1. Colon, Alan, “Black Studies: Historical Background, Modern Origins, and Development Priorities for the Early Twenty First Century.”

8/9/2019 1. Colon, Alan, Black Studies: Historical Background, Modern Origins, and Development Priorities for the Early Twe

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Black Studies: Historical Background, Modern Origins, and Development

Priorities for the Early Twenty First Century.

by Alan Colon

In the broadest historical cultural sense, the antecedents of Black Studies can

be traced to the homelands from which the Africans enslaved in the Americas were

taken. More pointedly, though, from captivity and the Middle Passage onward, the

roots of Black Studies run deep into the history of people of African descent in

North America. These roots can be traced through a three-centuries-long activist-

intellectual tradition that is evidenced both in and outside the academy. This

liberation tradition has three prongs: (1) the discovery, assembling and

disseminating of factual historical data pertaining to what Black people haveundergone and achieved; (2) the use of education and knowledge to defend and

vindicate the race against its detractors; and (3) the production and application of

prescriptive concepts, theories, programs and movements aimed at resolving or

alleviating Black group problems. Throughout their history African Americans

have exemplified this tradition through a myriad of activities that Black Studies

embraces and is an extension of.

Black Studies is the generic term for the reform movement and for the

emerging discipline and programs based in but not confined to institutions of

higher education in the United States which critically and systematically celebrate

the discovery, recording, teaching, learning and utilization of knowledge about

African heritage, the African Diaspora and African American experience and

initiatives for Black community development. (Other terms such as Africana

Studies, African World Studies and African American Studies have also been used

to describe this historical project). A core value in Black Studies is its underlying

social mission that requires the practical application of theory to methodology and

the wedding of knowledge to activism toward the resolution of Black community

issues. A model for productivity and development that has surfaced in Black

Studies is the achievement of academic excellence, the demonstration of socialresponsibility and the application of culturally grounded competencies.

To understand the evolution of Black Studies, it is especially important to

review events that transpired in the twenty year period, 1945-1965, that

immediately preceded the advent of the field in its modern form. The period

between 1945 and 1955, as Brisbane (1974, 21 and 23) has observed, "was a


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buoyant one for Black people in the United States." At no prior time had African

Americans expressed such hope and faith in the viability of American democracy.

After all, they were realizing significant gains through: (1) the opening up of areas

of employment; (2) the educational provisions of the G. I. Bill of Rights; (3) their

awakening sense of possibility for their empowerment in national, state and local

electoral politics; (4) their ongoing legal victories in civil rights which led to the

Brown Supreme Court decision of 1954, toppling legalized segregation; (5) the

ending of segregation and discrimination in the armed services, and (6) the

eradication of barriers in southern states to the admission of Black students to

formerly segregated institutions of higher learning (Brisbane 1974, 21-22).

Another part of the climate that Black people saw as sympathetic to and

supportive of their aspirations was a tendency to focus on improving interracial

cooperation. According to Brisbane (1974, 23),

White civic and social organizations for the first time ever interested

themselves in the improvement and betterment of race relations in their

communities. Major groups, such as the American Friends Service Committee and

the Anti--Defamation League of B'Nai B'rith, published reports and studies dealing

with race relations and set up programs to improve intergroup relations. And

perhaps under directions from the Vatican, Roman Catholic prelates called for the

elimination of discrimination and segregation from American life.

It should be remembered, of course, that segregated institutions under

apartheid in the United States had decidedly adverse effects for African American

communities. The residuals of legalized segregation-in the institutional structure of

society and in the attitudes and behaviors of its citizens-linger persistently today,

fifty years after Brown. At the same time, the cultural arrangements of Jim Crow

no doubt unintentionally promoted another consequence-a sense of security about

identity and a strong measure of group solidarity. Black schools, churches, and

voluntary associations, produced and reinforced an achievement-oriented middle-

class personality type where role models were successful Black men and women ...

(Colon 1980, 41). On the organizational level, as Drake (1970, 4) has pointed out.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

was the "fighting arm" of this group and its goal was the complete "integration"

into the American economic and political order and the full enjoyment of all civil

rights. The vote, the courts and education were the means to be utilized for group

progress, and destroying derogatory stereotypes was assigned an important role in

the process of change. Trying to give white people access to what they, as Negroes,


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already knew as the "truth" about Negro history became something of a crusade

and white liberal historians and publicists were welcome allies.

