Week 1
The right’s vehement opposition to Black Studies is predictable. Black Studies has been under attack since its formal inception on college campuses in the late 1960s. We can go back even further. Most state laws prohibiting enslaved Africans from learning to read and write were introduced after 1829, in response to the publication of David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, an unrelenting attack on slavery and US hypocrisy for maintaining it. Back then the
Appeal was contraband: anyone caught with it faced imprisonment or execution. Today, it is a foundational text in Black Studies.
Kelley, R.D.G. (2023)