Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

In the following pages, NEGRO DIGEST publishes two of the responses
to Dr . Harding's "New Creation or Familiar Death?" In doing so, however,
we feel it necessary to reprint at least key portions of Dr . Harding's
article to which the responding articles refer . In that connection, we
present here, first, the seven questions which Dr. Harding raised for
"serious discussion" and, second, the four "concrete suggestions for
action" for reaching some kind of viable accord between the Black students
and scholars in the North and those in the South concerned with
creating Black Universities .
Questions
1 . As you assess the total struggle and your own particular situations
in the North, in what ways may those of us who teach on southern
campuses be of greatest help to you? How much of our energies
should be spent in consulting and lecturing in the North at your
request when there is so much business to take care of down here?
2 . Many of you have been involved in attempts to recruit us to teach
full-time on northern campuses, urging us to take the 3-to-5 year
appointments which we have been offered . How do you reconcile
this position with the needs of the thousands of black students in the
South? (Though I have no inclination to play the numbers game, it
is important to consider the fact that the black student group
usually numbers less than 100 on most northern campuses, and 400
is an unusually large figure-though it often represents a miniscule
percentage of the total student body . On the other hand, you ask us
to leave campuses with black student populations ranging from 500
to more than 5,000 . )
3 . If we really intend to make the search for the Black University more
than good rapping material for a hundred conferences, then where
can we take the best concrete first steps-on a white campus or a
traditionally "Negro" one? Especially when we consider the service
the black university must render to its immediate community, is it
contradictory in the extreme to consider such nation-building service
coming from "black universities" in overwhelmingly white institutions?
4 . One former professor at a well-known "Negro" University recently
announced to the world that he will do his black thing from now on
at a predominantly white school . He made this decision, he said,
because black schools eventually will be more likely to imitate a
good thing if it happens in a white context first . Without using such
(Continued on page 681
NEGRO DIGEST March 1970 5