of media
scrutiny overemphasized the incidents and inflated them out of proportion.
Black Studies suffered at the hands of the media as the flip side of that coin:
the substantive intellectual issues and challenges raised by the movement to
establish Black Studies programs on predominantly white college campuses
appear to have been lost amid coverage of violence (both actual and implied)
and racial tension that shook so many campuses in the late 1960s.
Sometimes there was a direct connection between the violence -— particularly
as it related to black student protest — and Black Studies. At San Francisco
State College, for example, several of the key demands of the student strikers
who disrupted the campus for more than two months were focused on the
establishment and structure of the college's Black Studies program. But the
initial protest that launched the strike was sparked by what black students

perceived as inequity in the way the school's disciplinary policies had been
219

applied to several black students suspended for an incident at the campus
newspaper's office. Black students also were angry over what they considered
to be foot-dragging by the white administration in launching the Black Studies
program, but it was not Black Studies that ignited the strike and the violence it
entailed. Nor did the confrontational behavior of the protesters negate the
critique of Black Studies advocates that academia had suffered from narrow-
mindedness and Eurocentric bias in its scholarship. Still, as the situation spun
out of control; as fires were set and buildings vandalized; as the campus was
closed and classes canceled; as one president resigned and a hard-liner
replacement was appointed; as hundreds of protesters were arrested in bitter
confrontations with police; the presence of Black Studies at the top of the
students' list of demands guaranteed that Black Studies would be associated
in the minds of those who followed the events at San Francisco State with the
violence and disruptive tactics of the student protesters.

If the black militant students came to be seen by many Americans as
dangerous, unruly youths seeking to defy and usurp legitimate authority, that
image was, to a great degree, transferred to Black Studies. News coverage did
little to dispel that image and much to reinforce it. Nor did journalists draw
many distinctions between black student protest as social politics and Black
Studies as an academic or philosophical matter. There are a variety of reasons
for that failure. Some stem from the nature of the news business and the ways
in which journalists define and approach their task. Some stem from the very

novelty of Black Studies in the late 19603; if advocates could not agree on what
220

Black Studies were, how could journalists accurately represent Black Studies
to the broader public? Still others stem from the chaos and confusion of the
time: If you walk into the kitchen and see that the wine sauce in which some
food was simmering has burst into flames that threaten to engulf the room, it is
not likely that you will stop to ask whether the food in the pan is meat or
vegetables. The distinction may have very important dietary implications, but
you may find it difficult to focus on your long-term health if you perceive that your
immediate safety is threatened by the crisis at hand.

In WWW Gaye Tuchman writes
about the power of mass media to shape perceptions of the world we live in.
"News is a window on the world," Tuchman asserts. "Through its frame,
Americans Ieam of themselves and others, of their own institutions, leaders
and life styles, and those of other nations and other peoples."1 But as Tuchman
goes on to point out, that very quality of news coverage as window can lead to
problems and distortions.

The view through a window depends upon whether the

window is large or small, has many panes or few, whether

the glass is opaque or clear, whether the window faces a

street or a backyard. The unfolding scene also depends

upon where one stands, far or near, craning one's neck to

the side, or gazing straight ahead, eyes parallel to the wall

in which the window is encased.2
Consider, then, the view from the journalistic window that opened on the field of
Black Studies when American scholars began to examine the idea seriously in

late 1967. Reporters were scrambling to keep pace with events that defied

easy understanding or characterization. Steeped in traditions — both social

221

 

and professional -- that had grown out of an earlier era, journalists were
confronted with the necessity of examining and accurately reflecting social and
cultural change that appeared to be accelerating at an unheard of pace and in
breathtakingly divergent directions. The turmoil of the 1960s forced journalists
to reexamine what they do and how they do it; it forced them to reconsider the
ways in which they try to make sense —— for themselves and for their readers — l

of the world around them.

 

Journalists are products of the society and the culture in which they live.
Media organizations, like universities, in the mid-19605 were overwhelmingly
white. The vast majority of reporters, photographers and editors were white and
male and in most cases had been raised to accept the assumptions of white
Euro-American culture that Black Studies was reacting against. Even those
who had not attended college themselves would have been influenced by the
established structure of academic disciplines that guided the division of
classes into such familiar subjects as English, History, Mathematics,
Chemistry and the like, even at the high school level. Few would have been
likely on their own to perceive, as the militant black college students did, that
the prevailing curriculum constituted "white studies."

Journalists tend to view the world and to organize and present their
perceptions of it in ways they have been taught by the demands of their
profession and by the assumptions of the society in which they live. First and
foremost, journalism is about telling stories. Unlike poets and fiction writers,

however, reporters generally view their story-telling as being constrained by
222

literal facts. Notwithstanding the literary aspirations or pretensions of some
journalists, the profession as a whole insists that news reports be structured
around verifiable pieces of information. Assertions of fact must be
independently provable (e.g., through video or audio tape, or written
documents) or be attributed to recognized authorities, such as officials of
government or other established religious, social, economic or political
organizations. While this approach is designed to assure the integrity and
reliability of news accounts, it also may limit the range and depth of reporting by
encouraging an overreliance on "official" news sources and a reluctance to
consult and seriously consider sources that do not carry some socially
approved endorsement of their authority — whether it be intellectual, social,
moral or political. In the mid-19605, news organizations were just beginning to
shake off a long-standing tradition of coziness between reporters and "official"
news sources that has never been completely eliminated. By the end of the
decade, the antagonism between journalists and government over the conduct
and reporting of the Vletnam War would shatter the atmosphere in which
reporters had cast a blind eye toward Franklin Roosevelt's need for a
wheelchair or John F. Kennedy's sexual dalliances in the White House. How far
the pendulum could swing in the opposite direction would be demonstrated in
the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon's presidency. But in
the last half of the 1960s, reporters - like the rest of American society — still
locked to governmental officials, whether they be presidents, legislators,

governors or university administrators, as the primary source of definitive
223

information on almost any issue of public concern.

The problem, in the case of Black Studies, was that there was no single
established organization or authority to which journalists could refer for
definitive explanations. The traditional sources — university administrators --
were not the primary advocates of Black Studies. Often, those administrators
were predisposed to dismiss the idea of Black Studies as an independent
academic discipline, though they may have supported efforts to include more
information about African Americans in courses offered by the established
disciplines. Black student activists did not always present clearly the best
arguments for Black Studies because they were young and inexperienced and
because their focus was split among a complex variety of issues concerning
the status of black students on campus. Black faculty members may have been
considered by journalists to be more reliable sources than the students, but
those professors did not always agree on the rationale and proper direction for
Black Studies programs. Some black scholars, for example, strenuously
opposed Black Studies as an independent academic enterprise, preferring,
instead, to promote greater attention to African Americans and their culture
within the established disciplines. And so, the emergence of Black Studies
posed significant issues of information gathering for journalists who undertook
to explain the issue to their readers.

In at least one important respect, however, the journalist's role as storyteller
is the same as the writer of fiction: all stories revolve around conflict. The more

clearly defined the conflict, the easier the story is to write. The more intense the
224

ti.-

confrontation, the more appealing the story will be to the reader. The more
visceral the issue, the more compelling the drama. Journalists know these
truths and therefore tend to focus their efforts on those conflicts that are most
compelling, most intense and most sharply delineated. Black Studies had
difficulty attracting attention under these criteria. To begin with, Black Studies
was not clearly defined. Even supporters disagreed over what the term meant. l

At times, there appeared to be relatively little disagreement over Black Studies;

 

many schools set up programs without disruption or opposition, and at other
schools, debates often seemed to focus on the form a Black Studies program
should take, rather than whether a program should be established. The conflict
that did revolve directly around Black Studies tended to be either esoteric
(should Black Studies be established as a program or a department?) or
conveniently deflected into other issues (black separatism or student power)
that were more starkly defined and more easily expressed in news stories. In
an atmosphere where student demands and protests were provoking power
struggles that frequently involved police — and occasionally military —
intervention to determine who would control a campus, it was unlikely that
many journalists would take time to explore how Black Studies might change
the intellectual culture of the university.

Journalists also often resort to game and other familiar formats in
conceptualizing and writing their stories. Just as a novelist may choose to write
a mystery or a romance or a rite-of-passage novel, a journalist may adopt any

of a number of fairly standard approaches, depending on the circumstances of
225

his or her subject. A profile, for example, tends to have a flow and structure that
is noticeably different from that of a meeting report or a human interest story. By
the time the movement to establish Black Studies programs emerged on white
college campuses, the nation's news organizations already had nearly fifteen
years' experience in covering intense racial conflict between blacks and whites.
The Civil Rights Movement had established certain patterns of activity that
journalists could recognize, understand and report with confidence. A group of
black activists (NAACP, SCLC, SNCC) would confront a white institution
(Topeka school board; Montgomery bus system; Greensboro lunch counters)
with a set of demands (freedom to ride buses, attend school, eat in
restaurants), using protests (marches, boycotts, sit-ins) to publicize their
demands, and eventually achieve some negotiated or court-ordered resolution.
The Civil Rights Movement was a socio-political movement in which African
Americans sought ways to exert political power to guarantee themselves full
and free access to the benefits of citizenship in the United States. The battles of
that movement were essentially a struggle for social, political and economic
power; they were easily described in terms of who is challenging whom over
what, who is outside trying to get in, and who is inside trying to keep the other
out. It was a struggle peopled by good guys and bad guys (Martin Luther King
Jr. vs. Bull Connor), and it lent itself easily to portrayals in terms of virtue and
evil (peaceful, singing marchers vs. fire hoses, attack dogs and hooded cross-
bumers). In short, the Civil Rights Movement fit well with the patterns of conflict

reporting with which journalists were familiar. In a structural sense, covering a
226

 

civi 8 rights protest was similar to covering a labor strike; the dynamics of
confrontation and negotiation were understood.

I t is not surprising, then, that journalists would see the advent of black
student protest at white college campuses as merely an extension of the Civil
Rig hts Movement and report on it accordingly. To a great extent, the Black
Studies movement and the black student activism that surrounded it were an
extension of the Civil Rights struggle. The black students, first and foremost,
wanted to open up the nation's colleges and universities to greater African
Am erican participation, to increased black student enrollment, increased hiring
of b lack faculty, and increased promotion of blacks to positions of authority in
cam pus administration. In that context, the university was just one more public
accommodation where the "whites only" signs -- physically visible or not -—
needed to be taken down. And in that context, Black Studies and black student
activism fit easily into the models of reporting that had been established
thI'OLIgh years of covering civil rights protests.

But the Black Studies movement was never about access alone. Black

Studies advocates were never interested simply in obtaining the same
9" Ucation that white students obtained at white universities because they saw
that very education as a key element in the systematic oppression of African
Americans that had been going on for three and a half centuries. The black
st“dents and established scholars who lobbied so passionately for the
creation of Black Studies programs were seeking to transform the intellectual

e"‘Vlironment of the university. They wanted to smash the old Eurocentric

227

min dset that for so long had denied, dismissed and denigrated black people.
In its place, they sought to establish a model of scholarly pursuit that would
give full and honest attention and respect to African and African American
cultu re. They might not have put it this way —— because their focus,
understandably, was on winning the acceptance and acknowledgment of black
people and their culture as legitimate topics of intellectual inquiry — but in
rea I ity, Black Studies advocates were trying to reform academia's entire vision
of the world. A world view that takes Africans and African Americans seriously is
profoundly different from one that pretends they have never been significant
actors in American society or on the world stage. And adopting such a world
View is not a matter of merely adding Africans and African Americans to the mix
in th e way one might add a single item to one's grocery shopping list or add
one more chair to a classroom. It is much more akin to putting a new student in
that additional chair, a student who will interact with the instructor and every
0the r student in the classroom, increasing exponentially the complications of
Personality, social dynamics, knowledge and personal perspective that come
to bear each day on the activities of Ieaming.
J oumalists were not well prepared to recognize and assimilate an issue of
that nature and complexity. In fairness, they were far from alone. Amid the crush
Of daily events, the political, economic and social pressures bearing down on
their universities, few college administrators had much time to reflect on the
meQper, long-term philosophical implications of Black Studies. Even many

Black Studies advocates were focused, of necessity, on immediate goals and
228

objectives that posed such difficult problems of political organization and
mob ilization that contemplation of long-term issues had to be deferred. It was
not until the late 1970s, for example, that a truly rich discussion of theory and
methodology in Black Studies began to emerge in the academic literature
because for the previous decade, Black Studies scholars had more than
eno ugh to contend with just getting their programs set up and doing what was
necessary to assure their continued survival. Everybody had immediate crises
and conflicts to attend to, and in the maelstrom of conflict, violence and
agitation that was America in the late 1960s, it was not easy for an issue to rise
to the threshold of public attention.

So the journalistic window was not an ideal one through which to view Black
Stud i es. The frame of the window was shaped by the tendency of white
loum elists to share the traditional assumptions of white institutions. It was
she Ded by the reliance of journalists on conflict as an organizing principle. And
the view of Black Studies from that window was obscured by the abundance of
intense conflict that dominated the foreground: anti-war protests, the Vietnam

War itself, sit-ins, demonstrations, confrontations with police, civil rights
Struggles, generalized student power demands -— the full range of social
tur"I'ioil that was demanding Americans' attention, both on-campus and off. To
the extent that Black Studies was connected or associated with a more
d re matic or violent outburst -— such as a student strike or a sit-in
demonstration -— it got noticed, but seldom thoroughly explained, by the media.

Absent some additional element of conflict -— violent protest or racially

229

separatist demands -- Black Studies generally remained in the background,
its i ntellectual import and implications ignored and unexamined.

To understand how the frame of the journalistic window affected the view
Am ericans got of Black Studies, it helps look at how the three most prominent
wee kly news magazines — Iima, Normals. and Wood
— covered the issue between June 1967 and June 1970, the most fertile
peri od of Black Studies growth on US. college campuses. In that three-year
peri ed, the three magazines published a total of thirty-eight articles that in
som e noticeable way addressed the issue of Black Studies and/or black
student protest on American college campuses. Of those thirty-eight, only six —
three separate articles in U_S_News and three wrapped into a single package
in Manatee]: - gave more than brief references to the contents of Black
Stud ies courses or the rationale for Black Studies programs. And even those
six 8 rticles were far from thorough in their explanations of Black Studies. Most
Of the articles focused on the political conflict, disruption and violence attendant
‘0 b|ack student protest, with relatively little attention given to the reasons
beh i nd or objectives of that protest. Frequently, the articles and their headlines
used language that emphasized negative elements of the situation,
encouraging the impression (intentionally or not) that the aims of black student
a(“iivists were unwarranted or even irrational.

lime. for example, published six articles bearing on black student activism

'3 Llring the period, the first appearing Oct. 6, 1967 and the last in the issue of

Selot. 19, 1969. The first article, under the headline "Black Pride," was typical of
230

coverage in all three magazines, giving only passing attention -— and no
substantive explanation — to black students’ demands for curriculum changes
wh i I e emphasizing racial tensions on campus and the potential for violence. All
of the elements are wrapped up together in the article’s lead paragraph:
After a summer of race riots, Negro students are
returning to college campuses with a new and aggressive
pride in being black. It shows up in a revival of all-Negro
fraternities, surging membership in “Afro-American”
student-action groups, demands for more “black culture” in
the curriculum, and a growing scorn for the white, middle-
class world that lies within reach of the college-trained
Negro. The new mood ranges from angry militancy to a
brotherly desire for mutual improvement —— and it does not
reject violence as one way to make the black presence felt.3
Note that the paragraph begins and ends with violence, starting with the race
riots that had shaken the nation only three months earlier and closing with the
generalized assertion that black students accepted violence as a legitimate
tactic for achieving their aims on campus. The mood of black students is
described as 'aggressive' and “angry” and increasingly scomful of white
society; the sole positive adjective, 'brotherly,’ is sandwiched between “angry”
and the threat of violence. Demands for curriculum reform also are linked to the
“Oti on of racial separatism because they are lumped into the same sentence
as the “all-Negro fraternities,” and the quotation marks around the phrase
‘b'ack culture” suggest, at least in one sense, some question as to the validity
of the term.
Setting aside the question of whether the paragraph was entirely accurate

(some of those scomful black students might have questioned whether the

231

wh ite, middle-class world truly was within reach of black college graduates;
oth e rs might have objected strenuously to the suggestion that they approved
of vi olence) it is important to see the context in which Black Studies made its
way into general public view. From a journalistic standpoint, the recent race
riots in Detroit and elsewhere certainly were pertinent to an article about the
attitudes of black students on American college campuses in the fall of 1967.
And the remainder of the article cites several comments from African
Am ericans on campus that support the opening paragraph’s assertions. But
on t he whole, the article links the idea of Black Studies with controversial
ideas of violence and separatism without offering any explanation that would
help readers differentiate Black Studies from those other issues or assess
the merits of Black Studies programs. The only other reference to Black
Stud ies in the article is a description of efforts by black students at Columbia
Uriiversity to push ‘quietly for more Negro faculty appointments, more black
art, music, literature and history courses. ‘We have had to Ieam the white
man ’ 8 way of thinking,’ argues Senior Reginald Thompkins. ‘He must Ieam
the black man’s way of thinking.“ That is hardly the most potent pedagogical
rationale that could have been presented, and it was followed immediately by
the information that the Black Student Union at San Francisco State College
had been accused of engaging in “reverse racism.” A few paragraphs later,
the article quotes a black graduate student at the University of Wisconsin: ”Let
me tell you how it is, baby. When l get out, I have two choices -- to

e)(‘lerminate the white man or to prostitute myself to the white man. I haven’t
232

deci ded what I’ll do."5 The quote captures very pungently the extreme rhetoric
that was percolating on campus. But the lack of explanation about the black
stu cl ents’ curricular demands and the juxtaposition of those demands with
such extreme rhetoric, leaves the impression that the demand for Black
Stu dies was merely another part of an irrational and violent agenda and that
the re was no solid reason for curricular reform beyond the petulant demand
of unreasonable black students.

