Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

Response to Vincent Harding
12
BY RONALD DAMS
"As we have seen so many promises swell and fail to gain the
crucial burst needed for an overflow of success, I fear for the
ebbing but yet unborn and contained Black University . Pray
to all (Damballa first) that we do not fail this time"
~tt~>~-~r~R EAR Brother Harding :
l The questions and concerns that you raised, although heavily
weighted with ramifications for both our present and our
future, have for too long eluded our attention . Thanks
to you, they now command our attention. I find myself
wanting to say : "how right you are!-about everything you said ."
But your comments deserve more than that . I feel that we not only
have to explain the thinking (or lack of it) and action which led
up to the present state of affairs, but that we also have to offer something
towards the resolution of our present difficulties and for the realization
of our goal-the Black University .
While I do not wish to belabour or lengthen unnecessarily the points
I wish to make in this response, I can see no way of adequately explaining
what has occurred outside of recalling, somewhat in detail, the rather
complex formation of events which preceded the present situation . I do
hope that you will bear with me .
Near the end of August, 1968, I was visited by Brother Bill Moore,
a representative from the Monterey Peninsula Black Community which is
situated near the Santa Cruz campus of the University of California .
Bro . Moore had come to inform me that the community he represented
March 1970 NEGRO DIGEST