BLACK PROFESSORS AND THE BEGINNING OF "BLACK STUDIES"
We often erroneously assume that the contemporary interest in the systematic study of the history and culture of African Americans evolved in the late 1960s with the demands for "Black Studies" Programs and Departments on predominately white universities. In fact, however, what now passes as black studies has deep scholarly roots which can be traced back to the efforts of dozens of poorly paid professors in underfunded African American colleges in the South. In the following account Arnold H. Taylor briefly describes those efforts.
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In spite of heavy teaching loads, inadequate or total lack of research funds, and difficulty of access to publishers, scholars at black colleges produced much of the early literature in the area of black studies. W.E.B. DuBois, as a faculty member at Atlanta University, supervised a wide-ranging study on black life in America covering such topics as the family, the church, education, business, work, crime, and morbidity and mortality. While at Atlanta he also published his celebrated Souls of Black. DuBois, already known for his The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States (the first publication in the Harvard Historical Series) and The Philadelphia Negro, published numerous other historical and sociological works, including his classic Black Reconstruction, as well as novels, poems, and essays after leaving Atlanta. He also encouraged creative literary activity by other blacks by opening the pages of the NAACP 's Crisis to young writers. After returning to Atlanta University in 1943, DuBois in 1940 founded Phylon: A Journal of Race and Culture, which has published a wide range of articles not only on black subjects but on topics dealing with other racial and ethnic groups in the United States and throughout the world. Also published during his second tour at Atlanta was his Black Reconstruction.
At Fisk University, Charles S. Johnson, chairman of the Department of Social Science from 1928 to 1947, and president of the institution from 1947 to his death in 1956, led his students and colleagues in research projects that made Fisk "the leading research center in race relations in the world." By 1947 Johnson was the author or coauthor of seventeen books, the contributor of articles or chapters in fourteen books, and the author of over sixty articles. He continued to write and publish after becoming president of Fisk. His major works included The Negro in American Civilization (1930), the result research conducted from 1926 through 1928 under the auspices of the National Interracial Conference, an organ of sixteen national organizations devoted to improving race relations; Shadow of the Plantation (1934); The Negro College Graduate (1938); Statistical Atlas of Southern Counties (1941); Patterns of Segregation (1943); To Stem the Tide: A Survey of Racial Tension Areas in the United States (1943); Into the Mainstream; A Survey of Best Practices in Race Relations in the South (1947); Education and the Cultural Crisis (1951); and with Edwin R. Embree and Will W. Alexander, The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy (1935).
At Howard University in Washington, D.C., black scholars in a variety of disciplines have produced numerous works dealing with the black experience in America and throughout the world. Historians such as Kelly Miller, Rayford Logan, Merze Tate, John Hope Franklin, Williston Lofton, Benjamin Brawley, Charles H. Wesley; the great sociologist E. Franklin Frazier; librarian Dorothy Porter; literary scholars such as Sterling Brown, Alain Locke, Mercer Cook; economists and political scientists such as Abram Harris and Ralph Bunche; educationists and psychologists such as Dwight O.W. Holmes. Kenneth Clark, Doxey Wilkerson; and a host of other scholars have produced notable works in the area of black studies. For many years, for example, William Leo Hansberry was one of a few scholars in America who were conversant with the history of Africa.
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Source: Arnold H. Taylor, Travail and Triumph: Black Life and Culture in the South Since the Civil War (Westport, Conn: 1976) pp. 139-141.
BLACK STUDENT ENROLLMENT IN COLLEGES, 1941-1942
Twenty Black Institutions with the Largest Black Student Enrollment
Degrees to
School Enrollment Black Students,1942
1. Howard University 1,953 155
2. Tennessee A&I State College 1,583 192
3. Tuskegee Institute 1,407 138
4. Prairie View (Tex.) State College 1,151 71
5. Virginia State College 1,097 236
6. Alabama State Teachers College 1,054 48
7. North Carolina A&T College 1,020 93
8. Hampton Institute (Va.) 1,018 127
9. Florida A&M State College 907 79
10. Wiley College (Texas) 906 51
11. South Carolina State College 895 153
12. Lincoln Univ. (Missouri) 734 88
13. Fayetteville (NC) State College 714 83
14. Philander Smith College (Ark.) 686 --
15. Langston University (Okla) 681 68
16. Morgan State College (Md.) 660 84
17. Lane College (Tenn.) 650 52
18. (Ala.) State A&M Institute 644 41
19. Virginia Union University 635 100
20. Winston-Salem (NC) State College 632 74
Twenty White Institutions with the Largest Black Student Enrollment
Degrees to
School Enrollment Black Students, 1942
1. Wayne University (Mich.) 594 23
2. Ohio State University 431 24
3. City College of New York 250 --
4. Columbia Teachers College (N.Y.) 229 7
5. University of Kansas 159 14
6. University of Illinois 142 11
7. Western Reserve Univ (Ohio) 115 6
8. Indiana University 93 13
9. Boston University 65 5
10. Oberlin College (Ohio) 42 1
11. Kansas State University 41 4
12. Northwestern University (Ill.) 41 3
13. Harvard University 27 1
14. University of Nebraska 26 2
15. University of Denver 21 5
16. Purdue University 21 3
17. Loyola University (Chicago) 21 --
18. University of Arizona 15 3
19. Pacific Union College (Ca.) 14 --
20. Drew University (N.J.) 13 --
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Source: "The American Negro in College, 1941-1942," Crisis, 49:8 (August 1942), pp. 252, 266.