Anotherlime article, in the Nov. 22, 1968 issue, summarized developments
that had led to the closure of San Francisco State. The article traced the origin
of violence and disruption on the campus to the activities of Black Student
Uni o n members who ”wrecked the offices of the student paper and beat
several staffers for printing what the blacks called racial slurs. ”6 About halfway
throu 9h the article, there is a reference to Black Studies that again places the
concept of such programs in an unfavorable light by associating it with
undemocratic and violent assertions by some of the militants:

All 800 blacks at SF. State are counted as members by the
B.S.U., whether the students concerned agree or not. And
the disruptive B.S.U. tactics, designed to force the
administration to build up minority enrollment and black
studies programs, annoy many of the 16,300 white
students, who want only to complete their education.

Last month, [suspended black graduate student George]
Murray urged students at Fresno State College to “kill all
the slave masters,” among whom he counted President
Johnson, Chief Justice Warren and Governor Reagan. A
few days afterward he told students at SF. State to bring
guns on the campus for “self-defense”?

once again, the facts may be accurate but the lack of explanation of the

233

reasoning for Black Studies and the setting of the reference in the context of
such inflammatory other elements could lead a reader to conclude, logically,
that there was no legitimate rationale for Black Studies; that the only people
who supported such programs were violent thugs who went around beating up
wh ite students and advocating the killing of public officials. Even if the article
fairly represents the views and behavior of George Murray and the BSU at San
Fran ncisco State, it does not paint a fair portrait of Black Studies. The author of
the article or the editors at Iime might reasonably argue that it was not the
purpose of the article to explain Black Studies; its purpose was to examine the
vio l ence and disruption at San Francisco State, which is what the article does.
But that is precisely the point: absent separate and detailed reporting on Black
Stud ies, the readers ofIime, in this case, were most likely left with a

mis leading impression of Black Studies. The article, however accurate in its
facts , distorted the reality of Black Studies.

8 ubsequentIime articles did little to change the impression readers of the
first two articles may have formed. An article in the Jan. 17, 1969 issue reported
on protests by black students at eight colleges and a high school. Under the
hee-dline, “Engulfed by Black Anger,” the article noted: ”Practically all of the
C“S-(mders shared a common feature: often extravagant demands by black
“"tlnlczlents.’8 Demands by black students for Black Studies programs at San

Fra ncisco State and Brandeis University were noted in passing as reasons for
disruptions at those schools, but again, no further explanation of the programs

was provided. Several incidents of violence and clashes between students and
234

po I ice were mentioned, and the article demonstrated that students were not the

only ones capable of intemperate rhetoric:

Governor Ronald Reagan . . . called for legislation that

would curb “these criminal anarchists and latter-day

fascists.” Said Reagan: “Those who want to get an

education, those who want to teach, should be protected at

the point of bayonets if necessary.’9
An other article carried the headline, “Black ls Beautiful --- and Belligerent,’ and
incl uded information about the fatal shooting of two black students at UCLA in a
dis pute between two black student factions. The same article recited a litany of
black student protests and asserted that in recent weeks:

U.S. higher education seemed to be the victim of an artfully
orchestrated conspiracy of disruption. At campus after
campus, militant black students slammed down lists of
nonnegotiable demands on presidential desks,
threatening to shut down colleges that would not comply
and organizing protests, picket lines and strikes.10
The article later dismissed the idea of a conspiracy and noted that Black
Student Unions ”do not always use violent means to achieve their ends and not
all of their demands are unreasonable.” But the negative construction (“not
aways,” “not all”) of that statement clearly implies that the opposite was the
norm, And while the article suggests that one of the results of those “not
Unreasonable” demands had been to force “the universities to rethink their
obi igations to Negro students,” it balances that statement with the observation
that, ”Faculties are unanimous in denying the black students the right to set

their own standards and hire their own teachers.” And once again, the article

e"Ids with a quote from a black student suggesting the likelihood of violence.

235

Accompanying the article are two photos: one of black students occupying the
campus switchboard at Brandeis and the other of black students being forcibly
arrested by police at San Fernando State College. Nowhere is there a clear and
even-handed explanation of Black Studies and the rationale for Black Studies
programs. Iime’s readers saw the protests and the violence and saw that
Black Studies was associated with those events, but without some further
explanation, they might logically have concluded that there was nothing more to
su pport the idea of Black Studies than the most inflammatory comments of the
most radical militants.
In the same three-year period, Newsweek published eighteen articles
De rtaining in some way to black students or black student activism on white
Col lege campuses. Of that number, however, less than half even mentioned
Black Studies or efforts to reform college curricula to include more information
ab(but African Americans and African American culture. Fewer still offered any
substantial explanation about Black Studies. Of the ten articles that did not
mention curricular issues, most focused on issues of campus racial tension or
protests involving black students; two focused on the efforts of colleges to
increase their enrollment of black students. For example, “May Queens and
Effigies,” in the June 5, 1967 issue, explored the atmosphere at white colleges
in the South that were opening their doors for the first time to black students.
The article notes that, ”With a few notable exceptions, Negroes are
encountering little overt discrimination or hostility on Southern campuses,” but

then describes harassment of black students at the University of Mississippi,

236

where ”KKK” was frequently sprayed on black students’ dorm room doors with
shaving cream and a white student dressed in a sheet had recently confronted
a black student in a shower room.11 Another article described a heated debate
among black and white students at a convention of the National Student
Association over a resolution endorsing black power and defining it as ”the
u nification of all black people in America for their liberation by any means
necessary.” The phrase ”by any means necessary” had sparked opposition
from some white students, one of whom said that such a resolution would give
””a n entirely blank check to the black men of America to commit insurrection and
violence.” In the end, the black students won the battle over wording after
th reatening a walkout. Three other articles - bearing the headlines ”Guerrillas
on Campus,” ”Agony at State” and ”Unsteady State” -— focused on the turmoil at
San Francisco State and highlighted the role of the Black Student Union in the
protests and violence there.13 The first article, interestingly, was accompanied
by a photograph that carried the caption: ”Riot at State: Opening battle?” The
photograph appears to show a crowd of students standing quietly, listening to
a speaker. The most dramatic article, ”The Siege of Greensboro,” describes a
three-day running gun battle between black student snipers, police and
National Guard troops at the Agricultural and Technical College of North
Carolina. One student was killed and one student and five police officers were
wounded; two hundred students were taken into police custody. A photo above
the article shows three National Guardsmen crouching by a brick wall, aiming

their rifles at a campus dormitory.14 Black Studies was not mentioned in the

237

articles, but the connection between black student activism and racial tension,
controversy and campus disturbances - occasionally extreme violence - was
clearly established.

Of the eightflewsweek articles that mentioned Black Studies or related
curricular reform, five included only brief or passing references. An article in the
March 30, 1970 issue, for example, examined changes in the racial climate at

the University of Mississippi and included a single reference to Black Studies,
bu ndled together with several other issues: “This month, after two years of
trying to work through normal channels for the introduction of black studies,
black faculties and black athletic participation, black students have begun to
d e monstrate."15 No further explanation of Black Studies is offered, but the article
“ Otes the arrests of 71 black students by state police after the students
disrupted a concert. An April 28, 1969 article that discussed recent disruptions
at Harvard, Columbia and the University of Chicago reported on a black student
sit-in at Columbia and noted a vote of support from white students at Harvard
for ”the demands of the Afro-American Society that Negroes be permitted, in
effect, to help set up and run their own black curriculum."16 Nothing further was
said about that curriculum or the reasoning behind it. A third article, entitled
uBlack Against Black,’ was a report on the violence that erupted between two
black student factions at UCLA and resulted in the shooting deaths of two black
students.17 The article focused on the violence and the black radical politics that
surrounded the incident but included a brief reference to the dispute involving

the selection of a director for the university’s new Afro-American Study Center.
' 238

Once again, a Black Studies program gets mentioned in the context of extreme
violence, but is given no further explanation.

By far the most dramatic such example, however, was the report in
fiewsweek’s May 5, 1969 issue of the black student occupation of a campus
building at Cornell University. The story captured the cover of the magazine that

week; under the headline, ”Universities Under The Gun,” the cover displayed a
photograph of black ”Militants at Cornell” carrying rifles and shotguns, with one
of the students wearing ammunition belts around his waist and over his
sh oulder. Inside, the magazine’s five-page report on the Cornell sit-in and its
aftermath devotes just three sentences to black student demonstrations ”for a
Se parate black college” and white backlash to them."3 Ten additional
Sentences focused on developments at Harvard, where the faculty had agreed
u‘t<> give black students power in choosing professors and curriculum for a new,
b'ack-studies program — the first time Harvard students have ever had such a
voice.” But those sentences focused entirely on the politics of the Harvard
situation with no additional explanation about the Black Studies program.“ The
vast majority of the article was given over to a detailed description of the Cornell
protest, the negotiations that ended the sit-in, and the tensions that had been
heightened as a result.
The three Newsweek articles that provided more insight into Black Studies
were, in fact, part of a single extended package of articles, published in the Feb.
10, 1969 issue, that were presented under the overall headline, ”Black Mood on

campus,” whose double meaning emphasized the atmosphere of anger and

239

confrontation. The central piece of the seven-page package was actually a
sequence often short reports from different college campuses. The vast
majority of the material in the collected reports focused on race relations,
campus politics and the socio-political attitudes of black students. References
to Black Studies tended to be presented in the context of other related issues,
most notably separatist attitudes of black students. For example, a passage
describing the separatist attitudes and behavior of black students at Wayne
State University is introduced by a paragraph that refers to ”Comell’s black
students who are seeking an autonomous black college financed by the
u n iversity where they would select courses, students and faculty.” The section
0 r1 Wayne State also mentions plans by the Association of Black Students to
\a unch an independent Black Studies institute, but again, offers no explanation
of what that institute would entail. A report from Fisk, written by a junior at the
h istorically black college, mentions the students’ efforts ”to broaden the black-
studies program” but adds only that the aim is to ”make this educational
institution speak to the needs of the black community; that is, structure the
curriculum so that it educates and frees a black mind to deal with the system.”
Why Black Studies was necessary or how such a program would further that
aim was not explained.21 A section about Black Studies courses at Merritt
College focused overwhelmingly on debate over whether the courses should
be for black students only,2 and a report on a black history course at Harvard
zeroed in on controversy over whether white instructors could teach Black

studies courses.” The most neutral information about Black Studies was a

240

brief report from the University of California at Berkeley that summarized the
focus and reading lists of three new Black Studies courses at that campus.“
Two substantial sidebar stories —- one written by Nathan Hare, chairman of
the Black Studies department at San Francisco State, and the other written by
Roy Wilkins, executive director of the NAACP -- provided some important
perspective on Black Studies.”5 But even here, the emphasis was more on
debating the related issue of separatism than on exploring the question of what
distinguishes Black Studies as an academic enterprise. Readers not already
fa rniliar with the concept of Black Studies would have gained only limited
ad ditional insight from either article.
The most startling part of the entire report, however, was a section on the
Situation at San Francisco State, which quoted extensively from Jeny Vamado,
a 24-year-old campus coordinator for the BSU. Vamado was described as
Wearing fatigue jackets, blue jeans and black beret . . . ”a soldier of sorts.” His
description of his role in the college’s Black Studies program was stridently in
keeping with that image:
”I am now a graduate student and a lecturer in the black-
studies department. What we are involved in here at State
is not a reform movement. That is what the civil-rights
movement was. This is a revolution. . . .
”We will use any means necessary to uphold the
principle that people of the third world have a right to
determine what kind of human beings they want to be.
Violence is the best means. It disrupts and terrorizes so
that if people of the third world are not allowed to determine
their own kind of education, than nobody else on that
campus can get any kind of education.

”One course I teach is the sociology of black oppression
. . . Once during class we were talking about what napalm

241

was and how it was being used. I told them how it could get
on the skin and burn a hole all the way through. And for all
who didn’t believe it, I put a formula for napalm on the

board so they could make some. They could pour it on a

piece of meat or on the police or somebody and see exactly
how it works”?!8

I t is hard to imagine how any rational reader could examine that passage and
not come away with serious doubts about the legitimacy of Black Studies. And
yet, Vamado was not the typical Black Studies instructor, and instructions about
how to use napalm on police was anything but standard content for Black
Studies courses. Extreme rhetoric, such as Vamado’s, makes great copy for
journalists; it grabs the reader’s attention and it defines conflict in very stark
te rms. But how well it serves the reader to portray the sides of a conflict in
te ms of their most extreme advocates is another question.

Coverage of black student protest and Black Studies in Meme was
sOmewhat more critical in tone than were the articles published by lime and
hl-Eweweels. In the same three—year period, US News published fourteen

articles that touched, in some way, on Black Studies or black student activism.
And, as with its competitors, LLSJIews generally gave only passing attention to
Black Studies; only three articles provided any significant explanatory material
aimed at helping the reader understand what Black Studies was or make
sense of where it fit in the curriculum of higher education. Most often, Black
Studies was mentioned in connection with black student sit-ins or other
disruptive protests, but then merely as one item on a list of demands or black
student concerns. A report in the May 20, 1968 issue, for example, listed

, Gcurses in Negro literature and Negro art taught by professors approved by
242

Negro students’ as one demand of black students at Northwestern University.
No further explanation of the courses was given, and the article referred to the
university’s acceptance of black student demands as a ”surrender. ’27A
roundup of campus disturbances published in the Jan. 20, 1969 issue cited
four colleges — San Francisco State, San Fernando Valley State, Brandeis and
t he University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh — where Black Studies programs had
been a factor in black student demonstrations. None of the references gave any
significant explanation of Black Studies, although the section of the report
co nceming San Francisco State noted student demands that the Black Studies
department be allowed to Operate ”without interference of the fascist
ad ministration and the chancellor.”213 Just five weeks later, another roundup of
Ca rnpus unrest included incidents at two colleges — the University of
VVisconsin at Madison and Duke University — that were linked to demands for
Black Studies, among other issues}9 Particularly interesting is the portion of
the report concerning the Duke incident:
Authorities said it was the first such ”black power”
uprising on a predominantly white Southern campus.
The Negro rebels — an estimated 30 or 40 of the 100
Negroes at the private university -— had threatened to set
school records afire unless their demands were met. What
they were asking:
Initiation of a ”black studies” program controlled by
Negro students, a Negro dormitory, reinstatement of Negro
students who have fiunked out, an increase in Negro
students, a Negro adviser elected by Negro students, a
summer program for incoming Negro freshmen, an end to
”police harassment” of Negro students, no more ”racist

policies” at the university, and a change in the grading
system for Negroes.”

243

The references to the incident as an uprising and the black students as rebels
clearly signals the magazine’s disapproval, and the use of quotation marks
around key phrases also suggests that the students’ concerns are suspect.
Disapproval verged on contempt three months later, after the sit-in by armed
black students at Cornell. The magazine’s report of the incident in its May 5,

1 969 issue began:

Gun-toting Negro students challenged one of this
nation’s great universities — and won.

Under threats of violence backed by rifles and shotguns,
the faculty and administration of Cornell University
surrendered to the Negroes’ demands.

