Chapter 11: Historically Black Colleges and Universities: The Original Social Justice Movement

Long before a knee was ever taken, a fist was ever lifted, or the phrase “Black Lives Matter” were ever uttered, protest took shape in various forms as related to Social Justice Work and the African-American experience. Though traditional forms of protest were typified through marches and legislative change, social reform and justice advocacy and agency was also found itself in the social mobility and development of self within the educational space. This response to social change from the black perspective is rooted in the confluence of education and religion as “Historically, religion and spirituality were foundational to the development and understanding of social justice issues, including, but not limited to, issues of protest, community uplift, notions of care, and antioppression” (Witherspoon-Arnold, 2014, p. ix). As a social institution, education links ordinary everyday acts of justice, religion, and spirituality to a dominant culture that continues to systematically and institutionally create meaning, worth, and value in the lives of black Americans. It must be noted that as social discourse and change agency is not a novice or contemporary idea as even Plato (427–347 BC) argued in his text, The Republic, that an “ideal state would rest on the following four virtues: wisdom, justice, courage, and modernism,” and that the term “social justice” was first introduced in 1840 by a Sicilian priest, Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio, and given exposure by Antonio Rosmini-Serbati in 1848 (As cited in Zadja et al., 2006, p. 1).