Dr. Richard Benson II shares his vision for the Detroit Center for Black Studies at WSU

Long before Dr. Richard Benson II came to Wayne State University, Detroit had already found a place in his scholarship.

The historian, who spent 13 years teaching at Spelman College, began visiting the city more than a decade ago while researching his second book, Funding the Revolution: Black Power, White Church Money, and the Financial Architects of Black Radicalism, 1966-1976. He expected much of the material he needed to be in New York and Philadelphia. But as he dug deeper - including into the collections at Wayne State's Walter P. Reuther Library - his attention kept returning to Detroit: its labor history, the migrations that transformed it and, especially, its long tradition of Black organizing.

Eventually, Benson came to see the city as an "epicenter" of the history he was studying.

Now, he is helping shape how that history will be taught in Detroit.

Recently named director of Wayne State's Detroit Center for Black Studies (DCBS), Benson wants to build something that reaches well beyond the traditional boundaries of an academic center. His vision includes a place where Black students can find intellectual community and support; where scholars and longtime Detroiters can learn from one another; where the stories of Black autoworkers, educators and organizers can be preserved; and where the university can build stronger, two-way relationships with the city surrounding it.

Benson takes on that work at a consequential moment. Black studies programs, African American history and diversity initiatives face political and institutional challenges across the country. For Benson, that climate makes the mission of DCBS more urgent, not less. More than half a century after Black studies emerged as an academic discipline, he argues that the field remains essential not only for understanding Black life, but for understanding America itself.

In a conversation with EngageD, Benson discussed his ambitions for DCBS, the continuing relevance of Black studies, the national backlash against the field and why he believes Wayne State - in the heart of Detroit - is an ideal place to help determine where Black studies goes next.

As the inaugural director, you have an opportunity to help define what the Detroit Center for Black studies will become. What is your vision for the center?

I envision DCBS becoming a point of interaction where young people on this campus understand that if you are Black or of African descent, there is a space at this university that is both programmatic and a space for academic advocacy. You can come here and nurture relationships, network and get support.

Along with being a hub of scholarship, Benson said, the center also should serve as a "retreat" for WSU students: "I want students to be able to walk out of a classroom and come to the center and speak to one of the professionals or have a space of refuge..."

I want students to be able to walk out of a classroom and come to the center and speak to one of the professionals or have a space of refuge and retreat where they can study. Sometimes you just need to be around people who have similar cultural, historical and political identifications.

But the relationship with the community is critical. When Black studies departments and other units become disconnected from the communities that were instrumental in ensuring they existed in the first place, they become more vulnerable. The center has to be something different. It has to do something different.

What does that relationship between DCBS and the Detroit community look like in practice?

I want those connections to be bridges, not conduits where people from the university go out into the community but nobody from the community comes in. A student might come out of class, walk into the center and suddenly find themselves in an impromptu roundtable discussion with somebody who has been part of Detroit's history.

I also want to capture more oral histories - Black people who worked in the plants, teachers and others with deep relationships to Detroit. Those stories give young people and researchers another way to understand the city.

Dr. Jasmine Porter, who works with Benson to run the nascent DCBS, is helping assemble oral histories of Detroiters as part of Benson's push to connect the center with the community.

Our 'Communiversity' program is another part of that. These aren't simply speaking engagements. They are teaching opportunities connecting experts with the greater Black Detroit community. And the people who come aren't just an audience; they bring knowledge themselves.

You can read about what it meant to be a Black plant worker in Detroit in the 1970s and '80s, but what happens when the person who actually lived it is sitting in the room telling you what it looked like? That adds something to the conversation that may not have been written down.

More than half a century after the establishment of Black studies as an academic discipline, why does it remain relevant?

Black studies remains necessary because of who gets to write history, who gets to capture the narrative and what gets left on the fringe. Fifty years ago, you had people earning degrees without encountering a curriculum that reflected the presence and contributions of Black people to this nation from its inception. That problem hasn't disappeared.

Look at teacher education. You can have somebody preparing to teach who may end up in Detroit, Flint or Saginaw - standing in front of classrooms that are 60 or 70 percent Black - and maybe they've had one class dealing broadly with difference. If you want to teach Black kids, you need to understand that the historical, political and cultural realities are different.

Hired in July, Benson has been filling the center with art and reading material even as he has been organizing events on campus and in the city: "Black studies isn't only about Black people learning about themselves. You're learning about the greater nation. You're learning about structures, geopolitics, philosophy and so many different things."

To say you 'don't see color' while teaching those children ignores part of who they are. You want to teach my child or somebody else's child, and you're going to ignore who they are, but at the same time tell me you're concerned with who they're going to become? I can't reconcile those two things.

Black studies isn't only about Black people learning about themselves. You're learning about the greater nation. You're learning about structures, geopolitics, philosophy and so many different things. I think Black studies right now is even more critical, and we need to be unapologetic about understanding what its role should be moving forward.

Black studies, African American history, DEI programs and the teaching of race have come under political and institutional attack across the country. What do you believe is at stake?

University spaces are critical because young people come from different parts of the city, state and country. They bring different lived experiences and different curiosities. Universities have a responsibility to instruct and lessen the divide.

The greater question our nation is still struggling to answer is: What does it mean to be American? Does American have a particular color? Does it have a particular gender? Does it have a particular socioeconomic class? And if some of us don't neatly fit into those categories, how are we considered?

Young people need to understand that there is no standardized American. There are versions of Americans. They may speak English. They may speak Spanish. I'm from Chicago, whose metropolitan area is home to one of the world's largest populations of people of Polish descent outside of Poland, and where the Polish language remains part of everyday life in certain sections of the city. Detroit itself has French roots. To not understand the greater possibilities of this national experiment undermines the greater possibilities of humanism.

What is being called anti-DEI is another extension historically of what we've known to be true about marginalization. That's why the work matters.

When I was an undergraduate in Wisconsin, I met white students who told us they had never seen a Black person before. Much of what they thought they knew about us came from television and popular culture. We found ourselves saying, "That's a stereotype. That's misinformation." We were doing that informally. So, what would it look like if it were structured?

That's part of what a center like this can do - not only inform Black students but provide other people an opportunity to come in and learn something and interrupt misinformation.

Why is Wayne State - and why is Detroit - the right place for this center?

When I began coming to Detroit for research, I started realizing how much had happened here. Detroit became what it became because of auto, migration and an extraordinary organizing tradition. As I dug into the work, I began to see Detroit as an epicenter because of that tradition and the movement of Black people into and through the city.

For this center to be at Wayne State at a time when Detroit is experiencing a renaissance means it can be part of crafting, molding and exposing who the city's future leaders are going to be.

"A student might come into the center just looking for somewhere to study and spend three or four years absorbing information and support," said Benson. "Ten years later, that person could be a lawyer or sitting on city council."

A student might come into the center just looking for somewhere to study and spend three or four years absorbing information and support. Ten years later, that person could be a lawyer or sitting on city council. They might look back and say, 'I spent a lot of time getting support at the Detroit Center for Black Studies. I was having a hard time as an undergraduate, and these people helped me.'

So the center can inform, but it can also help retain students and show them their place in the larger construct of Detroit and Black America.

I've only been here a short time, but one thing I know to be true: Black folks here love being from Detroit. They love being Black and from Detroit. This center, without question, is going to be reflective of that disposition as well.