Strickland was a co-founder of the independent Black think tank, Institute of the Black World; Even though the organization was relatively short lived, it had a profound impact on the legitimization of Black studies as an academic discipline
Strickland was first interested in civil rights as a high school student in Amherst before exposure to the works of James Baldwin and Richard Wright further inspired him as an undergraduate student at Harvard University.
Peter Blackmer, a former student of Strickland’s and a current assistant professor of Africology and African American Studies at Eastern Michigan University, told the AP that Strickland’s contributions often flew under the radar.
“He made incredible contributions to the Black freedom movement that haven’t really been appreciated. His contention was that civil rights wasn’t a sufficient framework for challenging the systems that were behind the oppression of Black communities throughout the diaspora.”
Blackmer continued, discussing Strickland’s teaching style.
“As a teacher, that is how he taught us to think as students — to be able to understand and deconstruct racism, capitalism, imperialism and to be fearless in doing so and not being afraid to name the systems that we’re confronting as a means of developing a strategy to challenge them.”
“He underwent a similar kind of experience to committing himself to being an agent of social change in the world against the three big issues of the civil rights movement — imperialism or militarism, racism and the economic injustice of plantation capitalism,” Shabazz explained.
“He committed himself against those triple evils. He did that in his scholarship, in his teaching, in his activism and just how he walked in the world.”
Strickland was a co-founder of the independent Black think tank Institute of the Black World (IBW), which functioned from 1969 to 1983. Although the organization was relatively short-lived, it had a profound impact on the legitimization of Black studies as an academic discipline.
As Black Past reported, “It (IBW) promoted critical research and intellectual development while analyzing the various approaches to Black freedom, including Pan-Africanism, Black Nationalism, and Marxism, in an attempt to redefine and deepen American democracy.”
Source: Black Enterprise
