Invincible, Not Invisible: Black Women and Resistance at Black Colleges, 1957-2018.

This dissertation is a historical study of Black women’s activism at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) from the late 1950s through the early 2000s. The author uses historical records from institutional archives and oral history interviews to show how Black women students at HBCUs organized to challenge administrative oversight of their personal and social lives, and how they simultaneously participated in several social and political movements. Beginning with an examination of institutional cultures, the dissertation analyzes how Black women students resisted in loco parentis at Black colleges from the late 1950s through the early 1960s. Second, it focuses on the contributions of Black women students to the Greensboro sit-in movement and the broader civil rights movement during the late 1950s and early 1960s. From there, the dissertation focuses on how Black women students participated in student activism at Black colleges during the era of the Black student movement and the rise of the women’s liberation movement. Next, the dissertation tells the story of the 1976 Board of Trustees Lock-in at Spelman College, when Black women students and their faculty and staff allies demanded a Black woman president. Finally, “Invincible, Not Invisible,” concludes with an overview of the establishment of women’s studies and the Women’s Research and Resource Center (WRRC) at Spelman College in 1981, and student activism that was nurtured and supported within the WRRC through the recent past.