Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

Roach, Harold Cruse, Rhody Mc-
Coy, Ossie Davis, Maulana Ran
Karenga, Stokely Carmicrael, Dr .
Andress Taylor and hundreds of
others with national and local reputations
.
To the Howard campus the conference
had the effect of a rock
thrown into a pool : it caused ripples,
but two months later the surface
of the pool Qave little sign
that the questions raised by the
conference were submerged there .
However, fer some, li':e Acklyn
Lynch, a social science instructor
at Howard who helped to design
the conference, it achieved exactly
what he had supposed it would :
"It gave people a chance to get
together and start to talk about the
kinds of things they were going to
have to do . It furthered the dialogue
." He added that he was still
talking and exchanging ideas by
telephone with people from all
over the country, people he had
met at the conference .
During those bright warm five
days the Howard campus was full
of dashikis, Afros, undercover
FBI agents and revolutionary talk .
Former Howard instructor Nathan
Hare had declined an invitation
to return for the conference
because he said Howard students
would rather talk about a black
university instead of making the
university black . He stayed at San
Francisco State College where students
were doing more than talking
. His statement read : "unless
every Howard student comes armed
NEGRO DIGEST March 1969
with a shotgun and a molotov cocktail
they are defenseless against an
Amos 'n' Andy administration .
Lynch reflected later, however,
that talk was all they had intended
to do . "Back in the 1930's and 40's
scientists from all over the world
were meeting and talking about
space exploration, but the first
flight didn't take place until 20
years later ."
Buddy Hunt, a Howard freshman,
interrupted to say that the
Black University couldn't wait that
long. We were all sitting in Lynch's
office on the third floor of Founders
Library . Lynch was quick to add
that he had not meant that it
should . He turned from marking
final examination papers. "But you
can't have a five-day conference
and after it's over go out and build
a Black University . There are thousands
of questions that you have
to answer first."
But the prospect of revolutionary
talk was enough to bring a reaction
from the trustees . I quoted
to Lynch a statement the Board
had issued to the effect that Howard
was founded 101 years ago
"primarily for the education of disadvantaged
black people, but nothing
in its charter will support a
Black University," they said, seemingly
unmindful that Howard 101
years later has very little relation
to the really disadvantaged black
people who live in the slums surrounding
the campus in northwest
Washington .
The trustees were making it plain
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