The Equity Report #5: What is Black Studies?

Black Studies emerged as a corrective intervention within Western higher education, addressing the systematic exclusion of Black people as legitimate producers of knowledge. This essay traces the intellectual, political, and institutional foundations of Black Studies, situating its origins within long-standing Black intellectual traditions and the liberation struggles that culminated in its formal establishment during the late 1960s. Drawing on the work of foundational scholars including W.E.B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, and Nathan Hare, the essay examines how Black Studies developed as an interdisciplinary and explicitly political field accountable to Black communities rather than institutional norms of neutrality. Central attention is given to the role of Black feminists—such as Anna Julia Cooper, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and the Combahee River Collective—in expanding the field’s analytic frameworks through critiques of patriarchy, capitalism, and heteronormativity. The essay further analyzes the creation of Black Studies through student-led movements, particularly the 1968–1969 San Francisco State strike, highlighting how institutional recognition was achieved through collective resistance rather than administrative reform. Ultimately, the essay argues that Black Studies functions as both a discipline and a praxis, redefining knowledge production, challenging dominant epistemologies, and sustaining an ongoing commitment to justice, community accountability, and intellectual self-determination.

—Telisa Nyoka King, M.A.