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From Black Power to Black Studies: How A Radical Social Movement Became An Academic Discipline AUTHOR: FABIO ROJAS JOHN HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2007 PRICE: $45.00 ISBN:0-8018861-98 CLOTH
REVIEWER: JONATHAN FENDERSON, UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS, AMHERST
In From Black Power to Black Studies: How A Radical Social Movement Became An Academic Discipline, sociologist Fabio Rojas combines quantitative and qualitative sociological methodologies with archival history to detail Black Studies' past and present state. The work chronicles the emergence of select Black Studies programs during the radical 1960s and 1970s, such as San Francisco State University (formerly San Francisco State College), the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Chicago and Harvard University. The book is the latest in a sequence of works that focus on the history of the Black Power Movement, including Jeffrey Ogbar's Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity, Peniel Joseph's Waiting Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of the Black Power Movement in America, Cedric Johnson's Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics and Judson Jeffries 's anthology Black Power in the Belly of the Beast. Rojas' work also rests alongside Joy Ann Williamson's Black Power on Campus: the University of Illinois, 1965-1975, Noli we Rooks' White Money/ Black Power, Cecil Brown's Dude Where's My Black Studies Department and more recent works on Black Studies' history. Rojas' work is unique however, because of its sociological emphasis and its focus on the connection, or transition, between Black Power and Black Studies.
One of the critical chapters of From Black Power to Black Studies is the third, which attempts to provide a thicker history of the struggle to establish Black Studies at San Francisco State. Rojas details many of the events that lead to the Third World Strike, including the organization of the Negro Student Association later the Black Student Union, the arrival of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee member James Garrett, the establishment of the off-campus program known as the Tutorial Center, the critical role of the Experimental College, the Black student's dispute with the student newspaper- which he calls "the Gater Incident," named after the newspaper, the Daily Gater- and subsequent suspension of Black Panther George Murray and student initiatives to appoint Dr. Nathan Hare. Rojas'...