A Rapidly Escalating Demand: Academic Libraries and the Birth of Black Studies Programs

In the late 1960s, many universities created Black Studies programs in response to student demands. Because of the rapidity with which Black Studies became a discipline on campus, academic libraries faced challenges related to building collections and providing services for students when little time was available to plan for the changes. Within the context of political debates of the day, both within and outside of library administration, the responses of academic libraries to student demands leaned toward supporting a “liberal” vision of Black studies as an academic discipline similar to other disciplines, and away from supporting a “radical” vision of Black studies as a means of community empowerment. This article examines the responses of four academic libraries—at New York University, Rutgers University, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania—to the advent of Black Studies on their campuses between 1966 and 1971.