During the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the quest for civil rights by African Americans and other groups of color reverberated throughout the United States and the world, including within educational professional and research organizations, such as the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the American Educational Research Association (AERA). In this article, I discuss the presidential addresses of four AERA presidents, the historical and demographic context in which they were presented, and the ways in which these addresses increased equity and diversity within AERA by expanding its epistemological terrain.