Expanding the History of the Black Studies Movement: Some Prefatory Notes

Throughout this volume the contributors use a variety of different terms to refer to the discipline of Black/Africana Studies. These include but are not limited to Africana Studies, Black Studies, Afro-American Studies, African-American Studies, African Diaspora Studies, and so forth and so on. As editors, we acknowledge this variety and recognize the importance of the debate regarding nomenclature. And though we use the terms interchangeably in this volume, we encourage scholars interested in this debate to see the special issue of the Journal of Black Studies edited by Patricia Reid-Merritt of Richard Stockton College of New Jersey (Reid-Merritt 2009).

This use of the word “insure” could easily be replaced with “ensure,” as in “to make certain,” “guarantee” or “to secure someone or protect against.” It could be argued that BSA organizers were guaranteeing the administration that there would be no large student protests or problems during the course of the symposium. The BSA representatives were securing the administration and the university from the type of Black Student unrest that had characterized so many campuses, and been a cornerstone of the Black Studies Movement.

The invited list of attendees included administrators and/or representatives from: Albertus Magnus, Amherst, Barnard, Bennington, Boston, Brandeis, Brown, Bryn Mawr, Bowie State, Cheyney State College, City College of New York, Columbia, Connecticut College for Women, University of Connecticut, Cornell, Dartmouth, Fairfield, Hampton, Harvard, Haverford, John Hopkins, Howard, Hunter, Lincoln, Long Island, Maryland State, University of Maryland, MIT, University of Massachusetts, Morgan State, Mount Holyoke, New Haven College, Pembroke, New York University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Quinnipiac, Radcliffe, Rutgers, Sarah Lawrence, Simmons, Smith, Southern Connecticut College, Swarthmore, Temple, Tufts, Vassar, Virginia Union, George Washington, Wesleyan, Williams, State University of New York, and administrators from D.C. Public Schools (Robinson Papers 1968c).

In terms of his politics and intellectual posture, Martin Kilson could probably be better described as someone who vacillates between “Black liberalism” and “Black conservatism,” using the definitions described by Michael Dawson (Dawson 2001). Nevertheless, on the issue of Black Studies, Kilson initially took a conservative position, aligning himself with Bayard Rustin, A Phillip Randolph, Kenneth Clarke, and Roy Wilkins, who once argued “Black Study [sic] programs in the schools about our Negro ancestors is a lot of nonsense” (New York Times 1969b). Though Kilson did not adopt the same extreme right-wing position as Wilkins (who also vacillated on the topic), he could hardly be described as an early advocate for Black Studies or radical Black student protest. Ironically, in more recent times, Kilson has become more of an outright supporter of African-American Studies and, surprisingly enough, a vociferous critic of his departmental colleague Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

During the Ford Foundation’s first wave of grants in support of Black Studies, Yale received the second largest grant of some $184,400, which partially came as a result of the personal relationship and rapport that Robinson had cultivated with Bundy during the symposium and through several correspondences the subsequent year (Robinson Papers 1969a, b, c). And one can be certain that the conference played no small part in shaping the decision of Bundy and the Ford Foundation. The largest grant of $315,500 went to the graduate program at the Atlanta University Center, under the helm of Richard Long. This was to offset the more radical agenda put forth by Gerald McWhorter, then a sociologist at Spelman College, and the Black students that had taken the Board of Trustees hostage at Morehouse during April of 1969. While McWhorter was also part of the early planning of IBW, who received a smaller Ford grant of $100,000, Vincent Harding and Stephen Henderson (two key figures in the formation of IBW) were forced to part ways with the radical sociologist or watch the Institute have a stillbirth as a result of pressure from the Atlanta University Center administrators, Trustee members and the King Family (See Britton 1969; Rojas 2007, 137; Ford Foundation 2007; New York Times 1969a, b; also see White in this volume).

In his autobiography, titled My Life With SDS and the Weathermen Underground, Mark Rudd recalls a speech given by William Sales—one of the leaders of Columbia’s SAS—that perfectly encapsulates the last meaning of entanglement used here. In one of the chapters discussing the student occupation of Columbia, Rudd recalls Sales saying, “If you’re talking about revolution, if you are talking about identifying with the Vietnamese struggle…you don’t need to go marching downtown. There’s one oppressor—in the White House, in Low Library, in Albany, New York. To strike a blow at the gym, you strike a blow for the Vietnamese people…You strike a blow at the gym and you strike a blow against the assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. You strike a blow at Low Library and you strike a blow for the freedom fighters in Angola, Mozambique, Portuguese Guinea, and Zimbabwe, South Africa” (Rudd 2009, 63).

For an excellent discussion of the Arizona Senate Bill 1070, House Bill 2281 and their dire consequences for racialized minority populations and Black (and Ethnic) Studies see the special issue of the Black Scholar titled “Defending Ethnic Studies in Arizona” edited by Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, the current president of the National Council for Black Studies (Cha-Jua 2010). For a good discussion of mass incarceration—which “refers not only to the criminal justice system but also to the larger web of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control those labeled criminals both in and out of prisons”—see (Alexander 2010, 13).

For a discussion of the long intellectual genealogy approach to Africana Studies, see (Carr 2007, 2011). For a discussion of Black Studies as a solely academic enterprise, see (Marable 1998).

While most of the individuals who published in this volume did not oppose the establishment of Black Studies, they did openly resist Black student demands for Black dorms, Black cultural centers, and anything that could be perceived as “reverse segregation.” Several members of this group, including Kilson, also argued that Black Studies was not a valid area of study on its own terms, and that students needed to twin a degree in Black Studies with a more conventional discipline.

This initiative is already being taken up and was the driving force behind a panel titled, “Towards A Radical Scholarly Praxis: Architects of the Black Studies Movement,” at the Schomburg Center’s conference titled “The State of African American and African Diaspora Studies: Methodology, Pedagogy, and Research,” co-sponsored with the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC) of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Participants included Claudrena Harold (UVA), Sonya Ramsey (UNC-Charlotte), Corey D.B. Walker (Brown), Jonathan Fenderson (Washington University in St. Louis), and Cheryl Hicks (UNC-Charlotte), who acted as chair.

A similar observation could be made about the larger Black Studies project at Cornell University which would not only include the Africana Studies and Research Center as ground zero, but would also include the Ujamaa Residential College and Wari House (on campus), and the Ithaca Southside Community Center (off-campus).