This collection showcases the myriad ways that African Americans have engaged in activism on and off HBCU campuses through a selection of items such as oral histories, visual artworks, and written works.
Description
Since the early 20th century, HBCU students, faculty and their communities have demonstrated a spirit of activism to catalyze change within or on behalf of their own institutions to improve campus accommodations, strengthen the level of instruction, and explicitly connect the mission of their HBCUs to the project of Black liberation.
Date Modified
2025-12-17
About This Record
The HCAC public history focused digital archive cataloging is an ongoing process, and we may update this record as we conduct additional research and review. We welcome your comments and feedback if you have more information to share about an item featured on the site, please contact us at: HCAC-DigiTeam@si.edu
Black and white image of Tuskegee Institute students marching in response to the shooting and death of SNCC member and Tuskegee Institute political science student Sammy Younge Jr. in 1966.
James Newton was a painter, printmaker, scholar, and professor from Delaware. The American Sixties is an assemblage that symbolizes the political turmoil and militarization that arose in the 1960s after the Civil Rights Movement.
Washington’s mural is a timeline of Black education. On the left, he depicts slavery and lynching above enslaved people secretly reading. In the center, students write “Emancipation Proclamation” and Booker T. Washington delivers his "Atlanta Compromise" speech. The right depicts emerging Black professionals.
In this mural, Mother Nature is attacked by oil derricks, pollution, and industrialization. Jones painted this work as a response to the rapid expansion of oil drilling throughout Texas. Jones still engages with nature, now creating wood carvings from fallen timber after Galveston storms.
Eva Booker was an artist from Atlanta, GA. The Road we Trod depicts Black American experiences with white supremacy during the Civil Rights Movement. The peace critiques the KKK, lynching, lunch counter discrimination, education inequality, job orientation, religious hypocrisy and Black people's long march toward freedom in spite of.
Shelia Pree Bright is a cultural anthropologist and photographer from Waycross, GA. Young Americans Series: Tarrynn Deavens, age 18, African American depicts a young Black woman posing with the American flag binding her arms and mouth. This series is an examination of Generation Y's response to America.