In this crusade two aims were primary. First, efforts were directed toward

the revision of textbooks to include the well-authenticated favorable data on

African Americans perceived to be favorable that was usually omitted so that

students on both sides of the Blackwhite color line would receive a more accurate

and sympathetic account of Black peoples' participation in human history. Second,

there was a focus on enriching the curriculum at all levels to include material that

would foster harmonious interracial and interethnic relations (Drake 1970, 4-5).

The thrust of this crusade was decidedly for accelerating the pace of integration.

The key end result would be to liberalize white attitudes by creating a better image

of the race for white eyes to see. This was built upon the faith that if whites only

knew the Truth, they would set Black folks free, or tolerate them more if not fully

accept them. A corollary result would be to stimulate race pride among AfricanAmericans (Colon 1980, 42).

"Efforts to legitimate the study of the Black World through curriculum

innovation were embraced by some white educators in an era where interest in

Black people among white Americans rose dramatically," (Colon 1980, 42). The

Civil Rights Movement would help to expose the racial oppression and economic

exploitation of African Americans in the United States. At the same time, new

Black nations in Africa which emerged during the Cold War as a result of

anticolonial struggles of resistance aroused interest and concern over the prospect

that they might "go Communist." This would shift the global balance of allegiance

and power to the Soviet bloc. In United States universities and colleges this

expanded interest was manifested in (1) an increase in course content dealing with

race relations in general and African Americans in particular and (2) programs

devoted to African Studies, a field which appeared at the graduate level and, as

Fierce (1991, 5) has observed, was primarily concerned with continental Africans

and events and policies pertaining to African countries. The purpose of African

Studies was to train experts for government and business and for teaching about

Africa. These programs, though limited in number in contrast to the Black Studies

programs that would proliferate by the early 1970s, were to receive generousgovernmental and private foundation support. According to Fierce (1991, 5-6)

"such support eventually resulted in the designation and establishment between

1948 and 1971 of nine Title VI National Resource Centers in African Studies."

Because its history, rationale and mission diverge markedly from Black/Africana

Studies, African Studies should not be equated with Black/Africana Studies.


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Drake (1970, 5) warned "it is important to note that these race relations

courses and courses about the Negro and about Africa were not Black Studies" as

proposed earlier by Carter G. Woodson and W. E. B. DuBois, (or demanded later

by the activists of the 1960s and 1970s, or engaged in by today's Black Studies

professionals and students). Instead, these were "courses and programs oriented

primarily toward teaching white Americans about Black people and toward

training them to do research on matters affecting Black people" (Drake 1970, 5).

Through the middle of the Sixties decade, all this intellectual activity

occurred within the context of the liberal humanitarian tradition. The guiding value

premise of the African Studies programs was that Black Nationalism was

progressive for Africa at this stage of the continent's evolution and not mere

propaganda for African independence or African forms of government. The value

premise that was operative for the United States, however, was that integration, not

Black Nationalism, was desirable. This assumption was not always a hiddenpremise. Furthermore, it was also a cardinal principle of liberal educators that

study about Black people and about Africa should be an interracial enterprise and

that Black and white scholars should compete as peers. Whites should be

encouraged to cultivate an interest in the problems of the Black World and studies

of Black people should not be thought of as meeting Black identity needs and

political objectives only (Colon 1980, 43).

Coexisting at mid-twentieth century with these prevailing intellectual foci

and priorities were ongoing alternative approaches to the study of Black history

and culture that could historically be found at the outer fringes of the cultural

mainstream, of society in the United States. A dogged and determined interest in

Black heritage had been sustained by two distinct and dissimilar groups. As

Brisbane (1974, 233) has indicated, "The first and by far the most competent and

learned was the group of [contribution--oriented] Black scholars and teachers who

labored in the tradition generated by Woodson and the Association for the Study of

Negro Life and History" (ASNLH). These scholars had taught scattered courses in

Black history and culture since the early 1900s on the campuses of some Black

schools in the South where they worked. By 1915, the budding popular interest in

the history and culture of Black people needed coordination at the national level.This inspired Woodson and his colleagues to found their organization (ASNLH).

Besides teaching, Black historians and other social scientists were to produce

brilliant works of scholarship despite the difficulties they encountered in finding

publishers for them. Additionally, these scholars had occasional opportunities to

contribute in various ways to privately and federally funded research projects and

publications. These efforts were supported by resources that were unavailable to


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them as African Americans. For example, numerous notable African American

social scientists, librarians and writers took part in several stages of scholarly

production that led to An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern

Democracy, the publication of results of the sweeping landmark status survey

headed by Gunnar Myrdal (1944), a Swedish anthropologist.

The second group identified by Brisbane (1974, 223-224) as having a

continued interest in Black heritage was composed of Black cultural nationalists.

