the Black University concept w/ Bro. Abdul Alkalimat

W.E.B. Du Bois at the second annual meeting of the Niagara Movement at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, August 19, 1906, captured an early idea of the Black University concept in his speech titled: An Address to the Country. Du Bois writes: “And when we call for education, we mean real education. We believe in work. We ourselves are workers, but work is not necessarily education. Education is the development of power and ideal. We want our children trained as intelligent human beings should be, and we will fight for all time against any proposal to educate black boys and girls simply as servants and underlings, or simply for the use of other people. They have a right to know, to think, to aspire. We do not believe in violence, neither in the despised violence of the raid nor the lauded violence of the soldier, nor the barbarous violence of the mob, but we do believe in John Brown, in that incarnate spirit of justice, that hatred of a lie, that willingness to sacrifice money, reputation, and life itself on the altar of right.” Where would we or could we start more intentionally study into the practice of the Black University concept? We would argue we initially start with these formations: Peoples College (Nashville, Atlanta, and Chicago), the Institute of Black World (also in Atlanta); Malcolm X Liberation University (Durham and Greensboro); and the experiences of the African Liberation Support Committee/Movement (ALSC). According to Alkalimat, Peoples College wanted to serve working class people in Nashville. Alkalimat writes, “we sought a curriculum to link students to a working class ideological and political orientation for activism in the Black liberation movement. As part of the nationwide and even global demand for Black Power, we focused first on Black history and Pan-Africanism” (Alkalimat, Peoples College: A Black Liberation Project Based at Fisk University, 1970-1975, 2023: 6). “The Peoples College is an independent educational program for African communities in the Americas. We are trying to develop an alternative to existing educational programs because they serve the interests of racism, imperialism, and colonialism. Peoples College serves the interests of the people, and the necessity for Black liberation and world revolution” (Alkalimat, Peoples College: A Black Liberation Project Based at Fisk University, 1970-1975, 2023: 6).