UC Berkeley

The plight of the "desegregated Negro" serves as a perfect metaphor for the development of Black Studies in the United States. Histories of Black Studies often view its development as emerging from the Black Power Movement with no link to the Civil Rights Movement. Some of the new spaces, called Black Studies, began to challenge the legitimacy of the dominant culture. In the seven-year period from 1968 to 1975, over 500 academic units began offering a Bachelor's degree in Black Studies. The differences between white and black student activists are dramatically illustrated in events at the University of California at Berkeley. In April 1960, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee was born, significantly changing the modern Civil Rights Movement. When the students fought for Black Studies at colleges and universities across the country their purpose was the same as that of the teachers in the Freedom Schools.