Black Studies at U of I
The impacts of the University of Idaho’s recruitment were felt further into the late 1960s as several students began floating around petitions for the adoption of Black studies courses. The first of these was a petition in 1966 for the adoption of Anthropology 158, “Race Problems,” which was aimed to teach university students about the underlying causes that gave way to racial problems.1 This petition did not have many signatures, and it seems that there were no real actions taken by the University from it, but it would serve as a base for later petitions.
Around this time, the fight for Black Studies programs had grown quite large, with the Civil Rights movement pushing for greater inclusivity at universities. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had made it so that educational institutes could not ban anyone on account of the color of their skin, inspiring strikes such as the ones at the San Francisco State College in 1968 and 1969 that resulted in many new rights for Black students and other students of color.2 As such, these changes quickly brought more Black students to universities and further increased Black voices on campuses. The fight for Black studies programs on campuses increased further after the murders of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, with Black students insisting that Black studies programs were necessary in order to improve their situation and to educate the White students.
In 1968, another set of petitions was distributed to the student population by Joseph A. Tasby, a Black student-athlete. These sets of petitions received much more attention than the one in 1966, garnering over 400 signatures and creating “noise” in the history department and the President’s office.3 The petitions were intended to re-activate the Anthropology 158 course and to create a new Black history course titled “The Negro in America” for the 1969 school year.4 These petitions, as mentioned above, made a commotion within the faculty ranks of the University, and as such, President Ernest Hartung responded to Tasby by stating that if the University could implement the courses, then it would make the University undoubtedly a better educational institute.5
Despite this backing from President Hartung, the History Department was unsure of how to proceed with implementing a course focused on the Black community at the University. One argument brought up was that neither Jews nor women had their own specific course, and Black history was already being taught in other subjects, which would lead to redundancy if the new course was implemented. There was also the issue of recruiting an instructor, as the petitions had called for a Black history course to be taught by a Black professor; however, the University of Idaho did have issues in the past when it came to recruiting Black professors. This was due to several reasons, the biggest being the perception that not many Black professors were interested in coming to the University of Idaho.