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 activistintellectual 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, "was 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. 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 middleclass 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,

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 African Americans (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 generous governmental 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.

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 hidden premise. 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

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 to popularize 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 activistintellectuals in the United States. For them the mastery and application of knowledge 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

Movement, and critical issues, historical and contemporary, related to the defense and development of the Black community. By 1965 the Black Revolution (incorporating the movements for Civil Rights, Black Consciousness, the Black Arts and Black Power) was shifting gears, redirecting itself from the preoccupations with civil rights and integration and the devotion to nonviolence as the way to achieve them. Now, new psychological seedlings of Black consciousness could be seen budding in a time of ascendancy of Black Nationalism and strategizing for greater group empowerment as a pathway to freedom. Young people and their supporters who, in the coming years, would demand more and better scholarly treatment of African heritage in publications and in educational and other institutions, may not have always been conscious of the depth, breath, and longevity of the intellectual legacy left for them by their predecessors. In case they had not already known of this tradition many, by the mid-Sixties, would come to realize that there, indeed, had been prepared a groundwork upon which they and future generations might build. The responsibility facing the emerging generation of activist-intellectuals would be to discover their historical mission and build upon the foundation made available to them. Modern Origins Struggles for civil rights had objectives of desegregating public accommodations (including the public schools), expanding Black voting and office--holding capacity and assimilating into the societal fabric. Concomitantly, struggles for the improvement of education for African Americans and, thus, for their improved status in society, had largely revolved around gaining access to "better" schools, securing the resources with which to best conduct education, and converting their education into opportunities from which Black people still, in 1965, had been systematically excluded. In this scheme of things, it can be argued, concern for the content of formal education that would incorporate the study of the African background, the examination of the sojourn of people of African ancestry in the United States and the other parts of the Diaspora, and the fuller exploration of contemporary Black life was generally a lesser priority if, indeed, it was a priority at all. However, stirrings of another kind of discontent began to appear in some corners of the country which surpassed the dissatisfaction with being denied entry to a given school or with being deprived of "equal" education and the extended options that were perceived to be among its outcomes. Radicalized young African

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 the improved 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

year, a coalition of community groups, parents and students threatened boycotts of targeted public schools in New York City. They demanded curriculum reform and textbook revisions to include the study of Black history and culture. They also pressed for the hiring of more Black teachers. Protesters called offone planned boycott after officials consented to the demand to have African and African American history taught at the schools (Johnson 1966a; Johnson 1966b). Similarly, in Chicago in April, 1968, high school students orchestrated a boycott of public schools to underscore their demands for the inclusion of the study of Black history and culture in their education. These boycotts of high schools followed the confrontations many of the neighboring colleges had experienced with their Black students the previous spring (Pitts 1971, 197-198, 208-209 and 217). These developments in New York and Chicago form the rudiments of the movement for Black Studies in modern times. Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, the organizing of activistintellectuals around Black Studies and other Black community development projects in California was taking on a different character. Here, the structure of a nascent Black Studies enterprise was beginning to be shaped. In the Bay Area, as early as 1962, Donald Warden (now Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Monsour) and members of the Berkeley-based, anti-integrationist Afro-American Association organized study groups whose participants learned and taught about African and African American history which they proselytized through campus and community rallies. They also studied African languages and the techniques of community organizing. Besides Warden, members of the Association included current San Francisco mayor Willie Brown; Maulana Karenga, now professor and founder, in 1965, of Kwanzaa, who led the Southern California chapter of the Association; now former U. S. Congressman Ronald Dellums; Jimmy Garret, a migrant to the San Francisco-Oakland area in 1965 from civil rights campaigns in the South; and two Oakland residents, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, who would cofound the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in October, 1966 (Colon 2002a; Colon 2003b; Colon 2003c). A splinter group of the Afro-American Association headed by Seale and Newton pushed for an operational linkage between education and service for the development of the Black community. By the 1965-1966 academic year, their organizing and agitating resulted in the establishment of the first organized Black Studies curriculum, a two year program at Oakland's Merritt Community College (Colon 2002a). Also, in 1965, in Los Angeles, Karenga had formed and become leader of US, an activist group. He also had begun articulating Kawaida, his foundational social change ideology. Kawaida, in which Kwanzaa and the Nguzo

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, 3336). 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 for hundreds 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

(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 (19681969) 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.

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 was instrumental 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 Scott and 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

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, preschooling 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 (and been 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

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 island nations, 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 is not 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

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-cultural integrity, 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.

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 assault against 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 7277; 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 other support-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

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 these interrelated 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?

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, teaching and 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 Black community 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

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 of academic 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, energetic and 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-

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 we should be better able to tell the fuller impact of Black Studies as the intellectualactivist sword (Garrett 1998-1999, 150) of that movement. References Aldridge, D. P. and Young, C. (2000). Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Akbar, N. (1991). "Mental Disorder Among African Americans." In Black Books Bulletin. 5 (2). Aldridge, D. P. (1991). Focusing, Black Male-Female Relationships. Chicago: Third World Press. Aldridge, D. P. (2000). "Towards Integrating Africana Women into Africana Studies." In Aldridge, D. P. and Young, C. Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Aldridge, D. P. (1989). Black Male-Female Relationships: A Resource Book of Selected Materials. Dubuque, IA: Kendal/Hunt Publishing Company. Anderson, J. D. (1988). The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. Chapel Hill, NC: the University of North Carolina Press.

