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In an attempt to contribute to the advancement of Africana Studies as a discipline, it is vital that scholars of the field continue to assess the effectiveness of the various departments under the umbrella of Africana Studies. This research explores and assesses the departmental activities of two Africana Studies departments within the California State University system to identify effective models of student research engagement as a means of carrying out the mission of the discipline. In addition, this research offers recommendations for advancing the disciplinary mission. That authors use an Afrocentric lens to link the historical fight to preserve African peoples' humanity with the constant need to reengage African culture as a source for healing and accurately addressing contemporary challenges. Lastly, this article outlines guidelines for departments and scholars in the field of Africana Studies to continue to transform academic spaces into tools for liberatory research.

Black Women in America is an upper-division elective course for students majoring in African American or women's studies at California State University Fullerton (CSUF). The author has taught this course at CSUF at least once a year since 2002 and have changed the course readings, lectures, and assignments on a regular basis. In April 2007, however, when American radio personality Don Imus created a national controversy by referring to the Rutgers women's basketball team, whose players were predominantly Black, as a group of "nappy-headed hos," the author was provoked to completely overhaul her approach to teaching this course. It was clear that her students did not fully understand the complicated cultural issues raised by Imus's comments. This article describes how the author incorporated visual images of Black women in media and culture to help her students challenge narrow, false, and distorted depictions of Black women's daily lives. It further explains her intellectual rationale for the particular course goals, objectives, and pedagogical tools she took up using a three-pronged approach to cultural studies analysis. Finally, this article showcases some of her students' work, which demonstrates how students can use their analytical skills to promote Black women's agency. (Contains 4 figures and 2 notes.)

In the early 1900s, sociologist and civil-rights activist W.E.B. DuBois advocated the teaching of African-American studies in American schools. The goal was to teach a history and heritage that was being ignored, not just so blacks would better understand their own past, but so white society would be more respectful. But by 1968, when students demanding ethnic studies classes at San Francisco State University (SFSU) went on strike, essentially shutting down campus, the goals had shifted from DuBois' aim of engendering more respect from whites. As explained on the SFSU Africana Studies Department History Web page, the nonintegrationist Black Students Union, Third World Liberation Front, and their allies in the Black Panthers saw ethnic studies as part of a campaign for broad reform of the university, including open admissions for minority students and courses that would "serve as a counter to white value and white attitudinal courses." SFSU hurriedly set up a division of ethnic studies, offering black, Chicano, Asian and Native American studies. This article discusses how recent events in school districts and some states show how divisive this 1960s phenomenon may prove to be in the 21st century.

Using a critical race theory framework, this study examines the ways in which race and racialized ideologies are manifested in high-stakes college admissions, the debate over affirmative action, and the college choice behavior of Black high school students. This study allows for the voices of Black high school students in California to describe their lived experiences with Proposition 209, suggesting a deeper meaning to affirmative action than simply the ways in which it affected institutional practices related to admissions decisions. The results indicate that, following the end of affirmative action in California, Black students had altered perceptions of where they were welcome and where they belonged in higher education. The results of this study can help colleges and universities to create, maintain, or improve a positive and welcoming climate for students of color in the wake of such policy changes.

In 1966, traditionally White colleges and universities were admitting more Black students than ever because of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which banned discrimination in education. However, the climate on most campuses was decidedly inhospitable to the newly arrived Black students. Thus, there grew a desire to create a political group that would unite Black students and demand a weather change, in addition to organizing social and political activities. It was the activism of San Francisco State University students that gave birth 40 years ago to the first Black Student Union (BSU), and the establishment of other BSUs wasn't far behind. BSUs began demanding of their respective administrations more Black students, faculty, administrators, athletes and coaches. They added to that list their need for student publications, financial aid, offices of black student affairs, and cultural centers. Academically, the BSUs insisted on schools of ethnic studies, Black studies departments, and resources to help uplift Black communities. In many cases, the students' demands were met. Eventually, many BSUs began to revert back to the socio-cultural focuses that defined them before the Black Power boom. Today, most BSUs are less activist and more politically reactionary, activist James Garrett says. As they have lost their activist edge, they have also been losing a battle for membership to other social and cultural organizations, such as fraternities and sororities. With a growing movement toward race neutrality working its way through higher education, the future of BSUs is unclear. Despite these impediments, BSUs continue to be established on college campuses across the nation.

