Intro to Africana Studies

San Francisco State

Date: 1968-1969

Participants: BSU, Third World Liberation Front, Nathan Hare, community members, President Hayakawa (opposition)

Tactics: refusal to go to class, campus/community strikes

Demands: increase Black student enrollment, establish a Black Studies department

Cornell University

• Date: 1969

• Participants: SDS, Afro-American Society, white fraternity men/conservative faculty (opps)

• Tactics: takeover of student union

• Demands: establishment of a Black Studies program, no punishment for the students involved in the building takeover

Yale University

• Date: 1968

• Participants: Black Student Alliance (BSA), Black radicals, university administrators and white college representatives, SDS, conservative faculty/administrators (opps)

• Tactics: symposium (civil discourse/enlightened liberal exchange)

• Demands: establishment of a Black Studies department, to legitimize a course of study in the African-American experience

City College of New York

• Date: 1969

• Participants: Toni Bambara, SEEK students, SDS, Black and Puerto Rican students, college administration (opp)

• Tactics: campus protests, student strike

• Demands: separate orientation for incoming Black/PR students, representative admissions

Negro College

Nathan Hare, The Battle for Black Studies (1970s)

• colleges created post-slavery, often founded by abolitionists or missionaries with the objective of teaching freedmen and introducing them to the bible

Black University

 Toni Bambara, Realizing the Dream of a Black University (1960s)

• A university that goes beyond simply including Black students, teachers, and courses. It challenges traditional academic boundaries, utilizes knowledge from Black communities, and uses education to promote collective liberation

Black Studies

Nathan Hare, A Torch to Burn Down a Decadent World (1970s)

• Black Studies was never meant to be just about Black history, instead it was to be a new approach to scholarship and teaching which would prepare Black students to function in the hard times ahead while humanizing the Black population and involving the greater Black community

Spook Studies

Nathan Hare, A Torch to Burn Down a Decadent World (1970s)

pseudo-Black Studies where professors take existing courses and rename them “Black Studies” without actually changing the ideas, teaching methods, or curriculum

White Studies

June Jordan, Black Studies - Bringing Back the Person (1960s)

• the study of white people that, like Black Studies, should focus on preserving human life, identity, and love

American University

Realizing the Dream of a Black University, Toni Cade Bambara (1960s)

• A university that serves elites and promotes mainstream cultural ideas rather than the realities of marginalized communities

Cultural imperialism

Nathan Hare, The Battle for Black Studies (1970s)

• when white culture and ideas are imposed as the standard for understanding the world

Credential Mania

Toni Bambara, Realizing the Dream of the Black University (1960s)

• requirements by universities and elitists in society for experts to have credentials (like degrees), which excludes many experts on Black Studies experiences, like grandmothers, students, community members

Vocation of the Black Scholar

Vincent Harding, The Vocation of the Black Scholar and the Struggles of the Black Community (1970s)

• job/responsibility of the Black scholar includes speaking the truth to and about our people and enemy to free the mind, so that Black individuals may build towards a new time

Black Paper

Stephen Ward, Scholarship in the Context of Struggle (2000s)

• series of pamphlet-form essays published by Third World Press, that examines the Black experience by focusing on the political, social, economic, and cultural issues that affect black power and Black communities

June Jordan (courses, community work, publications, unique)

• Taught at City College, wrote Black Studies: Bringing Back the Person (1960s), and Nobody mean more to me than you and the future life of Willie Jordan (1980s)

• Taught the course In Search of the Invisible Black Woman

• Instead of breezing past the fact that students didn’t understand or appreciate written Black English, even though some of them spoke it, Jordan pivoted so that her class learned Black English, which is more culturally relevant than just reading one piece with Black English

• Unique: one of her student’s family members faced police brutality, and Jordan and her class applied what they had learned about Black English to write a message to the police in Black English, a real life application of Black Studies

Tonia Cade Bambara (courses, community work, publications, unique)

• Wrote “Realizing the Dream of a Black University" (1960s) and “The Organizer’s Wife” (1970s)

• Acted as a writer, teacher, and filmmaker bridging social movements and shaping our present potential for collective justice

• Teaching (at City College’s SEEK program) and community work were a cornerstone of her activism and a backbone of her existence

• How she is unique: bridged together the Black and Puerto Rican communities in Harlem so both groups could be advocated for, utilized writing, both fiction and nonfiction, to bring learning to and honor the intelligence of downpressed communities

  • Only work of fiction that we read

 Examples of Black Studies formations outside of PWIs or HBCUS

• Toni Bambara

  • Believed her mission in life went beyond writing- teaching and community work were a cornerstone of her activism and the backbone of her existence

  • She was always teaching, learning from her elders, peers, and students

  • Served as a community scribe for adults

  • Wrote about “Speaker’s Corner” which served as an outdoor university, teaching people how to deliver incisive arguments, compel audiences, make room for call-and-response, and be intellectually relevant to others outside oneself

  • Wrote “The Organizer’s Wife,” (1970s) which provides great detail into Black Studies outside of HBCUs/PWIs through the learning that took place in the co-op, with the teachers not having traditional qualifications and fighting for change within the community

  • Shows how Black Studies doesn’t just take place in traditional academic institutions, how Black Studies involves the community, and how you don’t need a degree to be an educator

Black Studies scholarship and Black Print Culture

• Black Papers published by Third World Press in Chicago

  • Vincent Harding: IBW and Education for Liberation (1970s)

  • Were non-traditional educational materials - utilized audio-tapes, books, and bibliographies, all at very cheap prices so the papers could reach as many people as possible

  • Purpose of these papers was to serve as a starting guide for scholarship regarding Black Studies, the bibliography creates more expansive networks of knowledge, and it includes a list of further readings that encourages individual commitment to scholarship

    • Includes readings from the 1860s-1960s to show that the IBW/Black Studies movement was not the beginning of Black Studies

Black Studies and Black Literary Traditions 

• June Jordan

• Wrote Black Studies: Bringing Back the Person (1960s), and Nobody mean more to me than you and the future life of Willie Jordan (1980s)

• Taught (at city college) the course In Search of the Invisible Black Woman

• Instead of breezing past the fact that students didn’t understand or appreciate written Black English, even though some of them spoke it, Jordan pivoted so that her class learned Black English, which is more culturally relevant than just reading one piece with Black English

• Unique: one of her student’s family members faced police brutality, and Jordan and her class applied what they had learned about Black English to write a message to the police in Black English, a real life application of Black Studies

• Toni Cade Bambara

  • Served as a community scribe for adults by drafting verbal agreements and meeting minutes for neighborhood organizers

  • Responsibility to document, interpret, and serve as a collectivity

  • Shows the non-traditional aspect of Black Studies in how community members come together to pitch in their talents to benefit the movement