Forever in the Path: The Black Experience at Michigan State University

by Pero G Dagbovie

Overview

Forever in the Path: The Black Experience at Michigan State University offers a sweeping overview of the Black experience at America’s first agricultural college from the 1890s through the late twentieth century. In exploring the personalities, important events, and key turning points of Black life at the university, this book deftly blends intellectual history, social history, educational history, institutional history, and the African American biographical tradition. Pero G. Dagbovie depicts and imagines how his numerous subjects’ upbringings and experiences at the institution informed their futures, and how they benefitted from and contributed to MSU’s vision, mission, and transformative role in the history of higher education.
Michigan State University—founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan—has a fascinating past, a history shaped by vacillating local and national contexts as well as by people from different walks of life. The first Black students arrived on campus during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the first full-time Black faculty member was hired in the late 1940s. Before and after the modern Civil Rights Movement, African Americans from various backgrounds were transformed by MSU while also profoundly contributing in vital ways to the institution’s growth and evolving identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611864946
Publisher:	Michigan State University Press
Publication date:	02/01/2025
Pages:	682
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Pero G. Dagbovie is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of History, the vice provost for graduate and postdoctoral studies, and dean of the Graduate School at Michigan State University. His scholarship centers on African American history, twentieth-century U.S. history, the history of the U.S. historical profession, and the philosophy of history. He has authored seven books and numerous articles and essays, is the former editor of the Journal of African American History, and is on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals, including Michigan Historical Review, Modern American History, Journal of Black Studies, and Journal for the Study of Radicalism. Active in public history, Dagbovie served as a scholar consultant for the And Still We Rise permanent exhibit at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the Organization of American Historians, and the National Park Service’s National Capital Region History Program (Northeast Capital Parks—East). He has also served as a consultant for history and social studies curriculum development with public school systems in Michigan and has led numerous teaching history workshops and summer institutes for secondary-school history teachers.

Editorial Reviews

Dagbovie’s comprehensive examination of Blacks at Michigan State University brings to light the struggles and triumphs of Black students at predominantly white institutions, and establishes Dagbovie as a new authoritative voice in Black higher education history. Concise and highly accessible, this is a masterful study at the intersection of African American history and studies and higher education.” —Derrick P. Alridge, Philip J. Gibson Professor of Education and director of the Center for Race and Public Education in the South, University of Virginia


“Forever in the Path: The Black Experience at Michigan State University is masterfully done. Dagbovie seamlessly weaves the histories of Black academic trailblazers, the land-grant university, and student life into a single volume. I am in awe. This book is a testament to inspiring stories of Black students, faculty, and administrators, whose world-changing efforts have been omitted from the public record. May we never forget them.” —Eddie R. Cole, author of The Campus Color Line: College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Freedom


“Dagbovie’s book is a welcome addition that humanizes Black student activists through rich biographies, inserts black faculty into the process of institutional transformation, and reminds us that the past can be inspiration for a more perfect future.” —Joy Ann Williamson-Lott, dean of the Graduate School and professor of the history of education, University of Washington


“Dagbovie’s exhaustively researched Forever in the Path introduces us to the Black students, staff, and faculty who courageously built the path to racial integration at Michigan State University during the twentieth century. Along the way, Dagbovie tells us how people and events on the local, state, and national stages influenced developments at MSU and how the university’s story fits into the larger historical picture. To understand the history of MSU this magnificent book is a must-read.” —Keith R. Widder, author of Michigan Agricultural College: The Evolution of a Land-Grant Philosophy, 1855-1925

From the Publisher