It is only proper that this inaugural, special issue of the National Review of Black Politics (NRBP) includes a symposium that highlights the 50th anniversary of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS), the professional association founded by a courageous and conscientious group of Black scholars in 1969. The transition to the NRBP represents a new chapter in the study of Black politics and the next generation of scholars, who will continue the intellectual quest of developing and disseminating knowledge to study and promote Black politics via a global African diaspora lens. As Walton, Smith, and Wallace (2017) argue, “the scholars who are the founders of NCOBPS and innovators in the study of Black politics created this scholarly subfield out of nothing. Principally, working in Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), without major financial support or grants and with large numbers of classes and students, these scholars decades...
University of California Press