Sport Becoming an Art

Throughout the twentieth century, dance instructors at historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, championed an innovative and holistic pedagogy, recognizing dance’s history as a vehicle for celebration, resistance, and self-expression in African American life. Often assigned to physical education departments, these instructors imagined dance as a “sport becoming an art,” with the capacity to stimulate students’ bodies and minds in tandem. The instructors used movement to teach their students, primarily young Black women, social responsibility and a sense of cultural pride. Beyond campus, HBCU dance instructors led community-based workshops in their home cities and embarked on regional tours with extracurricular performance troupes, contributing to desegregation efforts throughout the South and elsewhere in the United States. Focusing on programs led by Charles Holston Williams of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, Maryrose Reeves Allen of Howard University, and Mozel Jenkins Spriggs of Spelman College, the present article reveals how HBCUs enabled instructors, students, and audiences to think differently about the body’s capacity for communication and self-expression during periods of heightened political stakes and cultural revolution

African american · Community engagement · Dance · Desegregation · Higher education · Historically black colleges and universities · Politics · Student engagement · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Physical Education and Pedagogy · Sports, Gender, and Society

• The Emergence of the American University

  Laurence R Veysey•The Emergence of the American…•1965

  Add to list

• We Are Worth Fighting For

  Joshua M Myers•We Are Worth Fighting For•2019

  Add to list