Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

Faculty, Curriculum, Research . . .
BY STEPHEN E . HENDERSON
" . . . That the change will
come is obvious to all but
the blind and the deaf,
who really have no business
at all in the crucial
task of educating this new
black generation who u ell
may be our last hope for
sanity and decency in this
courztry . . ."
S I SEE IT, the Black
University may exist in
the following forms :
( I ) as a new institution
; (2) as an insti
tution already existing in toto ; and
( 3 ) as an institution already existing
in part, both physically and intellectually
. Now, it strikes me that
the first choice, for practical men,
is unrealistic and wasteful since the
need is immediate and the founding
and supporting of a strong
institution so costly and time-consuming
that it would unduly diffuse
the already too meager financial
and professional resources of the
black community . Can we turn,
NEGRO DIGEST March 1968
then, to a Black University which
already exists in toto? The question,
of course is rhetorical, for if
one such institution existed, there
would be no need for a discussion
of the desirability of such an institution
. This, consequently, leaves
us with the third possibility : an institution
already existing in part,
physically and intellectually .
It appears to me that, although
the Black University does not at
present exist anywhere in toto, it
does exist in part in that residue of
blackness-social, cultural, and
philosophical-which is found in
the so-called predominantly Negro
colleges ; or to use another circumlocution,
in the historically
Negro colleges . The problem becomes,
then, a matter of modifying
some one or more of these institutions
. Personally, I have no
doubt that such modification is necessary
; indeed, it seems to me inevitable
. Some, perhaps many, of
these schools will survive with relatively
little change ; others will
perish, either absorbed into their
various state budgets, or through
21