This book deals with Black Studies from a number of angles with the intention of being both historically cogent as well as critical. It offers some personal viewpoints from my vantage as a former Black Studies instructor and an award winning Black Studies essayist (1986, Council of Black Studies) and as a long-time student who seriously studied the history of my people with an eye toward making a contribution to our future. This book begins with a look at what I view as some of the "foundation points" during the outset of Black Studies Departments on American college campuses. The campuses selected, which I believe contributed most profoundly to the formation of Black Studies in America are: San Francisco State University/UC-Berkeley, Emory University, Pennsylvania University, Rutgers University, University of Florida-Gainesville, University of Massachusetts, UC-Santa Barbara, UW-Milwaukee, Vassar University and Yale University. I then move to an analysis of an article where African-American graduate students made the grandiose claim that Black Studies was "swaggering into the future." The article to be analyzed, which appeared in the April 12, 2012 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, was so insultingly disheartening that one of the sections in my analysis is titled, "Swaggering into the Future or "Staggering" into it?" I add another section that closes out my views under the sub-heading, "The Local "Swagger": Blackface in Action." Shifting and focusing to the University of Nebraska Omaha, I offer some history and analysis of how the department came into being on that campus. I follow up with a more scathing critique of what has taken place in recent years due to external administrative decisions and internal internecine conflicts. Information regarding the intentional mis-education of black students throughout the Omaha Public School District are also explored. Finally, an overview and analysis of the role of Black Studies-related courses at the high school level. The issues of "direct input," downsized integration" and "diluted involvement" will be explored. Black Studies has undergone a plethora of challenges over the decades. Today, in 2018, the issues are more than just racist reactions from Anglo administrations. The issues include the rise in a right wing among students at American universities and the general malaise of Black students, except during times of responding to various crises. The links to the community appear to be disappearing, except in the South and the east coast, and various special interests, including the gay lobby, are latching onto the black movement and using that movement to push their own agenda. This book is a starting point and is open to critique and analysis. But every great advocation for change must begin somewhere. If no one has written a book that is as personal and direct as this one, let this then be the first. Sifa ina ote watu weusi (All praise is due to black people).
Matthew C. Stelly is a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee working on a degree in Urban Education and Community Policy. He holds three Master's degrees: Urban Studies (1982), Urban Education (1983) and Political Science (2000). He is working toward his doctorate in Community Policy/Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the former editor of the Milwaukee Courier newspaper, former director of the Great Plains Black Museum and the Plano (TX) African American Museum, and lead archivist for The Black Academy of Arts and Letters (TBAAL) in Dallas, Texas. Stelly has more than 2,500 articles in print and has won two national essay competitions. He is the founding director of the largest African-American neighborhood group in Nebraska, the Triple One Neighborhood Association and Parents Union. He is publisher and editor of the Triple One News, a two-time nationally recognized newsletter. He is the father of five children - Mandla, Malik, Clariece, Charisse and Shannon -- and remains actively involved in community organizing and neighborhood development in several cities, including Milwaukee and Omaha.
