Jelani Favors, "Shelter in A Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism" (UNC Press, 2020)

Summary

Shelter in A Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism (University of North Carolina Press, 2020) by Dr. Jelani Favors fills the “missing pages” of history by highlighting the enduring role that Black colleges have played in African American freedom movements in the long-twentieth century. 

Favors shows that Black colleges created freedom fighters whose organizing, dedication, and fearlessness made the Black Freedom Struggle’s most pivotal moments possible. Favors also argues that Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were fortified interstitial spaces for consciousness-raising and solidarity-building among race women and race men. HBCU students, faculty, and administrators were vital players in fashioning blueprints for Black liberation and ensuring the inter-generational transmission of resistance wisdom. 

Taking the long view and moving through a tour of Black higher education, Favors theorizes that a hidden second curriculum and a Black college communitas thrived on each campus, making them both seedbeds of racial justice and shelter in a time of storm.

Amanda Joyce Hall is a Ph.D. Candidate in History and African American Studies at Yale University. She is writing an international history on the global movement against South African apartheid during the 1970s and 1980s. She tweets from @amandajoycehall.

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Amanda Joyce Hall

Amanda Joyce Hall is a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University in the Department of African American Studies. She's on Twitter @amandajoycehall.

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