Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

The pimps, prostitutes, preachers, entific detachment must be limited
and Ph.D .'s must find a common to method and technique, comple-
bond to change themselves and mented with involvement and com-
weave an organic unity as the basis mitment . The students and faculty
for liberation and a better life for must be evangelical in their social
all .
roles and give new meaning to be-
These goals must redefine two ing a missionary for freedom . And
dangerously-pervasive patterns finally, the Black University must
found among Afro-American fac- impart to all who are associated
ulty and students today . One of the with it the strength to be alone . The
patterns is for education to be sim- struggle against ignorance, just as
ply a process of acclimation and with the struggle of power, is one
adjustment to the white world . One within which the forces of good are
goes to a white school to rub shoul- often small in number and sparsely
ders with them, "because, son, you placed . An Afro-American of the
got to make a livin' out in their Black University must have inner
world ." Another pattern is the strength, positive historical iden-
play-culture of friendship cliques tity, and a vision of the good, for
and fraternity life . Whether it is only in having these traits will he
mimicry of whites (think of Fort be able to stand up in a world dom-
Lauderdale in the spring), or deinated by evil and be secure even
fection based on hopelessness, we in being alone .
must find the recipe for a revolu- Among its many functions, the
tionary discipline consistent with university is most concerned with
our desire for immediate radical knowledge, both the accumulated
change . A free man is also (and information and insights of human
must be) a responsible man, and history and the vision and process
so must Afro-American students of new discovery . And it is knowl-
and faculty be responsible to themedge about Afro-Americans that is
selves by being responsible to the most lacking, or biased and wrong,
Black community .
in all these respects . The Black
The values of the Black Univer- University is based on the fundasity
must support the liberation mental assumption that the
movement of Afro-Americans, op- Afro-American community is, in
pressed people around the world, E . Franklin Frazier's words, "a lit-
and all that prevents man from tle social world," a human universe
leading the good life . We must find heretofore misused or ignored by
a synthesis of efficient reason and higher education . Consider these
purposive compassion . The value autobiographical comments by Dr .
placed on scientific methods must Du Bois :
be joined by an equally important "When I went South to Fisk, I
value placed an empathy, i .e ., sci- became a member of a closed
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March 1968 NEGRO DIGEST