This article applies the paradigm of Black insurgency and social uplift to the teaching of the Greek and Latin classics at Black colleges and universities during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It demonstrates how study of the classics helped construct the tools of Black agency by imparting three important lessons: the knowledge that…

This article explored the archives of three preeminent southern Historically Black Colleges and Universities founded soon after the end of the war: Fisk, Atlanta, and Howard Universities. The author began by searching their founding documents and catalogues through the turn of the twentieth century. Curricular history provides an articulated…