Black Studies: Historical Background, Modern Origins, and Development Priorities for the Early Twenty First Century (2003)

Historical Background 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 have undergone 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 social responsibility 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, a 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. …