The Black Scholar (TBS) is a journal founded in California, in 1969, by Robert Chrisman, Nathan Hare, and Allan Ross. It is the third oldest Black studies journal in the US, after the NAACP’s The Crisis (founded in 1910) and the Journal of African American History (formerly The Journal of Negro History, founded in 1916). The journal is currently housed at Boston University's Program in African American Studies.[1] Originally published 10 times a year, and without peer review, the journal introduced peer review and became a quarterly in 2015.
The Black Scholar: Journal of Black Studies and Research
From 1969 to 2009 it was independently published, printed and distributed by the Black World Foundation[citation needed]. From 2009 to 2014 it was published, printed and distributed by Paradigm Press[citation needed]. The Black Scholar's Editor-in-Chief is the scholar and writer Louis Chude-Sokei.[2]TBS is owned by the Robert Chrisman Foundation, a Seattle based non-profit educational organization, which took over ownership from The Black World Foundation[citation needed] when the latter was dissolved in 2018. It is currently published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis.[3]
Robert Chrisman (1937–2013) and Nathan Hare (b. 1933) were active in the 1968-9 Black studies struggle at San Francisco State University.[4] The experience motivated Chrisman and Hare to create a venue outside of the academy for Black knowledge production. [5] In November 1969, Hare (publisher), Chrisman (editor) and Allan Ross, a white Bay Area printer (as business manager) founded The Black Scholar: A Journal of Black Studies and Research to cover issues of social, cultural, economic and political thought.[6]
Robert L. Allen (b. 1942) joined the journal as associate editor in 1974, then rose to senior editor following Nathan Hare's departure and Robert Chrisman's move to the position of publisher/Editor-in-Chief. Allen remained senior editor until his retirement in 2012. Allan Ross (d. 1974) had left in 1973; his assistant Gloria Bevien took his place as business manager. Hare left The Black Scholar in spring 1975.[7][8] The public split attracted coverage from national newspapers.[9][10] In 2012, Robert Chrisman officially retired from his position as Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of The Black Scholar. [11]
According to Black Studies academic Abdul Alkalimat, "Publishing material that directly reflected different sides of the prominent debates in the Black community was the contribution of The Black Scholar that endeared it to the main activists of Black Studies as Social Movement".[12]
The journal was an early critic of Black incarceration, publishing two special issues on "The Black Prisoner" (April/May 1971; Oct 1972). [13] Robert Chrisman's essay "Black Prisoners, White Law", from the 1971 issue, was taken up by mainstream media such as the New York Times. [14]
In 1971, a special issue on "The Black Woman" (Dec 1971) featured Angela Davis' "Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves". The essay, written and published while Davis was in prison, has been widely cited and anthologized.[15]
The early 1970s also published influential special issues concerning Pan-Africanism ("Pan Africanism I", Feb 1971; "Pan Africanism II", Mar 1971; "The Pan-African Debate", July/Aug 1973) [16][17] These and related essays were published in 1974 by Bobbs-Merrill, as a book titled Pan-Africanism. [18]
In 1979 the journal published "The Black Sexism Debate" (May/June 1979); this was one of the first public scholarly forums about sexism within the African-American community.[19]
In 1980, the journal published a pair of special issues on "Black Anthropology" (Sept/Oct 1980 and Nov/Dec 1980), guest-edited by Johnnetta Cole and Sheila S. Walker on behalf of the Association of Black Anthropologists, whose editorial (Sept/Oct 1980) explained that this was "the first collection of works by Afro-American anthropologists".[citation needed]
In 1992, following Clarence Thomas’ controversial hearings in the Senate prior to his being confirmed to the Supreme Court, TBS compiled a special issue (Winter 1991/Spring 1992). The essays were later published as Court of Appeal: The Black Community Speaks Out on the Racial and Sexual Politics of Thomas vs. Hill (Ballantine, 1992).[20]
