Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

diaspora, students who are ready to take care of business, and it
must have continuous exposure throughout the black community .
The schools you attend could help raise funds for this Institute .
For they will need our products (both human and informational)
if they are to be transformed into viable situations . Some of you will
ultimately comprise the staff and student body . The plans you now
have for Afro-American studies in white settings must be reexamined
and challenged by Atlanta .
In short, I am proposing that you help this Institute become the
major black educational creation of this generation . You have a
kind of leverage in the white world which must not be dissipated
in minor, ambiguous victories . More importantly, you have a power
which must not be turned against meaningful black institutions . The
challenge to help create such an institute, to break down the many
brittle assumptions of conventional American education, to move
consistently towards our intellectual roots in the struggle for liberation-this
is, I think, a challenge more appropriate to your power.
As you ponder these matters, I trust you will remember that my questions
and proposals are meant .to be only some of the ingredients in a
dialogue which must take place among us . The letter is written in the
spirit of black ecumenical concern as we move towards a new humanity .
The words are my own, but the concerns are shared by many other persons
on the southern campuses . We look forward to appropriate response from
the North, East and West .
In the struggle,
Vincent Harding,
Spelman College
Atlanta, Georgia
14
Vincent Harding, author of "New Creation or Familiar Death," is
chairman of the Department of History and Sociology at Spelman College
in Atlanta, Ga ., and author of the forthcoming book, Black Radicalism
in America . Dr . Harding frequently lectures on history and
contemporary problems, and his articles appear frequently in both
scholarly and popular journals, including NEGRO DIGEST .
March 1969 NEGRO DIGEST