With this surrender, the revolution on American college
campuses entered a new and potentially dangerous
phase. Armed force had become a winning form of student
protest.31

The remainder of the report is heavily weighted with expressions of outrage
from public officials and newspaper editorials. But while the article mentions
developments in the debate over Black Studies at Harvard and traces the
unrest at Cornell to black student demands for a separate black college, there
is no further explanation of Black Studies.

In one respect, however, LLSJIewe was more attentive than its competitors
to the question of Black Studies. Three major articles during the period were
devoted in significant part to examination of Black Studies. The first of the
articles appeared in the June 24, 1968 issue of the magazines:Z Although it
begins with references to threats, capitulation and black power demands, the
article takes the black militants’ demands seriously and consciously poses the

c“,estion: ”Just what do they want the universities to teach about the ”black
‘ 244

experience’?’ One answer was presented from Charles J. Hamilton, a junior at

Harvard who served as managing editor of the Wire.

“Firstly,” he said, ”we want courses dealing specifically
with Afro-American history, culture, literature, music and so
forth.

”Secondly, we want to see the basic elements of these
worked into the general curriculum to provide the general
run of student with a better knowledge of the Negro in
America.

”Thirdly, we want a program of African studies dealing
with Africa's history, economics, religions and so on.

”As we see it, there has to be a reeducation of whites.
What do most of them know about the black man in
America?

”They may have heard of Booker T. Washington, but how
many now of W.E.B. DuBois? How many know Richard
Wright and other Negro authors?

”Our history courses ought to retell the story of Lincoln,
give him fuller dimension. This doesn’t mean we have to
paint him as a proslavery man. But he isn’t just the man
who issued the Emancipation Proclamation, either. At
various times he made it clear he did not favor equality for
Negroes and he even said once he favored sending them
back to Africa.

”In other words, he was a complex man operating in a
politically complex situation, and this ought to be known.’33

Ha milton’s statement is followed by a response from Sidney Hook, a New York
U n i varsity professor who was heading a committee overseeing the
esta blishment of a Black Studies program at that school.
”The primary justification for expanding the curriculum to
provide a picture of the black experience is educational. To
understand the world more adequately, we must know
something of the black experience as well as that of the
other minorities.
”This is the sole justification. . . .34
Taken together, these two statements amount to the most thorough expression

of the philosophy behind Black Studies to be presented in any of the articles in
245

the three magazines. The remainder of the article is mainly an examination of
the status of Black Studies programs at a number of different colleges.
Another of the articles, published in the Feb. 24, 1969 issue, looked broadly
at the growth in demand for Black Studies programs and touched on such
related issues as the short supply of qualified instructors, the insistence of
militants on black instructors and the lack of agreement about what should be
included in Black Studies courses.35 But while the article gave plenty of
attention to what was being done at various institutions to establish Black
Studies programs, it gave virtually no attention to the philosophy behind the
movement.
The final article, a report on developments at Federal City College in
Washington, DC, emphasizes the school’s Black Studies program in an
a [most adversarial tone.
Drawn up by the faculty for next year is a black-studies
department that would be more antiwhite and separatist
than anything yet seen on a US. campus.
It offers a four-year program providing ”total immersion”
in black nationalism. This ranges from a freshman course
aimed at eradicating white values, to physical-education
classes in karate, riflery and stick-fighting}!5
In essence, the piece was an examination of political infighting at the college
and an attack on the growing influence of a black radical faction of the college’s
facu lty. Because the radicals (including a former leader of the black student
strike at San Francisco State) were congregated in the school’s Black Studies

progra m, the program and the political cast the radicals gave to it were central

to the article. But while the article quoted extensively from the black nationalist
246

rhetoric of the radicals and offered in detail their political vision for the Black
Studies program, it offered little in the way of alternative views of what Black
Studies could or should be. A single paragraph noted that student government,
though sometimes supportive of the radicals, had disavowed the radicals’
plans for the Black Studies program. ”Instead, it has offered support to black
studies that are academically sound, nonracist and ‘responsive’ to student
needs,” the article said.37 The lingering impression left by the article was that
the radicals were Black Studies, for all intents and purposes; that the perceived
problem was with the concept of Black Studies, not merely the implementation
of the concept by a particular group of people at a particular campus.
It seems clear, from the articles published in these three magazines, that
Black Studies was less than adequately explained by the media. Perhaps other
media outlets did a better job; local newspapers, for example, are likely to have
given more attention — or at least more space — to such issues on the college
campuses in their coverage areas. A more expansive examination of news
coverage of Black Studies in its formative years would be interesting and, I
think, useful. But even local newspapers are likely to have been limited by the
sa me conceptual - and factual — considerations that influenced the reporting
of the big three national news weeklies. First of all, Black Studies was not even
clearly understood, or at least explained, by its supporters, so it would have
been difficult for journalists to perceive and understand the nuances of
Philosophy at issue in the Black Studies movement. Second, Black Studies

tended to get lost in the background because it was only one of several issues

247

that revolved around black student protest; incidents of blatant racism or
violence were much easier for journalists to understand and describe, and, the
journalists knew, more commanding of the reader’s attention. And third,
because of the joumalist’s pattern of basing stories on conflict and describing
the conflict in terms of its most extreme expressions, Black Studies was
unlikely to get the attention necessary to make it well understood. Unless it was
the source of conflict, Black Studies barely got mentioned at all, and only if it
involved radical rhetoric - whether it was demands for blacks-only programs
or instructors who advocated the use of napalm on police — did it get more
substantial attention.

Black Studies only got attention when it was on the black students’ lists of
demands and when those students were disrupting a campus to win
acceptance of those demands. In a way, it was almost irrelevant what the
demands of black students were or what their rationale was. What seemed
i mportant was merely that there were demands and that a disagreement over

those demands was causing disruption to the institution. The underlying nature
of the disagreement got little attention from the news magazines. That, I think,
tri vialized the students’ demands in a subtle way. Because journalists did not
elaborate on and explore the demands, reporting on the issue gave the
im pression that the dispute was simply a case of youthful rebellion against
authority, a point on which the kids always lose. Unfortunately, in the struggle

for public awareness and understanding, Black Studies lost as well.

248

Chapter 8

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

In 1903, W.E.B. DuBois declared: ”The problem of the twentieth century is
the problem of the color line."1 One hundred years later, many of the difficulties
that underlay that problem persist, but the issue, I think, needs to be restated
for a new era. The problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of the color
spectrum.

When DuBois wrote IbeSeulseiBlemEelk -— and for many decades
thereafter -— the discussion of race and racial issues in the United States was
built on the simple foundation of the black/white dichotomy. That color division,

and the question of whether it could be used to justify human slavery, had been
at the heart of the nation’s most traumatic and devastating war. The Civil War
was still fresh in the memories of those who had lived through it, never mind
that the war had been over almost forty years. About the same span of time has
passed since the assassination of President Kennedy and it is unlikely that
anyone who was old enough to take note of that event (far less wrenching than
a nearly five-year war) has forgotten. Moreover, as DuBois wrote, America was

still struggling with the black/white racial fallout from the Civil War, through the

249

 

lingering effects of Reconstruction, the enactment of Jim Crow segregation
laws, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.
Certainly there were other racial minorities in the United States at the time:
Native Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans. But they were all
much smaller than the African American population, and for a variety of reasons
were generally disregarded. Native Americans, for example, were widely
dismissed as mere savages and had, in some cases, only narrowly avoided
the extermination that appeared to be federal government policy in the last half
of the nineteenth century. Those who remained were relegated to reservations
where they had little contact with and little impact upon the general American
populace. Native Americans were already coming to be seen as quaint and
insignificant relics of the nation’s youth, of the frontier that Frederick Jackson
Turner had so recently declared closed. Asian Americans, likewise, were
relatively few in number and tended to be clustered on the West Coast (far from
the population centers of the East) or in relatively small urban enclaves. They
spoke non-European languages and were perceived as foreigners (witness
the internment camps of World War II) rather than as real, however
rn arginalized, members of American society. Hispanics -- mostly Mexican
Americans — were a conquered people and, like Asian Americans, tended to
be concentrated in the Southwest and in small urban enclaves, which
diminished their claim on America’s public awareness.
A century later, the problems of racial division persist. Racism remains

widespread in American society; racially based hatred, bigotry, prejudice and
250

violence show no signs of disappearing, though their frequency and intensity
may have abated. The racially motivated lynchings that occurred on an almost
weekly basis in America throughout the second decade of the twentieth century
may no longer be a rampant plague, but the disease has not been eradicated
either, as the vicious murder of James Byrd Jr., who was dragged to death
behind a pickup truck in Texas in 1998, demonstrated. Wnat has changed
dramatically is the way America, as a nation, thinks about race. The word itself
has been diminished in some ways; in recent years, public discussions have
focused less on "race" and more on ”race and ethnicity,” reflecting the growing
belief, championed by many anthropologists, that the very concept of race is of
dubious scientific value. At the same time, Americans find themselves in a
society that no longer measures itself by the black/white dichotomy that
predominated through the mid-1960s, but in terms of what David Hollinger
called "the ethno-racial pentagon."

This is the set of categories Americans most often confront

when asked to identify themselves by a multitude of public

and private agencies. On application forms and

questionnaires, individuals are routinely invited to declare

themselves to be one of the following: Euro-American (or

sometimes white), Asian American, African American,

Hispanic (or sometimes Latino), and Indigenous Peoples
(or sometimes Native American)?

This five-part categorization of America’s racial/ethnic landscape is new since

1 9 70. The emphasis on ethno-racial demography began in the mid-19603 as a

Way to measure progress toward compliance with federal civil rights and

an ti discrimination legislation by schools, businesses and governmental

251

agencies. At first, the focus was on distinguishing adequately between black
and white. (As I noted in Chapter 3, for example, the 1960 Census did not
differentiate between African Americans and other racial minorities when it
came to enrollments in higher education.) The categories were expanded as
other ethno-racial groups and women began to assert themselves in the late
19603 and demand attention to their grievances and concerns about
discrimination.

As America's population boomed and as Americans became increasingly
mobile, communities and neighborhoods often became less homogenous.
More and more, Americans encountered people from different ethno-racial
groups in the course of their daily activities, and the encounters were not
always pleasant or welcome. Resentments grew as many whites came to
perceive the attention paid to minority groups as an effort to give minorities
"special rights,” rather than as a means to redress past repression and denial
of equal rights. Universities, in particular, came under fire in the 1980s and
1 9903 over affirmative action programs aimed at increasing the numbers of

minority students on campus. Critics began to challenge affirmative action
programs as ”reverse racism” or ”racial quotas” that sought to promote blacks
and other minorities by discriminating against whites. Words like diversity and
m ulticulturalism took on political significance. "Culture wars" erupted over
social values; what liberals promoted in the name of cultural pluralism and
understanding, conservatives attacked as an oppressive political correctness.

"1 a society that was increasingly aware of its cultural diversity, the categories of
252

the ethno-racial pentagon became universally familiar, if not always
appreciated, and were enshrined in law and public awareness.

The old black/white dichotomy of American society has been replaced by the
ethno-racial pentagon, but as Hollinger points out, even that paradigm is
breaking down under the pressures of continuing immigration and growing
public awareness of cultural distinctions. Until fairly recently, for example, it was
common to discuss America’s Hispanic population as though it were
composed of three subgroups: Mexican, Cuban and Puerto Rican. But that
model does not begin to describe the contemporary range of cultural variation
among Spanish-speaking pe0ples of the United States. Since the 19703, the
United States has absorbed substantial Hispanic immigration from such
Central American and South American countries as Nicaragua, Honduras, El
Salvador, Columbia and Bolivia, each with its own distinct cultural heritage. In
the same way, the ethnic and cultural differences between immigrants from
Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, India, Tibet and the Philippines belie
the superficial unity of the single Asian American category. And where did Arab
Americans ever fit within the stiff confines of the ethno—racial pentagon?
Moreover, intermarriage between ethnic groups has profoundly complicated the
simple categories of the ethno-racial pentagon and heightened public
awareness of the extent to which Americans are becoming multiethnic in ways
that the ethno-racial pentagon cannot account for and that the black/white
dichotomy could not even contemplate. Attention paid to the multiracial descent

of celebrities such as Tiger Woods, Mariah Carey, Keanu Reeves, Derek Jeter
253

 

 

 

and Ben Kingsley has further illuminated the public's awareness of America’s
changing ethncracial makeup.
Hollinger sees that as an encouraging sign that America is moving toward

the freedom of a postethnic society in which each person’s ethnic identity is

 

fluid, flexible and self-detennined by voluntary and revocable affiliations, not by
rigid definitions of ethnicity derived solely from one's history of biological

descent. Others are less optimistic. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. looked at the

 

same demographic trends, as well as the dissolution of whole countries into
ethnic conflict, and was prompted to ask: "[Wjill the melting pot give way to the
Tower of Babel?" The danger, he said, is particularly acute in America’s public
schools.

The bonds of national cohesion are sufficiently fragile

already. Public education should aim to strengthen those

bonds, not to weaken them. If separatist tendencies go on

unchecked, the result can only be the fragmentation,

resegregation, and tribalization of American life.3

But whether one’s analysis is optimistic or pessimistic, it is hardly in question

that the awareness of the American public concerning the complexities of the

 

nation's racial diversity has been elevated dramatically since the mid-1960s.
Black/white conflict still gets the lion’s share of the public’s attention; that is
where the special burden of America's history most squarely rests. But
increasingly, Americans are coming to see that the challenge that lies ahead
for the nation is the struggle to build a single society that can accommodate not
two, not even five, but a multitude of ethno-racial definitions. To an important —

if somewhat ironic — extent, that new awareness is a result of the Black
254

Studies movement.

The activists who set out to create Black Studies programs at white colleges
and universities were not looking to cultivate multicultural awareness. Their
aim was to liberate African Americans from the social, political, economic and
intellectual oppression of the past. Even the most conservative integrationists,
who decried the separatist tendencies of the militants, agreed with that much:
the ultimate objective was to improve the circumstances of the African
American community. They disagreed on means to that end. And because
many of the integrationists preferred to work within the existing departments,
and because the intense rhetoric and in-your-face tactics of the militants
generated such discomfort -— inside and outside academia — Black Studies
came to be identified with the confrontational demands and aggressive style of
the militants. Black Studies, the public believed, was about revolution. The
militants said as much, the sit-ins and confrontations with authorities
reinforced the militants' claim, and if there were any doubts in the public mind
about the implications of that revolution, the images of armed black
demonstrators at Cornell erased them.

The vivid images of conflict, confrontation and violence that suffused the
news media served to reinforce in the public’s mind the perception that the
struggle was precisely what the combatants said it was: either a revolution to
destroy white racism and white racist institutions or a defense of society and
intellectual integrity against the forces of chaos. There was enough truth in both

claims to lend plausibility to either analysis of the conflict. Universities, in their

255

 

 

 

history of excluding African Americans and in their failure to undertake the
honest study of African American culture or the contributions of African
Americans to American society, were certainly racist and sometimes

oppressive. At the same time, the tactics of the black militant students were

 

often chaotic, occasionally violent and sometimes ludicrous. The issue of Black

.n.

Studies -- like so many other contentious public issues — came to be defined
by the extremes of the debate.

But the revolution that the militants sought and the public saw was not the
revolution that America got. As with all revolutions, the collision between ideals
and practical realities produced unanticipated -— and sometimes unrecognized
-— outcomes. Mass media have never been good at communicating subtleties
in public discourse because subtleties by their nature are indistinct, murky and
hard to grasp. The media want images that are sharp, clear, easy to express
and easy to understand. Whether that arises from an inherent incapacity of the
media to explain subtle distinctions, as some might argue, or is simply a

reflection of the reading/viewing public’s demand for easily digestible

 

information hardly matters. In either case, the result is news coverage that
oversimplifies, that overlooks variation of opinion, that expresses conflict in the
most polarized terms, that emphasizes the extremes, that is heavy on the
enumeration of demands and light on the explanation of intellectual rationale.
Gil Scott-Heron assailed the tendency of the mass media to oversimplify and
trivialize social protest and explored those discrepancies between image and

substance, between the perceived and the actual in his poem, ”The Revolution
256

Will Not Be Televised.”

The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox

In 4 parts without commercial interruption . . .

The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal . . .

NBC will not predict the winner at 8:32

On the count from 29 districts . . .

The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,

Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom

Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth . . .
The revolution will not be right back after a message

About a white tornado, white lightning or white peOple . . .
The revolution will not go better with Coke.

The revolution will not fight the germs that cause bad breath.
The revolution WILL put you in the driver’s seat.

