Key Resources for "An Empowering Heritage" 

Education, Freedom, Democracy (PDF)
J. Herman Blake’s original essay for this webcast brings to life the transformative democracy tradition in citizenship schools and historically black colleges and universities. Combining pioneering oral histories with his own experiences as a leading African American educator, Blake shows the centrality of community learning and HBCUs to a broader understanding of democracy today. Democracy, he argues, is a “state of mind,” a “sense of identity,” and a “quest for freedom,” an understanding of democracy that uplifts as it educates.

A Daufuskie Island Lad in an Academic Community: An Extraordinary Journey of Personal Transformation (PDF)
This 2008 article co-authored by J. Herman Blake and Ervin R. Simmons gives an insider look at a rural Sea Island community. It also provides a vivid description of the educational development of a student who becomes a civic leader. Finally, the article gives one a sense of the "spirit" of Dr. Blake's academic leadership.

Changing the Story About Higher Education's Public Purposes and Work: Land-Grants, Liberty, and the Little County Theater (PDF) Scott Peters’ keynote address to the 2006 annual conference of Imagining America, shows how a deeper understanding of the land-grant tradition reframes the meaning of “engagement” in higher education from critique or expert service to collaborative partnership. As an example, he recounts the history of partnerships between rural communities and extension educators in the 1920s and 1930s, which generated a “little country theater movement” aimed at bringing to light the hidden talents and creativity of rural communities.

Public Engagement in a Civic Mission (External Site)
Harry C. Boyte’s report on a year-long planning project undertaken by the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the University of Minnesota. Commissioned by the Kellogg Foundation in 1997, the project assessed possibilities and developed strategies for strengthening and revitalization the university’s public mission and purpose. It found remarkably wide discontent about the privatizing trends at the UMN, and help generate a university-wide provost’s Civic Engagement Task Force in 2000.

Wingspread Declaration on Renewing the Civic Mission of the American Research University (PDF)
Harry Boyte's Wingspread Declaration, co-authored with Elizabeth Hollander on behalf of a group of higher education leaders, calles for the revitalization of the public and democracy purposes of research universities. A group of college and university presidents adapted it in 1999 in the President’s Declaration, now signed by more than 600 higher education presidents.