The Forgotten Racial History of Freedom of Expression, 1960–90

Current discussion of First Amendment rights at colleges and universities frequently reinforces the notion that commitments to anti-racism on the one hand, and freedom of expression on the other, inevitably diverge. This presumption is contradicted by the long, complex and consequential history of how exercise of rights of speech, assembly and protest developed and sustained diverse currents of Black freedom activism– civil rights, nationalist, Pan-Africanist –in the second half of the twentieth century.

This paper considers the exercise of First Amendment rights by African Americans within higher education institutions in three phases: initial student protests related to sit-ins and engagement with non-violent direct action campaigns from 1960-1963; the more militant phase of occupation and alternative education associated primarily with the movement to found Black Studies (1968-1975); and the resurgence of Black Student nationalism, in response to growing conditions of racial intolerance at colleges and universities from 1986-1992. Across these three periods, reliance upon group protest– a form of collective speech - marked African American dissidents, especially on campuses, as early skeptics of the idea that individual expression and exchange of opinion constituted the surest means to advance knowledge and overturn falsehood. The equivocal manner in which Black freedom of expression and assembly was protected by college and university administrators, and in some cases civil authorities, demonstrates the racial limits of landmark First Amendment rulings during the 1960s, notably Brandenberg v. Ohio (1969). The developing commitment within Black student protest to identify and establish their own “harm” standard for legal speech speaks, in important ways, to the debate regarding “libertarian” versus “democratic” conceptions of the First Amendment– a debate crucial to considering whether classic liberal citing of the State as the greatest threat to freedom of expression and inquiry hold, in fact, in the face of historical racial discrimination and inequality.