“Be Your Own Man”: Student Activism and the Birth of Black Studies at Amherst College, 1965–1972

Historians have examined how social movements influenced African American student activism in mid-to-late twentieth century America. This essay extends the scholarship by telling the story of African American male student activists who led the fight for curricular reform at Amherst College, then an all-male liberal arts college in Massachusetts. This local story reveals that African American student activism was driven by social movements as well as the distinctive mission of the liberal arts college.