PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas (February 3, 2020) – In the spring of 1878, eight young men, whom we now refer to as The Unknown Eight, arrived at what was formerly the Alta Vista plantation to embark upon the same improbable journey as Black Americans across the nation. They were recreating themselves, changing their life trajectory and rewriting the meaning of American freedom and citizenship. This race, this people, who a few years earlier were not viewed as human, understood that a solid future required that they find the families they lost and, in some cases, redefine what kinship meant. In addition, they tested and expanded the limits of their new rights. Finally, they created these enduring institutions as testaments to their belief that with faith and education, future generations could accomplish what Nannie Helen Burroughs called “the wholly impossible.”
Guarded by the old oaks that dotted the campus, these men transformed the soil into fertile intellectual ground that would train black farmers, teachers, nurses, and engineers, and become the center of academic and extracurricular life for Black students in Texas at every education level.
Each February, we take time to remember and reflect on our journey from enslavement to emancipation and honor the people and institutions that have moved us forward. We marvel at our ancestors’ ability to dream of freedom on these shores when they had never experienced it and work toward achieving it. We show gratitude to the living, who are still working to ensure Black liberation. Nearly a century-and-a-half later, I believe the best way to memorialize the lives of these young men—and the women who came shortly after—is to say that their work and the lives of other African Americans are worthy of dedicated academic study.
Twenty-five years ago, when I was a student here, on this Black campus, a lot of the Black Studies scholarship I read was done as a part of a student-run study group. I am driven by the desire to ensure that future students get more formalized training in Black Studies and a broader curriculum that exposes students to their own history and its impact on the country and the world. There’s a popular phrase that you will see on T-shirts and bags that says, “I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams.” But we all know that our students cannot be their ancestors’ wildest dreams unless they are clear about what those dreams were.
African American Studies, at its core, is the critical analysis of power and how it is used to constrain the lives of others. There are those who would shape the narratives of the lives of Black people into a story about how white supremacist power has acted on and oppressed us. But we all know that the more important story is the way African Americans expanded and transformed their perceived powerlessness into dreams of freedom that have inspired movements around the globe. African American Studies also demands that we see Blackness as diverse, nuanced, and global, and acknowledge that the American Black struggle or even the Texas Black struggle is a part of a larger international struggle that is filled with victories and progress and joy! We cannot forget Black joy! That’s why African American Studies is also about coming together to understand our collective history and memory.
We must tell our own stories. We must help our students understand that African American history is not what happens to people in other places, but the very paths they take to class are the same ground that Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Dubois, and Carter G. Woodson also walked and consulted with our presidents. They should know that the PV Co-eds, an all-female jazz orchestra, played at the Apollo Theater. In my own teaching, I talk about Prairie View’s role in Symm vs. U.S., the Supreme Court case that made it legal for college students to vote in the place they attend college. I want them to see Prairie View as an active participant in the shaping of Black life. They should graduate knowing that they are heirs to and caretakers of an impressive legacy.
More than anything, our students should know that the best of Black life is complicated, messy, nuanced, and sometimes contradictory. There is an incessant desire for Black people to be unified, which really is more a desire for us to speak from the same voice. This is not only unhealthy, but it also has never existed in our history. Robust debate is a sign of a healthy community, and requiring unanimity inevitably silences some part of that community—usually the most vulnerable, like women, children, queer and trans folk, and the differently abled. We can mine history for tools to deal with current challenges while also being attentive to not repeating past problems of sexism, classism, homophobia, and other ideologies that rob of us the gifts of a fully inclusive community.
What African American Studies will look like for Prairie View is being considered, but it is more than just students who might choose to major or minor in it. It is also a wider project of affirmation and exposure. We want to train engineers who ask questions about how building and electrical innovations might create unexpected and racially biased outcomes so that when they go to work, they raise questions that might help mitigate the negative impacts of potential policies and technologies on African Americans. But not just engineers or even teachers or musicians, we want all of our students to ask questions that might result in fairer, freer, and more inclusive solutions for our world. Lastly, we must see our archives as hallowed space that is meant for exploration. This also means that we will engage in a process that I am calling “immersive Black Studies,” where we pull images and documents out of the archives and display them throughout the campus. Everywhere students assemble, they will find historical images of previous generations of Prairie View students engaged in similar activities. I hope they will internalize the fact that they have a connection with the people in these images and understand that because of that connection, they are in community with greatness. It is simply affirming their place as rightful heirs to the work of their ancestors.
Melanye Price, Ph.D.
When we accomplish this, and I believe that we will, Prairie View will be a model of HBCU Black Studies. Our students will graduate as critical consumers of information that makes them more able to combat those forces that would see the color of their skin, their family’s income, or the fact that they went to an HBCU, and count them out. They will be able to draw on the rich history of their own institution that they have learned from their own archives in the courses they have taken and seen with their own eyes. When they do, they will understand that they are engaged in the same basic project began by The Unknown Eight—creating a new intellectual family, becoming good stewards of black institutions, and reframing for each new generation the meaning of freedom and citizenship.
Melanye Price, Ph.D., is an endowed professor of political science at Prairie View A&M University.