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“'Education Didn't Mean a Degree, It Means How We Serve Our Race and All Humanity': Women’s Cultural Nationalist Activism and the Campus-Community Connection, 1967-1981”

Sat, Sep 26, 8:30 to 9:50am, Sheraton Atlanta Hotel, Floor: 2, Savannah 2 (Level 2 Lobby)

Abstract

While many histories of the Black Campus Movement emphasize the importance of campus activism during the late 1960s and early 1970s in catalyzing the Black Studies Movement and instating the field in institutions of higher education, exploring the work of female cultural-nationalist activists of the era invokes a greater understanding of the synergy between students and communities. It is well known that the Campus Movement catalyzed the reorganization of academia, broadening its inclusiveness and mission as well as altering the meaning of knowledge production. Campus protests, however, also directly and indirectly shaped many of the women involved in Kawaida-influenced cultural-nationalist organizations. These women took many core Campus and Black Studies Movement ideals to their grassroots, neighborhood work. Building upon African American Studies scholar Jonathan Fenderson’s assertions, this paper will explore the idea that cultural nationalists’ advocacy for community control of educational institutions, independent schools and presses, neighborhood bookstores, study groups, and other such activities represented “the living part of the black intellectual tradition.” I contend that women were central to such cultural-nationalist pursuits and, thus, were at the heart of these living, black intellectual traditions because many had come of age during or shortly after the Black Campus and Black Studies Movements and acted upon some of the movements’ core tenets within the community-based, Kawaida-influenced organizations with which they were affiliated.

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