The revolution will not be televised, WILL not be televised,
WILL NOT BE TELEVISED.

The revolution will be no re-run brothers;

The revolution will be live.‘

Scott-Heron was speaking to the demand for social transformation that was
shaking America far beyond the confines of academia, but the struggles within
American higher education were a part of that. Whether it was academia or the
broader cultural milieu of American society, the mass media sketched the
outlines of the conflict, the stark contrasts, the arresting details on the surface
but often missed the deeper — less dramatic but more profound —- shifting
currents of change.

The revolution that was happening live, that was moving under the radar of
the mass media, the real revolution in higher education - and in the entire
society — the revolution that was not generally being noticed in the pages of
Time Magazine or on the nation’s television screens was a revolution of
perception. America was slowly awakening to the fact that it was not a white

nation, that it was not even a black-and-white nation, that it was a truly

257

multicultural nation whose challenge lay in the necessity of reshaping society
to accommodate the tremendous variety of ethnicity and cultural heritage. The
awakening has been painfully slow and even now is far from complete. It did
not start or end with Black Studies, but Black Studies played an important role
in reshaping America’s awareness of itself.

The birth of the Civil Rights Movement was the first big wake-up call. From
the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on school desegregation and the 1955 bus
boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, the United States was immersed in a war
between a new vision and an old way of thinking. The genius of the Civil Rights
Movement was the way in which it forced America to confront the paradox of its
own injustice toward African Americans. It held up a mirror in which the nation
that prided itself on being “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition
that all men are created equal” could not avoid seeing that it denied liberty and
equality to African Americans. Martin Luther King Jr.’s emphasis on nonviolent
protest confronted racism and discrimination in a way that laid bare the brutality
of white America’s domination of black people. King’s movement was a call to
conscience, a demand that America see reality and act — on the very principles
it claimed to revere -- to correct injustice.

And if King and the Civil Rights Movement had succeeded in prying open
America’s eyes, the Black Studies movement continued the struggle to pry
open America’s mind. Black Studies was, on one level, simply a continuation of
the Civil Rights Movement, an effort to get higher education to open its doors to

African Americans, to enroll more black students, to hire more black faculty. But
258

 

 

 

it was always, because of the nature of academia, about much more. The
university has, since the earliest medieval institutions were created, held a
unique place in Western society as the center of intellectual life. Of course not
every great thinker has been an academician and not every thought emerging
from the ivied halls of the university has been brilliant, but the university is the
one institution whose fundamental role has been the accumulation and
transmission of knowledge in all its forms. A central part of that function has
been a responsibility for careful examination and analysis of society itself.
Black Studies challenged the university to live up to that responsibility, to look at
society in a new way, to consider previously ignored perspectives —— to quite
literally change America’s mind.

In Blackfitudmfiedaamaniflemllmm. Johnella E. Butler asserted that
Black Studies aimed not just to decolonize African Americans politically,
socially and economically but intellectually as well. One source of oppression,
she argued, was the dualistic thinking that forms the foundation of the Western
intellectual tradition, the Cartesian approach that constantly divides the world
into polar opposites and works to separate the mind from the emotive and the
physical realm of human experience. African Americans could begin to throw off
that oppression, she suggested, by looking to African cultural patterns and
modes of thought, modes of thought that sought similarities and connections
rather than differences and divisions.

Central to decolonization then is the ultimate unification

of the duality. What may be termed an either/or world view
(corresponds to Western sensibility) maintains the

259

 

 

 

dichotomized duality of matter and spirit, feeling and
intellect. A both/and world view provides the perspective
and the impetus for the unification of the dichotomy. . . .
This dialogical interaction of contradictions allows for
resolution not through an either/or negation, but through the
interaction and the subsequent evolution of generative
themes . . . Built upon the recognition of equal importance
of the physical and the spiritual, and upon the resultant
entity of their constant interaction, it is a world view that
recognizes humankind's oneness with nature. It
diametrically opposes Western thought in its emphasis on
the intuitive, subjective, and communal and is essential to

a liberating pedagogy.5
Not every black intellectual or even every Black Studies advocate would
necessarily agree with Butler’s analysis. But it is not necessary to agree that
the ”both/and world view” is typical of or peculiar to African American or African
intellectual culture to recognize that the issue Butler raised involves the
fundamental structure and process of the academic enterprise. From this
perspective, the Black Studies movement wasn’t just about expanded access
to the same old higher education, or merely broadening the content of courses,
it was about reshaping the way academia looks at the world. It was about
challenging the fundamental assumptions that guide the work of scholars. That
was the real revolution, the revolution that to a great extent succeeded.

The rhetorical revolution, the revolution that demanded complete autonomy
for Black Studies programs, that demanded intense community involvement,
that pressed separatist demands for blacks-only courses, dorms and cultural
centers, that demanded student control over faculty appointments; that
revolution did not work out as many of the militant black students had so

ardently hoped. Black Studies did not become established on every university

260

 

 

 

campus; hundreds of programs were launched, but the United States has
several thousand colleges and universities. Some of the programs that were
begun did not survive more than a few years. Many programs were chronically
understaffed and underfunded, and relatively few were ever given full

departmental status. None ever had the complete autonomy that the more

 

radical militants demanded. Black Studies programs never became the large,

aggressive, training centers for community activists that many of the militants

 

envisioned. And despite all the turmoil of the late 1960s and early 19703,
despite the incendiary rhetoric, the confrontation, the violence -- threatened
and real — the white institutions of academia were not smashed.

But they were changed. The American college campus of the early twenty-
first century is a very different place from the campus of 1965. There are more
African Americans and other minorities in the student body, on the faculty and in
the administration. The history, literature and culture of African Americans and
other minority groups are far more thoroughly examined in the college
curriculum than they were a generation ago. Scholars spend much more time
and energy in their research studying and addressing the concerns of African
Americans and other minorities than they did in the early 1960s. Today it is not
merely common for scholars in the social sciences and humanities to reflect
an awareness of America’s cultural pluralism in their research, it is expected
that they will. The university is a different place because scholars and
academic administrators came to recognize the breadth and depth of

America’s cultural diversity and accepted the notion that both academia and the
261

whole of American society would benefit from ensuring that the university
reflected that diversity.

Of course, Black Studies was not solely responsible for that change in
institutional perspective. But it played a big part. As an extension of the Civil

Rights Movement, the Black Studies movement was a lever for institutional

 

change. Black Studies was a focal point for pressure on universities to

increase the presence of African Americans on campus. The rapid proliferation

 

of Black Studies programs inspired women, Hispanics, Native Americans,
Asian Americans and others to demand similar programs to address their
cultural history and concerns; it provided, as well, a model for establishing and
organizing those programs. And despite heated debates over the question of
whether Black Studies is a legitimate academic discipline, scholars in Black
Studies programs have produced a substantial body of research and analysis.
As Darlene Clark Hine noted in her examination of Black Studies programs for
the Ford Foundation:

[O]ne fact deserves underscoring. Black Studies

departments and their faculties have proven to be a

continuing source of intellectual stimulation on many

American campuses. Black Studies has opened up vast

and exciting new areas of scholarship, especially in

American history and literature, and has spurred

intellectual inquiry into diverse social problems affecting

the lives of significant portions of the total population.6

Hine noted in her study that she found little evidence to support the

justification of Black Studies by early proponents on grounds that the

interdisciplinary nature of Black Studies break the confines of traditional

262

disciplines. ”Actually, as far as I have been able to discern, most of the
individual scholars in these programs and departments have published works
that are very much in keeping with the mythological canons of the disciplines in
which they were formally trained," Hine wrote.7 But even if Black Studies did not
exactly break the traditional disciplinary mold and establish itself as a truly
interdisciplinary field, it seems clear that the presence and scholarly production
of Black Studies programs prodded scholars in the established, traditional
disciplines to take more seriously the study of African American history and
culture. Black Studies emerged in the first place because the traditional
disciplines had largely ignored African Americans and African American culture.
Thirty-five years later, scholars in the traditional disciplines count more African
Americans among their numbers and regularly address African American
culture in their research and scholarly writing. That is at least partly a result of
the pressure brought to bear on academia by the Black Studies movement.

More than one commentator has observed that part of white America’s
willingness in the 19603 to respect and respond to the civil rights leadership of
Martin Luther King Jr. was the recognition by whites that if they did not deal with
the dignified and respectful demands of King, they might have to deal with the
frightening and defiant anger represented by Malcolm X. Both men were
intelligent, articulate and charismatic leaders who struggled to achieve
freedom and justice for African Americans. Both were assassinated. Both are
widely revered within the African American community. But while King is

honored by a national holiday and his life and speeches are studied even in
263

 

 

 

 

predominantly white schools, Malcolm’s stature still suffers, among whites,
from the lingering image of his militancy, inflammatory rhetoric and association
with separatist ideology.

To some extent, Black Studies has played the role of Malcolm in the
academic worid. The militants did not achieve the revolution they set out to
ignite. The programs they got established have struggled for three decades to
achieve acceptance and respect -- not to mention budgetary support -— within
the university. Black Studies programs were forever tarnished in the minds of
many by the manner and tone of the political conflict that led to their creation,
and by the ideological excesses of their most radical advocates. But all the
while, the fundamental tenet of Black Studies - that African Americans and
African American culture are worthy of serious scholarly study —- has been
increasingly absorbed by and reflected in the traditional academic disciplines.

Black Studies prodded the university to open its mind to a world and a world
view that included African Americans. Once that door was pried open there was
no going back; a mind once stretched to contain a new idea never returns to its
former shape. An intellectual world that suddenly included African Americans
quickly expanded to include women, Native Americans, Hispanics, Asian
Americans and others. Now it is even possible to consider, as Hollinger does,
a society (and an academy) whose intellectual currents overflow even those
expanded boundaries. It may not be the new world imagined by the activist
black students who fought so hard for Black Studies so many years ago, but it

is a new world nonetheless.

264

 

 

 

NOTES

CHAPTER 1

1. Maralyn Edid. WW Ithaca, N.Y.: lLR
Press. 1994. pp. 34-43.

2. Roland Dewing WW
Semnilneldent New York: lrvington Publishers Inc. 1985. pp 38-68.

3. Aldon D. Morris. Iheflugmseimefimifllgbtsflmtement New York: Free
Press. 1984. pp. 51—63; and Martin Luther King Jr. W San
Francisco: Harper & Row. 1958. pp. 43-89.

4. Clayborne Carson. msmlagle. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
1981. pp. 9-30.

5. Doug McAdam. Eneedemfiummec. New York: Oxford University Press. 1988.
pp. 161-232.

6. Maulana Karenga. “The Black Community and the University: A Community
Organizer’s Perspective,” in Armstead L. Robinson, Craig C. Foster, and

Donald H. Ogilvie, editors, W New
Haven: Yale University Press. 1969. p. 37.

7. Eldridge Cleaver. ”Education and Revolution,” War: 1.2 1969. p. 51.
8. David Brion Davis. ”Reflections,” in Armstead L. Robinson, Craig C. Foster,
and Donald H. Ogilvie, editors, BlackStudieemJbeJJnhtetsimesitmmsium.
New Haven: Yale University Press. 1969. pp. 216217.

9. Gil Scott-Heron. ”The Revolution Vifill Not Be Televised,” in African American
EDBIQL Paramus. N.J.: Globe Book Company. 1993. pp. 48-50.

265

CHAPTER 2

1. Charles Homer Haskins. Ibeflseefllnixecsifles. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press. 1957. pp. 1-2.

2. Charles Homer Haskins. We Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press. 1957. p. 2.

3. Charles Homer Haskins. Ihefiiseefllnixersifles. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press. 1957. p. 28.

4. Charles Homer Haskins. IhefiiseeLUnixetsities. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press. 1957. p. 5.

5. Charles Homer Haskins. Ibefiiseotflnixecsities. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press. 1957. p. 5.

6. John S. meacher and Willis Rudy. W

W New York. Harper& Row.
1968. p. 13.

7. John S Brubacher and Willis Rudy. HiobeLEducatimlnltansiflMbIstom.

W New York. Harper 8: Row.
1968. p. 7.

8. John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy. HigbeLEducatiaanlransitlomAJtistem.
W New York: Harper & Row.
1968. p. 61.

9. John Henry Newman. IbeJdmeLaJlnixersity. Notre Dame, lnd.: Notre
Dame University Press. 1982. p. WI.

10. John Henry Newman. IheJdeaeLaJlnixecsihL Notre Dame, lnd.: Notre
Dame University Press. 1982. pp. xlii-xliv.

11. Helen Lefltowitz Horowitz. CampueLife_Undemraduate.Cultunes.tmm.tbe_

Endeflbefigbteenmfiammbeflmsent Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press. 1987. p. 6.

12. “The Yale R690“ of 1828.” in ASHEBeademnlbehlstdmcLngber.
Education, Lester F. Goodchild and Harold S. Wechsler, editors. Needham
Heights, Mass: Ginn Press. 1989. p. 174.

13. Ralph Waldo Emerson. ”The American Scholar,” in Ihe Selected Writings of
Ralphflaldeimersen. New York: Random House. 1992. p. 59.

266

 

 

 

14. Ralph Waldo Emerson. ‘The American Scholar," in W
BalnLiNaldnimersnn. New York: Random House. 1992. p. 49.

15. John S Brubacher and Willis Rudy. UigheLEdiicatinanlransitinmA.
W New York: Harper &
Row. 1968. p. 110.

16. John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy. WA.
histnnLntAmenoamcnuegesendviniverW New Yorlc Harper &
Row. 1968p. 98.

17. Julie Thompson Klein. tnterdisninfinanmvflismlnennrurantine Detroit.
Wayne State University Press. 1990. pp. 21-22.

18. Christopher Jencks and David Riesman. IbeAcedemicBemliitinn. Garden
City, N.Y.: Anchor Books. 1969. p. 161.

19. Christopher Jencks and David Riesman. IheAcademinfievnlutinn. Garden
City, N.Y.: Anchor Books. 1969. p. 94.

20. Abraham Flexner. Universities. New York: Oxford University Press. 1930.
pp. 47—48.

21. Abraham Flexner. Universities. New York: Oxford University Press. 1930.
p. 83.

22. Abraham Flexner. Universities. New York: Oxford University Press. 1930.
p. 27.

23. John Frederick Martin. ErnfitanJbeJMtdemess. Chapel Hill, NC:
University of North Carolina Press. 1991. p. 116.

24. Clark Kerr. IbeUsesnLtheUniversitv Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
University Press. 2001 (1963). p. 6.

25. Clark Kerr. IbeJJsesnttbeJtnimrsinL Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
University Press. 2001 (1963). p. 6.

26. Clark Kerr. IheJisesnttheUniversitv Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
University Press. 2001 (1963). pp. 13-14.

27. Clark Kerr. IheJlseanLtheJJniversitv. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
University Press. 2001 (1963). p. 7.

267

 

 

 

CHAPTER 3

1 August Meier and Elliott Rudwick. BlacLHistnmendtbeHistnnmL
W Urbana: University of lllin0is Press. 1986. p. 5, also

Earl E. Thorpe. BlackflistnnanLAfintiaue. New York: William Monow and
Company. 1971. pp. 74-75, 82

2. Earl E. Thorpe. BlackflstnriansACriticue. New York: William Morrow and
Company. 1971. pp. 85-86

3. August Meier and Elliott Rudwick. BlackflistnrvandtbeflistnricaL
W80. Urbana: Universityoflllinois Press. 1986. p 6

4. August Meier and Elliott Rudwick BlackhistnmendmwstnricaL
W Urbana: University oflllinois Press. 1986. pp. 1-2; also

Earl E. Thorpe. BlaclLHistnrienLALritique. New Yorlc \Mlliam Morrow and
Company. 1971. pp. 108-118

 

5. August Meier and Elliott Rudwick. BlackflstnnuandtbeflistnricaL
W Urbana: University of "Mom Press. 1986. p. 71

6. August Meier and Elliott Rudwick. BlackflistcrvandtheflistnrimL
W Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1986. p. 3

7. ArthurA. Schomburg. BaciaUntearithfleainLtbeEstablisbmentpteraiL

cLNegrnhistnnLimnuLSchnclsandficllegesflc. (Read Before the Teachers'
Summer Class at Cheney Institute, July 1913); Chesapeake, Virginia, ECA

Associates, 1990, pp. 18-19.

8. Earl E. Thorpe. BlacLHistnrians..A.Criticiie. New York: William Morrow and
Company. 1971. pp. 173-188; also August Meier and Elliott Rudwick. Black.

