A surge of African American enrolment and student activism brought Black Studies to many US campuses in the 1960s. Sixty years later, Black Studies programs are taught at more than 1,300 universities worldwide. This book is the first history of how that happened.

Black Studies founder and movement veteran Abdul Alkalimat offers a comprehensive history of the discipline that will become a key reference for generations to come. Structured in three broadly chronological sections - Black Studies as intellectual history; as social movement; and as academic profession - the book demonstrates how Black people themselves established the field long before its institutionalization in university programs.

At its heart, Black Studies is profoundly political. Black Power, the New Communist Movement, the Black women’s and students’ movements – each step in the journey for Black liberation influenced and was influenced by this revolutionary discipline.

Abdul Alkalimat is a founder of the field of Black Studies and Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. A lifelong scholar-activist with a PhD from the University of Chicago, he has lectured, taught and directed academic programs across the US, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe and China. His activism extends from having been chair of the Chicago chapter of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s, to a co-founder of the Black Radical Congress in 1998. He edited H-Afro-Am (1997-2014).

'Abdul Alkalimat is one of the most rigorous and committed Black radical thinkers of our time'
Barbara Ransby, award-winning author of 'Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement'

'Magisterial [...] The most comprehensive history of the field of Black Studies. This landmark book will become a standard in the history of our field.'
Molefi Kete Asante, Professor at the Department of Africology, Temple University

'Abdul Alkalimat, one of the pioneers of Black Studies, has done a great service by providing a powerful, expansive, and compelling history of the field'
Keisha N. Blain, award-winning author and co-editor of the #1 New York Times Bestseller '400 Souls'