Inaugurated in 1971, the Black studies program at the University of Puget Sound came into being under the historical precedent of various national Black Power and cultural/ethnic empowerment movements. In an attempt to push back against injustices that Black individuals confront daily, the Black Power movement cultivated what scholar Oba T'Shaka calls “an ethic of Blacks being responsible to Blacks”, encouraging the formation of a Black “identity” and the collective deployment of “their skills for the benefit of the Black community” at large [NA 14]. This ethic contributed strongly to the formation of the “revolutionary Black Nationalist mindset of the Sixties” [NA 14], a mindset that U.S. public and those in power deeply loathed.

As the Black Power movement gained purchase nationally, the Nixon administration and the U.S. American public grew increasingly hostile to Black Power. Under the guidance of the CIA and FBI, State apparatuses, including (counter)intelligence programs (i.e. COINTELPRO), worked to disband the movement [NA 14]. Building up the now monstrous prison industrial complex, the Nixon administration began a trend of removing Black individuals, largely men, from the U.S. public with surgical precision [NA 13]. As a result, Black families, now largely headed by single women as a result of State-sponsored incarceration, were increasingly pathologized by scholars. In the wake of the infamous 1965 Moynihan Report, a cruel shadow was cast over Black families as Moynihan pushed his “culture of poverty” thesis, which not only blamed impoverished communities of color for their own (uncontrollable) situation, but also inspired disdain and outright hatred of Black families. This collection of structural violence, as T'Shaka contends, “worked to weaken extended family communities and promoted the greatest disparity between the rich and the poor on the planet” [NA 14].

Against the backdrop of increasingly visible racialized injustices, Black Studies as an academic discipline came into being. In 1968, San Francisco State University (formerly San Francisco State College) inaugurated the nation's first Black Studies Department in a four-year college. UC Berkeley followed suit within a year as did a handful of other four-year colleges.

U.C. Berkley

In regards to the U.C. Berkley program, the kick off event for creation of the program arose from the lectures taught by Eldridge Cleaver, a leader of the Black Panther Party, taught a series of ten lectures at the University. At the time there were also a series of protests ongoing on campus to protest the protesting rights of students. Students demanded the creation of a black studies program, to which the university responded that a committee with at least three white people would create the program. There was backlash, and eventually a committee with African American students and professors was formed to create the curriculum.

Three years after the first Black studies program was inaugurated, the University of Puget Sound began its own program to not only center “community revitalization, cultural transformation, and empowerment” [NA 14], but also to bring the narratives of Black struggle into a university setting.