While higher education student populations have become more diverse, the faculty remains predominately white and male. The number of African American faculty receiving tenure is still drastically low. One source indicates that less than 6 percent of full-time faculty are African American at four-year institutions, and at higher ranking and small, private master's universities, the percentage is even lower (NCES, 2019). To better understand some of the reasons behind these lower numbers of African American faculty members across the country and even fewer who have obtained tenure compared their counterparts, this case study explored the factors, events, and practices at institutions of higher education that influence the experiences that African American faculty have during the tenure-attainment process and that shape their perceptions of the process, as well as the role that institutional leadership plays in the experience of African American tenure-track faculty. Specifically, the study focused on four main areas of African American faculty tenure experience which included: (1) perceptions of the process of tenure-attainment and influences on those perceptions. (2) factors such as informal service that contribute to attaining tenure. (3) roles of campus racial climate and institutional leadership in the tenure-track experiences. (4) Perceptions of institutional leaders in communicating with and providing support for tenure-track faculty. This study found that African American faculty believed that research was the most important tenet for determining the attainment of tenure, that informal service--while having personal importance to them--had negatively influenced their tenure evaluation (mostly by taking time away from completion of their research and teaching), and that leadership's support or lack thereof directly impacted how they viewed their outlook of attaining tenure. The study also found that institutional leadership did not provide useful communications or support for African American tenure track faculty. In addition, racial climate played a role in all these findings. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]