Blyden, E. W. (1994). "The Aims and Methods of a Liberal Education for Africans," In Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race. Baltimore: Black Classic Press. Inaugural Address as President of Liberia College, January 5, 1881. Brisbane, R, H. (1974). Black Activism: Racial Revolution in the United States, 1954--1970. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press. Brown, S. (2003). Fighting for US: Maulana Karenga, The US Organization and Black Cultural Nationalism. New York: New York University Press. Carnoy, M. (1974). Education as Cultural Imperialism. New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1974 Carr, E. L. (2000) "Maulana Karenga Interview by Elston L. Carr," Tape Number III, Side 2, University of California at Los Angeles, Center for African American Studies. Carruthers, J. H. (1999). Intellectual Warfare. Chicago: Third World Press. Colon, A. (1980). "A Critical Review of Black Studies Programs." Unpublished Ph. D. in education dissertation, School of Education, Stanford University. Colon, A. (2002a July 20). Transcript of interview with Bobby Seale. Colon, A. (2002b July 22). Transcript of interview with Nathan Hare. Colon, A. (2003a January 28). Transcript of interview with Ethelbert Miller. Colon, A. (2003b May 17). Transcript of interview with Jimmy Garrett Colon, A. (2003c July 5). Transcript of interview with James Turner. Colon, A. (2003d August 11). Transcript of interview with Maulana Karenga. Colon, A. (2003e September 19). Transcript of interview with Delores Aldridge. Colon, A. (2003f September 20). Transcript of interview with Acklyn Lynch.

Colon, A. (2003g September 21). Transcript of interview with Bertha Maxwell Roddy. Drake, St. C. (1970). "Reflections on Black Studies." Unpublished expanded version of a paper presented to the Danforth Workshop on Liberal Arts Education, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Co. July 1970. Fierce, M. C. (1991). Africana Studies Outside the United States: Africa, Brazil and the Caribbean. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Africana Studies and Research Center. Garrett, J. (1998-1999, Fall--Winter). "Black/Africana/Pan African Studies: From Radical to Reaction to Reform? Its Role and Relevance in the Era of Global Capitalism in the New Millennium. In The Journal of Pan African Studies. 1(1) Gordon, V. (2000). "Black Women, Feminism and Black Studies." In Aldridge, D. P. and Young, C. Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Harding, V. (1980). The Other American Revolution, Los Angeles: Center for Afro-American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles and Atlanta: Institute of the Black World. Hare, N. (1968 April 29). "A Conceptual Proposal for a Department of Black Studies." Copy supplied by author. Hilliard, A. G. "The State of African Education." Unpublished paper of plenary presentation to the Commission on Research in Black Education, annual convention of the American Education Research Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 24, 2000. Hudson-Weems, C. (2000). "Africana Womanism: An Overview." In Aldridge, D. P. and Young, C. Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Hull, G. T., Scott, P. B. and Smith, B. (1982). All the Women Are White. All the Blacks Are Men. But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press.

Hull, G. T., and Smith, B. (2000). The Politics of Black Woman's Studies. In Hayes, F. W. HI. A Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African American Studies. Third edition. San Diego, CA: Collegiate Press. Johnson, T. A. (1966 August 26). "3 Harlem Schools Facing Boycotts," New York Times. Johnson, T. A. (1966 September 3). "3 Harlem Schools Facing Boycotts," New York Times. McEvoy, J. and Miller, A. (1969). Black Power and Student Rebellion. Belmont, CA: WadsworthPublishing Co., Inc. Myrdal, G. (1944). An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. New York: Harper and Row Publishers. Negro Digest (1968 March). XVII (5). Special edition, The Black University. Negro Digest, (1969 March). XVIII (5). Special edition, Toward the Black University. Pinkney, A. (1976). Red, Black and Green: Black Nationalism in the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pitts, J.P. (1971). "A Case Study: Analysis of Black High School Students A Generation of Change." Unpublished Ph.D. in sociology dissertation, Northwestern University, 1971. Robinson, A., Foster, C. C., and Ogilvie, D. H. (1969). Black Studies in the University: A Symposium. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Rodney, W. (1974). How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington, DC: Howard University Press. Shujaa, M. J. (1994). Too Much Schooling, Too Little Education: A Paradox of Black Life in White Societies. Trenton, N J: Africa World Press, Inc. Westin, M. (1974 August). Black Studies: Dead or Alive?" Essence, 5.

Wilson, A. (1993). The Falsification of African Consciousness: Eurocentric History, Psychiatry and the Politics of White Supremacy. New York: African World InfoSystems. Wilson, A. (1998). Blueprint for Black Power: A Moral Political and Economic Imperative for the Twenty First Century. New York: African World InfoSystems. Woodson, G. G. (1933). Miseducation of the Negro. Washington DC: Associated Publishers. Young, C. (1972). The Black Experience: Analysis and Synthesis. San Rafael, CA: Leswing, Press. 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.