The Black Scholar

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The Black Scholar
DisciplineAfrican-American studies
LanguageEnglish
Edited byLouis Chude-Sokei
Publication details
History1969–present
Publisher
Routledge (UK)
FrequencyQuarterly
Standard abbreviations
ISO 4Black Sch.
Indexing
ISSN0006-4246 (print)
2162-5387 (web)
Links

The Black Scholar (TBS) was founded in California, in 1969, by Robert Chrisman, Nathan Hare, and Allan Ross. It is the third oldest Black studies journal in the US, after the NAACP’s The Crisis (founded in 1910) and the Journal of African American History (formerly The Journal of Negro History, founded in 1916). In 2017, The Princeton Review of Academic Journals ranked it the number-one journal of Black Studies in the United States. [1] Its associated Black Scholar Press has published books since the 1970s.  The journal is currently housed at Boston University's Program in African American Studies.[2]

Production[edit]

The Black Scholar's Editor-in-Chief is the scholar and writer Louis Chude-Sokei. Shannon Hanks-Mackey is the managing editor.[3] TBS is owned by the Robert Chrisman Foundation, a Seattle, Washington-based non-profit educational organization headed by Laura Chrisman, and is published quarterly by Routledge/Taylor & Francis.[4]

Journal origins[edit]

Robert Chrisman (1937–2013) and Nathan Hare (b. 1933) were active in the 1968-9 Black studies struggle at San Francisco State University.[5] As a consequence of a five-month student-faculty strike, the first and the longest strike for Black studies in the US academy, Hare was fired and Chrisman was removed as a professor from tenure track.[6] The experience motivated Chrisman and Hare to create a venue outside of the academy for Black knowledge production.[7] In November 1969, Hare (publisher), Chrisman (editor) and Allan Ross, a white Bay Area printer (as business manager) founded The Black Scholar: A Journal of Black Studies and Research to cover issues of social, cultural, economic and political thought.[8] Its opening issue, "The Culture of Revolution", featured articles by Chrisman, Eldridge Cleaver, Amiri Baraka, Sékou Touré, and Stokely Carmichael, among others, with Nathan Hare writing the lead article on the First Pan African Cultural Festival Cultural Festival held in Algiers in the summer.

Early members of the editorial and advisory board included Muhammad Ali, Abdul Alkalimat, Sam E. Anderson, James Baldwin, Imamu Baraka, Lerone Bennett, Andrew Billingsley, Shirley Chisholm, Johnnetta B. Cole, Angela Davis, Ossie Davis, Emory Douglas, Shirley Graham Du Bois, Vincent Harding, Michael S. Harper, Ron Karenga, Joyce Ladner, Audre Lorde, Haki Madhubuti, John Oliver Killens, Max Roach, Sonia Sanchez, Chuck Stone, and Dempsey Travis.

Robert L. Allen (b. 1942) joined the journal as associate editor in 1974, then rose to senior editor following Nathan Hare's departure and Robert Chrisman's move to the position of publisher/Editor-in-Chief. Allen remained senior editor until his retirement in 2012. Allan Ross (d. 1974) had left in 1973; his assistant Gloria Bevien took his place as business manager.

Hare left The Black Scholar in spring 1975 after a dispute in which Hare charged other board members of advancing a Black Marxist agenda at the expense of competing ideologies.[9] [10]. The public split attracted coverage from national newspapers. The New York Times covered the story in an article titled "Ideology Dispute Shakes Black Journal",[11] while the New York Amsterdam News headline read "Black Reds Take Over Magazine". [12]

Notable issues and articles[edit]

The journal was an early critic of Black incarceration, publishing two special issues on "The Black Prisoner" in 1971 and 1972. [13] The issues included prisoners' poetry, photography, testimonials, social, historical and political analyses by George Jackson (his last publication), Ruchell Magee, Johnny Spain, Max Stanford, Ron Karenga, Fleeta Drumgo among others, and launched the Black Scholar Prisoner's Fund, to support legal fees as well as subscriptions to the journal. Robert Chrisman's essay "Black Prisoners, White Law", from the 1971 issue, was taken up by mainstream media such as the New York Times. [14]

