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Reworked my course on nonprofits and social innovation for #BHM to open each class in Feb with African American history. A thread on the sources I used and how this history helped me frame the seemingly neutral "third sector" as a site of struggle, power, and change 1/
For context--this is an intro course for 40 undergraduate @UMDPublicPolicy @DoGoodatUMD students interested in nonprofits and social innovation. Each class meeting contains both lecture and discussion. Here are the topics we covered: 2/
Nonprofits: The Boston Black United Front and their denial of charitable status by the IRS to discuss nonprofits as spaces for politics, black power, and policing by federal agencies. processhistory.org/dunning-philan… 3/
Philanthropy: Madame C.J. Walker and her philanthropic support of education and the NAACP's anti-lynching campaign. @AmandaMoniz1 interview with Tyrone Freeman americanhistory.si.edu/blog/walker and this NAACP letter aleliabundles.com/wp-content/upl… 4/
Civil Society: Rosa Parks and how we've obscured the community mobilization, training, networks, and organizations behind her famous arrest @JeanneTheoharis @sayburgin thenation.com/article/10-myt… 5/
Volunteering: Ruby Duncan and Operation Life to question what counts as volunteering, unpaid labor, or community work, and how race, gender, and income shape these categories. @AnneliseOrleck1 beacon.org/Storming-Caesa… 6/
Community Organizations: Child Development Group of Mississippi to discuss the policies and politics of government support of community orgs, and the grassroots opportunities and constraints thereof. @profcsanders aaihs.org/head-start-and… 7/
Anchor Institutions: Frank Campbell and the 271 other enslaved persons sold in 1838 by Georgetown University to connect slavery, universities, and endowments. @GUslavery @arothmanhistory slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/items/show/1 8/
Religion: Dr. Martin Luther King and his sermon On Being a Good Neighbor to discuss faith, moral leadership, and the differences between caring for others and preventing harm from happening kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/do… 9/
INGOs: W.E.B. Du Bois and Audley Moore to talk about Pan-Africanism, networks of diaspora, politics of decolonization, and development aid during the Cold War @KeishaBlain aaihs.org/audley-moore-b… 10/
The point for my students is that the history of nonprofits/philanthropy is black history, and black history is a history of nonprofits/philanthropy. #BHM offered an opportunity to highlight this in a central way each class session, and to connect past to present. 11/
(Also, clearly many more examples I could have drawn on--ones I know and even more I don't--so please share other examples or ways to include this history in policy, nonprofits, philanthropy courses.) fin/
