Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

students, and the attractive salary figures, assistance for research and
other inducements extended to black faculty .
3 ) That black students and faculty of northern institutions are participating
fully in this common destruction (common in the sense that
their activities circumvent the concept of the Black University and
impede the development of new levels of black solidarity), not only by
demanding the enrollment of more black students, the recruitment of
black faculty and the establishment of black studies programs, but also
by helping to raid black schools to meet their demands .
4) That serious questions can be raised about the fruitfulness of such
demands and the contradictions they entail, e .g., if only a few institutes
in Afro-American Studies "can live with significant integrity, where
should they develop?", and would it not "make more sense to bring
50 black students to a black-oriented professor in the South than to
take him away from his campus?"
5 ) That a program of action to deal with these problems and "make
it possible for us to serve-rather than destroy-each other" includes :
(a) establishing special visiting professorships "rather than raiding of
black schools" ; (b) creating a consortium in which one or more black
and one or more white schools would pool their funds and jointly participate
in the recruitment of black students and thereby provide each
student the choice of spending three years at a black institution and a
year at a white institution or vice versa ; (c) encouraging white institutions
"to make long term substantial [financial] investments in the black
academic institutions" ; and (d) organizing institutes to train future teachers
of black studies programs at black colleges ; especially those black
schools that have the resources to launch such an institute immediately,
e .g ., the Atlanta University Center .*
Since I shall have to challenge Professor Harding on several points
of a fundamental nature, I should like to begin with a brief statement
of the no less important arguments with which I find myself in general
accord. I agree with Professor Harding that the frantic search by white
college administrators for black faculty, if left unchecked, will threaten
the survival of black schools, and that many northern black students
and faculty are either consciously or unconsciously contributing to this
precarious state of affairs . Moreover, I agree that questions may be
raised about the practicality of some northern student demands and the
* The Atlanta University Center includes the following institutions ; Atlanta
University ; Morehouse College; Spelman College; Morris Brown College; Clark
College; and the Interdenominational Theological Center . The A.U.C . now also
includes the newly established Institute of the Black World of the Martin Luther
King Jr. Memorial Center.
NEGRO DIGEST Morth 1970 7