‘Home away from home’: NIU Center for Black Studies celebrates 50 years

DeKALB – Teja Harris visits her favorite location on Northern Illinois University’s campus about four times a week. The center is marking its 50th year on campus in 2021.

“I like to just pop in, say hello to administrators, hang out with friends, be involved with organizations,” Harris said. “The culture there is so different. I feel like I’m with family whenever I go there. I love the people, the decorations, the historical items on the walls. It’s definitely a more intimate setting. It’s a place where you feel like you belong, a safe space, a place where you can discuss anything under the sun. You can study, do homework, visit with others or wind down after a long week.”

Harris’ favorite spot on campus is NIU’s Center for Black Studies. Harris, a senior human resource studies major, is the student president of NIU’s John Henrik Clarke Honors Society. The society was established at NIU in 2002 by a group of African American students to recognize students with high academic standards and an ongoing commitment to community service.

“Having the center at NIU is really, really important and I’m really grateful we do have it because some other university campuses don’t have it,” Harris said. “When you go to college, one of the main things you look for is to fit in. The center has helped me fit in. It’s a place for people trying to find friends or their identity. It makes you feel wanted, like you belong.”

The Center for Black Studies was established in 1971 as part of the International Studies program as a hybrid academic and student services program. The Center for Black Studies is one of five centers on NIU’s campus, which also include the Latino Resource Center, the Asian American Center, Gender & Sexuality Resource Center and Military and Post-Traditional Student Services.

The Center for Black Studies’s mission is to “advance cultural understanding, intellectual and leadership development, professional growth and social justice while serving as a collaborative and supportive space on campus.”

The center conducts research on the experiences of people of African descent and offers a minor in Black Studies. It promotes the retention of Black students and sponsors lectures, workshops, conferences and other student-oriented activities. The center’s staff advise and assist student organizations, host campus visits and develop community service opportunities, including study abroad trips.

“The center has dual purpose: it serves as both a Black cultural center, focusing on the histories and cultures of African Americans and the African diaspora, and as an academic center, offering a Black Studies minor and certificate,” the center’s director Anne Marie Edwards said. “We offer a mentoring program for students, an honors society and outreach programs for DeKalb public schools. We provide events for the community with speakers and guest lecturers and co-curricular programming.”

Edwards describes the center as “more than a building.”

“The center is open not only to Black students, but all students,” she said. “It was created as a place to support Black students on campus, a home away from home. It is a place of refuge during times of struggle.”

The Center’s history

Edwards connects the founding of NIU’s Center for Black Studies with an on-campus movement that started after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination in 1968.

The morning after his assassination, April 4, 1968, a crowd of students and faculty gathered in the Carl Sandburg auditorium for a memorial service.

According to NIU’s 125 Key Moments:

“Black students in the audience rose as one and filed out of the auditorium. Once outside the center, they hoisted a black flag on the HSC flagpole, and publicly voiced their grievances with NIU.

Less than a week later, 200 Black students staged a sit-in at Lowden Hall and demanded to see President Rhoten Smith. They presented him with a list of demands that included a required course in white racism and African-American history, a program of Black studies, more equitable admission standards for Black students from the inner city who showed potential and a dedicated center for Black students and Black studies.

Smith thought their grievances were justified and their demands reasonable. He immediately appointed three new Black administrators, established an interdisciplinary course called “Racism in American Culture and Society,” created the CHANCE program and established a center for Black students to relax and study.”

Edwards said DeKalb’s historic roots as a “sundown town” – a phrase commonly used to refer to all-white neighborhoods that historically had discriminatory local laws and resorted to violence or intimidation to disenfranchise minority residents – is also significant.

“DeKalb was a sundown town, and the founding of the center began by Black students on a historically and predominantly white campus,” Edwards said. “Students felt a disconnect between themselves, the community and the university.”

For 20 years, the center was located in a house at 225 Normal Road in DeKalb. In the early 1990s, plans for a new parking garage required the demolition of the house and three others on the block. In 1993, a new Center for Black Studies was constructed on Lincoln Highway between Normal Road and Carroll Avenue. The center features a large central classroom, five faculty and staff offices, a computer lab, a smart classroom and offices for student organizations.

The center is open 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, with staff available Fridays by appointment.

The future of the Center for Black Studies

“The creation of the center was extremely relevant and timely, and it still is today,” Edwards said. “The center is still a home away from home, it’s that place students can go to to study. It’s a place where you can find friends and have conversations with someone that looks like you.”

Edwards said a goal of the center in the future is to continue to engage alumni and the community.

“We love to see Black alumni during homecoming and our Black Family Reunion,” she said. “We also hope to connect and educate the community with the new exhibit ‘Hateful Things.’”

The traveling exhibit “Hateful Things,” created and circulated by the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University, will be on display at the Pick Museum of Anthropology, Cole Hall 114, through April 9. The exhibit features 39 items that represent nearly 150 years of anti-Black and racist material and imagery. The exhibit is co-sponsored by the museum, the center, and Friends of the NIU Libraries. Reservations to tour the exhibit can be made via the museum’s website.

Joseph Flynn, associate director of academic affairs for the center and associate professor of curriculum and instruction, described the exhibit as “a sampling of the history of racist and negative images of African Americans across history, from post-slavery and emancipation until today.”

“Racism isn’t simply someone not liking someone, it’s an all pervasive experience, and part of that experience is how people are depicted throughout society,” he said. “African Americans were often depicted as being less than human, beastly, unintelligent, unclean, dangerous, as well as silly, lazy and buffoonish. These negative images were on everything: kitchen calendars, household products, fast food companies, toys, games, books, movies, everywhere. These images were not meant to be complimentary. They were meant to represent African Americans in ways that made us seem dangerous or comical.”

Flynn said that the museum exhibit directly ties into the mission and vision of the center.

“If you’re interested in history and the life and culture of African Americans, the center is where you come,” Flynn said. “The center is a place of learning, growth, and community. It’s a space in the community where all came come if they’re truly interested in understanding the Black and African American experience.”

“Sometimes I’m asked, ‘What about a Center for White Studies,’ and I explain that the identity-based centers and courses of study were created because of a need. They were created in the response to African Americans not being represented in curriculum and popular culture, and when they were, they were not being represented accurately. People also ask why we say ‘Black Lives Matter,’ and it’s so much more than officer-involved shootings that happened recently. It’s about a history of torture, whippings, forced sterilizations, lynchings, violent and degrading representations, among other atrocities unique to the Black experience. It’s about a general lack of concern about how African Americans have always struggled in the United States. This violence against African Americans isn’t new. The impact of that violence and negative stereotyping persists in our society today.”

A recent example of racism in the DeKalb community was a racist slur spray-painted on the street in front of the Center for Black Studies in September. In response, NIU held a public outdoor event where community members far and wide were invited to help paint Black Lives Matter on the sidewalk in bold letters.

“The most powerful weapon we have to fight racism is knowledge and understanding,” Flynn said. “We need to look at history and recognize that history has repercussions: whether the conflict or practice is over or not, there are lingering effects. We have to be honest about what those lingering effects and why they persist. We have to discuss it, We have to change it. It’s why I invite everybody, anyone, to come to the center and the ‘Hateful Things’ exhibit to learn, dialogue and build community. Sitting down and having a conversation is the first step to true understanding and unity in the community.”

For more information about NIU’s Center for Black Studies, visit www.niu.edu/blackstudies or call 815-753-2495.