This article offers a portrait of a young black male teacher in an urban school in South Central Los Angeles. In the portrait, the words of the subject are intertwined with the thoughts and reactions of the researcher as a way in which to capture his life history narrative and offer his reading of the world. The article discusses the participant's reflections on growing up in South Central, Los Angeles and how it shaped his identity. In particular, the portrait discusses the participant's experiences in middle school, high school and college. The article concludes with some reflections about how Critical Race Theory--as a discourse on race and racism in the law and society--helps us to better understand the lives black men lead. (Contains 3 notes.)

June Jordan, a prolific and most-published African American essayist and poet and a professor in the African American Studies department at the University of California, Berkeley, ventured to challenge the institutionalized Ivory Tower traditions and subsequently established a university program called Poetry for the People (P4P) in 1991. Such efforts to integrate literature courses with fresh material on the college level, however, still left many high school students in urban settings receiving traditional "classic" poetry in their English classes. In a joint effort to sustain artistic and political empowerment, Jordan and her students explored means to "democratize" poetry in and outside the confines of the university campus. In this article, the author explores from a pedagogical standpoint June Jordan's P4P and its partnership with Bellevue High School as one means to innovate the teaching and learning of poetry on the high school level. Using archival materials such as class readers and anthologies from between 2000-2002 as well as interviews with teachers, the author identifies aspects of the program that reveal the complexities of what she calls a "collaborative intervention." What became clear in laying P4P's pedagogical practices inside several English classrooms was that different teachers had different experiences within the partnership. Moreover, the presence of P4P in the classroom, the implementation of its curriculum as a collaborative intervention model, the role of student-teacher-poets, and the program's culminating events together created a kind of learning environment that students, whether to their liking or not, were a part of.

Thoughts of college student protests during the late 1960's and early 1970's often ignite memories of demonstrations against the Vietnam War. Stories of college student activism during the these years underplay the Civil Rights focus of African American students that preceded and paralleled the more salient Vietnam War protests. Less attention in the research literature has been given to the student movement at San Francisco State College where the first Black Studies and Ethnic Studies Departments were established. The San Francisco State student movement and protests sought to bring about racial equality in college access, curricular reform, and degree attainment for African Americans. This study focuses on the events leading to and during the strike at San Francisco State College. The study explores the importance long-range planning played, along with the role of the African American community and other ethnic community groups who were underrepresented as college attendees at that time, in the success of the strike.

This collection of articles includes such topics as: black student matriculations at the highest-ranked colleges and universities; the effect of the racial gap in home ownership on African American higher education; black trustees at major colleges and universities; medical school admissions; race sensitive admissions; fixed-percentage college admissions plans; and the "Mississippification" of California's public schools. (SM)

Examines ideological representations of how slavery began and a slave's trip to America (the Middle Passage) as depicted in classroom texts in California public schools. Explores the controversy over the adoption of these supposedly multicultural textbooks through interviews with eight African-American parents and four multicultural education specialists. (SLD)

The article presents the author's reflections on the progress of the academic discipline of African American studies in the United States at the graduate level as of 2010. The history of the establishment of the African American studies program at the University of California, Berkeley is described since 1968. The impact of the African American Civil Rights movement on the campus is particularly addressed. The official creation, administration and development of the African American program in the following decades is then related.

Focuses on the radical conservationism inherent in Cedric J. Robinson's book "Black Marxism," which is about recuperation of the Black radical tradition. Significance of Robinson's directorship of the Center for Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara which reflected his genius as a radical communitarian during an era in which the United States academy as a whole set itself on a path of increasing cultural and social isolation from mainstream society; Role of Robinson in helping close the distance between the university and the surrounding community by organizing a regular forum that attracted local citizens.