TCNJ

17 SPRING 2023 Through a series of focus groups, these academics poured their expertise into online discussions. After months, they got to the heart of African American studies: an examina- tion and commemoration of how all kinds of Black people have survived and remade their worlds despite continued oppression. They pushed to make sure the course was inclu- sive of various Black experiences by representing intersec- tionality, the idea that certain groups of people experience layered forms of discrimination due to the convergence of constructs like race and gender. It was imperative to Adair and her peers that the course appeal to younger generations by including the movement that they largely spearhead — Black Lives Matter. "If we only talk about African American history, it conve- niently roots oppression in the past and leaves the contem- porary injustices up for thought or debate," Adair says. "It wraps up African American struggles as something that happened in the past, but the past is present, and it's also future." But just as soon as the AP course was praised for being piloted in 60 American classrooms this year, it got caught in the ongoing school culture war. African American history was lambasted for "lacking educational value," as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said when he announced that the state would not adopt the course. "States were fighting critical race theory, so we always knew there would be parts of the country that would push back against the AP curriculum," says Adair. For her, the controversy brought urgency to the meaning of African American studies at TCNJ. "There are ways that African American history has become sanitized and palpable for the mainstream. But we have to tell the whole story of the Black experience," she says. After students and workers at San Francisco State University held a five-month strike in 1969 that birthed the country's first ethnic studies department and Black studies degree, students at TCNJ picked up the baton. A series of protests at Green Hall led by Black and Latino students — against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, the growing Black power and Black arts movements, and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. — put pressure on the college. A list of demands from students called for the creation of a Black studies program and directly called out institutional racism as a reason for delay in the program's establishment. "It wasn't like TCNJ actively sought to be one of the first schools with this program. It was a result of student activism," says Piper Kendrix Williams, the African American studies department chair. Initially, TCNJ hired a series of scholars who laid the groundwork for what the African American studies course work would look like. By 1972, a minor in Afro American studies boasted 14 classes, with eight of them being taught TEST OF TIME To commemorate 50 years of African American studies at TCNJ, Journalism Professor Kim Pearson and students in her Race, Gender, and the News class created a timeline. As they note, "Our story of African American presence at what is now TCNJ begins in the first years after the founding of the State Normal School." 1804 New Jersey passes legislation to start the gradual abolition of slavery, the last Northern state to do so. 1866 A New Jersey constitutional amendment brings the official end of slavery in the state. 1879 The college graduates its first Black student, Priscilla Herbert. L to R: Timothy H. O'Sullivan/Wikimedia Commons; TCNJ Archives 1855 New Jersey State Normal School (what is now TCNJ) opens. New Jersey still has slaves.

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