In 1971, a special issue on "The Black Woman" featured articles by Shirley Chisholm, Johnnetta Cole, Joyce Ladner, Jacquelyne J. Jackson, an interview with Kathleen Cleaver, and Angela Davis' "Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves". The essay, written and published while Davis was in prison, has been widely anthologized and become a foundational essay of Black feminist studies.[15]

The early 1970s also published influential special issues and articles concerning "Pan-Africanism", by activists such as Max Stanford, Amiri Baraka, Adolph Reed, Sam E. Anderson, Nathan Hare, Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture, Eldridge Cleaver, Imari Obadele, Robert Chrisman, Charles V. Hamilton, Sekou Toure, and Haki Madhubuti. [16] [17] These and related essays were published in 1974 by Bobbs-Merrill, as a book titled Pan-Africanism. [18]

In 1979 the journal published "The Black Sexism Debate" (May/June 1979); this was one of the first public scholarly forums about sexism within the African-American community.[19] The editorial for the issue explains that "We believe that the effort to clarify the nature of black male/female relationships is an important step in the process of re-uniting our people and revitalizing the struggle against oppression".

In 1980, the journal published a pair of special issues on "Black Anthropology", guest-edited by Johnnetta Cole and Sheila S. Walker on behalf of the Association of Black Anthropologists, whose editorial explained that this was "the first collection of works by Afro-American anthropologists".

In 1992, following Clarence Thomas’ controversial hearings in the Senate prior to his being confirmed to the Supreme Court, TBS compiled a special issue (Winter 1991–Spring 1992). The essays were later published as Court of Appeal: The Black Community Speaks Out on the Racial and Sexual Politics of Thomas vs. Hill (1992).

In 1998, the journal devoted a special issue to the newly-formed Black Radical Congress, publishing the BRC Principles of Unity, a summary of workshop sessions, reports and commentaries by Herb Boyd, John Woodford, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, Jennifer Hamer and Helen Neville, Carl Dix, Clarence Lang.

Since 2015, the journal has published a variety of issues that participate in the reshaping of Black Studies in the wake of new generations of institutional Black academics, new political activism and cultural conversations. These include the award-winning issue on Dominican Black Studies (Summer 2015) [20]; Environmental justice (Fall 2016); a roundtable on "Race, Pornography and Desire" (Winter 2016; Black Code and technology (Fall 2017); Black Studies in South Africa (Summer 2017); Black Experimental Poetics (Spring 2017); The Political Legacy of Chokwe Lumumba (2018); the first collection of writings about Black Queer and Trans aesthetics (Spring 2019); Black Performance (Fall and Winter 2019); Black Girlhood (Winter 2020); Afro-Latinidades (Spring 2022); Black Religions in the Digital Age (Fall 2022); Black Archival Practice (Summer and Winter 2022); Afro-Futurism (Summer 2023).

The journal has always explored Black American issues through a broader context of Black transnational and global experience. In 1977, TBS published a special issue on Cuba, featuring essays from artists, activists, and intellectuals who had been enabled to visit Cuba through the initiative of the journal’s board. In 1984, in the immediate aftermath of the US invasion of Grenada, the journal published a special issue, "The Struggle for Grenada", that included eye-witness accounts by Audre Lorde among others, as well as an exclusive interview with Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. In Spring 1999, the double issue "Black Women Writers", featured work from the first major international conference devoted to literature from around the world by women of African descent. The conference was organized by the Organization of Women Writers of Africa. The journal has devoted issues to Southern Africa, Zimbabwe, global Peace struggles, the Non-Aligned Movement and Summits, and Nicaragua.