HistanandJlnHistnficaLErntessianmmm Urbana: University of Illinois
Press. 1986. pp. 73-238

9. Hare, Nathan. “Questions and Answers About Black Studies," in IheAfn'cerL

Americanfludiesfleader. Nathaniel Norment Jr editor. Durham, N. C.:
Carolina Academic Press. 2001 p.19.

10. William E. Nelson, Jr. AtncnlngvirnmSocialMcvementtnAcedemic.
Discipline. Columbus, Ohio: Center for Research and Public Policy, The Ohio
State University. (Date uncertain; probably 1988), pp. 14-15

11. August Meier and Elliott Rudwick. W
W Urbana: University of lllmors Press. 1986. p. 94

12. Stephen Alan Jones. CampusendLnrnrnuninLOriginscflNavneflate.
268

 

 

 

 

UntimsitvisCenteunLBlecLStudies. Master's thesis. Michigan State
University. 1993. p. 34

13. Statistir‘aLAbstractcttheJinitedflates. 1980. Washington, DC: US.
Bureau of the Census. 1980. p. 166

14. StetistiraLAbstractcttbeUnitedfletes, 1980. Washington, DC: US.
Bureau of the Census. 1980. pp. 166-167

15. Nathan Hare. "What Should Be the Role of Afro-American Education in the

Undergraduate Curriculum?" in NemEerspectivesmBlacLfitudies, John W.
Blassingame, editor. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1971. pp. 3-4.

16 Michele Russell. “Erased, Debased, and Encased: The Dynamics of African

Educational Colonization in America,” in NevLEerspectivescnfllacLStudies.
JohnW. Blassingame, editor. Urbana: University of "know Press. 1971. p. 53.

17. Personal recollection of the author.

18. Talmadge Anderson. “Black Studies: Overview and Theoretical

Perspectives,“ in Talmadge Anderson, editor. Blackfitudretheneretbnd.
and_C‘.ultiiraLEerspectives. Pullman, Wash; Washington State University Press.
1990. p. 1.

19. Talmadge Anderson. “Black Studies: Overview and Theoretical

Perspectives," in Talmadge Anderson, editor, BIackfitudiethennLMetbnd.

andLulturaLEerspectives. Pullman, Wash: Washington State University Press.
1990 p. 2

20. Nellie Vamer. “Initial Report Assessing Available Courses and Alternative
Approaches to the Creation of a Program in Afro-American Studies.“ Sept.
1968, files, College of Literature, Science and the Arts, Michigan Historical
Collections, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

21. Armstead L. Robinson, Craig C Foster and Donald H Ogilvie, editors.

W New Haven. Yale University
Press. 1969. p.225.

22. Nick Aaron Ford. BlacLStudiesilbreahnrzcmllengeZPort Washington,
N..:Y Kennikat Press 1973. pp. 191-95.

23. Robert L. Allen. “Politics of the Attack on Black Studies,“ in IbeAfrican.

Americanfitiidiesfieader. Nathaniel Norrnent Jr., editor. Durham, N. C.:
Carolina Academic Press. 2001. p. 491, 494.

24. Manning Marable. “Introduction: Black Studies and the Racial Mountain," in
269

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dispatchesirnmtbeibnnvlnviei‘. edited by Manning Marable. New York:
Columbia University Press. 2000. p. 10.

25 Darlene Clark Hine. "Black Studies: An Overview, " reprinted in Africana.
WWW edited by James L.
Conyers Jr. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1997. p. 7.

26. Stephen Alan Jones. CammsendfinmmmMmmscLWavmfim

UniiiersitiszLentectnLBlaclcStudies. Master's thesis. Michigan State
University. 1993. p. 66

27. Clark Kerr. IbeUsescttheJtniversitv Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
University Press. 2001. pp. 127-128.

28. John W. Blassingame. “Black Studies: An Intellectual Crisis," inNeiiiL

EerspectivesntlacILStudies. JohnW. Blassingame, editor. Urbana:
University of IIImors Press 1971. pp. 152-153.

29. Kenneth B. Clark. “A Charade of Power: Black Students at White Colleges,"

inUevLEerspectivescmBlackflud'ies. John W. Blassingame, editor. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press. 1971. pp. 118-119. [Reprinted from The Antioch

Review XXIX, no. 2 (Summer 1969): 145-48.]

30. Stephen Lythcott. "Black Studies at Antioch," in NmEersnectivesnnBIaclL
Studies John W. Blassingame, editor. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

1971. pp. 149-154.

31. Roger A. Fischer. "Ghetto and Gown: The Birth of Black Studies," in Men

Eerspectivescnflackfitudies. John W. Blassingame, editor. Urbana:
University of "know Press. 1971. p.19.

32. Doug McAdam. Ereednmfiummer. New York: Oxford University Press.
1988. p. 163.

33. For a thorough examination of SNCC, see: Clayborne Carson. tnfitnigalei.

WWW Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
University Press. 1981.

34. Doug McAdam. Ereedcmfiiimmer. New York: Oxford University Press.
1988.p.166.

35. Mario Savio. “An End to History," in Massimo Teodori, ad., The New Left: A
Documentary History. Indianapolis. Bobbs-Merrill. 1969. p. 159. Cited in

Clayborne Carson. WWW
Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. 1981. p. 129.

270

 

 

36. Stephen Alan Jones. WW

UniversibL’sCanterioLBlackfitudies. Master’s thesis. Michigan State
University. 1993 p. 38

37. Stephen Alan Jones. WWW

UniversitvisLenteLtnLBlacLStudies. Master’s thesis. Michigan State
University. 1993. p. 38

38. Stephen Alan Jones. WW

UniversinCsLentertnLBlackfimdies. Master’s thesis. Michigan State
University. 1993. p. 38

39. Manning Marable. “Introduction: Black Studies and the Racial Mountain,“ in

Manning Marable, ed., DEW New York: Columbia
University Press. 2000. p. 11.

40. Roger Rapoport. “Black Institute Studies at WSU,“ ScumEnd 22 Jan. 1969.
p. 17.

41. Talmadge Anderson. “Black Studies. Overview and Theoretical

Perspectives, in Talmadge Anderson, editor, W

and_CuItiireLEerspectives. Pullman, Wash; Washington State University Press.
1990. pp. 1-2

CHAPTER 4

1. Christopher Jencks and David Riesman. IbeAcademicBevnlutinn. Garden
City, N.Y.: Anchor Books. 1969. p. 12

2. Christopher Jencks and David Riesman. IheAcedemicBemluticn. Garden
City, N.Y.: Anchor Books. 1969. p. 12

3. Gerald A. McWorter. “Deck the Ivy Racist Halls: The Case of Black Studies, in
Armstead L. Robinson, Craig C. Foster and Donald H. Ogilvie. BIacIrStudiean.

tbeUnivemASvmpnsium. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1969. p. 56

4. Eldon L. Johnson. "Race and Reform, " in John W. Blassingame, editor, NevL
EerspectivesjnfllacILStudies. Urbana: University oflllinois Press. 1971. p. 77

5. Eldon L. Johnson. "Race and Reform," in John W. Blassingame, editor, New.
EerspectivesILBlackfitudies. Urbana: University oflllinois Press. 1971. p. 78

6. Eldon L. Johnson. "Race and Reform," in John W. Blassingame, editor, New.

WW Urbana: University of IllinOIs Press. 1971. pp.
81 -82

271

 

 

 

7. Michele Russell. ”Erased, Debased, and Encased: The Dynamics of African
Educational Colonization in America,” in John W. Blassingame, editor. New.

Eerspecfiveannflacksmm Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1971p. 46

8. Hine, Darlene Clark, "Black Studies: An Overview," in Africana Studies: A
Disciplinary Quest for Both Theory and Method, edited by James L. Conyers Jr.,
pp. 7-15; Jefferson, N. C.: McFarland 6: Company, 1997. pp. 10-11

9. Donald H. Ogilvie. “A Student’s Reflections,“ in Armstead L Robinson, Craig

C. Foster, and Donald H. Ogilvie, editors, BlackjmdieanJbeJJniversinrcA.
Svmpcsiiim. New Haven. Yale University Press. 1969. pp. 81-82

10. Nathan Hare. “A Radical Perspective on Social Science Curricula, in
ArmsteadL. Robinson, Craig C. Foster, and Donald H. Ogilvie, editors, Black.

StudieantbeUniversinLLASvmpcsium. New Haven. Yale University Press.
1969. p. 105

11. Eugene D. Genovese. “Black Studies: Trouble Ahead,“ in John W.

Blassingame, editor, NeMLEerspectivesmflecLSmdies Urbana: University of
Illinois Press. 1971. pp. 109- 110

12. Stephen Lythcott. “Black Studies at Antioch, in John W Blassingame,

editor, Newfierspectivescnfllackfitudies Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
1971. pp. 124-125 [Reprinted from IheAntinanevieivXXlX no. 2(Summer
1989):149-54.]

13. Stephen Lythcott. “Black Studies at Antioch, in John W. Blassingame,
editor, NemEerspectivesmBlaclLStudies. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
1971. pp. 126-127 [Reprinted from IbeAntimfleiaeivXXIX no. 2 (Summer
1969): 149-54.]

14. Kenneth B. Clark. "Letter of Resignation From Board of Directors of Antioch

College, " in Black.Studies_Mvths.&.Bealities. A. Philip Randolph Educational
Fund, 1969. pp. 32-33

15. Roy Wilkins. "The Case Against Separatism: “Black Jim Crow, "' in Black.

StudiesmitthsLBealities. A. Philip Randolph Edumtional Fund, 1969.
pp. 38- 39

16. Roy Wilkins. "The Case Against Separatism: ’Black Jim Crow, in Black.
Studies_Mvths_&_BeaIities. A. Philip Randolph Educational Fund, 1969. pp. 38

17. Roy Wilkins. ”The Case Against Separatism: 'Black Jim Crow, "' in Black
Studies:.Mvtbs.&.Bealities. A. Philip Randolph Edumtional Fund, 1969. pp. 39

272

 

 

 

18. RogerA. Fischer. “Ghetto and Gown: The Birth of Black Studies," in John W.

Blassingame, editor, NevLEerspectniemBIackStudies Urbana: University of
Illinois Press. 1971. pp. 24-26

19. Roger A. Fischer. “Ghetto and Gown: The Birth of Black Studies," in John W.

Blassingame, editor, NemEersnectivesmBlackfitudies Urbana: University of
Illinois Press. 1971. p. 26

20. August Meier and Elliott Rudwick. BlacLHistnnLandeeHistcricaL
Erntessinn._10.1.5_-.19.80. Urbana: University of "know Press. 1986. p.292

21. August Meier and Elliott Rudwick. BlacILHistnmandthehistnricaL
ErniessinnAfilLlfiBfl. Urbana: University of IllinOis Press. 1986. p. 291

22. C. Vann Woodward. “Clio With Soul,“ in BlackfitudiesJidbsLBealities. A
Philip Randolph Educational Fund. 1969. pp. 16-31

23. John W. Blassingame. “Black Studies: An Intellectual Crisis, in John W.

Blassingame, editor, NevLEerspectivescnflaclLStudii-‘is. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press. 1971. pp 154-155

24. Jan Gorak. IheMakinchtbeMcdernLancn. London: Athlone Press. 1991.
p. 222

25. Nathan I. Huggins. Afrn=AmericanStudies New York: Ford Foundation.
1985.p.13

26. Nathan I. Huggins. Afrn:Amenmn_Studies. New York: Ford Foundation.
1985.p.14

27. Allan Bloom. IhefllnsinanttbeAmericamMind. New York: Simon and
Schuster. 1987. p. 380

28. William Casement. IbefireatfiennnCnntrnversv New Bninswick, N.J.:
Transaction Publishers. 1996. p. 39

29. MLAJnternatinneLBihilingraphvflfi. New Yorlc New York University
Press. 1965: pp. 136-149

30.MLA.lnternatinnaLBibiIinarapbv_1915. New York: Modern Languages
Association ofAmerica. 1975: pp. 153-186.

31. Hine, Darlene Clark, "Black Studies. An Overview," in W
DisdplinaryflnesLtmchtthenqrandMethod, edited by James L. Conyers Jr.,
pp. 7-15; Jefferson, N .C.: McFarland 8: Company, 1997. p. 9

273

 

 

32. Armstead L. Robinson. “A Concluding Statement,“ In Armstead L.
Robinson, Craig C. Foster, and Donald H. Ogilvie, editors, BIacILStudieanJhe.

Universitv_A.Svmpcsiurn. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1969. p. 207

33. Julie Thompson Klein. WWW Detroit:
Wayne State University Press. 1990. p. 20

34. Julie Thompson Klein. WWW Detroit:
Wayne State University Press. 1990; Charles Homer Haskins. Ihe.Bise_ct.

Universities. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press. 1957; Christopher Jencks
and David Riesman. IbeAcadernnBevnIiitinn. Garden City, N. Y.: Anchor
Books. 1969; and Abraham Flexner. Universities. New York: Oxford University
Press. 1930.

35. Julie Thompson Klein. WW Detroit:
Wayne State University Press. 1990. p. 21

36. Julie Thompson Klein. lnterdiscipflnantyrflistnmlhenniifiractice. Detroit:
Wayne State University Press. 1990. pp. 21-22

37. Julie Thompson Klein. lnterdisciplinarity..l:tistnnr.lbecry._&.l2ractice Detroit:
Wayne State University Press. 1990. p. 22

38. Julie Thompson Klein. lnterdisciplinanMHistnrvillienMEractice Detroit:
Wayne State University Press. 1990.Klein, p. 23

39. Julie Thompson Klein. lnterdisdplinaritLUistnnLWEractice. Detroit:
Wayne State University Press. 1990.Klein, pp. 25—34

40. Julie Thompson Klein. WWW Detroit:
Wayne State University Press. 1990. p. 34

41. Julie Thompson Klein. tnterdisciplinarity.l:listnni..lbenni..&£ractice Detroit:
Wayne State University Press. 1990. p. 36

42. David Halliburton. "Interdisciplinary Studies, " in Arthur W. Chickering and

Associates, IbeMndernAmeriranLnllege. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishers. 1981. p. 460

43. David Halliburton. "Interdisciplinary Studies, " in Arthur W. Chickering and

Associates, IheMndernAmericanLcllege. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishers. 1981. p. 462

44. David Halliburton. "Interdisciplinary Studies, " in Arthur W. Chickering and

Associates, IbeMndernAmericanLnllege. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishers. 1981. p. 456

274

 

 

45. David Halliburton. "Interdisciplinary Studies, " in Arthur W. Chickering and

Associates, IheMcdernAmencanficuege San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishers. 1981. p. 454

46. William V. Mayville. lnterdisciplinaritLIheMutableflaradiam. Washington,
D. C. American Association for Higher Education. 1978. pp. 6-7

47. Julie Thompson Klein. WW Detroit:
Wayne State University Press. 1990. p. 38

48. Winnie BengeIsdorf. WW
and_Bthicaranhy. Washington, D. C.: American Association of State Colleges

and Universities. August, 1972. p. 18

49. Hine, Darlene Clark, "Black Studies: An Overview," in Africana Studies: A
Disciplinary Quest for Both Theory and Method, edited by James L. Conyers Jr.,
pp. 7-15; Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland 8: Company, 1997. p. 7

50. Carlos A. Brossard. ”Classifying Black Studies Programs," in Nathaniel

Norment Jr., editor, IneAtncanAmericanjtudtesBeadi-‘ir. Durham, N. C.:
Carolina Academic Press. 2001. p. 67

51. Carlos A. Brossard. "Classifying Black Studies Programs, " in Nathaniel
Norment Jr, editor, WW Durham, N. C.:
Carolina Academic Press. 2001. pp. 66- 67

52 Carlos A Brossard. "Classifying Black Studies Programs," in Nathaniel

Norment Jr., editor, IbeAtriranAmericanfitiidiesBeader Durham, N. 0.:
Carolina Academic Press 2001. p. 65

53 Carlos A. Brossard. "Classifying Black Studies Programs," in Nathaniel
Norment Jr., editor, IneAtncanAniericanStudiesRmder. Durham, N. C.
Carolina Academic Press. 2001. p. 67

54. Donald H. Ogilvie. "A Student's Reflections, " in Armstead L. Robinson,
Craig C. Foster, and Donald H. Ogilvie, editors, BlacILStudieantbeJlniversitv'.
W New Haven: Yale University Press. 1969. p. 81

55. Tom Raymond. “Wayne’s Black Conscience.“ ScutnEnd. 18 May 1970:
p. 12

CHAPTER 5

1. Peny A Hall. anbeMnevardiminanAtrimnAmencanfitudies. Knoxville,
275

 

 

 

Tenn: The University of Tennessee Press. 1999. p. 35

2. \Mlliam E. Nelson Jr. AfricnlngLErnmjnciaIMovenienttdAcademic.
Discipline Columbus, Ohio: Center for Research and Public Policy, The Ohio
State University, (no copyright date listed; internal reference is made to study of
courses at various campuses during the 1987-88 academic year and to
interviews with faculty members of several schools in the winter of 1988) p. 20

3. Robert L. Allen. “Politics of the Attack on Black Studies,“ in IbeAtrican.
Amencan_Studies.Beader, Nathaniel Norment, editor. Durham, N. C.: Carolina
Academic Press. 2001. p 493. Originally published inBlacILScnnlaLS, No. 1
(Sept. 1974): pp. 2-7

4. Martin Luther King Jr. MereDnJNafieEmHereLChamptCnmmunith
Boston: Beacon Press. 1967. p. 43

5. Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton. W
UheratianeAmerica. New York. Random House. 1967. p. 37

6. Eldridge Cleaver. QniheldeclnavthInBlacILEanflieLEartv San Francisco:
Ministry of Information, Black Panther Party. c. 1970. p. 12; Special Collections,

Michigan State University Library, East Lansing.

