Towards a Blacker University: The Reconstitution of Power and Pedagogy at Malcolm X Liberation University, 1969–73

Founded in the wake of black student protest at Duke University in 1969, Malcolm X Liberation University (MXLU) was the radical outgrowth of a new argument for independent schools that advanced a curriculum designed to liberate the minds and communities of black people. In its second year of operation, founder Howard Fuller relocated MXLU to Greensboro and staffed the school with community volunteers and student activists.  While these new efforts for independence and liberation embraced (at least in its early stages) the concepts of Black nationalism, the existence of MXLU was heavily dependent on previously existing institutions that were historically rooted in the black community.  Although historically black colleges received a heavy dose of the critique being levied against the old guard, their continued presence and role were critical in the genesis of Black Power and its related initiatives.  MXLU tapped into the activist energies being fueled on black college campuses and in doing so, helped to create a template for Black Studies that included the creation of inroads into the communities that they studied and served. This paper will examine the history of Malcolm X Liberation University by illustrating the close relationship that it shared with the community of Greensboro, North Carolina, which historian William Chafe described as, “the center of Black Power in the South.” This relationship strengthened MXLU’s agenda for transforming the “pedagogy of the oppressed,” into a curriculum that sparked a new discourse centering on the empowerment of the masses.