Academic discussion of the journal includes work by Abdul Alkalimat [21], Keith Gilyard [22], Charles P. Henry, [23], Faustine Childress Jones [24], Kinohi Nishikawa [25], and Armond R. Towns [26].

Notable contributors[edit]

The Black Scholar was founded on the principle that Black authors, scholars, and activists could take part in dialogues within its pages. It has featured articles by US Congress representatives Carol Moseley Braun, Edward Brooke, John Conyers, Ron Dellums, Charles Diggs, Barbara Lee, Mickey Leland, Cynthia McKinney; activists such as JoNina Abron-Ervin, Frances Beal, Dhoruba bin Wahad, Julian Bond, Linda Burnham, Bill Fletcher, Jr, James Garrett, Jesse Jackson, Chokwe Lumumba, Mae Mallory, Imari Obadele, Walter Rodney, Jamala Rogers, Bobby Seale, Assata Shakur, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael); international political leaders including Amílcar Cabral, Julius Nyerere, Cheddi Jagan; and journalists such as Herb Boyd, Don Rojas, and Robert van Lierop.

The journal showcases creative and critical contributions from an international range of artists, including African poets and novelists [27] ; Caribbean poets, novelists and filmmakers[28]; Black British and European creative writers [29]; and a historical range of Black American writers from early twentieth century through the Black Arts period to the 21st century.[30] Visual art by Elizabeth Catlett, Emory Douglas, Mel Edwards, Tom Feelings, and Jacob Lawrence has frequently featured in the journal.

The journal publishes a wide spectrum of ideological perspectives, that include Marxism, cultural nationalism, Pan Africanism, liberal democracy, Afropessimism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and feminism. According to Abdul Alkalimat, "Publishing material that directly reflected different sides of the prominent debates in the Black community was the contribution of The Black Scholar that endeared it to the main activists of Black Studies as Social Movement".[31] The voices of historians, economists, social and political scientists, humanists, scientists, librarians, community organizers, physicians, social workers, entrepreneurs, psychologists, college administrators, bankers, school children, choreographers, musicians, sex workers, soldiers, have featured in the journal. [32]

Activist involvement[edit]

Activism was an important premise of The Black Scholar. The founders saw the journal not only as a publication informed by community activism but also as a hub for further activist work that addresses social inequality based on race, class, and gender in the United States and abroad.[33] This involved campaigning to lift the US Government's ban on Shirley Graham Du Bois, trips to Cuba and revolutionary Nicaragua, trips to the Eastern Bloc in 1983 and 1985, trips to South Africa in 1994, and a speaker’s bureau to arrange speaking engagements for diverse thinkers of varying disciplines and experiences in and outside traditional academia. In 1977, as chairman of the U.S. People's Delegation, Chrisman presented "The Case for the Independence of Puerto Rico" to the U.N. Committee on Decolonization, August 16th. In 1986, then-journalist Barbara Lee covered the Eighth Summit of the Movement for Non-Aligned Countries, for the journal. Robert L. Allen’s booklength investigation, The Port Chicago Mutiny, shed light on the unjust and unsafe working conditions that Black Navy servicemen sustained during wartime efforts, culminating in the Port Chicago disaster.

Robert Chrisman’s retirement[edit]

On June 30, 2012, founding editor Robert Chrisman officially retired from his long-standing position as Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of The Black Scholar. He announced his retirement in the Spring 2012 issue of the journal.[34] In his letter, Chrisman made reference to the transitioning direction and goals of the journal in the light of changes in the field of Black Studies and the intellectual interests of scholars and activists within it.[34] Chrisman died after a long illness on March 10, 2013.[35]

Black Scholar Press[edit]

Black Scholar Press was based in San Francisco, California. It began publishing books beginning in the 1970s, mostly regarding social science or poetry. Notable titles include:

