Martha Biondi

Martha Biondi is Lorraine H. Morton Professor of African American Studies and Professor of History as well as the Director of the Center for African American History. She teaches classes in 20th Century African American History with a focus on social movements, politics, labor, gender, cities, and international affairs.

Her latest book, The Black Revolution on Campus, describes an extraordinary but forgotten chapter of the black freedom struggle. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Black students organized hundreds of protests that sparked a period of crackdown, negotiation, and reform that profoundly transformed college life. At stake was the very mission of higher education. Black students demanded that public universities serve their communities; that private universities rethink the mission of elite education; and that black colleges embrace self-determination and resist the threat of integration. Most crucially, black students demanded a role in the definition of scholarly knowledge. Vividly demonstrating the critical linkage between the student movement and changes in university culture, the book illustrates how victories in establishing Black Studies ultimately produced important intellectual innovations and had a lasting impact on academic research and university curricula over the past 40 years. Her first book wasTo Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City* (Harvard University Press, 2003).