7. Bayard Rustin. “Introduction,” inBlackfitudieeMvtbsARealitim. New York:
A. Philip Randolph Educational Fund. 1969. p. 5

8 Kenneth 8. Clark. “Letter of Resignation From Board of Directors of Antioch

College,“ in BlacLStudies_Midbs.&_Bealities. New York: A Philip Randolph
Educational Fund. 1969. p. 33

9. Roy Wilkins. “The Case Against Separatism: ‘Black Jim Crow, ’“ in Black.

Studies_Mvtns_&.Bealities New York. A. Philip Randolph Educational Fund.
1969. pp. 38-39

10. Roy Wilkins. “The Case Against Separatism: “Black Jim Crow,” in Black.

W New York: A Philip Randolph Educational Fund.
1969. p 39

11 Harold Cruse. "The lntegrationist Ethic as a Basis for Scholarly Endeavors, "

in Blackfitudiesinmeumveismsiimpnsium. Armstead L. Robinson, Craig
C. Foster and Donald H. Ogilvie, editors. New Haven: Yale University Press.

1969.p.4

12. Harold Cruse. "The Integrationist Ethic as a Basis for Scholarly Endeavors, "
in BlaclrStudieanJbeUniversithSvmpcsium. Armstead L. Robinson, Craig
C. Foster and Donald H. Ogilvie, editors. New Haven. Yale University Press.

276

 

 

 

1969. pp. 9—10

13. Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton. BlaclLEniverLIbefinlitmpf.
LiberatiannArnerica. New York: Random House 1967 p 44

14. Robert Blauner. “Intemal Colonialism and Ghetto Revolt.“ ScciaLErnblems
16.41969. pp. 394-95

15. Nathan Hare. "What Should Be the Role of Afro-American Education in the
Undergraduate Curriculum?” in NemEersnectivasanlackStudies. John W.
Blassingame, editor. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1971. p. 14

16. Maulana Karenga. “The Black Community and the University. A Community
Organizer’s Perspective,“ in Armstead L. Robinson, Craig C. Foster and Donald

H. Ogilvie, editOfS,BlaCLSIUdlflS.tD_fl1EJlm¥B£Sll¥_A.S¥mmsmm New Haven.
Yale University Press. 1969. pp. 37- 38

 

17. Eldridge Cleaver. “Education and Revolution.“BIack_Schnlar 1.1 1969. p. 51

18. Bobby Scale. “Revolutionary Action on Campus and Community.“ Black
Scholar 1.2 1969. p. 5

19. Stephen Lythcott. “Black Studies at Antioch,“ in John W. Blassingame,

editor, NemEerspectivesmBIackfludies. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
1971. pp. 126-27

20. Darlene Clark Hine. “Black Studies: An Overview“ inIhreeEssavsLBIac'i.
Studiean.tbe.United.States. New York: Ford Foundation. 1990. p. 15

21. Stephen Alan Jones. Campusendfinmmunitvfliginspflnlavnesmte

UniversitvsCenteLtnLBIacIrStudies Master’s thesis. Michigan State
University. 1993. p. 20

22. Roy Wilkins. “The Case Against Separatism: “Black Jim Crow, ’“ in Black.

SW New York. A. Philip Randolph Educational Fund.
1969 p.39

23. Bayard Rustin. “Introduction,“ in BlacLStiid'ies._Mvtbs_&.Bealities New York:
A. Philip Randolph Educational Fund. 1969. p. 6

24. William E. Nelson Jr. AtricnlngvarnmScciaLMcvementtnAcademic.
Discipline Columbus, Ohio: Center for Research and Public Policy, The Ohio

State University, 19?? (no copyright date listed; internal reference is made to
study of courses at various campuses during the 1987-88 academic year and
to interviews with faculty members of several schools in the winter of
1988)(paper apparently was intended to be included [as a chapter?] in a book,

277

 

 

Africology: Conceptual Foundations, to be edited by Winston Van Horne) p. 20

25. Darlene Clark Hine. “Black Studies: An Overview, inIhreefissevszlack.
StudiesJiLtbeJJnitedStater-‘i. New York: Ford Foundation. 1990. p. 17

26. Maulana Karenga. tntrnductianeBlackStudies. Los Angeles: University of
Sankore Press. 2002. p. xiii

27. Molefi Kate Asante. Ahmentdcitv Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press. 1988.
(1980.) p. x

28. James B. Stewart. "Reaching for Higher Ground. Toward and
Understanding of Black/Africana Studies, " in IbeAfdcanAmericanStiidies.
Reader. Nathaniel Norment, editor. Durham, N. C: Carolina Academic Press.
2001.p.357

29. Johnella E. Butler. BlackStudies_Eedagcgv.and_Bevnluticn. Lanham, Md:
University Press of America. 1981. p. 16

30. Nathan Hare. "What Should Be the Role of Afro-American Education in the

Undergraduate Curriculum?" in NeMLEerspectivesprLBlacLStudies. John W.
Blassingame, editor. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1971. p. 13

31 PhilipTHK Daniel. "Theory Building in Black Studies, inIheAfn’can.
AmericanStudiesfieader. Nathaniel Norment, editor. Durham, N. C.: Carolina
Academic Press. 2001. p. 377

32. June J.ordan "Black Studies: Bringing Back the Person, " in New.
John W. Blassingame, editor. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press. 1971. p. 29

33. Johnella E. Butler. BlackSnidIeSLEedeacgvandRevnliitinn Lanham, Md:
University Press of America. 1981. pp. 96-97

34. David Brion Davis. “Reflections,” in BlacKStudiesentheJiniversith
Svmpcsiiim. Armstead L Robinson. Craig C. Foster and Donald H. Ogilvie,

editors. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1969. p. 218

35. David Brion Davis. “Reflections,”

nBllSll' III II' 'I!
Svmpnsiiim. Armstead L Robinson, Craig C. Foster and Donald H. Ogilvie,
editors. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1969. p.219

36. McGeorge Bundy. “Some Thoughts on Afro—American Studies, in Black.
StudiescndtheUniversMSvmpnsiurn. Armstead L Robinson, Craig C.

Foster and Donald H. Ogilvie, editors. New Haven. Yale University Press. 1969.
p. 176

278

37. McGeorge Bundy. “Some Thoughts on Afro-American Studies,“ in Black.
StudiesentheJJniversMSvmpnsium. Armstead L Robinson, Craig C.
Foster and Donald H. Ogilvie, editors. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1969.
p. 174

38. Peny A Hall. uLtheMnevardMlcrkincinAfncanAmericaeStudies

Knoxville, Tenn: The University of Tennessee Press. 1999. p. 23

39. Eugene D. Genovese. “Black Studies: Trouble Ahead,“ in NevLEerspectives.
nn.BlaclLStudies. John W. Blassingame, editor. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press. 1971. p. 105 [Reprinted from The Atlantic Monthly CCXXII (June, 1969):
37-41 .1

40. Eugene D. Genovese. “Black Studies: Trouble Ahead,“ in NevLEerspectivcs.
nn_Black.Studies. John W. Blassingame, editor. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press. 1971. p. 107 [Reprinted from The Atlantic Monthly CCXXII (June, 1969):
37-41.]

41. Eugene D. Genovese. “Black Studies: Trouble Ahead,“ in NevLEeispectives.
cn_Black_Studies. John W. Blassingame, editor. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press. 1971. p. 113-114 [Reprinted from The Atlantic Monthly CCXXII (June,
1969): 37.41 .1

CHAPTER 6

1. Darlene Clark Hine. "Black Studies: An Overview," in James L. Conyers Jr.,
edltOI', ..:-IV: a: - ' ‘ ‘ . z.. . .. .
Jefferson, N. C.: McFarland & Company, 1997.7

2. Orrick, William H. Jr. ShutJLDmvainlegeJnLrisis. A staff report.

Washington, DC: National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of
Violence. June 1969. pp. 77-78, 115

3. Orrick, William H. Jr. ShutJtDcwnALcllegeJnfinsis. A staff report.

Washington, DC: National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of
Violence. June 1969. p. 5; Algo D. Henderson. "San Francisco State College: A
Tale of Mismanagement and Disruption, " in David Riesman and Verne A.
Stadtman, eds. Academiclranstcrmaticn_Seventeen.lnstitutinns_Under_
Pressure sponsored by The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. New
York: McGraw-Hill. 1973. p. 291

 

4. Algo D. Henderson. "San Francisco State College. A Tale of Mismanagement
and Disruption," in David Riesman and Verne A. Stadtman, eds, Academic.

IranstcnnatinmSeventeeanstituticnlendeLEressure, sponsored by The
279

 

 

 

Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1973.
p. 292

5. John H. Bunzel. “Black Studies at San Francisco State,“ in Nathaniel
Norment Jr ed, WW Durham, N. C.: Carolina
Academic Press. 2001. pp. 201-202

6. Orrick, William H. Jr. W A staff report.

Washington, DC: National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of
Wolence. June 1969. p. 96

7. Orrick, William H. Jr. WW3. A staff report.

Washington, DC: National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of
Violence. June 1969. p. 117

8. Orrick, VWliam H. Jr. ShutJLDnmn_A.Cnllege_in_Crisi3 A staff report.

Washington, DC: National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of
Violence. June 1969. p. 115

9. Orrick, \Mlliam H. Jr. snuuinmirniacaiiegeincnsis. A staff report.

Washington, DC: National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of
Violence. June 1969. pp. 23-27

10. John H. Bunzel. “Black Studies at San Francisco State“ in Nathaniel

Norment Jr ed, IneAtn'canAmericanStudiesBeader. Durham, N. C.: Carolina
Academic Press. 2001. pp. 199- 200

11. John H. Bunzel. “Black Studies at San Francisco State,“ in Nathaniel

Norment Jr ed., IbeAtrimnAmericanStudieeReader. Durham, N. C.: Carolina
Academic Press. 2001. pp. 204

12. Orrick, Vlfllliam H. Jr. W A staff report.

Washington, DC: National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of
Violence. June 1969. pp. 120-123. Most of the factual information for
subsequent narrative passages is taken from Orrick’s report. Henderson’s
assessment is less detailed but agrees on the essential facts.

13. Orrick, William H. Jr. Sbuth_Dnan_ACnllegein_Crisis. A staff report.

Washington, DC: National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of
Violence. June 1969. p. 121

14. Orrick, William H. Jr. SbuLlLDcivnACnllegeJnCrisis A staff report.

Washington, DC: National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of
Violence. June 1969. p. 51

15. Orrick, Vlfilliam H. Jr. W3]; A staff report.
280

 

 

 

 

Washington, DC: National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of
Violence. June 1969. p. 51

16. Orrick, William H. Jr. W3. A staff report.
Washington, DC: National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of

Violence. June 1969. p. 52

17. Orrick, William H. Jr. ShutJLDnivnACnllegeJnfirisis. A staff report.

Washington, DC: National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of
Violence. June 1969. p. 52

18. Orrick, William H. Jr. ShutJLDnvrnALnIlegeJnCrisis. A staff report.

Washington, DC: National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of
Violence. June 1969. p. 70

19. Nathan I. Huggins. Atrc:American_Studies. New York: Ford Foundation.
1985.p.23

20. Morton Keller and Phyllis Keller. Makingflanrardflcdemmflsenf.
AmencalsJJnlversitv New York: Oxford University Press. 2001.

21. Morton Keller and Phyllis Keller MahmflanmfiMndernilheBisecf.
AmeriraisUniversitv. New York: Oxford University Press. 2001. p. 285

22. Henry Rosovsky. "Black Studies at Harvard."Arnerican_SchclaL 38:4,
Autumn 1969. pp. 562-563

23. Henry Rosovsky. "Black Studies at Harvard." W 38:4,
Autumn 1969. p. 563

24. Lawrence E. Eichel, Kenneth W. Jost, Robert D. Luskin, and Richard M.
Neustadt. W Boston: Houghton Mifllin. 1970. p. 262-263

25. Morton Keller and Phyllis Keller. MakingilanmrdflcderntheBisect.
Ameijcalleniversity. New York: Oxford University Press. 2001. p. 286

26. Quoted in Lawrence E. Eichel, Kenneth W. Jost, Robert D. Luskin, and
Richard M. Neustadt. IbeHanzardStrike Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1970. p. 261

 

Cambridge, Mass: Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University. January
20, 1969. pp. iii-iv

28. Henry Rosovsky. "Black Studies at Harvard." AmencanScbclar. 38:4,
Autumn 1969. pp. 563-564

281

 

 

 

 

Til:

 

29,:“0.0III 'l‘ : I onull:rou.t.rlv:n:|otuotii‘lvcl 0‘

Cambridge, Mass: Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University. January
20, 1969. pp. 2-3

 

Cambridge, Mass: Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University. January
20, 1969. p. 5

 

Cambridge, Mass: Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University. January
20, 1969. p. 6

32.:‘OJIO II‘ It OIIHl-a‘OILIO'SI 3|. -IIOAII- I 3. 0‘
Cambridge, Mass: Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University. January
20,1969.p.12

 

Cambridge, Mass: Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University. January
20 1969. pp. 14-15

34. Henry Rosovsky. "Black Studies at Harvard."Arnerican_Scbclar. 38:4,
Autumn 1969. p. 568

35. Henry Rosovsky. "Black Studies at Harvard."American_Scliclar. 38:4,
Autumn 1969. p. 568

36. Lawrence E. Eichel, Kenneth W. Jost, Robert D. Luskin, and Richard M.
Neustadt. IneflanramStrike. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1970. p. 266-267

37. Fran Farmer, quoted in Lawrence E. Eichel, Kenneth W. Jost, Robert D.
Luskin, and Richard M. Neustadt. Iheflaniardfitrike Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
1970.p.268

38. Lawrence E. Eichel, Kenneth W. Jost, Robert D. Luskin, and Richard M.
Neustadt. Ibeflanmrdfitrike Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1970. p. 269

39. Morton Keller and Phyllis Keller. MakingflanmrrLMcdernLIheBisecf.
America'leniversity. New York: Oxford University Press. 2001. pp. 314-318;

Lawrence E. Eichel, Kenneth W. Jost, Robert D Luskin, and Richard M.
Neustadt. Wise Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1970; and Roger

Rosenblatt. CnmingApaiLAMemnircttbeflanrardJNarsptlafia Boston:
Little, Brown and Company. 1997.

40. Lawrence E. Eichel, Kenneth W. Jost, Robert D. Luskin, and Richard M.
Neustadt. IhellanrardStrike Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1970. pp. 269-270

282

. . LIN.

