Includes bibliographical references (pages 379-447) and index.
Contents
Introduction -- Surviving solitude : the travails of ivy desegregators -- Unsettling ol' Nassau : Princeton University from Jim Crow admissions to anti-Apartheid protests -- Bourgeois black activism : Brown University and black freedom -- Black power and the big green : Dartmouth College and the challenges of isolation -- Space invader : Columbia enters Harlem world -- There goes the neighborhood : Penn's postwar expansion project -- Blue bulldogs and Black Panthers : Yale, New Haven, and black imaginings -- Black studies the hard way : fair Harvard makes curricular changes -- Africana ambitions : the defense of blackness at Cornell university -- Conclusion : welcome to the class.
Summary
"Upending the Ivory Tower illuminates how the Black Power movement, which was borne out of an effort to edify the most disfranchised of the black masses, also took root in the hallowed halls of America's most esteemed institutions of higher education. Between the close of WWII and 1975, the civil rights and Black Power movements transformed the demographics and operation of the Ivy League on and off campus. As desegregators and racial pioneers, black students, staff, and faculty used their status in the black intelligentsia to enhance their predominantly white institutions while advancing black freedom. Although they were often marginalized because of their race and class, the newcomers altered educational policies and inserted blackness into the curricula and culture of the unabashedly exclusive and starkly white schools"-- Provided by publisher.
