RPAATH as a Tool for Recovering and
Preserving UCSC’s Black Cultural Memory and
Prominence from 1967-1980s.
Slides by Moses J.
Massenburg
UCSC, Class of 2010.
Bettina Aptheker and
Moses Massenburg at
the
Purpose(s) of Today’s Talk
• Contextualize UCSC within several social and academic
movements for the liberation of Black people from different forms
of oppression. (Black Power, Black Studies Movement, Black
Feminist Thought, Civil Rights, Black Arts, Black Student
Movement, etc.)
• Articulate RPAATH as an interpretive space for the Study of
African American Life and History.
• Empower Black Students and their antiracist allies.
Overview of Black History Month and
the Early Black History Movement.
• Organized by Historian Carter G. Woodson’s Association for the
Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) founded Chicago in 1915.
• Black History Month Started in 1926 as Negro History Week.
• The Association for the Study of African American Life and History
(ASALH) is still active today.
Woodson Home Office
• Served as a meeting place for activists and community organizers.
• Clearing house for the professional study of Black History.
• Nurtured Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Mary McLeod Bethune, Angela
Davis, and thousands of other Black innovators.
Rosa Parks
• Who was Rosa Parks? Answer
without thinking about a public
transportation, the Civil Rights
Movement, or elderly persons.
• Training Group at the Highlander
Folk School, SUMMER 1955,
Desegregation workshop six months
before the Montgomery Bus Boycott
began.
• Founded in 1932, the school
continues to operate. Visit
Highlandercenter.org
Recommended Reading
Published in 2013
Published in 2009
What does Rosa Parks have to do
with UC Santa Cruz?
Septima P. Clark at UCSC
Septima Clark Again
What was/is Casa Septima?
• Why was Septima Clark at
UCSC?
• Who are the students in these
photos?
• These photos are courtesy of
the UCSC Library Special
Collections and the Santa Cruz
Public Library. Find the
answers to these questions in
those spaces.
Septima was to Rosa what Rosa was
to Malcolm. Mentors and Supporters.
Septima Mentored and
Admired Rosa
Rosa Mentored and Admired
Malcolm
Malcolm X College, UCSC
Malcolm X College, College 7
1969
• The UC Regents voted against
naming C7 after Minister Malcolm as
several U.S. politicians and the FBI
still believed he was a domestic
terrorists.
• No Black Studies, Black Faculty, or
Architects. No West Coast HBCU
• Oakes College was selected at the
requests of C7’s financial sponsors.
Dr. Herman J. Blake
• Founding Provost of what is now
known as Oakes College.
• Active during the Black Power Era
and heavily involved in Black
Student Activism at UCSC during
the Civil Rights Movement and
Black Power Era.
• Friends with various
revolutionaries including Septima
Clark, Alex Haley, Angela Davis,
and Akasha Hull.
Huey P. Newton, Black
Panther Party Co-Founder
Huey P. Newton receives his
doctoral degree from UC Santa
Cruz on June 15, 1980. At left is
Newton's sponsor, Triloki Pandy,
assistant professor of
Anthropology. Chronicle file
photo by Frederic Larson.
Dr. Pandy’s UCSC affiliations
include American Studies, South
Asia Studies, and Legal Studies.
The Social Sciences website
indicates that he still teaches at
UCSC.
Huey P. Newton
• "Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989)
earned a bachelor's degree from UC Santa Cruz in 1974. He
was enrolled as a graduate student in History of
Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz in 1978, when he
arranged to take a reading course from famed evolutionary
biologist Robert Trivers, while in prison. He and Trivers
became close friends. Newton earned a Ph.D. in history of
consciousness at UCSC in 1980. His doctoral dissertation
was entitled 'War Against the Panthers: A Study of
Repression in America.' Later, Newton's widow, Frederika
Newton, would discuss her husband's often-ignored
academic leanings on C-SPAN's "American Perspectives"
program on February 18, 2006." Dr. Robert Trivers
RobertTrivers.com
• Unlike many famous
scientists, Dr. Trivers has
spent time behind bars,
drove a getaway car for
Huey P. Newton, and
founded an armed group
in Jamaica to protect gay
men from mob violence.
Somewhere in this
sequence of he taught at
UCSC from 1978 to 1994.
bell hooks
• Considered one of the foremothers of Black Feminist
Thought and Theory.
• Iconic is an understatement.
• Completed her graduate work at UCSC at Kresge College
two years before the departmentalization of what is now
Feminist Studies.
Dr. Angela Davis
• Professor in the History of
Consciousness Department at
UCSC.
• Close friends with Dr. Bettina
Aptheker. The entire Aptheker
family took on active leadership
roles on the Movement to Free
Angela Davis. All were active in
the American Communist Party.
• Read, When Morning Breaks: The
Trial of Angela Davis, by Bettina
Aptheker.
Akasha Hull/Gloria Hull
• In 1989 Hull was hired as the
second full-time faculty
member in what is now
called the Feminist Studies
Department. Bettina
Aptheker demanded that the
UCSC fill the position with
someone trained in African
American Women’s Studies
regardless of the discipline.
Hull Continued
• Dr. Hull has also been a professor of
women's studies and literature at the
the University of Delaware, and
the University of the West Indies, Mona,
in Kingston, Jamaica.
• She has published four books, a
monograph, three edited collections,
over twenty articles in peer-reviewed
professional journals, numerous
chapters in a dozen volumes, fifteen
book reviews, poems in more than thirty
magazines and anthologies, and two
short stories. She lives in Little Rock,
Arkansas.
Co-edited All of the Women Are White, All
of the Blacks are Men, but Some of Us Are
Brave. (1982)
• Hull was a member of
the Combahee River
Collective, a Black
feminist group active
in Boston in the late
1970s. Membership in the
collective catalyzed her
focus as a scholar, activist,
and critic.
Dr. Bettina Aptheker
• Active member of the
American Communist Party.
• Founding faculty of the
Feminist Studies Department
at UCSC.
• Prominent scholar in the
fields of Women’s and
Gender Studies, African
American History, and
African American Women’s
History.
Alex Haley at UCSC
• Author of the American
Television series and
literary classic, Roots.
• Brain behind The
Autobiography of
Malcolm X, as Told by
Alex Haley.
• Friend and Supporter of
Dr. Herman Blake and the
Early Black Studies
Movement at UCSC.
Early Black Life and UCSC
Early Black Brilliance at UCSC
Black Scientists at UCSC
Dr. Grant D. Venerable,
1978-1980
Dr. Paul Tia
Cowell Culture Break, Black Power Era,
Black is Beautiful Movement, Black Arts
Movement.
Early Black Life at UCSC
Black Youth on a tour,
Pre-DHE with
Dr. Herman Blake
Professor Doyle
Foreman
Alex Haley Audience(?) Members
Cowell College Culture Retreat
Amiri Baraka (Le Roi Jones) at UCSC,
It’s Nation Time
Develop Cross-generational Friendship
and Identify these people. PLEASE!!!
WERE THESE ADMINISTRATORS? WERE THE
WHITE FOLKS MEMBERS OF THE WHITE
PANTHER PARTY? WHO ARE THE STUDENTS?
Dr. Herman Blake’s Junior
Leadership Program
Herman Blake’s Junior Leadership
Program, Black Power Era
Sonia Sanchez and John Bracey
Myself, Sonia
Sanchez, and
John Bracey,
before a bust of
W.E.B. Bu Bois
at Clark Atlanta
University,
2015.
THANK YOU
ALWAYS ASK QUESTIONS