The nationalists, unlike the others, concentrated more on asserting the greatness of

African history and culture and the African origins of Blacks in the United States

and of all of humankind. They were less enthusiastic about the role of Black people

in the building of American civilization. The nationalists' propagation of the

culture and history of Africa stems from patterns that climaxed around 1920 in the

separatist movement led by Marcus Garvey and were continued and expanded

through the mid-1960s by the Nation of Islam and other groups. They helped topopularize the celebration of Black Nationalist cosmologies and mythologies in

their definitions and interpretations of history. Their teachings, however, were

confined largely to Black communities in urban centers.

By the early 1960s Black nationalist ideologies had been expressed through

a long line of scholars without portfolio, or lay historians, who did not hold

mainstream academic credentials and who functioned for the most part outside the

academy. Among them were author Joel A. Rogers, educator and writer John

Henrik Clarke, and Harlem book dealers Richard B. Moore and Lewis Micheaux,

to cite only a few. Nationalism drove the oratory of street corner speakers whose

topics embraced African and African American heritage and current affairs.

Foremost among these lecturers was El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, or Malcolm X. As

the leading Black nationalist in the post--World War II era, Malcolm centered his

political analysis in the lessons he culled out of studying the history of Black

struggle in the United States and worldwide. Until his assassination in February

1965, the outspoken and influential Muslim minister, who had also attracted

audiences in foreign lands, especially in Africa, had made these lessons

unmistakably clear and meaningful to militant Black youth and activist-

intellectuals in the United States. For them the mastery and application ofknowledge of Black heritage would become necessary to the successes of the

Black Liberation Movement (Brisbane 1974, 224). Nationalist consciousness was

evident also in the activities-the lectures, debates, organizational meetings, book

parties, receptions for African dignitaries, etc. that were held in the various Black

book stores, church basements and other community centers where people came

for illumination about African independence movements, the Civil Rights


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Americans and more seasoned scholar-activists heightened the attention they

would pay to the content of education and to how education either aided or

thwarted Black people's becoming free. They would proclaim that something is

wrong with conventional European American-centered approaches to Blacks'

education. They would reason that under circumstances of underdevelopment,

which had been historically central to African Americans' existence, education

serves, on the one hand, the goal of freedom and development or, on the other, the

goal of subordination and underdevelopment. Education, they insisted, could not

be neutral to these polarities.

When African American college students began to demand Black Studies

their assumptions were quite different from those of liberal white educators and

from those of most Blacks who interacted with school districts in the country. They

were the same assumptions that lay behind the demands of Black high school

students for educational reform: Black Studies was needed for Black people.According to one analysis (Drake 1970, 4).

These high school students of the northern Black ghettos wanted such

courses for very specific reasons--to aid them in their identity quest; to bolster a

sense of pride ... of being Afro--Americans; to supply them with facts and myths to

defend their ethnic group against its detractors; and to reinforce bonds of solidarity

between Black people and their struggle for equality and respect.

When, where and how did Black Studies first appear in the modern era? This

question is difficult to answer with absolute precision. For the genesis of Black

Studies cannot be simply attributed to one person, or to a single organization, or to

a magical historical event. One thing seems clear, though. Enough data exist to

support a multiple cradle explanation of the origins of Black Studies. That is to

say, demands for what came to be called Black Studies seem to have

simultaneously emerged within about a four-year period, 1965-1969, in different

locations in the United States. Generally, there is no evidence available to suggest

that the first Black Studies advocates in any one of these sites initially had any

direct organizational relationship to the early innovators in other places. Instead,

they were linked by their holding common aspirations first and foremost for theimproved status of Black people along with the shared need they expressed to

produce a committed scholarship and a cultural socialization. Where, then, are the

specific locations out of which modern Black Studies sprouted?

One such place is in the hearts and minds of Black youth and their organized

activities in key cities for a liberating education. Preceding the 1966-1967 school


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Saba (Seven Principles) are grounded (Colon 2003d), would become a significant

philosophical reference point for nationalists and would influence the intellectual

development of Amiri Baraka, Haki Madhubuti and Kalamu ya Salaam, among

other scholar-activists who made contributions to Black Studies (Brown 2003, 33-

36). US was also involved in a dispute with the Black Panthers over the structure

of Black Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles that left two

Panthers dead on that campus in 1968 (Brown 2003, 95-99; Carr 2000, 124-130).

