Assimilationist Black students and colleges resisted Negro Studies in the 1930s.

Evidence

In June 1933, Du Bois challenged those HBCU educators who were copying White college curricula during a commencement address at his alma mater, Fisk. Du Bois knew Thurgood Marshall’s class of 1929 at Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania, had overwhelmingly voted against the acquisition of Black professors and “Negro Studies,” explaining their votes through racist ideas. The antiracist calls for Negro Studies at Negro colleges kept coming from Du Bois, from Langston Hughes, and from the 1926 architect of the popular Negro History week, Carter G. Woodson. In his 1933 book, Woodson called attention to the subject. In his title, he called it The Mis-Education of the Negro. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 867

Categorization

• XREF: Illustrates the reader’s stated discomfort: even educated Black elites (Lincoln University graduates) internalized assimilationist racism, voting against Black professors — a concrete case of Kendi’s claim that assimilationism is itself a racist position.