SEGREGATION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 1950
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Segregation Permitted
Segregation Required in Various Degrees
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Alabama Arizona
Arkansas Wyoming
Delaware Kansas
District of Columbia New Mexico
Florida
Georgia
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maryland
Mississippi
North Carolina
Oklahoma
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Virginia
West Virginia
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Segregation Prohibited No Legislation
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Colorado California
Connecticut Maine
Idaho Montana
Illinois Nebraska
Indiana Nevada
Iowa New Hampshire
Massachusetts North Dakota
Michigan Oregon
New Jersey Utah
New York Vermont
Ohio
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Washington
Wisconsin
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Source: Carl E. Jackson and Emory J. Tolbert, ed., Race and Culture in America: Readings in Racial and Ethnic Relations, (Edina, Minn., 1989), p. 106
BROWN V. TOPEKA BOARD OF EDUCATION
The 1954 Brown decision outlawing public school segregation was one of the most sweeping and controversial decisions rendered by a U.S. Supreme Court. Part of the decision is reprinted below.
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Today education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship....
We come then to the question presented. Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal education opportunities? We believe that it does....To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone....
We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment....
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Source: Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education, (New York: 1975), pp. 781-782.
ROSA PARKS REFUSES TO MOVE: THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT
The following account from Taylor Branch's Parting the Waters, describes the decision by Rosa Parks to refuse to relinquish her seat in "no man's land" the section of seats between the black and white sections of the segregated Montgomery city bus which was to carry her home. Her refusal to move touched off the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
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On December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks left the Montgomery Fair department store late in the afternoon for her regular bus ride home. All thirty-six seats of the bus she boarded were soon filled, with twenty-two Negroes seated from the rear and fourteen whites from the front. Driver J. P. Blake, seeing a white man standing in the front of the bus, called out for the four passengers on the row just behind the whites to stand up and move to the back. Nothing happened. Blake finally had to get out of the driver's seat to speak more firmly to the four Negroes. "You better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats," he said. At this, three of the Negroes moved to stand in the back of the bus, but Parks responded that she was not in the white section and didn't think she ought to move. She was in no-man's-land. Blake said that the white section was where he said it was, and he was telling Parks that she was in it. As he saw the law, the whole idea of no-man's-land was to give the driver some discretion to keep the races out of each other's way. He was doing just that. When Parks refused again, he advised her that the same city law that allowed him to regulate no-man's-land also gave him emergency police power to enforce the segregation codes. He would arrest Parks himself if he had to. Parks replied that he should do what he had to do; she was not moving. She spoke so softly that Blake would not have been able to hear her above the drone of normal bus noise. But the bus was silent. Blake notified Parks that she was officially under arrest. She should not move until he returned with the regular Montgomery police.
At the station, officers booked, fingerprinted, and incarcerated Rosa Parks. It was not possible for her to think lightly of being arrested. Having crossed the line that in polite society divided Negroes from niggers, she had reason to expect not only stinging disgrace among her own people but the least civilized attentions of the whites. When she was allowed to call home, her mother's first response was to groan and ask, "Did they beat you?"
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Source: Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63, (New York, 1988), pp. 128-129.
THE MONTGOMERY VICTORY, 1956
In 1956 Montgomery blacks won a year-long boycott of the segregated city-owned bus line, achieving the first victory over segregation in a Deep South city. In the following document E.D. Nixon, Martin Luther King, and other boycott leaders suggest how blacks should behave on the newly integrated busses.
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Within a few days....each of you will be reboarding integrated buses. This places upon us all a tremendous responsibility of maintaining, in face of what could be some unpleasantness, a calm and loving dignity befitting good citizens and members of our race. If there is violence in word or deed it must not be our people who commit it. For your help and convenience the following suggestions are made. Will you read, study and memorize them so that our non-violent determination may not be endangered. First, some general suggestions:
1. Not all white people are opposed to integrated buses. Accept goodwill on the part of many.
2. The whole bus is now for the use of all people. Take a vacant seat.
3. Pray for guidance and commit yourself to complete non-violence in word and action as you enter the bus.
4. Demonstrate the calm dignity of our Montgomery people in your actions. In all things observe ordinary rules of courtesy and good behavior. Remember that this is not a victory for Negroes alone, but for all Montgomery and the South. Do not boast! Do not brag!
5. Be quiet but friendly; proud, but not arrogant; joyous, but not boisterous.
6. Be loving enough to absorb evil and understanding enough to turn an enemy into a friend.
Now for some specific suggestions:
1. The bus driver is in charge of the bus and has been instructed to obey the law. Assume that he will cooperate in helping you occupy any vacant seat.
2. Do not deliberately sit by a white person, unless there is no other seat. sitting down by a person, white or colored, say "May I" or "Pardon me" as you sit. This is a common courtesy. If cursed, do not curse back. If pushed, do not push back. Do not get up from your seat! Report all serious incidents to the bus driver.
3. For the first few days try to get on the bus with a friend in whose non-violence you have confidence. You can uphold one another by a glance or a prayer. If another person is being molested, do not arise to go to his defence, but pray for the oppressor and use moral and spiritual force to carry on the struggle for justice.
4. According to your own ability and personality, do not be afraid to experiment with new and creative techniques for achieving reconciliation and social change.
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Source: Leaflet distributed to bus protesters, reprinted in Martin Luther King, Stride Toward Freedom, (New York, 1984) pp. 144-45.
"WITH ALL DELIBERATE SPEED": INTEGRATION IN SOUTHERN SCHOOLS, 1960
The phrase "with all deliberate speed" was added to a ruling by the the U.S. Supreme Court one year after its famous Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. The Court's second ruling was intended to amplify the previous ruling and to indicate to segregated districts throughout the country that they should initiate plans immediately to end de jure segregation. However as the table below indicates, most southern states reluctantly embraced the decision. Six years after the original ruling and three years after U.S. Army troops were used to enforce a federal court order to integration Little Rock's Central High School, five states: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, had not integrated a single school district.