Dramatic and volatile events in the creation of the Black Studies Movement

also occurred at numerous other institutions. None of those events, however, were

as sustained as those that took place at San Francisco State College. Jimmy Garrett,

a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) veteran who was enrolled

at State, was instrumental as an organizer in his attempts to reshape the cultural

landscape of that institution. By 1965, State's Negro Students Association was

reborn as the Black Students Union (BSU), which became the prototype forhundreds of other campus-based Black student organizations around the country to

emulate. Subsequently, the BSU at State seized control over strategic campus

agencies such as the work-study and tutorial programs and the student-run

Experimental College, as well as the Student Government Association.

Importantly, because they also controlled the budgets of these administrative units,

the members of the BSU channeled resources from the campus to struggles of

Black and poor people off campus, intending to bridge the gap they saw between

the mission of the college and the needs of the community (Colon 2002a; Colon

2002b; Colon 2003a). Stressing an education for a different kind of cultural

socialization, the students challenged the structures and practices of white privilege

and white supremacy. Inspired by the visual, literary, recording and performing

artists of the Black Arts Movement, which was international in its reach, the BSU

established a cultural arts series which drew the likes of poet-playwright Baraka,

poetess Sonia Sanchez and writer Askia Muhammad Toure?. These writers would

also be among the first to teach Black Studies courses on campus (Colon 2003a).

When Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture) came to speak at State in

1968, according to one source, the sisters, hoping to impress him, donned Afros

and African attire. Not surprisingly, the brothers, trying to impress the sisters,followed suite (Colon 2003a). Along with the changes that were being forged on

campus, and in the context of the intellectual ferment, expanded Black

consciousness and radicalized activism that emanated from Bay Area communities

off the campus, the BSU membership skyrocketed and personal identities of

individuals in it became transformed. This was due in no small part to the impact

of the Black Panther Party members who were also students at San Francisco State


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(Colon 2003a; Colon 2002b) and wanted "... education for our people that exposed

the true nature of this decadent American Society ...," part of the fifth point in the

Party's platform and program (Colon 2002a; Pinkney 1976, 105).

Academic year 1967-1968 brought to San Francisco State the approval of a

four year curriculum in Black Studies, the first in the nation. The demands of Black

students and their faculty and administrator allies for the offering of Black Studies

through a department formed the basis for a Black student-initiated strike that, with

the support of other student organizations and of faculty groups, shut down the

school for six months (McEvoy and Miller 1969). Nathan Hare, author of the

widely-distributed "Conceptual Proposal for a Department of Black Studies"

(1968), and who was more prolific than anyone in the production of the Black

Studies literature base during the field's early years, enjoyed a short-lived (1968-

1969) appointment as the first chair of the first Black Studies department (Colon

2002b; Colon 2003a).

Calls for programs in Black Studies similar to the one at San Francisco State

College escalated nationwide. The struggle for Black Studies seemed to gain added

legitimacy when Yale University, in spring, 1968, sponsored a conference on the

subject with Ford Foundation underwriting (Robinson Foster and Ogilvie 1969).

The movement for Black Studies certainly gained momentum with the programs

that multiplied into existence following the April, 1968 assassination of Martin

Luther King, Jr. (These programs were often hurriedly granted by fearful officials

of institutions as appeasements to contain the rage held by the Black community,

especially college students, over King's murder.) At Cornell University on Parents

Weekend in April, 1969, Black students carrying guns and wearing bandoliers

captured headlines upon leaving Willard Straight Hall, which they had taken over

to underscore their demands, at the core of which was Black Studies, on the

administration. As a consequence, the Africana Studies and Research Center was

created at Cornell, and Northwestern University graduate student leader James

Turner was hired as the founding director (Colon 2000c). By fall, 1969, Harvard

University joined two other elite universities, Yale and Stanford, in offering a

degree in Afro-American Studies.

Also in 1969, beyond the academy, in Atlanta, Vincent Harding founded the

Institute of the Black World, an independent think tank, as an experiment which

related scholarship to struggle. That same year Nathan Hare became founding

publisher of The Black Scholar, billed as the journal of Black Studies, based in

Berkeley.


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Not to be overlooked as architects of Black Studies in its formative years are

the pioneering achievements of Black women. As is true throughout other aspects

of the Black Freedom Movement, women were active in some of the student

organizations and faculty-staff caucuses on campus and in some off-campus

community groups which advocated for Black Studies. Among these women three

stand out as major contributors to the field. First, Delores Aldridge's ground

breaking work resulted in the launching, in 1970, of Emory University's African

American and African Studies B. A. program in Atlanta, the first such effort in the

South. Aldridge led this program from its inception to 1990, rendering her the

longest continuous serving program director in the first decades of Black Studies.

