In 1968, Dr. Margaret Walker Alexander, professor of English at Jackson State College, founded a Black Studies Institute in Jackson, Mississippi. This study is an intellectual, institutional and social movement history that utilizes archival research and textual analysis of Alexander’s writings, poetry, and work as teacher and director of the Institute in the context of the Black Campus Movement (BCM) and Black Freedom Struggle. It pushes the boundaries of historiographical scholarship on BCM that overshadows the epistemological and aesthetic politics of women faculty-activists who ushered forth racialized and gendered analysis as well as developed the foundations of Black Studies.