The idea of the Journal of Black Studies (JBS) was born in 1968 when a young academic named Molefi Kete Asante approached SAGE founder Sara Miller McCune with an idea for a journal that would respond to the Black studies movement as well as a public call for equality, justice, and nonviolence. At the time there was no comparable journal, and Sara saw this journal as a vital addition to social science scholarship. The first full volume was completed in 1971. (Read the full history of the journal at Social Science Space.)

50 years later, JBS continues to publish research that shapes not only the academic field, but ultimately lived experiences as it provides dynamic and creative analyses of many aspects of the Black experience.

“With the publication of JBS in September 1970, the academy and the field of social sciences had opened a new door into the lived experiences of Africans in America and indeed throughout the African diaspora,” commented Dr. Asante. “This was not to be a field defined simply by the discipline of history but we sought to sustain a ‘full analytical treatment’ of African people.”

We’re celebrating the anniversary with free-to-read JBS articles, a podcast, and video messages (all below), and through the endowment of a new scholarship – the SAGE Asante Award – at Temple University.

Open articles from JBS

• Body Politics: Making Black Lives Matter: A virtual, thematic editor’s selection of 11 of the most notable articles published in the journal’s first 50 years on the topics of policing, injustice, and inequity.  

• Punished Bodies in Soyinka’s The Bacchae of Euripides and Morrison’s Beloved by Fethia El Hafi (September 2010)

• The Afrocentric Paradigm: Contours and Definitions by Ama Mazama (March 2001)

• Perceptions of African American Police Officers on Racial Profiling in Small Agencies by Charles P. Wilson, Shirley A. Wilson, and Malane Thou (April 22, 2015)

• Introduction: African Americans: Official and Unofficial Violence in America by Molefi Kete Asante (November 30, 2020)

• An Oral History Interview: Molefi Kete Asante by Diane D. Turner (July 1, 2002)

Podcast interview from Social Science Bites

In this Social Science Bites podcast, Dr. Asante offers an insider’s view of the growth of the Afrocentric paradigm, from the founding of the Journal of Black Studies a half century ago to the debates over critical race theory today.

Video Messages from the JBS Community