Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

us to hear essentially these sentiments from the keepers of the embattled
educational establishments :
"We are determind to get our black mu~ti-tokens up here," they say. "If
we don't do it quickly we'll lose money, status, and perhaps some of our
nicest buildings .
Therefore, we have learned well our lessons from the
black community's hero, and we are determined to get students, courses
and faculty members by any means necessary . If that involves the destruction
of the black schools of the South, so be it. We never thought very
much of them anyway . We've got the money and the prestige . They
haven't . As everyone knows, money and prestige buy everything, even
loud-talking, gun-toting black militants."
Indeed, just, as this letter to you was being completed, two black students
from Northwestern University came into my office at Spelman . I had
met them during one of my visits up North two years before, andnow they
were in Atlanta returning the visit-and recruiting black students for
Northwestern .
Just as I was presenting to them some of the central con-
cerns of my letter, the phone rang and the long distance operator introduced
the voice of an old acquaintance-a dean at a prestigious white institution
in Pennsylvania .
He said he wanted to know if there was any directory of black scholars
available, or if I had a list I could give him, because his Afro-American
student organization was demanding black faculty representation in every
department of the college. He had already seen a piece of writing in which
I had decried the raping of black schools, but he was calling anyway, he
said.
I told him that I was quite serious in my published position and therefore
had no intention of giving him such a list when we needed in the black
schools every excellent black scholar we could find. At that point, he produced
a fascinating and revealing response, one worth reporting . He said,
"You realize, of course, that there are many persons in the northern
schoolswho have serious questions about whether those institutions should
continue-at least as black schools; and that is one of the reasons why
they have no hesitation about attempting to draw from them whatever
faculty they can." The conversation came to a more or less abrupt halt
after that, and I reported it to my friends from Northwestern for the same
purpose that I report it to you: to ask whether you have pondered the im-
Mareh 1969 NEGRO DIGEST