(Aldridge would also become the first person to hold an endowed chair in Black

Studies, having been appointed to the Grace Townes Hamilton Chair in Sociology

and African American Studies in 1990. Further, Aldridge, from 1984 to 1988,

would become the first individual to head the National Council for Black Studies

for an unprecedented two terms (Colon 2003b). Second, Carlene Young wasinstrumental in implementing a Master of Arts degree offering in African

American Studies at California's San Jose State University in 1970. Additionally,

she edited a survey text, The Black Experience: Analysis and Synthesis (1972),

that was a staple in early Black Studies courses. (Young would later coedit, with

Aldridge, Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies [2000], the

most current comprehensive anthology of the field.) A third woman is important as

a shaper of Black Studies is Bertha Maxwell Roddy. She was responsible for

organizing and convening the first national meeting of scholars to design a national

organizational structure of Black Studies. Formed in 1970 at the University of

North Carolina-Charlotte, where Maxwell was head of Black Studies, this body,

the National Organization for Black Studies, would evolve a few years later into

the National Council for Black Studies, the field's premier professional

organization. (Colon 2000g).

It should also be noted that by the early 1970s scholars had begun addressing

the special concerns of Black women. In the ensuing years these interests would be

expressed along two developmental paths: as an integral part of Black Studies

(Aldridge 1989; Aldridge 1991; Aldridge 2000; Gordon 2000; and Hudson-Weems

2000) and, by contrast, as an enterprise independent of Black Studies (Hull Scottand Smith 1982; Hull and Smith 2000).

By 1971, as Westin (1974, 57) has reported, 500 programs in Black Studies

were formed in higher educational institutions in the United States.

Characteristically, demands for Black Studies were issued at predominantly white

universities and colleges, not at HBCUs. The reasons for this trend are several. But


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at the least it should be said that, as with other institutions, HBCUs which lacked a

Black Studies program also lacked a cadre of activist students, faculty and staff

who were committed to a concerted movement to protest Black Studies'

nonexistence and push for its establishment and for other changes. In rare instances

anywhere did an institution seek to voluntarily reform its educational philosophy,

curriculum and pedagogical strategies to synthesize into its mission a broader and

more penetrating focus on Black history and culture. It should also be said,

however, that a few HBCUs dared or were forced to struggle over the definition of

an education for freedom for Black people and over the meaning of "The Black

University" in ways that resulted in the setting up of new formal organizational

units in Black Studies. Among these schools which did do so is Howard

University, which established a degree-granting Department of Afro-American

Studies and an Afro-American Studies Research Center in 1969, the year following

the university's hosting of the Toward the Black University conference in March,

1968 (Colon 2003a; Negro Digest 1968; Negro Digest 1969).

Significance of Black Studies

A comprehensive critical examination of developments, trends, issues and

outcomes in Black Studies in the nearly four decades since its modern inception is,

of course, essential to an understanding and assessment of the field. That larger

undertaking is beyond the scope and space constraints of this essay. Suffice it to

say here that Black Studies has had a substantial effect on the educational

enterprise. In the words of Vincent Harding (1980, 227), a central figure in Black

Studies and other human development projects, "... the universities will never be

the same again--though they may try very hard--after the movement of Black

people and ideas into their formerly essentially white precincts ..." Having emerged

as a phenomenon of American higher education, the reach and impact of Black

Studies have extended downward to secondary and elementary education, pre-

schooling and home schooling; upward to graduate education and professional

schooling; outward to diverse communities and the various constituencies in them;

and to some places overseas.

As an interdisciplinary scholarly project, Black Studies has challenged (andbeen challenged by) a range of associated disciplines and persons devoted to them

through which the experiences and initiatives of African people have been

investigated, examined, recorded, and transmitted. This is most particularly true of

methodologies in the social sciences and the humanities. Because it seeks to

substitute facts and their analyses and application for the prevailing miseducation

and destructive myths, misrepresentations and misunderstandings about Black


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people, Black Studies has generated a knowledge base for helping to humanize the

wider society and the world. Also, as a catalyst for social change, Black Studies

has prompted other groups to become more proactive to retrieve and project their

respective historical experiences through research, writing, instruction and other

means. Puerto Ricans, Chicano(a)s, Asian Americans, Native Americans, white

ethnics, women, Black women, and gays and lesbians are among those who have

also pushed for the institutionalization of the ethical scholarly treatment and

utilization of their histories.

