Black Studies has its origins in the experiences of Black students, both in terms of the discrimination they encountered and the tools they developed to organize against it. After the Brown v. Board of Education decision (1954), which required schools to integrate “with all deliberate speed,” student protests engulfed K–12 schools, colleges, and universities (Fairclough, 1995). Black students in the South protested the inequitable educational experiences they were encountering.

In some newly integrated schools, Black students were not allowed to be a part of the homecoming court. For example, in 1972 Black students at the newly integrated Tara High School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana demanded a Black Studies course and to have Black students placed on the all-White homecoming court (Lussier, 2020). In protest of these inequalities, most of the Black students left the school on January 13, 1972 (Lussier, 2020).

Other schools barred Black students from other extracurricular activities (Fairclough, 1995; Pitre, 2024). These unequal experiences caused Black students to protest, a precursor to Ella Baker’s idea for a student-led organization that would protest the injustices that Black people experienced. Ella Baker was the executive secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC; Moye, 2013).

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) being the student-led branch of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. However, Baker urged students to remain independent of the SCLC (Moye, 2013). What is seldom mentioned is that the ideas stirring a newfound Black consciousness were influenced by the Nation of Islam (T’Shaka, 2012). The Nation, with temples in nearly every urban area, had a large influence on Black youth in these cities.

This presence was an underlying factor that caused Black students to echo Malcolm X’s cry of “by any means necessary” as it pertained to equal justice. Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X were pivotal in their incorporation of Blackness across disciplines and fields of study (Pitre, 2021). Malcolm’s influence on Black youth would play a major role in shaping the development of Black Studies. Scholars of the discipline have noted that Malcolm X was a central figure and considered a grandfather of Black Studies (Alkalimat, 2021; Karenga, 2010).

The influence of Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X extended to those such as Stokely Carmichael (the first chairman of the SNCC) and H. Rap Brown. Both Carmichael and Brown were influenced by Malcolm X, and they articulated ideas they learned from him to form what is called Black Power. The combination of the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement would form the Black freedom struggle. This, in turn, led to the formation of Black student unions at colleges and universities. These Black student unions became the fertile grounds to develop the ideas that gave rise to Black Studies (T’Shaka, 2012).

At San Francisco State College, when Professor George Murray was suspended from his position, students protested his suspension. This would lead to a prolonged strike where the students demanded courses that included the Black experience (Evans, 2023). The Black consciousness that students ascertained caused them to recognize that their history and perspectives were not being included in the university curriculum. They argued the dominant Eurocentric perspectives did not include the study of the first human civilizations or Black contributions that predated European existence (Alkalimat, 2021; Karenga, 2010). 

The Black student union members whose ideas and activism stimulated Black consciousness and protest at the university were later joined by Native American, Latino, Asian American, and Filipino American students, which became the Third World Liberation Front. After five months of protest, the first Department of Black Studies was formed at what is now San Francisco State University (Evans, 2023). Dr. Nathan Hare would serve as its first department chair.

Black Studies is interdisciplinary. It encompasses a wide range of disciplines and fields of study. Maulana Karenga (2010), one of the pioneers of Black Studies, defines it as the “critical and systematic study of the thought and practice of African people in their current and historical unfolding” (p. 3). He articulated seven areas of the discipline: Black history, Black psychology, Black religion, Black politics, Black social organization, Black creative production, and Black economics. What makes Black Studies unique is that it focuses on the history, culture, and experiences of Black people from an African-centered perspective.

Black Studies is an ever-evolving discipline in that it continues to include the experiences of Black people. Some of the new perspectives in Black Studies include hip-hop, Black queer studies, Afro-futurism, Black cyberspace/technology, health and nutrition in the Black community, race and sports, and Elijah Muhammad studies, among many other areas. These new perspectives provide knowledge to address problems impacting Africana people and the entire human family. Because of its study of the first people to establish human civilization, Black Studies will be of great importance for the twenty-first century, paving the way for a new human consciousness.