Early Black Studies Movements

Abstract

The ways the first Afro-Americans-slaves and free blacksacquired and transmitted their knowledge of their history and culture are very significant. Some picked up the knowledge in a piecemeal fashion, others through a formal process, such as the Sabbath schools and truebands. Often the more literate blacks secretly communicated to their fellow men what they knew of Africa, African heritage, and the ways blacks were being exploited and oppressed in America. Shrewdly, these early teachers and preachers gave private lessons in history and culture unbeknown to whites. Their secret classrooms were the fields, work groups, restricted social gatherings, and churches. Their textbooks were the Scriptures and Ethiopianism, which they acquired from Greek and Roman literature. Prior to the eighteenth century, the first known and white-approved organized advocacy of what might be termed black studies came from the Quaker educators. Though only a minor part of their total educational program for