W. E. B. Du Bois and New Directions in Future Research on Black Higher Education

• In Event: W. E. B. Du Bois in Our Times: Toward Racial Justice in Education in the 21st Century

Abstract

This paper and presentation will offer commentary on more than 100 years of scholarship on Black higher education, and we make recommendations for. Cole notes that the historiography on Black colleges and universities begins with W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1898 article titled, “The Study of the Negro Problems.” The article was a broad call for the sociological analysis on the status of Black people at the end of the 19th century, but his essay was also rooted in the importance of history. Du Bois (1898) argued, “One cannot study the Negro in freedom and come to general conclusions about his destiny without knowing his history in slavery” (p. 12). To address challenges faced by Black people, Du Bois (1898) said, “it would seem to be the clear duty of the American people, in the interests of scientific knowledge and social reform, to begin a broad and systematic study of the history and condition of the American Negroes” (p. 15). The study of history was the first step, and Black colleges were essential to conducting such historical study (Du Bois, 1898). Du Bois (1898) added:
We hear much of higher Negro education, and yet all candid people know there does not exist to- day in the centre of Negro population a single first-class fully equipped institution devoted to the higher education of Negroes; not more than three Negro institutions in the South deserve the name of college at all; and yet what is a Negro college but a vast college settlement for the study of a particular set of peculiarly baffling problems? (p. 22).
The Black college would be essential to solving “the Negro problem,” but scholars have not fully engaged Black intellectuals’ ideas about the broader academy (not just Black colleges). Cole will explain why AERA is the ideal moment to reflect on Du Bois and his contemporaries’ scholarship while assessing new directions.

Author

• Eddie R. Cole, University of California - Los Angeles