Black Women and Student Activism at Fayetteville State, 1960-1972

In this historical study I used written and oral archival sources to explore the experiences of Black women who attended Fayetteville State University from 1960-1972 with particular attention paid to their experiences as organizers, activists, and students during the Sit-In and Black Campus Movements. I asked the following research questions: (1) In what ways did Black women participate in the Civil Rights/Black Power era activism, specifically the Sit-In and Black Campus Movements, while students at Fayetteville State?; (2) What forces radicalized Black women or aided in their political education? Specifically, what family, community, and/or educational experiences shaped Black women’s involvement in organizing and activism while enrolled at Fayetteville State?; and (3) In what ways did Black women’s experiences during their participation in the Civil Rights/Black Power and Black Campus Movements affect their career trajectories? The introduction to this dissertation contains my positionality, a brief history of Fayetteville and Fayetteville State, my study design, theoretical framework, methodology, and methods. In Chapter 2, I provide a historiographical analysis, in two sections, that examines scholarship on Black women’s experiences pursuing higher education and activism at Black colleges and universities through the 1960s. Chapter 3 is an examination of how and why each of the eleven institutions of higher education in North Carolina came into existence. I also discuss the ways in which white philanthropy and its resulting paternalism set the tone for student unrest in North Carolina. In order to explain the genesis of the Black campus activism I discuss in chapters 4-7; I pay particular attention to how funders used money as a means of control that reached into every aspect of a Black student’s life. In Chapter 4, I share accounts of student activism on Black college and university campuses in North Carolina from the earliest to the latest extant accounts predating the years bookending this dissertation. Having thus set the context in which the Sit-In Movement began, Chapter 5 details Fayetteville’s Sit-In Movement by providing a more in-depth look at Fayetteville State’s participation in the 1960 sit-ins as previous scholarship minimizes this year. In Chapter 6, I reanalyze Fayetteville State’s 1963 Sit-In participation and I attempt to further broaden the movement several years past the widely accepted “end” to a segregated downtown. In Chapter 7, I explore a complicated web of Black Campus Movement activism on and off Fayetteville State’s campus by detailing several student protests between 1966-1972. I conclude the study in Chapter 8 by revisiting each of the research questions and providing closing comments.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Educ Policy, Orgzn & Leadrshp

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2020

Author dc:creator

• Turner, Francena F. L.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Anderson, James D
• Zamani-Gallaher, Eboni
• Pak, Yoon
• Span, Christopher

• Social movements
• U.S. South, historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
• Black Feminist Theory
• Intersectionality
• Oral history
• Black Education
• local history
• Black women
• higher education
• Fayetteville
• North Carolina
• Fayetteville State University

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2020 Francena F.L. Turner

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/108690

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/108690