Armstead Robinson, Founding Director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia

Black Studies is Armstead Robinson’s relentless pursuit of academic excellence,  Vivian Gordon’s dedicated service,Black Voices’ joyous shots, Houston Baker’s rhetorical mastery, Joseph Washington’s theological probing, the Black Student Alliance’s refusal to accept the dictates and practices of white supremacy, Reginald Butler’s unflinching commitment to the epistemological power of the local, Kevin Everson’s unerring eye…Black Studies is ETERNAL. 

UVA Hospital Worker, 1970s

On this fourth day of Kwanzaa, it seems only fitting to turn our attention to one of the most important documents emerging out of African Americans’ collective struggle for economic justice at the University of Virginia: the Muddy Floor Report. It’s a lengthy but quite informative analysis of the racial politics of UVA’s occupational structure.

Office of Equal Opportunity Programs, An Examination of the University’s Minority Classified Staff (The Muddy Floor Report), June 1996