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Black Studies



  • The Book that Launched Black Studies Was a Challenge to Classroom Racism

    by Ibram X. Kendi

    Education historian Jarvis Givens discusses a 90th anniversary edition of Carter Woodson's pathbreaking "The Mis-Education of the Negro," noting that the book was banned in Oklahoma for being "antiklan" in its efforts to overturn the pervasive message of Black inferiority in the established school curriculum. 



  • Conversation: Why is AP Taking Activism Out of African American Studies?

    Historians Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Robin D.G. Kelley discuss the roots of African American Studies in civil rights activism, which makes the decision to de-emphasize contemporary movements like Black Lives Matter inexplicable and diminishes the power of the course to help students make sense of the society.



  • A Reading List of Authors Removed from the AP African American Studies Course

    The College Board has made revisions to its pilot African American Studies course that appear to follow the criticisms made by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Here's a collection of essays by many of the scholars representing diverse Black intellectual traditions whose ideas will not be part of the course going forward. 



  • The Lost Promise of Black Study

    by Andrew J. Douglas and Jared Loggins

    Atlanta's Institute of the Black World struggled to negotiate its mission to theorize and document Black oppression and resistance without being captured or controlled by outside institutions, including the established historically Black colleges in Atlanta. Its history raises difficult and important questions about the relationship of universities and freedom today.



  • The Contours of Black Studies in American Public Schools

    by Alexander Hyres

    A historian of education argues that Black studies was not an invention of the 1960s; its flawed implementation reflected the long battles Black activists fought against hostile and indifferent school administrations for decades before. 



  • How Saidiya Hartman Retells the History of Black Life

    The literary scholar Saidiya Hartman's studies of the aftermath of slavery and the African diaspora point to the limits of archival records for understanding historical Black experience. Some historians question whether her methods fill archival gaps too creatively.



  • Black Studies For Everyone

    by Armond R. Towns

    Ongoing protest movements demonstrate that Black Studies is for everybody. The question is: how long will it take for higher education to catch up to such a realization?