The Interior Spaces of Campus Activism: Black Women, Dorm Rooms, and Dressing for the Revolution

One of the major changes in the vocabulary of American culture in the 70s was the rise of Black Power. This period, in which images of the Black Panthers, the Afro, the gun-toting soul sister, and dashikis loom large in the American imaginary, had a profound impact on college campuses. I argue that as black enrollment in colleges soared during the peak years of the Black Power movement, collegiate spaces became an important index of the ongoing cultural discourse over soul and contests over its meaning and expression. I show how the intimate politics of dress and décor in the contested space of the university give us a window into what happened as soul went “mainstream.” The dorm room was a potentially contested space; its decoration was a way of asserting black identity in a predominantly white world. The prevalence of Angela Davis posters, African flags, Black Power clenched fists, and “ethnic” beads and fabrics in college dorm rooms across the country was one sign that black women were making themselves and their culture visible in new ways. This paper offers a close reading of Essence magazine’s annual “Campus Issue” (published each August and featuring fashion spreads, tips for dorm room decoration, and news content that focused largely on historically black colleges and universities) examining it vis-à-vis social and cultural developments at my alma mater, Indiana University. Exploring tensions and contestations over the meaning of soul as embodied in the material culture and beauty practices of a generation of black college women at both black colleges in the South and predominantly white schools in the Midwest helps us to unearth a history of soul culture that moves beyond the realm of formal political organizing to offer an alternative, culturally-based narrative of the transition from Civil Rights to Black Power.