41. Lawrence E. Eichel, Kenneth W. Jost, Robert D. Luskin, and Richard M.
Neustadt. IhehantardStrike. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1970. pp. 274-284

42. Myles Lynk, quoted in Lawrence E. Eichel, Kenneth W. Jost, Robert D.
Lu3kin, and Richard M. Neustadt. Ibeflammsm'ke Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
1970.p.285

43. Skip Griffin, quoted in Lawrence E. Eichel, Kenneth W. Jost, Robert D.
Luskin, and Richard M. Neustadt. IheJdanrardStrike Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
1970. pp. 274-284

44. Lawrence E. Eichel, Kenneth W. Jost, Robert D. Luskin, and Richard M.
Neustadt. W Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1970. p. 288

45. Jeff Howard, quoted in Lawrence E. Eichel, Kenneth W. Jost, Robert D.
Luskin, and Richard M. Neustadt. Ibellanrardflrike Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
1970. p. 287

46. Henry Rosovsky. "Black Studies at Harvard."American.Scbclar. 38:4.
Autumn 1969. pp. 569-572

47. Morton Keller and Phyllis Keller. MakmflanrardflcdetheBisect.
AmenralleniversinL New York: Oxford University Press. 2001 p 288

48.lNavne_StateJJniversity_Self=Stud¥_1925. Detroit: Wayne State University.
1976. p. 44

49.lNavneState.l.lniversitvSelt:Stud¥_1216. Detroit: Wayne State University.
1976.p.33

50. Stephen Alan Jones. CampueandficmmuniMnginecflNavneState.

UniversitylsfientectcLBlacLStudles. Master's Thesis. American Studies
Program, Department of English, Michigan State University. 1993 p. 29

51. Stephen Alan Jones. WWW

Uniiersinr'snentertnLBIackStiidie3 Master's Thesis. American Studies
Program, Department of English, Michigan State University. 1993. pp. 35-36

52. 'WSU Students As For Afro-History." Michiganlthrnnicle. 16 Oct. 1985.
p. A12.

53. "Proposal For Five Year College Program Background," 3 June 1968, files,
Office of the President, President Keast, Box 64, University Archives, Walter P.
Reuther Library, Wayne State University, Detroit.

54. Stephen Alan Jones. Win.
283

 

Master's Thesis. American Studies
Program, Department of English, Michigan State University. 1993. pp. 46-47

 

55. "Black Students Decide on Independent institute." W 16
Jan.1969.p.5

56. Willaim R. Keast. Statement released by Wayne State University, 10 Jan.
1969. Files, Academic Administration, Associate Provost E. Burrows Smith, Box
7, University Archives, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University, Detroit.

57. Stephen Alan Jones. W

W Master's Thesis. American Studies
Program, Department of English, Michigan State University. 1993. p. 52

58. Stephen Alan Jones. W

W Master's Thesis. American Studies
Program, Department of English, Michigan State University. 1993. p. 52

 

59. Loretta Akers. "Black Studies Need Student Interest." Smnhfind. 10 Feb.
1972.p.3

60. Stephen Alan James W

WOW Master's Thesis. American Studies
Program, Department of English, Michigan State University. 1993. p. 105

61. Stephen Alan Jones. W

W Master's Thesis. American Studies
Program, Department of English, Michigan State University. 1993. p. 105

CHAPTER 7

1. Gaye Tuchman. W New
York: The Free Press. 1978. p. 1

2. Gaye Tuchman. Makiogflewmmdyjnmefionstmctmoifleaflm New
York. The Free Press. 1978. p. 1

3. “Black Pride.” lime. 90, Oct. 6, 1967. p. 70
4. “Black Pride.” lime. 90, Oct. 6, 1967. p. 70
5. “Black Pride.'Iime. 90, Oct. 6, 1967. p. 70

6. “Shutdown at SF. State.'Iime. 92, Nov. 22, 1968. p. 55

284

 

 

7. “Shutdown at SF. State.”Iime. 92, Nov. 22, 1968. p. 55

8. 'Engulfed by Black Anger.” lime, 93, Jan. 17, 1969. p. 46

9. “Engulfed by Black Anger.” lime. 93, Jan. 17, 1969. p. 46

10. ”Black Is Beautiful — and Belligerent.” lime, 93, Jan. 24, 1969. p. 43

11. “May Queens and Effigies.” Newsweek. 69, June 5, 1967. pp. 98

12. “Student Powerl”Newsweek. 70, Sept. 4, 1967. p. 49

13. 'Guerrillas on Campus.” Newsweek. 70, Dec. 18, 1967, pp. 68, 70; “Agony
at State.” Newsweek. 71, Jan. 22, 1968. p. 59; “Unsteady State.”Newsweek. 73,
Jan.20,1969.p.59

14. “Siege of Greensboro.” Newsweek. 73, June 2, 1969. p. 38

15. “Ole Miss Enters the ‘60s.” Newsweek. 75, March 30, 1970. p. 83

16. “The Campus Spring Offensive.” Newsweek. 73, April 28, 1969. p. 66

17. “Black Against Black.”Newsweek. 73, Jan. 27, 1969. p. 30

18. “It Can’t Happen Here — Can It?” Newsweek. 73, May 5, 1969. p. 27

19. "It Can’t Happen Here —- Can It?” Newsweek, 73, May 5, 1969. pp. 26-27
20. “Black Mood on Campus.” Newsweek. 73, Feb. 10, 1969. p. 54

21. “Black Mood on Campus.”Newsweek. 73, Feb. 10, 1969. p. 55

22. “Black Mood on Campus.” Newsweek. 73, Feb. 10, 1969. pp. 57-58

23. “Black Mood on Campus.” Newsweek. 73, Feb. 10, 1969. p. 59

24. “Black Mood on Campus.” Newsweek. 73, Feb. 10, 1969. pp. 58-59

25. Nathan Here. “The Case for Separatism: ‘Black Perspective.” Newsweek.
73, Feb. 10, 1969. p. 56; Roy Wilkins. “The Case Against Separatism: ‘Black
Jim Crow.’”Newsweek. 73, Feb. 10, 1969. p. 57

26. "Black Mood on Campus.” Newsweek. 73, Feb. 10, 1969. p. 57

27. “When Students Take Over Colleges.” W 64, May 20, 1968. p. 38

285

 

28. “On the Campus: Unrest, Race Trouble, Strikes.” LLS_News. 66, Jan. 20,
1969. p. 4

29. “Campus Unrest: Now Force Meets Force.” W 66, Feb. 24, 1969.
pp. 8, 10

30. “Campus Unrest: Now Force Meets Force.” U_S_News. 66, Feb. 24, 1969.
pp. 8, 1O

31. “As Guns Are Added To Campus Revolts —-” W 66. May 5, 1969.
p. 30

32. “What Negro Students Demand — And What They Get.” U.S_News. 64,
June 24, 1968. pp. 82-84

33. “What Negro Students Demand — And What They Get.” LLS._News. 64,
June 24, 1968. pp. 82-83

34. “What Negro Students Demand — And What They Get.” W 64.
June 24, 1968. p. 83

35. “Puzzled About Afro-American Culture?” News. 66, Feb. 24, 1969.
pp. 52-54

36. “A College Beset By Black Revolutionaries.” wants. 66, May 12, 1969.
p. 38

37. “A College Beset By Black Revolutionaries.” 1LS_News. 66. May 12, 1969.
p. 40

CHAPTER 8

1. W.E.B. DuBois.]]Je_SOu1s.eLBlaek_EOlk New York: Penguin Books. 1989
(1903). p. 13

2. David A. Hollinger. EastethnieAmefiea. New York: Basic Books. 2000 (1995).
p. 23

3. ArthurM. Schlesinger Jr. IhemsunitingntAmedcajeflectionsme.
Multicuflutalfimiem. New York. WW Norton&Company. 1992. p. 18

4. Gil Scott-Heron. “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” in AtdeanAmedcan.
Eoeth Paramus, N.J.: Globe Book Company. 1993. pp. 48-50

5. Johnella E. Butler. Wm Lanham, Md.,
286

 

 

 

University Press of America. 1981. pp. 96-97

6 Hine, Darlene Clark, "Black Studies: An Overview," in W
DisdplinagLQnestOLBottheegmndMethed, edited by James L. Conyers Jr. .,
pp. 7-15; Jefferson, N .C.: McFarland 6: Company, 1997. p. 9

7. Hine, Darlene Clark, "Black Studies: An Overview," in W
WWW edited by James L. Conyers Jr. .,
pp. 7-15, Jefferson, N C. McFarland & Company, 1997. p. 9

287

 

I .

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY
"A College Beset By Black Revolutionaries." 1LS._Nm 66, May 12. 1969. pp.
38-40.
"A Cry of 'Halt' to Campus Violence." W 66, May 12, 1969. pp. 6, 8.

“ABS Fires Daniels, Black Studies Head,”hilichigan_chmnicle 22 Feb. 1969.
p. A6.

Adams, William, Peter Conn and Barry Slepian, editors. Athmeflean.
Literatuceflmim Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1970

WWW Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company. 1970.

AflmAmedcanJJteraturezflcama. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

 

 

1970.

 

AW Boston: Houghton Mifilin Company.
1 970.

"Agony at State." Newsweek 71, Jan. 22, 1968. p. 59

Akers. Loretta. “Black Studies Need Student Interest.” Seuthfind 10 Feb.
1972. p. 3.

Allen, Robert L. “Politics of the Attack on Black Studies,” in Nathaniel
Norment Jr, editor, IbeAtrieanAmerieeiLStudiesfieedeL Durham, N. C.:
Carolina Academic Press. 2001. Originally published in BlackficboiarS, No. 1
(Sept. 1974): pp. 2-7.

Anderson, Talmadge, editor. W
Eerspeeiwes. Pullman, Wash; Washington State University Press. 1990

 

“Black Studies: Overview and Theoretical Perspectives,” in Talmadge
Anderson, editor, : - - .
Pullman, Wash: Washington State University Press. 1990.

 

"As Guns Are Added To Campus Revolts —" um 66. May 5, 1969.
pp. 30-31.

Asante, Molefi Kete. mm Trenton, N.J.: Africa Worid Press. 1988
(1980)

288

Baker, Houston A. Jr., editor. BiaeiLLIteratuceJnAmedca. New York: McGraw-
Hill Book Company. 1971.

WWW Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. 1993.

 

Barksdale, Richard and Keneth Kinnamon, editors. Ween.
Aflomprebensiveentbelegy. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1972.

"Behind Revolt of Black Students —" LLS..News 67, Sept. 22, 1969. p. 16.

"Behind The Tunnoii At Yale: Black Power‘ and the Courts." LLS.News 68,
May 11, 1970. pp. 41-42.

Bengelsdorf, Nnnie. WWW
Bibliography. Washington, D. C.: American Association of State Colleges and

Universities August, 1972.

Beny, Faith, editor. WWW.
Saundexsfieddino Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky. 1992.

"Beyond the Ban'icades." Newsweek 72, July 22, 1968. pp. 86-87.
"Black Against Black."NewaEEK73, Jan. 27, 1969. p. 30.

"Black Is Beautiful — and Beiligerent."Iime 93, Jan. 24, 1969. p. 43.
"Black Mood on Campus." Nemweek 73, Jan. 20, 1969. pp. 59—60.
"Black Mood on Campus." Newsweek 73, Feb. 10, 1969. pp. 53-59.
"Black Pride."Iime 90, Oct 6, 1967. p. 70.

"Black Protests — New Voices, New Forms." .LLS.Nm 68, June 1, 1970.
p. 21.

“Black Students Decide on independent institute.” Michiganfiathoirc 16 Jan.
1969. p. 5.

W New York: Management
Division of the Academy for Educational Development. 1971.

Blassingame, John W., editor. WW3 Urbana,

lll.: University of Illinois Press. 1971.

—- "Black Studies: An Intellectual Crisis."Amedean.SdmiaL 38:4.
289

Autumn 1969. pp. 548-561.

Blauner, Robert. “Internal Colonialism and Ghetto Revolt.” SecieLEmblems
16.4. 1969. pp. 393-408.

Blonston, Gary. “Wayne Negroes Press for College of Black Studies.” DetmiL
ELeeJZLeeszo Sept. 1968. p. 12A.

Bloom, Allan. We.“ New York: Simon and
Schuster. 1987.

Booker, David. Interview. Sauthfind 19 Nov. 1970. p. 3.

Braddock, Jomills H. II. 'lntemal Colonialism and Black American
Education.” WestemeimaLoLBlaciLStudim 2.1. 1978. pp. 24-33.

Brawley, Benjamin, editor. EadLNegmAmeflcanMecs. Freeport, N.Y.:
Books For Libraries Press. 1968. Originally published, 1935, by The University

of North Carolina Press.

Brimmer, Andrew F. “Education and Economic Opportunity,” inBlaclL

Studies.M.ytbs_&.Bealitiee New York: A Philip Randolph Educational Fund.
1969. pp. 40-42.

Brooks, Gwendolyn editor. JumeBadLANewfibicamAmbnm Detroit:
Broadside Press. 1971.

Brossard, Carlos A. "Classifying Black Studies Programs," in Nathaniel
Norment Jr., editor, IbeAtncanAmericanfludiesBeader. Durham, N. C.:
Carolina Academic Press. 2001. pp. 65-78.

Brubacher, John S. and Willis Rudy. W

W New York: Harper & Row.
1 968.

Bundy, McGeorge. “Some Thoughts on Afro-American Studies," in Armstead
L. Robinson, Craig C. Foster and Donald H. Ogilvie, editors, BianLStudiesAnd.

W New Haven: Yale University Press. 1969.
pp. 171- 177.

Butler, Johnella E. W Lanham, Md.:
University Press of America. 1981.

"Campus Unrest: Now Force Meets Force." LLS.News66, Feb. 24, 1969.
pp. 8, 10.

290

"Campus Violence —— Crackdown Coming."1LS_NflMs 65, Sept. 23, 1968.
pp. 48-53.

Carmichael, Stokely and Charles Hamilton. WM
UbeLaflominAmeciea. New York: Random House. 1967.

Carson, Claybome.1n_Stmggle.SNCC_am_tbe_Black_Awakening_oLthe_
1.96mi. Cambridge. Mass: Harvard University Press. 1981.

Casement, William. Ibeficeatnananfiantmxemy. New Brunswick, N.J.:

Transaction Publishers. 1996.

"Changing Greensboro." lime 93, May 30, 1969. p. 22.

Chapman, Abraham, editor. WW
Literatuxe. New York: St. Martin's Press. 1970.

Clark, Harry. "Afro-Experience: Student Instructs Peers." SnutlLEnd 22 Nov.
1968.p.3.

“Class of ‘73: No Loyalty Oath Yet.” Newsweek. 73, May 5, 1969. pp. 28-29.

Cleaver, Eldridge. QaneldeologyeflbeBIacLEantbeLEarty. San Francisco:
Ministry of Information, Black Panther Party. c. 1970. Special Collections,

Michigan State University Library.
-———- “Education and Revolution." W 1.1. 1969. pp. 44-52.

Clark, Kenneth B. "A Charade of Power. Black Students at White Colleges,"
in John W. Blassingame, editor,NewEe£specti1ea.nn_BIanlLSIUdies Urbana:
University of Illinois Press. 1971. pp. 118-119. [Reprinted from The Antioch
Review XXIX, no. 2 (Summer 1969): pp. 145-48.]

 

“Letter of Resignation From Board of Directors of Antioch College," in
BMW New York: A. Philip Randolph Educational

Fund. 1969. pp. 32—34.

. Coleman-Bums, Patricia. "The Revolution Within: Transforming Ourselves,"

iii‘ewormo”"u. i999. ‘ ' "‘" '°' ' ' ' " '
”Conclusions About Cornell." Iime99, Sept. 19, 1969. p. 44.

Conyers, James L. editor. ' ' '
IbeemandMetbnd. Jefferson, N. C.: McFarland & Company. 1997.

291

"Crackdown Starts On Student Riots." u.S.News64, Jan. 1, 1968. pp. 34-35.

Crouchett, Lawrence. "Early Black Studies Movements." JmimaLQLBladt.
snidieszz. 1971. pp. 189-200.

Cruse, Harold "The lntegrationist Ethic as a Basis for Scholariy Endeavors,”
in Armstead L. Robinson, Craig C. Foster and Donald H. Ogilvie, editors, Black.

W New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press. 1969. pp. 4-12.

Cumming, Joseph B. Jr. "Ole Miss Enters the '603."Newsweek 75, March
20,1970.p.83.

Cunningham, Gene. "Editorial.”Seuth.End 11 Feb. 1972. p. 1.

Daniel, Philip T. K. "Theory Building in Black Studies, " in Nathaniel Norment,
editor, IbeAiiieanAmericanjtudiesBeadeL Durham, N. C.: Carolina
Academic Press. 2001.

Davis, David Brion. “Reflections," in Armstead L. Robinson, Craig C. Foster,

and Donald H. Ogilvie, editors. WW
New Haven: Yale University Press. 1969. pp. 215-224.

Davis, Henry Vance. "From Coloreds to African-Americans: A History of the
Struggle for Educational Equity at the University of Michigan and an Agenda for
the Pluralistic Multicultural University of the Twenty-first Century,” in Senkota. a
conference report. Nin Arbor: Office of Minority Affairs, University of Michigan,
1991. pp. 30—51.

Decker, Barbara Ann. "5 WSU Council Members Seek Black Study
Department.” DetmiLNews 15 July 1971. p. 13.