Interest in aspects of Black Studies has also been fueled well outside of

collegiate circles. This interest has been reflected in the agendas of Black

community groups and in the governmental and private organizations and agencies

with which they interact in this country and abroad. In addition, Black Studies has

stimulated a more widespread focus on developmental issues confronted by people

in Africa and in the African Diaspora (in the Americas and the Caribbean islandnations, most notably) and by others' in struggles for survival, development, justice

and freedom. Furthermore, as it has evolved, the field has produced abundant

answers to the often-asked question, "What can you do with Black Studies?" A

new vocationalism has arisen that demarcates Blacks' heritage and contemporary

realities for specialized attention. Black Studies professionals stand out in a broad

spectrum of diplomatic, administrative, consultative, organizing, publishing,

entrepreneurial, preservationist and archival services and enterprises, as well as in

research, curricular, pedagogical, historiographical and related educational

endeavors.

In some sense, a response to the question of the larger impact of Black

Studies must be speculative, for it is still too soon to tell. Sociology and

psychology, which became crystallized into disciplines of Western social science

thought and experience in the late nineteenth century, are still subjects of scholarly

debate as to their nature, scope, application, legitimacy and relationship to other

fields of scientific inquiry and analysis. It is, thus, unfair and inappropriate for

premature judgments and conclusions to be reached about Black Studies which,

over the broader sweep of time of disciplinary development, is still in its

youthfulness. Besides, using other fields to gauge the efficacy of Black Studies isnot the ultimate standard against which this discipline should be evaluated.

Paramount in any more complete assessment of Black Studies' impact is the

need to measure Black Studies against itself and its original intent. That is, to what

extent has Black Studies fulfilled its signature claim and mission as an education

for Black liberation and human development? A response to this question cannot


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be produced outside of the context of the current location and condition of Black

people in the landscape of the United States and of the world, especially as regards

their education and socialization.

Development Priorities for the Early Twenty First Century

The 400-year struggle for African people has been for a legitimate education

for the children, a high quality, culturally appropriate, truthful

education/socialization for our children. It has been a struggle against hegemony

and for control over socialization. We begin the new millennium with the same

issues that we have always had, just new faces and new forms. Who can be pleased

with what we see as we observe our people all over the world? (Hilliard, 200)

If we provisionally define Black freedom as the ongoing, dynamic group

achievement, exercise and expansion of political emancipation, social-culturalintegrity, economic well-being, physical and mental health and wellness, spiritual

salvation and fundamental human rights, we must conclude that Black people are

not yet free. The continuing African Holocaust, which began five centuries ago

with Europeans' invasion, disruption and division of the African Continent,

continued with the forced emigration of African peoples to various regions of the

New World. The Holocaust of Black people extended to the United States,

encompassing 246 years of institutionalized enslavement, then 89 years of

legalized segregation and now 50 years of ongoing underdevelopment in nominal

freedom. This history has left African Americans marginalized as a social group in

their overall societal existence. In measurements of quality of life across a broad

spectrum of categories--social, economic, legal, political, health, etc.--African

Americans continue to be confronted with the most of the worst and the least of the

best. Of course, significant and necessary victories have been won. Among them

are the dismantling of de jure segregation by the 1960s, the expansion of Blacks'

voting rights and the increased number of Black elected officials by the 1970s and

the growth of the Black middle class in the 1980s and 1990s to one-third of the

African American population today. However, notwithstanding these gains, Black

people remain reluctantly bound in a crisis of protracted underdevelopment, a state

in which the realization of their fuller human potential is arrested (Rodney 1974)through racial oppression, economic exploitation, cultural domination and

patriarchy. And, as Hilliard (2000, 13) has observed, "nothing in place or publicly

contemplated offers any prospect that our general position in the global society will

improve." This predicament is epitomized in African Americans' education and

other socialization experiences, the short and long term consequences of which

have been nothing less than horrifying.


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As a new millennium dawns, there exists no consistent, comprehensive,

coordinated commitment to appropriately formally educate the masses of African

Americans. At the same time, as Hilliard (2000, 4-7) has claimed, a critical

problem Black people now face is their decreasing ability to control the processes

by which their children are socialized. "When we combine the formal system

trends with the control of informal socialization through movies, videos, audios,

advertising and television," Hilliard (2000, 8) has asked, "where is the space and

time for our community to carry out its responsibility to intergenerational cultural

transmission?" Conventional education and other means used for the socialization

of African Americans into underdevelopment are sustained by a genocidal

intellectual-psychological warfare that is waged against them. This warfare aims to

colonize or incarcerate Blacks' minds to extend power over them. To paraphrase

Woodson (1933, ix-xiv and 1-16), when you control a person's thinking you do not

have to worry about his or her actions. A most devastating casualty of the assaultagainst the collective Black psyche and historical memory remains the psychic

disorientation, disrepair and discouragement that have left so many African

Americans in states of confusion, self-hatred, self-alienation and inertia. Thus

disempowered, Blacks have witnessed a diminished capacity to determine and act

more in their own personal and collective enlightened self-interests (Akbar 1991,

