Nairobi College

Not to be confused with University of Nairobi.

Nairobi College was a small college in East Palo Alto, California for Black students in the late 1960s.

Background

It is necessary for us to develop a new frame of reference which transcends the limits of white concepts. It is necessary for us to develop and maintain a total intellectual offensive against the false universality of white concepts.

Lerone Bennett, Jr., qtd. in Ferguson 2015, p. 41

The College was part of a movement for ethnic minority groups in the United States to have dedicated academic programs to train themselves in the theory and practice of liberation, resistance, and revolution. These programs were referred to as "Third world colleges", which sought to practice the principles of self-determination and community empowerment while teaching rejection of the dominant bourgeois ideology and white control of mainstream academic institutions. Prominent advocates for this movement included graduate student Angela Davis and professors Herbert Marcuse of the University of California San Diego and Carlos Blanco of Thurgood Marshall College. Other colleges founded as part of this movement included Malcolm X Liberation University, Uhuru Sasa Shule, the Center for Black Education, and Thurgood Marshall College.

Description

Nairobi College began classes in the fall of 1969 with initial funding of $100,000 donated by area residents and private foundations. 20,000 books were donated by schools, individuals, and publishers, which were kept in two residential garages. Anyone at least 16 years of age was welcome to enroll at no cost. The first class had 100 working-class students, some of whom had dropped out of high school. The all-volunteer faculty numbered about 40 and consisted of student and professors from nearby universities as well as community organizers. Based out of a small private home in East Palo Alto, Nairobi College operated out of stores, church buildings, and homes throughout black, Latino, and Asian neighborhoods in the San Francisco Peninsula. The college leadership hoped that spreading classes out in these existing structures would integrate it with the needs and reality of their surrounding community, calling it a "college without walls" in contrast to the perceived "ivory tower" of mainstream academia. It was a two-year college.

The students were primarily African American and Hispanic, although working-class white students were also included. Most of them worked full-time and took classes in the evenings. All students were required to utilize their training to provide skilled volunteer work three hours per week in support of area social organizations, such as schools, community health centers, and legal aid.

Instructors included Ed Roberts, a disability rights activist, Tello Nkhereanye, a leftist from South Africa, Frank Omowale Satterwhite, a community organizer, Aaron Manganello, a Marxist minister of education for the Brown Berets, and Mary Hoover, a Stanford academic advocate for African-American English.

In 1966, Nairobi College launched an affiliated preschool through high school program called the Nairobi Day School. By 1971, a $500 tuition charge was instituted, but was usually paid by federal student financial aid and was often waived.

See also

• Black Panther Party § Black Panther Party Liberation Schools
• Black separatism
• Experimental college movement
• Institute of the Black World

References

• Ferguson, Steven C. (2015). Philosophy of African American Studies: Nothing Left of Blackness. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-54998-3. Retrieved 29 December 2017.
• "Public schools 'not working': Creates own". Jet. Vol. 40, no. 1. Johnson Publishing Company. 1 April 1971. p. 47.
• Kent, D.; Quinlan, K.A. (1996). Extraordinary People with Disabilities. Extraordinary People. Children's Press. ISBN 978-0-516-26074-7.
• Rickford, R. (2016). We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-986148-4.
• Turner, Sarah (26 August 2013). "The TMC History Project: A Short History of Thurgood Marshall College" (PDF). San Diego, CA: Thurgood Marshall College.
• Van Deburg, W.L. (1992). New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965–1975. University of Chicago Press. p. 80. ISBN 978-0-226-84715-3.