A Focus on Black Studies

he authors of Seven Sisters and a Brother: Friendship, Resistance, and Untold Truths Behind Black Student Activism in the 1960s are working together with royalties from their book to strengthen a fund that supports Swarthmore’s Black Studies Program, student work and research in Black Studies, and the Swarthmore Black Alumni Network Endowed Internship Fund.

They’ve named it the Seven Sisters and a Brother Black Studies Fund. For co-authors Marilyn Allman Maye ’69, Harold S. Buchanan ’69, Jannette O. Domingo ’70, Joyce Frisby Baynes ’68, Marilyn Holifield ’69, Myra E. Rose ’70, Bridget van Gronigen Warren ’70, and Aundrea White Kelley ’72, the creation of the fund is the next step in a story that began with their student activism, which helped lead to the creation of Swarthmore’s Black Studies Program. Holifield ’69, co-author and member of the College’s Board of Managers, explains that “the fund is so timely in light of our national reckoning on race and reopening of history to include a fuller story of how slavery, Jim Crow, and its legacies created unresolved inequities as well as amazing contributions.”

“It’s also an intriguing story of student activism that evolved to philanthropy as an extension of the quest for a robust Black Studies Program and maybe one day a department,” she adds. “There may be more support for the fund beyond the co-authors than we might have imagined.”

Discussing the importance of sustaining Black studies in the liberal arts, Holifield poses the question, “What is considered a well-educated 21st-century global citizen?”

For her, Black Studies must be part of the equation. Interdisciplinary at its core, “Black Studies covers history, sociology, economics, science, culture, and medical care,” says Holifield, “every aspect of who we are as individuals and who we are as a country.”

The co-authors and the College are in the final steps of creating an endowment fund to provide perpetual support for Black Studies at Swarthmore — the Seven Sisters and a Brother Black Studies Endowment Fund.

To others who share her vision, Holifield says, “I would like to think that in this world of so many problems, so many setbacks, and so many harsh things happening, that one area of hope is to support the Seven Sisters and a Brother Black Studies fund.”

— NICK FORREST ’08