  • Sonia Sanchez, I've Been A Woman: New and Selected Poems. Black Scholar Press, 1978
  • Andrew Salkey, In the Hills Where Her Dreams Live. Black Scholar Press, 1979
  • Robert Chrisman, Children of Empire. Black Scholar Press, 1981
  • Robert Staples, Black Masculinity: The Black Male's Role in American Society. Black Scholar Press, 1982
  • Kenneth A. McClane, A Tree Beyond Telling. Black Scholar Press, 1983
  • Nancy Morejon, trans. Kathleen Weaver, Where the Island Sleeps Like a Wing: Selected Poetry. Black Scholar Press, 1985
  • D. L. Crockett-Smith, Cowboy Amok: Poems. Black Scholar Press, 1987
  • Charles P. Henry, Jesse Jackson: the Search for Common Ground. Black Scholar Press, 1991
  • William McClendon (ed. Robert Chrisman), Straight Ahead: Essays on the Struggle of Blacks in America, 1934-1994. Black Scholar Press, 1995
  • Robert Chrisman, The Dirty Wars. New Poems. Black Scholar Press, 2012

Anthologies[edit]

The editors of The Black Scholar have published anthologies of notable articles from the journal, including:

  • Robert Chrisman and Nathan Hare (eds), Contemporary Black Thought: The Best of The Black Scholar, Bobbs-Merrill, 1973
  • Robert Chrisman and Nathan Hare (eds), Pan-Africanism, Bobbs-Merrill, 1974
  • Court of Appeal: The Black Community Speaks Out on the Racial and Sexual Politics of Thomas vs. Hill (edited by The Black Scholar), Ballantine Books, 1992
  • Charles P. Henry, Robert L. Allen and Robert Chrisman (eds), The Obama Phenomenon: Toward a Multiracial Democracy, University of Illinois Press, 2011

Archive[edit]

The Black Scholar Records were endowed to the African American Writers Collection at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library.

References[edit]

