"Who am I?" was the first question students were required to explore in the University of North Carolina-Charlotte's Black Studies Program, created in 1969 after student demands and with student involvement. This collection of essays shares just how much students in the first decade of the program were influenced by its courses, faculty, social and cultural opportunities or merely its existence. It also reveals the courage, expectations and fears of a too-often overlooked generation of black students. Often first in their families to attend college, their mission was to deliver on the promise of desegregation. That many achieved and contributed so much is worth celebrating. But not without understanding the care and guidance essential to ensuring their lives mattered.

UNCC’s Black Studies Program was directed by education trailblazer Dr. Bertha Maxwell Roddey, who later served as national president of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. and co-founded the Harvey Gantt Center for African-American Art + Culture in downtown Charlotte. Under her guidance, the program laid the foundation for the university’s Department of Africana Studies as well as for the National Council of Black Studies, which promotes advanced degrees in ethnic studies. The program’s innovative first semester for freshmen was ahead of its time in designing learning communities and it set a model for an acclaimed campus summer program preparing students for college. So, support for this program from students in the 1970s has had broad impact over generations.