In Spring 1999, the double issue "Black Women Writers" was the first Anglophone publication of the first major international conference devoted to literature from around the world by women of African descent. The conference, "Yari Yari", was organized by Organization of Women Writers of Africa and took place in New York, 1997.[21]
Since 2015, the journal has published a variety of issues that participate in the reshaping of Black Studies in the wake of new generations of institutional Black academics, new political activism and cultural conversations. These include the award-winning issue on Dominican Black Studies (Summer 2015).[22]
As part of the educational mission of the journal and The Black World Foundation, The Black Scholar Press was launched in 1978. It concentrated on publishing social science and poetry titles. Social science titles include
The widely-cited book by Charles P. Henry, Jesse Jackson: the Search for Common Ground. Black Scholar Press, 1991 [23]
Notable poetry titles include
The widely-cited book by Sonia Sanchez, I've Been A Woman: New and Selected Poems. Black Scholar Press, 1978 [24]
The prize-winning book by Andrew Salkey, about Chile, In the Hills Where Her Dreams Live. Black Scholar Press, 1979 [25][26]
The first book of Cuban Nancy Morejon poetry translated into English, trans. Kathleen Weaver, Where the Island Sleeps Like a Wing: Selected Poetry. Black Scholar Press, 1985. This is widely-cited in academic studies of poetry and poetics [27]
The editors of The Black Scholar have published anthologies of notable articles from the journal, including:
Robert Chrisman and Nathan Hare (eds), Contemporary Black Thought: The Best of The Black Scholar, Bobbs-Merrill, 1973
Robert Chrisman and Nathan Hare (eds), Pan-Africanism, Bobbs-Merrill, 1974
Court of Appeal: The Black Community Speaks Out on the Racial and Sexual Politics of Thomas vs. Hill (edited by The Black Scholar), Ballantine Books, 1992
Charles P. Henry, Robert L. Allen and Robert Chrisman (eds), The Obama Phenomenon: Toward a Multiracial Democracy, University of Illinois Press, 2011
According to the Journal Metrics Black Scholar webpage at Routledge, The Black Scholar has a 2022 Impact Factor of 0.4, a 2022 CiteScore (Scopus) of 0.7, and a 5 Year Impact Factor of 0.8. Retrieved June 1, 2024.
Towns, Armond R. "In search of the (Black) international: The Black Scholar and the challenge to communication and media studies". Communication Theory: 33. 4 (November 2023), 197–205.
^Biondi, Martha. The Black Revolution on Campus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. 75. Print.
^Nishikawa, Kinohi, 'From the Ground Up: Readers and Publishers in the Making of a Literary Public' in Woolfork, Lisa, et al. ed., Black Cultural Production after Civil Rights. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2019.
^ Henry, Charles P., Chapter 5: The Black Scholar: Drum of the Black Studies Movement, in his Black Studies and the Democratization of Higher Education. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017.
^Henry, Charles P., Chapter 5: The Black Scholar: Drum of the Black Studies Movement, in his Black Studies and the Democratization of Higher Education. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017.
^ Gilyard, Keith. John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010.
^ Hunter, Charlayne. “Ideology Dispute Shakes Black Journal.” The New York Times, March 11, 1975. Web Archive.
^"Black Reds Take Over Magazine; Editor Quits." New York Amsterdam News, March 8, 1975. Web Archive.
^Chrisman, Robert. "An Open Letter from Robert Chrisman." The Black Scholar 42.1 (Spring 2012).
^ Alkalimat, Abdul. The History of Black Studies. London: Pluto Press, 2021, p. 111.
^ Winn, Maisha T. “'We are all Prisoners': Privileging Prison Voices in Black Print Culture". The Journal of African American History: 95.3-4 (Summer-Fall 2010),392-416
^ Fraser, C. Gerald. "Black Prisoners Embrace New View of Themselves as Political Victims", New York Times, Sept 16, 1971.
^ Google Scholar records 840 academic citations of the essay, https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=15656237114368738792&as_sdt=5,48&sciodt=0,48&hl=en. Examples of reprinting include Guy-Sheftall, Beverly, ed. Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought. New York: New Press, 1995; Kaepernick, Colin, et al, eds. Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2023.