18-25; Anderson 1988, 1-3; Blyden 1881/1994, 85-107; Carnoy 1974, 31-77 and

270-305; Carruthers 1999, 61-73; Shujaa 1994; Wilson 1993, 1-4, 20-38 and 72-

77; Wilson 1998, 11-12; Woodson 1933, ix-xiv and 1-16).

Two disruptive socialization processes have historically been salient in the

battles against the minds of Black people. One process is miseducation.

Miseducation redirects the cosmology (the world view or outlook) and behavior of

people of a group from identifying with their own historical memory and cultural

self-awareness, which foster their development and well-being. These are replaced

by an overriding alien and dysfunctional historical and cultural reference point, and

this serves the group's underdevelopment as its members identify with this point of

reference as their own. The other disruptive socialization process is diseducation,

by which a group's members are deprived of access to education and receive

unequal allocation of resources-human, fiscal, technological, physical and othersupport-with which to conduct education. Miseducation raises the issue of content.

With diseducation the concern is with access. Both these processes have been

operative in prevalent ways in the educational history of African Americans.

A major challenge for supporters of alternative approaches to education and

socialization is to sustain the alternative model of success such that it achieves a


16/23

desired educational impact on large enough numbers of people on the group's

behalf. With regard to alternative education for African Americans, the essential

and enduring question remains: How can an underdeveloped group create and

perpetuate an education for group liberation in a social climate that emphasizes

individual success as a prime value and is, therefore, antagonistic to a group

liberation ethic and value system? Additionally, we might ask, how do we actualize

a socialization for group liberation in a multicultural world?

The early stages of the 21st century offer a complex milieu in which Black

Studies, as an avowed agency of change for freedom, must struggle with the

essential questions raised here. The struggle for Black Studies must complement

other organized efforts for empowerment in the broader dimensions of Black life.

In this dialectic, there are important internal developmental issues-both symbolic

and substantive, and ongoing and new-to which Black Studies theorists and

practitioners must address their attention over the next decades. Some of theseinterrelated issues and some of the challenges associated with them on campuses

and in other places are identified below.

First, Black Studies, it should be remembered, was established as a

corrective to the disservice of European American-based, male dominated and

monocultural thought and social practice. So, too, must Black Women's Studies

provide corrections and prescriptions for the patriarchy that has dominated Black

women and also restricted the more optimal development of Black Studies. Black

Women's Studies concentrates on rediscovering, restoring and projecting the

"invisible woman," which Black women have too often been in the human record.

Black Women's Studies, a central part of Black Studies, prioritizes the research,

scholarly production, instruction and application of knowledge centered on women

of African descent. The incorporation of Black Women's Studies into Black

Studies is necessary for mutual intellectual, curricular, pedagogical and practical

legitimacy and advancement.

A second critical issue for the development of Black Studies is research.

Given the extent and complexity of the stifled development of Black people in the

United States and abroad, what is a responsible Black Studies research agenda,who is to set its priorities and how is it to be carried out?

Third, in the matter of curricular and pedagogical reform, in what new,

proactive and coordinated ways can we build and transmit what needs to be learned

and lived for freedom and the development of humanity? What are the base

components we can agree on for a liberating curriculum?


17/23

Fourth, in what pioneering and sophisticated ways can Black Studies

develop appropriate analytical and explanatory frameworks that can serve the

Black Freedom Movement? Dysfunctional dichotomies involving theory, research

and practice must be narrowed through theoretical and methodological innovation.

Standardization is a fifth concern that is salient for Black Studies. For

example, what minimum and common competencies do we value and require of

those who are trained and practice in Black Studies? What are the critical literature

base, research skills, analytical and writing capabilities, etc. that persons in the

field are held accountable for mastering?

A sixth developmental issue for Black Studies is institutionalization. How

and where is the Black Studies idea organized as a broad-based popular liberation

education and socialization process that is operative for lifelong learning, teachingand living? Most formal Black Studies programs were born as concessions through

struggle in others' space which, along with the requisite resources, Black people

did not control. That struggle must continue and accelerate wherever Blacks seek

education or undergo socialization. But a more widespread institutionalization of

Black Studies will require imaginative and committed new visions, collaborations

and undertakings, including consortia of various kinds involving colleges and

universities, other education centers, churches, agencies and activist organizations

at the grass roots.

