The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972
by Ibram X. Kendi

Check out the 2nd Edition of this Volume (2025, Springer)

Between 1965 and 1972, African American students at upwards of a thousand historically black and white American colleges and universities organized, demanded, and protested for Black Studies, progressive Black universities, new faces, new ideas—in short, a truly diverse system of higher education relevant to the Black community. Taking inspiration from the Black Power Movement, Black students drew support from many quarters—including White, Latino, Chicano, Asian American, and Native American students—and disrupted and challenged institutions in nearly every state. By the end, black students had thoroughly reshaped the face of the academy. The Black Campus Movement provides the first national study of this remarkable and inspiring struggle, illuminating the complex context for one of the most transformative educational movements in American history, and providing a groundbreaking prehistory of black student activism from abolition through the 1960s. The book synthesizes records from more than three hundred colleges and universities, including documents from 163 college archives, into one national story. This authoritative study is essential to understanding modern American higher education.

Introduction

1. An "Island Within": Black Students and Black Higher Education Prior to 1965
2. "God Speed the Breed": New Negro in the Long Black Student Movement
3. "Strike While the Iron is Hot": Civil Rights in the Long Black Student Movement
4. "March That Won’t Turn Around": Formation and Development of the Black Campus Movement
5. "Shuddering in a Paroxysm of Black Power": A Narrative Overview of the Black Campus Movement
6. "A Fly in Buttermilk": Black Campus Movement Organizations, Demands, Protests, and Support
7. "Black Jim Crow Studies": Opposition and Repression
8. "Black Students Refuse to Pass the Buck": The Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education

Epilogue: Backlash and Forward Lashes of the Black Campus Movement