^ Jones, Faustine Childress. The Changing Mood in America. Eroding Commitment? Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1977.
^ Walters, Ronald W. Pan Africanism in the African diaspora : an analysis of modern Afrocentric political movements. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993.
^ Chrisman, Robert and Hare, Nathan, eds. Pan-Africanism. New York: Bobbs-Merill, 1974.
^Byrd, Rudolph P., and Guy-Sheftall, Beverly. Traps: African American Men on Gender and Sexuality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. 14. Print.
^Gerber, Scott D. "Judging Thomas", Journal of Black Studies 27:2 (1996), 224-259.
^Williams, Lena. "Literary Women With Roots In Africa", The New York Times, Oct 16, 1997; Diawara, Manthia. Black Renaissance. 1.3(1998):5.
^ The book is cited in Marable, Manning. Race, reform, and rebellion: The second reconstruction and beyond in black America, 1945-2006. Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2009; Walton Jr, Hanes. American politics and the African American quest for universal freedom. Routledge, 2020; Keiser, Richard A. Subordination or empowerment?: African-American leadership and the struggle for urban political power. Oxford University Press, USA, 1997; Obenzinger, Hilton. "Palestine Solidarity, Political Discourse, and the Peace Movement, 1982-1988." CR: The New Centennial Review 8.2 (2008): 233-252; Whitaker, Matthew C. Peace Be Still: Modern Black America from World War II to Barack Obama. U of Nebraska Press, 2014.Smallwood, James M. "Jesse Jackson: Run, Jesse, Run!." African Americans and the Presidency. Routledge, 2009. 129-144, among others.
^ Discussed and cited in Shockley, Evie. Renegade poetics: Black aesthetics and formal innovation in African American poetry. University of Iowa Press, 2011; Breines, Wini. "Sixties stories' silences: White feminism, black feminism, black power." NWSA Journal 8.3 (1996): 101-121; Ryan, Jennifer. Post-Jazz Poetics: A Social History. Springer, 2010; Graham, Maryemma, Sharon Pineault-Burke, and Marianna White Davis. Teaching African American Literature: Theory and Practice. Routledge, 2013; Anderson III, Thomas Jefferson. Notes to Make the Sound Come Right: Four Innovators of Jazz Poetry. University of Arkansas Press, 2004; Thomas, Lorenzo. "Authenticity and elevation: Sterling Brown's theory of the blues." African American Review 31.3 (1997): 409-416; Gabbin, Joanne V. "Sterling Brown's poetic voice: a living legacy." African American Review 31.3 (1997): 423-431; Badejo, Diedre L. "Birthing Orality in Mother Tongue Ebonics: Sistah Sonia Speaks." Contemporary Literary Criticism 453 (2020), among other.
^ Awarded the Cuban Casa de las Americas First Prize for Poetry 1979 (Anglophone Caribbean category); Cuban award cited by W. C. Morton in review of Salkey book, The Orlando Sentinel, Aug 16, 1981,69
^Scholarly discussions include Valdés, Vanessa K. Oshun's daughters: The search for womanhood in the Americas. SUNY Press, 2014;Tillis, Antonio D.『Postcolonial Pilgrimage: Toward an Afro-Cuban Identity in the Poetry of Nancy Morejón.』Mosaic: A journal for the interdisciplinary study of literature (2003): 65-79; González, Patricia E.『Yoruba Vestiges in Nancy Morejón's Poetry.』Callaloo (2005): 952-966; Amich, Candice. Precarious Forms: Performing Utopia in the Neoliberal Americas. Northwestern University Press, 2020; Miller, Marilyn.『Slavery, Cimarronaje, and Poetic Refuge in Nancy Morejón.』Afro-Hispanic Review (2005): 103-125; Puleo, Gus.『A Pan-Africanist Politics of the Imagination: Nancy Morejón's』Mujer negra"." Revista Hispánica Moderna 49.2 (1996): 419-429; Duke, Dawn. "Poetic Valuing of the Female Self: Selected Women's Writings from Brazil, Cuba and Guyana." Obsidian III (2005): 90-113.
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