Black Studies

Black studies, also known as African American studies and Africana studies, consist of the scientific and humanistic study of people of African descent in the United States and other regions of the world. Black studies is interdisciplinary; its earliest roots are in history, sociology, literature, and the arts. The field's most important concepts, methods, and findings are still centered within these disciplines.

Black studies consists of research; courses at the high school, college, and university levels; and organizational structures such as programs, centers, and departments. This entry focuses on the historical development of research in Black studies in part because the research aspects of the field are much better documented in the literature than course offerings. Also, there were few course offerings outside of historically Black institutions prior to 1970. Readers can see books listed in Further Readings for a discussion of organizational issues; they are beyond the scope of this entry. Because of its limited scope, this entry focuses on historical and sociological research in Black studies; scholarship in literature and the arts is not discussed. Readers are referred to the books listed in Further Readings that deal with the arts and literature in Black studies.

The typology of the development of Black historical scholarship conceptualized by John Hope Franklin is used to organize this entry. It is appropriate to use this typology to describe the historical development of Black studies because history was the field's birthplace and remains an important center. Franklin describes four generations of scholarship in African American history. These periods are not clearly distinct but are overlapping and interrelated.

The First Generation of Black Studies

The first period or generation is marked by the publication of what is generally regarded as the first history of African Americans in 1882, History of the Negro Race in America by George Washington Williams, published in two volumes (1882 and 1883). Williams, the first Black to serve in the Ohio legislature, was not a professionally trained historian but was a gifted and interesting orator, writer, soldier, minister, journalist, lawyer, and politician. Other significant works published during this period included The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America by W. E. B. Du Bois in 1896 and Story of the Negro by Booker T. Washington in 1909. Du Bois's book, a carefully researched and respected publication, was his doctoral dissertation at Harvard.

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William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868–1963), who made pioneering contributions to Black history and sociology, was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in history from Harvard.

Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-16767.

An important goal of the writers during the first generation of African American scholarship was to counteract the negative images and representations of African Americans that were institutionalized within academic and popular cultures. A key tenet of social science research of the time was that Blacks were genetically inferior to Whites and that Africa was the “dark continent” that lacked civilizations. The American Negro Academy, founded in 1896, had as one of its major goals “to aid, by publications, the vindication of the race from vicious assaults, in all lines of learning and truth” (Moss, 1981, p. 24).

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