  1. ^ https://journalreviews.princeton.edu/2017/02/23/the-black-scholar/
  2. ^ "Contact Us", The Black Scholar.
  3. ^ "Editorial Board", The Black Scholar.
  4. ^ "Subscriptions", The Black Scholar.
  5. ^ Biondi, Martha. The Black Revolution on Campus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. 75. Print.
  6. ^ Nishikawa, Kinohi, 'From the Ground Up: Readers and Publishers in the Making of a Literary Public' in Woolfork, Lisa, et al. ed., Black Cultural Production after Civil Rights. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2019.
  7. ^ Chrisman, Robert. The Black Scholar 41.4 (Winter 2011): 2-4. Print.
  8. ^ Henry, Charles P., Chapter 5: The Black Scholar: Drum of the Black Studies Movement, in his Black Studies and the Democratization of Higher Education. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017.
  9. ^ Henry, Charles P., Chapter 5: The Black Scholar: Drum of the Black Studies Movement, in his Black Studies and the Democratization of Higher Education. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017.
  10. ^ Gilyard, Keith. John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010.
  11. ^ Hunter, Charlayne. “Ideology Dispute Shakes Black Journal.” The New York Times, March 11, 1975. Web Archive.
  12. ^ "Black Reds Take Over Magazine; Editor Quits." New York Amsterdam News, March 8, 1975. Web Archive.
  13. ^ Winn, Maisha T., “'We are all Prisoners': Privileging Prison Voices in Black Print Culture". The Journal of African American History: 95.3-4 (Summer-Fall 2010),392-416
  14. ^ Fraser, C. Gerald, "Black Prisoners Embrace New View of Themselves as Political Victims", New York Times, Sept 16, 1971.
  15. ^ Examples of reprinting include Guy-Sheftall, Beverly, ed., Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought. New York: New Press, 1995; Kaepernick, Colin, et al, eds., Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2023.
  16. ^ Jones, Faustine Childress. The Changing Mood in America. Eroding Commitment? Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1977.
  17. ^ Walters, Ronald W., Pan Africanism in the African diaspora : an analysis of modern Afrocentric political movements. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993.
  18. ^ Chrisman, Robert and Hare, Nathan, eds. Pan-Africanism. New York: Bobbs-Merill, 1974.
  19. ^ Byrd, Rudolph P., and Beverly Guy-Sheftall. Traps: African American Men on Gender and Sexuality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. 14. Print.
  20. ^ https://stjenglish.com/dr-raj-chetty-wins-award-for-journal-issue/
  21. ^ Alkalimat, Abdul. The History of Black Studies. London: Pluto Press, 2021.
  22. ^ Gilyard, Keith. John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010.
  23. ^ Henry, Charles P. Black Studies and the Democratization of Higher Education. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017.
  24. ^ Jones, Faustine Childress. The Changing Mood in America. Eroding Commitment? Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1977.
  25. ^ Nishikawa, Kinohi, 'From the Ground Up: Readers and Publishers in the Making of a Literary Public' in Woolfork, Lisa, et al. ed., Black Cultural Production after Civil Rights. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2019.
  26. ^ , Towns, Armond R. 'In search of the (Black) international: The Black Scholar and the challenge to communication and media studies'. Communication Theory, 2023, 00, 1–9.
  27. ^ This includes Dennis Brutus, Frank M. Chipasula, Alex La Guma, and Seitlhamo Motsapi.
  28. ^ This includes Dionne Brand, Opal Palmer Adisa, Nicolás Guillén,Nancy Morejón, Sergio Giral,Claudia Rankine, Andrew Salkey,George Lamming.
  29. ^ This includes Linton Kwesi Johnson, John la Rose, Jackie Kay, May Opitz.
  30. ^ This includes Margaret Walker Alexander, Chester Himes,Gwendolyn Brooks, Melba Boyd, Wanda Coleman, Conyus, Jayne Cortez, Henry Dumas, Ernest J. Gaines, Michael S. Harper, Angela Jackson, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Lance Jeffers, Patricia Spears Jones, June Jordan, Yusef Komunyakaa, Pinkie Gordon Lane, Audre Lorde,Nathaniel Mackey, Clarence Major, Larry Neal, Aldon Lynn Nielsen,Sterling D. Plumpp, Eugene Redmond, Ishmael Reed, Kalamu ya Salaam, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Al Young.
  31. ^ Alkalimat, Abdul. The History of Black Studies. London: Pluto Press, 2021, p. 111.
  32. ^ Contributors include Ernest Allen, Horace Campbell, Clayborne Carson, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, John Henrik Clarke, Darlene Clark Hine, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Jonathan Fenderson, Lewis R. Gordon, Lenneal Henderson, Charles P. Henry, Patricia Hill Collins, Gerald Horne, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Joy James, E. Patrick Johnson, Peniel Joseph, Robin D. G. Kelley, Shireen Lewis, Treva B. Lindsey, Julianne Malveaux, Manning Marable, Alvin Francis Poussaint, Orisanmi Burton, Jared Ball, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Mark Anthony Neal, Kristie Dotson, Anthony Reed, Evie Shockley, David Marriott, Anthony Walton, Michelle Wright, Katherine McKittrick, Stephanie Batiste, Shoniqua Roach, Jared Sexton, Lorgia García Peña, Frank B. Wilderson III, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Alexander Weheliye, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Adolph Reed, Randall Robinson, Christina Sharpe, Barbara Smith, Geneva Smitherman, Hortense Spillers, Chuck Stone, William Strickland, Akinyele Umoja, Ronald Walters, Cecil Williams (pastor), George Yancy, and Paul Zeleza.
  33. ^ Watkins, Mel. "The Last Word: The Black Scholar." New York Times, May 30, 1971. Web Archive.
  34. ^ a b Chrisman, Robert. "An Open Letter from Robert Chrisman." The Black Scholar 42.1 (Spring 2012).
  35. ^ Damu, Jean, "Robert Chrisman and The Black Scholar", San Francisco BayView, March 21, 2013.

External links[edit]

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