Session Abstract

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, thousands of politicized African American students challenged colleges and universities across America, seeking a relevant education.  From the Ivy League in the Northeast to small rural historically black colleges in the South to large state universities in the West, black students struggled to erect mechanisms on campus that gave them the tools to finish college and fix what they considered a broken society.  Demanding Black Studies, Black Universities, Black Cultural Centers, Black Universities, more black students, faculty, and administrators, while championing black power concepts, black students endeavored to racially overhaul the academy through hundreds of protests at historically black and white colleges in almost every state.  Their activism led to, for example, the intrusion of Black Studies courses, programs, and departments at more than 1,000 institutions, the opening of hundreds of black cultural centers, the mass hiring of black faculty and diversity workers, and the quadrupling of the black student population from 1965 to 1973.  They even assisted in creating new institutions, including Malcolm X Liberation University in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1969.   

Despite the breadth of their activism during a period when other racial groups were also demanding a more socially responsible education, this Black Campus Movement has been marginalized.  In the historiographies of Sixties student activism, the black student movement, and black power, anti-war protests, early 1960s civil rights struggles, and organizations like the Black Panther Party, respectively, have received the scholarly attention.  This panel challenges that marginalization, while also attempting to frame and analyze the contours, overarching demands, and effect of this national struggle.  This panel also discloses the relatively unknown ideological, tactical, and spatial diversity of the movement with case studies of the struggle on specific campuses, regions, or cities.