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African American Education Historiography

Suggested Books

Shelter in a Time of Storm

For generations, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have been essential institutions for the African American community. Their nurturing environments not only provided educational advancement but also catalyzed the Black freedom struggle, forever altering the political destiny of the United States. In this book, Jelani M. Favors offers a history of HBCUs from the 1837 founding of Cheyney State University to the present, told through the lens of how they fostered student activism.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities

This exhaustive analysis of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) throughout history discusses the institutions and the major events, individuals, and organizations that have contributed to their existence. The oldest HBCU, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, was founded in 1837 by Quaker philanthropist Richard Humphreys as the Institute for Colored Youth. By 1902, at least 85 such schools had been established and, in subsequent years, the total grew to 105.

Stand and Prosper

Stand and Prosper is the first authoritative history in decades of black colleges and universities in America. It tells the story of educational institutions that offered, and continue to offer, African Americans a unique opportunity to transcend the legacy of slavery while also bearing its burden. Henry Drewry and Humphrey Doermann present an up-to-date and comprehensive assessment of their past, present, and possible future.

Alain Leroy Locke: race, culture, and the education of African American adults

This book fills a void in the scholarly treatment of Alain Locke by providing the reader with a comprehensive view of Locke's vision of mass, and adult, education as instruments for social change. It is representative of the remarkable optimistic manifesto of 1925 in which the New Negro, by virtue of a cosmopolitan education emphasizing value pluralism, would become a full participant in American culture.

Rebellion in Black and White

In the 1960s, southern college campuses--both historically black and predominantly white--became powerful centers of student dissent, activism, and protest...Rebellion in Black and White offers a panoramic view of southern student activism in the 1960s. Original scholarly essays demonstrate how southern students promoted desegregation, racial equality, free speech, academic freedom, world peace, gender equity, sexual liberation, Black Power, and the personal freedoms associated with the counterculture of the decade.

Black Power on Campus

Joy Ann Williamson charts the evolution of black consciousness on predominately white American campuses during the critical period between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s, with the Black student movement at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign serving as an illuminating microcosm of similar movements across the country.

Radicalizing the Ebony Tower

This path-breaking examination of black colleges in Mississippi during the civil rights and black power movements offers a unique opportunity to understand how institutions are transformed into liberatory agents. Williamson examines how campus constituents negotiated and clashed over local, state, and national pressures against the backdrop of the highly contentious conflict between those determined to protect racial hierarchy and others equally determined to cripple white supremacy.

A Forgotten Migration

Under the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, decades earlier, southern states could provide graduate opportunities for African Americans by creating separate but equal graduate programs at tax-supported Black colleges or by admitting Black students to historically white institutions. Most did neither and instead paid to send Black students out of state for graduate education.

To Advance the Race

Beginning with early efforts and the establishment of abolitionist colleges, Perkins follows the history of Black women's post-Civil War experiences at elite white schools and public universities in northern and midwestern states. Their presence in Black institutions like Howard University marked another advancement, as did Black women becoming professors and administrators. But such progress intersected with race and education in the postwar era.

History of Morehouse College

This work has been reprinted several times. UAB Libraries has a copy from 1970 in house. The original from 1917 is available digitally at the Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/item/17006218/).