Black Studies, Then and Now: From HBCU Classrooms to Today's Battles
3 min read · 582 words
Cover photo: from Hartshorn and Penniman, An Era of Progress and Promise (1910), via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).
Black Studies did not begin in a faculty meeting. It began on picket lines. The 1968–69 student strike at San Francisco State, led by the Black Student Union and the Third World Liberation Front, produced the first College of Ethnic Studies and the first Black Studies department, chaired by Nathan Hare.
Growth at a glance
1968: First Black Studies department (San Francisco State)
1975: National Council for Black Studies founded
1988: First Ph.D. in African American Studies (Temple University)
1994–2019: Doctoral programs spread: Yale, UMass Amherst, Michigan State, Harvard, Ohio State, Howard, Brown, UT Austin and Clark Atlanta
2021–present: State restrictions on teaching race and AP African American Studies disputes
Growth in one picture
Black Studies builds a ladder: the running total of doctoral programs from Temple in 1988 to Clark Atlanta in 2019, and the master's degrees that came first.
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The Ph.D. programs, year by year
1988: Temple University — the first Ph.D. in African American Studies
1994: Yale University
1996: University of Massachusetts Amherst
1999: Michigan State University
2001: Harvard University (approved 1999; first students matriculated 2001)
2002: Ohio State University
2009: Howard University
2011: Brown University (Africana Studies)
2012: University of Texas at Austin — first Black Studies Ph.D. in Texas and the South
2019: Clark Atlanta University
Master's programs came first, from 1968 through 1988: Boston University's M.A. in Afro-American Studies (1969), Yale's M.A. in African American Studies (1978), UCLA's M.A. in African American Studies (1980), and San Francisco State's M.A. in Ethnic Studies (1988).
Where things stand
Black Studies today spans undergraduate majors, minors, M.A. and Ph.D. programs, and its scholars shape history, sociology, literature and public policy. Yet the field faces new challenges: state laws limiting instruction on race, cuts to diversity offices, and the 2023 controversy over the College Board's AP African American Studies course. As in 1968, the field's future depends on students, scholars and communities who insist this history be taught.
Black Studies: Long Before 1968 — HBCU foundations, the first programs and departments of 1968–1972, selected MA degree launches from 1968–1988, and the Ph.D. programs since 1988. HBCU dates are institutional founding dates, not course launch dates.
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