From the Bayou to the Bay

The Autobiography of a Black Liberation Scholar

Robert C. Smith

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781438482323, 9781438482316
• eBook ISBN: 9781438482330
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Biographies

The intellectual autobiography of a leading scholar in the field of African American Studies.

In this refreshingly candid intellectual autobiography, Robert C. Smith traces the evolution of his consciousness and identity from his early days in rural Louisiana to his emergence as one of the nation's leading scholars of African American politics. He interweaves this personal narrative with the significant events and cultural flashpoints of the last half of the twentieth century, including the Watts Rebellion, the rise of the Black Power movement, the tumultuous protests at Berkeley, and the sex and drug revolutions of the 1960s. As a graduate student he experiences the founding of Black Studies, the grounding in blackness at Howard University, and, as a professor, the swirling controversies and contradictions of Black Studies and feminism at San Francisco State University. Smith also locates his story in the context of the scholarly literature on African American politics, imbuing it with his own personal perspective. His account illuminates the past but, at the same time, looks toward the future of the long struggle by African American scholars to use knowledge as a base of power in the fight against racism and white supremacy.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Growing Up Accommodating Segregation with Community and Culture
• Chapter 2 The Awakening: Malcolm, Black Power, and Black Studies
• Chapter 3 Berkeley: Revolution in the Air
• Chapter 4 Los Angeles Redux: UCLA and Bird
• Chapter 5 New York City, the New School, and Discovering Ethnicity
• Chapter 6 Howard and the Black Experience
• Chapter 7 The College at Purchase and the Conservation of Human Resources
• Chapter 8 Howard Redux and Prairie View
• Chapter 9 San Francisco State: Controversies, Contradictions, and Black Liberation Scholarship
• Chapter 10 The End
• Notes
• Index
• Back Cover