Retired, Not Disconnected: Why Black Academics Need Each Other Now More Than Ever

Retirement is often framed as a conclusion. A long-awaited pause after decades of work. But for many Black professionals in academia, retirement is not the end. It is a shift. And in this current moment, it is a shift that requires new tools, new connections, and most importantly, a new kind of community.

That is why I created Retired Black Professionals in Academia, a space for Black faculty, staff, administrators, and researchers who are either retired or approaching retirement. It is a place to stay connected, to remain engaged with the academic world we helped shape, and to support one another through a transition that, for many of us, arrives with more questions than answers.

This is not just about missing colleagues or keeping up with university news. This is about survival, legacy, and the collective wisdom that Black scholars have carried across generations. It is also about refusing to disappear in a moment where the very institutions we helped build are being restructured, undermined, or outright attacked.

Across the country, we are watching academic programs that center Black history, culture, and intellectual traditions come under political fire. The same lawmakers attempting to ban books and silence discussions about systemic racism are now targeting spaces like the National Museum of African American History and Culture. That museum is not just a building. It holds our stories. It reflects our scholarship. It is filled with the very disciplines so many of us gave our lives to—history, literature, sociology, education, the arts.

To attempt to erase it is to attempt to erase us.

This targeting of cultural and academic institutions is not happening in a vacuum. It exists alongside real, material threats to Black retirees and elders. The rising cost of living, the instability of retirement funds, and the long-term impacts of wage disparities all converge to make retirement more precarious than peaceful for many Black professionals.

After decades of service, we should be stepping into a season of rest and dignity. Instead, many are navigating retirement with financial strain, social isolation, and the emotional weight of watching institutions they fought to transform revert to exclusion and hostility.

And for Black academics, those struggles are often compounded by the trauma and exhaustion we carry from our time in predominantly white institutions. In my own research, a qualitative study involving interviews with tenured Black faculty from Big Ten and Big 12 universities, I found that while success in academia is possible, the racial climate at these institutions consistently hinders Black faculty’s ability to navigate the systems required to gain tenure and promotion. These faculty members, despite achieving what so many were told was out of reach, faced race-related challenges that shaped not only their careers but their health, their relationships, and their long-term sense of belonging in academic spaces.

That research was conducted to help guide younger Black scholars through those same obstacles. But the truth is, it also points to why retired Black academics need spaces of our own. The cost of our success was never just professional—it was personal. And in retirement, we are finally positioned to speak freely, to heal openly, and to support one another without institutional filters.

We should not be expected to fade quietly into the margins. Not after building programs, mentoring generations, and expanding the boundaries of what knowledge looks like and who gets to create it. We deserve community. We deserve joy. We deserve to be in conversation with each other about what comes next.

Retired Black Professionals in Academia is one small effort to honor that. A space to exchange ideas, share opportunities, and stay intellectually and politically active in a world that still needs us. It is also a space to be seen. Fully. Without explanation or code-switching.

Our work did not end when we walked off campus. It changed. And now, it is time to be in community with others who understand exactly what that means.

Dr. Marjorie M. Fuller is a retired higher education administrator and instructor. In retirement, she continues her work as a researcher, with a focus on race, culture, and the evolving experience of Black professionals in academia.

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