Dewing, Roland. WWW
SecondJncidenL New York: lrvington Publishers Inc. 1985.

DuBois, w.E.B. W New York: Penguin Books. 1989.

Edid. Maralyn. EannLaboLQrgamzngizendsAEmspeds Ithaca, N.Y.: lLR
Press. 1994.

Eichel, Lawrence E., Kenneth W. Jost, Robert D. Luskin, and Richard M.
Neustadt. We Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1970.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "The American Scholar,” in Ibe_SeIected_IMitings_oL
BaIanNaldsLEmecsnn. New York: Random House. 1992. pp. 43—59.

292

 

61‘ _

 

 

"Engulfed by Black Anger." Ilme 93, Jan. 17, 1969. p. 46.

Fischer, Roger A. "Ghetto and Gown. The Birth of Black Studies, " in John W.
Blassingame, editor, NewEerspentixesmBIasLSmdies. Urbana: University of

Illinois Press. 1971.

Flexner, Abraham. Unwersities. New York: Oxford University Press. 1930.

Ford, Nick Aaron. BIacLStudies'cheaLeLCbaIIenge Port Washington, N.Y.:
Kennikat Press. 1973.

Frye, Charles A WW
upwecsities. Washington: University Press ofAmerice,1976.

Frye, Hardy T., Charles Irby and John C. Leggett.mm1tbeLBIacK.Studies
Stockton, Calif.: Hammer Press. 1972.

"'Gangsters' Cash In On Student Revolt."1.LS.Nem 66. Feb. 24, 1969.
pp. 3841.

Gates, Henry Louis Jr. "'Ethnic and Minority' Studies," in Joseph Gibaldi,

editor, WWW New
York: Modern Languages Association of America 1992. pp. 288-302.

—. moseCaanNotesmtbefiulmLeJNacs New York Oxford
University Press. 1992.

Genovese, Eugene D. "Black Studies: Trouble Ahead," in John W.

Blassingame, editor, NewEerspectixesomBiackfitudies Urbana: University of
Illinois Press. 1971. p. 104-115. [Reprinted from The Atlantic Monthly CCXXII

(June, 1969): 3741.]

Georgakas, Dan and Marvin Surkin. Wm. New York: St.
Martin’s Press. 1975.

Goodchild, Lester F and Harold S. Wechsler, editors. ASBEBeademnlbe.
BistenmLHigbeLEducatien. Needham Heights, Mass: Ginn Press. 1989.

Gorak,Jan.IbeMaking.ef_tbe.Medem.Cenni1 London: Athlone Press. 1991.
p. 222.

Grant, Walter. "The Official End of Non-Violence.” Smtbfind 8 Apr. 1968.
p. 5.

"Guerrillas on Campus." Newsweek 70, Dec. 18, 1967. p. 68+.

293

Hagerty, Donald. Wa"yne Students Detail Hopes for Unique College."
Michiganfiatbolic 3 Oct. 1968. p. 9.

Hall, Perry A WWW Knoxville,

Tenn: The University Of Tennessee Press. 1999.

Halliburton. David. "Interdisciplinary Studies, " in Arthur W. Chickering and

Associates, IbeMedemAmericanLelIeae. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishers. 1981. pp. 453-471.

Hare, Nathan. "The Battle for Black Studies.” Blaekficbeier. 3.9. 1972.
pp. 3247.

"Questions and Answers About Black Studies,” in Nathaniel Norment

Jr., editor IbeAtficanAmeflmnfimdiesBeader. Durham, N. C.: Carolina
Academic Press. 2001.

 

 

"The Case for Separatism: ‘Black Perspective.“ Newsweek, 73, Feb.
10,1969.p.56.

"What Should Be the Role of Afro-American Education in the
Undergraduate Curriculum?" in John W. Blassingame editor, New.

Eerspecflxesmflleckstudies. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1971.

Harris, Robert L. Jr. "The Intellectual and Institutional Development of

Africana Studies," inIbree_Esse¥s.Black_Studies.in_tbe_United_States New
York: Ford Foundation. 1990. pp. 7-14.

 

Hartman, Anita. "A New Experience." Sauthnd 10 Oct. 1968. p. 3.

Haskins, Charles Homer. IbeBiseoLUnixersities. Ithaca N.Y.: Cornell
University Press. 1957 (1923).

Henderson, Algo D. "San Francisco State College: A Tale of
Mismanagement and Disruption, in David Riesman and Verne A. Stadtman,
edit0r$,- :osu nu on. on - :I :so a on no; 'I" :
New York: McGraw-Hill. 1973. pp. 287-302.

Hill, Norman. "Integration or Segregation?" in W
Realities. New Yorlc A. Philip Randolph Educational Fund. 1969. pp. 43-45.

Hine, Darlene Clark. "Black Studies: An Ovewiew,"inIl1£ee_Esse¥s.Black.
Wales. New York: Ford Foundation. 1990. pp. 15-25.

 

History. Brooklyn, N. Y. Carlson Publications. 1994.
294

 

Editor. WWW

Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 1986.

Hollinger, David A. W New York:
Basic Books. 2000 (1995).

Horowitz Helen Lefkowitz. CampusJJthndercraduatenultuLesjmmJbe.

W Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press. 1987.

Huggins, Nathan I. AflmAmedcanfitudies. New York: Ford Foundation.
1 985.

"It Can't Happen Here — Can It?" NW]: 73. May 5, 1969, pp. 26-30.

Jencks,Christopher and David Riesman. William. Garden
City, N.Y.: Anchor Books. 1969.

Jones, LeRoi and Larry Neal, editors. W
AmeflcanJNming. New York: William Morrow & Company. 1968.

Jones, Stephen Alan. Campusandfinmmumbulnanmmnafitate.

UniversityLSLeMeLtoLBlackfitudies. Master’s thesis. Michigan State
University. 1993.

Jones, Val. "ABS Reorganizes — And Grows.” SouflLEnd 20 Jan. 1971. p. 3.

"Black Studies Courses Established." SoutlLEnd 10 Mar. 1971. p. 1.

 

Jordan, June. "Black Studies: Bringing Back the Person," in John W.
Blassingame, editor, WW Urbana: University of

Illinois Press. 1971.

Karenga, Maulana.101mducflon.to.fllack.$1udies. Los Angeles: University of
Sankore Press. 2002 (1982).

 

"The Black Community and the University: A Community Organizer’s
Perspective,” in Armstead L. Robinson, Craig C. Foster and Donald H. Ogilvie,

editors, W New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press. 1969. pp. 37-41.

Keast, William R. "The President’s Report to the Faculty." Speech to Wayne

State University faculty convocation, 4 Dec. 1968. W 30. 1968-69.
pp. 61 -65.

295

"Keast Announces Plan to Resign." Waynefiemn 32. 1970-71. p. 27.

Keller, Morton, and Phyllis Keller. MakmaflamandMedemRisem
Amefleallenwensity. New York: Oxford University Press. 2001.

Kelman, Steven. EusILComesioflmyezlbeEscaIafionnLStudentflotast
Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1970.

Kerr, Clark WM Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
University Press. 2001 (1963).

Kilson, Martin Jr. "The Intellectual Validity of Studying the Black Experience,"
in Armstead L. Robinson, Craig C. Foster and Donald H. Ogilvie, editors, Black

Studies'irLtbeJlnixecsitLAfiymmsium. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press. 1969. pp. 13-16.

"Realism in Afro-American Studies," in W
Realities. New York: A. Philip Randolph Educational Fund. 1969. pp. 9-15.

King, Martin Luther Jr. W

Boston: Beacon Press. 1967.

 

___.. Stddelowaizdineedem. San Francisco: Harper & Row. 1958.

Klein, Julie Thompson. mterdiscipflnafimmstomlheomefladice Detroit:
Wayne State University Press. 1990.

Lythcott, Stephen. "Black Studies at Antioch" in John W. Blassingame,

editor, NewEetspectwemflackfitudies Urbana, III.: University of Illinois
Press. 1971. pp. 123-132.

Marable, Manning. "Introduction: Black Studies and the Racial Mountain," in
Manning Marable, editor, W New YorIc
Columbia University Press. 2000.

"May Queens and Effigies." Newsweek 69, June 5, 1967. pp. 98+.

Mayville, William V. lnterdisciplinarityslheumahlemradiam. Washington,
DC: American Association for Higher Education. 1978.

McAdam, Doug. Eteedemjummer. New York: Oxford University Press.
1 988.

McClendon, William H. "Black Studies: Education for Liberation." Black.
Summon. 1974. pp. 15-20.

296

Meier, August and Elliott Rudwick. W
ELOtassiOO._1915-_-.L98.Q Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1986.

Meyer, Marshall. "After the Bust: Student Politics at Harvard 1969-1972,” in
David Riesman and Verne A. Stadtman, editors, AcademicltanstOrmallOO'.
SemntaanJOstitutiOOsflndaLEizassuLa. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1973.
pp. 127-153.

W New York: New York University Press.
1965.

WWW New York: Modern Languages

Association of America. 1975.

"Monteith: Ten-Year-Old Experiment." Waynefiepmi 31. 1969-70. p. 55.

Moynihan, Daniel P. "Politics as the Art of the Impossible." Amedcanfichnlac.
38:4, Autumn 1969. pp. 573-583.

"Negro Flare-Ups At Two Colleges."tl_S_New365, Nov. 18, 1968. p. 16

"Negro Leader's Tough Talk About Negro Students."lLS_News66. May 12,
1969.p.8.

Nelson, William E. Jr. WOW
Discipline Columbus, Ohio: Center for Research and Public Policy, The Ohio
State University. 1988.

Newell, William H. ,editor. lnterdisciplinaOOLEssaxstmJbeLiteratura. New
York. College Entrance Examination Board. 1998.

Newman, John Henry. WIN. Notre Dame, lnd.: Notre
Dame University Press. 1982 (1852).

Norment, Nathaniel Jr., editor. IbeAtOOanAmeOOanfitudiesROadeL
Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press. 2001.

Norris, Aldon D. menacinsntthaflxilfiigmsMOmmeOt New York: Free
Press. 1984.

"On the Campus: Unrest, Race Trouble, Strikes." um 66. Jan. 20,
1969. p. 4.

Orrick, William H. Jr. ShuULDOmmALOlIeaeJOQOsis. A staff report.
Washington, DC: National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of
Violence. June 1969.

297

Painter, Nell Irvin and Arnold Rampersad. "African-American Studies Enters
the New Century, " in Judith Jackson Fossett and Jeffrey A Tucker, editors,

. or. o l‘ .t. :-I-n: [.-: o: o I'Lvi ‘l a New
York: New York University Press. 1997. pp. ix-xii.
"ProtestAnd Authority."Newsweek 73, May 12, 1969. pp. 72-73.

"Puzzled About Afro-American Culture?" W 66. Feb. 24. 1969-
pp. 52-54.

Rapoport, Roger. "Black Institute Studies at WSU." SmittLEnd 22 Jan. 1969.
p. 17.

Raymond, Tom. "Wayne’s Black Conscience." Snuthfind 18 May 1970.

 

Cambridge, Mass; Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University. January
20,1969.

Riesman, David. "Commentary and Epilogue," in David Riesman and Verne

A Stadtman, editors AcademiclranstOLmatiOLSexenteenJOstitutioosltndeL
Eressuce. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1973. pp 409-474.

Riesman, David and VemeA. Stadtman, editors. Academiclmnstonmatim.
SexenteeanstitutImUnderflessura. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1973.

Robinson, Armstead L. Craig C. Foster and Donald H. Ogilvie, editors. BlaOIL

W New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press. 1969.

Rogers, Ray. "Black Guns on Campus." Nation 5 May 1969. pp. 558-560.
Rosenblatt, Roger. WWW

Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1997.

Rosovsky, Henry. "Black Studies at Harvard." AmeOcamSObOIar. 38:4,
Autumn 1969. pp. 562—572.

Russell, Michele. "Erased, Debased, and Encased: The Dynamics of African
Educational Colonization in America," in John W. Blassingame, editor New.

Eenspectwesnnfilackfitudles. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1971.

Rustin. Bayard. "Introduction." in W New York:
A. Philip Randolph Educational Fund. 1969. pp. 5-7.

298

Savio, Man'o. "An End to History," in Massimo Teodori, ed, IbeNawLeLA

Documentamflism Indianapolis: Bobbs—Merrill. 1969. 159. Cited in

Clayborne Carson WWW
Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. 1981. p. 129.

Scott-Heron, Gil. "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," in AfricaOAmeLican.
Beater. Paramus, N.J.: Globe Book Company. 1993. pp. 48-50.

Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. IbeDisunitingetAmeOOajefleOtiOOsema.
MulticultumLSOcietiL New York: WW Norton & Company. 1992.

Scholes, Robert. "Canonicity and Textuality, " in Joseph Gibaldi, editor,

MMWSMMWW New York:
Modern Languages Association of America. 1992. pp. 138-158.

Schomburg, Arthur A W
(Read Before the Teachers'

Summer Class at Cheney Institute, July 1913); Chesapeake, Va.: ECA
Associates. 1990.

Schuelke, Suzanne. "Wayne State University Student Political Activities 1967-
70." Unpublished senior honors essay. 1977. Student Activities vertical file.
University Archives. Walter P. Reuther Library. Wayne State University, Detroit.

Seale, Bobby. "Revolutionary Action on Campus and Community." Black
Sebolan1.2. 1969. pp. 4-7.

"Shutdown at SF. State." lime 92, Nov. 22, 1968. p. 55.

Simpkins, Edward. "Black Studies — Here to Stay? W 24.2. 1974.
pp. 26-29.

"Soul Brothers and Swahili." Newsweek. 70, Oct. 9, 1967. p. 59.
Sowell, Thomas. "Black Studies: Slogan or Social History?" in W

MxthsLRaalifles, New York: A. Philip Randolph Educational Fund. 1969.
pp. 35-37.

W 1980. Washington, DC: US.
Bureau of the Census. 1980.

Stewart, James B. "Reaching for Higher Ground: Toward and Understanding

of Black/Africana Studies " in Nathaniel Norment, editor IheAfriOanAmeriOan.
Studiesfimder. Durham, N. C.: Carolina Academic Press. 2001. p. 357.

299

 

"Student Power."Nmsweek. 70, Sept. 4, 1967. p.49.
"Student Power." Newsweek70, Oct. 23, 1967. pp. 94-95.

"Student Strikes: 1968-69." BIaOLSObOIai: 1.3-4. January-February 1970.
pp. 65-75.

"Student Violence: Into A More Dangerous Era." W 68, May 18, 1970.
pp. 2831.

"Task Of The Campus Is Education, Not Rioting." um 64, Jan. 1,
1968. pp. 36-37.

"The Campus Spring Offensive."Newsweek 73. April 23. 1959- PP- 6659-
"The Envelope, Please." Newsweek71. Apn'I 22. 1968- D- 86-

"The Siege of Greensboro." Newsweek 73, June 2, 1969. P- 33-

“The Yale Report of 1828," in Lester F. Goodchild and Harold S. Wechsler,

editors,ASl:IE_ReadeLOOJ]1e_I:IistOOLOLI:ligheLEdantiOO Needham Heights.
Mass: Ginn Press. 1989. pp. 171-178.

Thorpe, Earl E. BIackHistOflansACLitique New York: William Morrow and
Company. 1971.

"Ugly New Mood." Newsweek 70, Nov. 27, 1967. p. 68.

"Unsteady State."Newsweek 73, Jan. 20, 1969. p. 59.

WOW Detroit: Wayne State University.
1976.

"What Negro Students Demand — And Wnat They Get." lLSi_News 64, June
24, 1968. pp. 82-84.

"When Students Take Over Colleges." LLS_News 64. May 20, 1968.
pp. 38-40.

"Where Campus Violence Is Heading." LLS_Neus 64. May 20, 1968.
pp. 41 -44.

"Why A Revolt On College Campuses." LLS..Neiim 62, May 29, 1967.
pp. 71-75.

Widick, B.J. Wane. Detroit: Wayne State
300

 

University Press. 1989.
VWkins, Roy. “The Case Against Separatism: ‘Black Jim Crow,” in Black.

Studies_M¥ths_&.Realitles. New York: A. Philip Randolph Educational Fund.
1969 pp 38-39.

Woodward, C. Vann. "Clio lMth Soul," in BIack.Studies.M¥ths_&.Realities. A
Philip Randolph Educational Fund. 1969. pp. 16-31.

"WSU Students Ask For Afro-History." MieblaaanrOniele 16 Oct. 1965.
p. A12.

301