On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on students at Kent State University (KSU), killing four and wounding nine. Although this event marked a watershed moment in American culture and the start of a decline in activism related to the war in Vietnam, its place in higher education history is not well-understood. This paper traces the…

The 1971 passage of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution was a significant step in advancing voting rights that offered a new route for young people to participate in public life. While met with enthusiasm in many quarters, the question of where a substantial segment of the youth vote--college students--would cast their ballots was a…

Educational research, policy, advocacy organizations, and higher education policy scholars, have noted the significance of race-conscious admissions in the dismantling of the structural and material racial and class barriers that reflect the historical role of colleges and universities. In this essay, the author enacts a different reading of the…

LGBTQ history within the US South is rich and diverse though it has remained mostly absent from mainstream and academic narratives around LGBTQ history generally. In recent years, there has been a growing effort to location, preserve, research and make accessible to the community the history of the Queer and Trans South. Despite stereotypes of the…

In the late 1970s Iranian student activists in the United States worked to educate the American public on the history of the US-Iranian relationship and the long-term consequences in Iran of the 1953 CIA-sponsored coup that placed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on the Iranian throne. The students directly challenged local and state governments to respect…

During the 2016 elections and the Trump administration, the fight against interlocking systems of oppression--from white supremacy, to transphobia, misogyny, and xenophobia--occupied dominant and minoritized cultural imaginaries, on the news, in fictional representations, on social media. As some outlets even denied the existence of these…

Highlighting the relationship between the racial slavery in the formation of U.S. colleges and universities and the archive of Black student revolt, this dissertation examines one of the longest and most violent Black student strikes in the history of postsecondary education--the San Francisco State College strike in 1968-1969. Rather than…

Dr. Jessie Wallace Hughan was a trailblazing New York City public school educator and pacifist. Hughan was a socialist, and she was among numerous teachers who faced investigations for anti-patriotic activities at the turn of the 20th-century, when teachers across the country faced intense scrutiny and legal challenges if they were suspected of…

Children's literature is a powerful way to engage young learners in understanding the civil rights movement (CRM); yet at the same time, most children's books focused on the CRM often create ahistorical, inaccurate depictions by only focusing on a few key people such as Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King Jr. or events such as the March on…

The debates that involve banning critical race theory and implementing ethnic studies programs have recently surged. But this is not the first time that controversy about ethnic studies programs and other efforts to promote equity has led to dissension. In the 1960s, similar discord led to violence. Today, right-wing activists are making efforts…

Social media campaigns such as #BlackLivesMatter have demonstrated Twitter as a powerful tool for anti-racist social activism. This article traces one local hashtag, #BeingMinorityatTCU, which has resurged on the TCU campus in the wake of a university lawsuit. Drawing from Critical Race Theory (Delgado, 1989; Martinez, 2014; Yosso, 2013),…

A transdisciplinary archival project, this dissertation uses counter-institutional student literacies emanating out of the City University of New York (CUNY) in the 1990s--placing them within much bigger political, educational, and geographic contexts--to think through the dynamics of ground-up resistance in the face of profound, institutionally…

This research addresses the guiding autoethnographic question: "What three key institutional incidents/conditions inform my Black scholar-activism for predominantly White education in this historical moment?" Moreover, it applies autoethnography to illuminate three key incidents/conditions involving: (1) predominantly White…

Purpose: To construct the life history of an exemplary veteran African American physical education teacher education faculty member. Method: The participant was Dr. Andrew Lewis, a retired professor from the College of Charleston. Data were collected through formal semistructured interviews, informal interviews, and documents and artifacts. They…

"Plantation Politics and Campus Rebellions" provides a multidisciplinary exploration of the contemporary university's entanglement with the history of slavery and settler colonialism in the United States. Inspired by more than a hundred student-led protests during the Movement for Black Lives, contributors examine how campus…