In this article, the author traces the development of community colleges, from their ignominious beginnings in the middle of the 20th century to their current status as a valuable part of the higher education community. Likening this development to the progress made by the civil rights movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and applying W.E.B. DuBois's idea of a "double consciousness" to community colleges' current divided sense of themselves as institutions, he asks that now that community colleges have the muscle to be more equal partners with legislatures, business, and four-year colleges and universities, they assert themselves more boldly and move up the hierarchy of needs.