Black Studies as an Integral Tradition in African-American Intellectual History

Abstract

The modern Black Studies movement, in its present form, appeared in the 1960s as an emergent academic field and a self-conscious component part of the larger social and political movement for Black liberation. In contrast to the 1950s, which had been labeled “the silent generation” by some scholars, the 1960s were times of widespread political unrest and social movements. These currents were enlivened and precipitated by the Black liberation movement in its current stage of struggle for democratic rights, commonly referred to during that period as the “civil rights movement.” The Black college campuses were the source of leadership for this movement by young (though not exclusively) activist-intellectuals. The general social climate of self-assertion and political protest released an intellectual ferment that stimulated some Black students and Black scholars in their demand for “Black Studies” as a vanguard opposition to an entrenched intellectualism in American society.