The National Council for Black Studies (NCBS) was established in 1975, when African American scholars came together to formalize the study of the African World experience, as well as expand and strengthen academic units and community programs devoted to this endeavor.
NCBS was formed out of the substantial need for a national stabilizing force in the developing discipline of Africana/Black Studies. The roots of NCBS run deep in the evolutionary growth of the discipline given that the organization was formed only seven years after the establishment of the first Black Studies Program in the United States. Today, the purpose of the NCBS is multidimensional and the scope of its functioning is quite broad. As an organization created and sustained primarily by students and their teachers, NCBS is committed to academic excellence and social responsibility.
For over five decades, American education has been profoundly affected by the emergence of Africana/Black Studies. Its impact on the broader educational setting is due to the holistic and interdisciplinary approach it takes. Growing fundamentally out of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Africana/Black Studies has become the intellectual extension of that movement.