Seventh, the Black Studies agenda and its practitioners' capacity to carry it

out cannot be circumscribed by relying exclusively on allocations from established

institutional budgets, or on the monies from government and foundation sources, as

deserving as the recipients may be of such support. A sophisticated, vibrant

independent Black Studies fiscal infrastructure must be developed through which a

more self-determined Black community is better served. The raising of resources

and governing of their use must be done collectively.

An eighth critical area for Black Studies in the coming decades lies in its

mission, continuity and expansion. The use of scholarship and education for Blackcommunity outreach, service and holistic development is at the heart of Black

Studies. This mission has differentiated Black Studies from other scholarly

enterprises, and from the mere random study of Black people and of selected

fragments of their history and current status. Yet, as Harding (1980, 227) has

argued, Black Studies has been absorbed into the structures, ethos and aspirations

of the American university system. It should be realized that movements for


18/23

change often fall short of, if not betray, the radical, life changing vision of what

they could achieve. This tendency is true of the Black Studies Movement as the

prospect of what it could accomplish in the context of mainstream higher education

has diminished in exchange for acceptance, legitimation and career advancement

of individuals. (Hull and Smith 2000, 15) Black Studies has fallen into this trap of

its own underdevelopment because the Black Studies Movement

failed to carry to their logical, radical ends many of the challenges to the

assumptions, ideology and structures of American higher education, failed to

continue to press the critical issue of the relationship between black people inside

the universities and those who will never make it. It was absorbed because it failed

to deal unflinchingly with the connections of the American university to the

American political, economic and social system, failed to organize nationally to

deal with such questions failed, because many black persons wanted nothing more

than to be absorbed into the tenure tracks, systems of status and communities ofacademic unreality (Harding 1980, 227-228).

In the academy, then, in settings that cultural critic-activist Acklyn Lynch

(Colon 2003f) has called "enchanted quagmires of irrelevance," Black Studies is

caught in a vice. The Black Studies Movement can claim partial victories in the

establishment of beachheads at collegiate institutions which house Black Studies

currently. Such institutionalization of Black Studies, however, does not alone meet

the requirements of an education for liberation. Today, the movement for Black

Studies has another requirement: it must revitalize its militancy and its critical

stance if it is to nourish its transformatory potential into actual capacity. The

campus needs to continue to be a focus of this thrust but Black Studies'

revitalization also should be accelerated more vigorously off campus through

indigenous community-based agencies and organizations. While the long shadow

of relentless problems and their residuals will continue to challenge Black Studies,

the Black Studies future will witness the emergence of new issues, new questions,

new threats and new problems, matters which go beyond the best thinking we have

ever known (Harding 1980, 225).

The next stage of Black Studies demands a more self-conscious, energeticand systematic magnification of an ethical orientation to the field's founding

premises, developmental history and future prospects. The number of graduate

students who receive terminal degrees in Black Studies need to multiply as do the

limited number of institutions--six--presently offering opportunities for study

leading to the Ph.D. degree in the discipline. New cadres of Black Studies

professionals must be diligently prepared to succeed their more seasoned scholar-


19/23

activist colleagues in grappling with the critical issues and fundamental struggles

of today and of the next decades. Along with the regeneration of an overriding

loyalty and accountability to Black Studies' social mission, addressing the

challenge to its intergenerational continuity is an indispensable priority in the

field's future. In the resolution of this issue, as with responding to other

developmental priorities, leader ship and collective responsibility are key variables,

Creative approaches to organization, governance and accountability will need to be

devised by the Black Studies professional groups and by a range of other local,

national and international organizations, as well as by those in organized programs

of Black Studies.

The extent and endurance of successes is confronting these and other

challenges to its maturation will be a measure of Black Studies' claim--and it

capacity to contribute--to greater relevance to the movement for Black freedom,

development and justice and the development of humanity. By the 2030s weshould be better able to tell the fuller impact of Black Studies as the intellectual-

activist sword (Garrett 1998-1999, 150) of that movement.

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Dr. Alan Colon is an NEH Professor of Education and African World Studies.Resources for this article were provided by the National Endowment for the

Humanities. Dr Colon has served in various capacities at Howard University,

Hampton University, and several other institutions. He has contributed to

numerous scholarly publications and is currently completing a book on the history

and development of Black/Africana Studies.

Documents

1. Colon, Alan, “Black Studies: Historical Background, Modern Origins, and Development Priorities for the Early Twenty First Century.”