Graduate Student Speaker Series: Jennifer Ash
April 18, 2018
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
“I THINK THAT THE LEGISLATURE WOULD BE OUT OF THEIR GOD-DAMNED MIND TO PASS THE STERILIZATION BILL”: BLACK FEMINIST THOUGHT AND POLITICS AT HBCUS, 1965-1975.
Jennifer Ash
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History
WHEN: 4PM ON APRIL 18, 2018
WHERE: UH 1550
Visions of Black liberation at HBCUs between 1965 and 1975 were overwhelmingly dominated by political articulations that deemed heterosexuality and normative gender roles as ideal characteristics of both campus citizenship and Black identity generally speaking. While the demands of the Black student movement and Black cultural nationalists were often developed in defiance of middle-class objectives associated with Black college administrations, respectability in the form of normative notions of Black manhood and womanhood remained very much unchallenged by Black cultural nationalist politics. However, a small cohort of rising Black feminists challenged gender and sexual normativity at HBCUs during this decade. Their developing Black feminist consciousness generated both intellectual and political work that centered gender and sexuality in public debates and activism at HBCUs. This work existed at the intersection of several emerging movements that gained momentum between 1965 and 1975: the second wave of the Feminist Movement, the Black Power Movement, the Anti-War Movement, and the Gay Liberation Movement.
Date posted
Mar 22, 2018
Date updated
Jan 24, 2019