Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

with the problems they found there . They were no different from the
white social worker . All they did was remind the people that they had
problems . But in most cases they could offer no solutions ; they could
render no positive service, and this turned the people off . So we were
aware that we not only had to "catch" people and direct them to the community-we
were also aware that we had to give them something to
take there . This was our thinking about the "catch" action and Black
Studies at the time .
Most important of all, perhaps, was that feature of our thinking on
Black Studies which opposed its institutionalization . It was our belief
that if such a program was institutionalized it would, at the same time,
be de-radicalized and reduced to a purely academic experience . And
we could see no good coming from an isolated, sterile dissection of the
Black Experience . We refused to consider any program that would not
have arms for action. Beyond this, our concerns centered around what
happens to people who get caught-up in institutions . We imagined that
it would be very easy for concern and enthusiasm to be replaced by
indifference and complacency . We saw this as a real threat and made all
kinds of arguments against it. We argued, for instance, that instructors
working in the program should not be tenured . This, to us, was very
important because we saw it killing two birds with one stone . First of
all, a number of opportunists who valued the security and prestige of
tenure would be discouraged from getting involved from the outset . And
second, we would be able to purge the program from time to time of those
influences which proved negative . We had not wanted to develop a program
with any aspects of permanence . We wanted a program that we
could pick up at any time, intact, and sit it down anywhere that we wished .
And we were sure that we would have to do just that if the program effectively
did what we wanted it to do .
I have bothered to call the occasion of Bro . Moore's visit and some
of the thinking that preceded it from memory because it sheds a great
deal of light on what we were thinking and what was happening on the
eve of the great stampede . We can see by this, rather vividly, how sometimes
when we begin to move we abort the ideals of our initial intent .
So how did we respond, at that time, to the proposed "College of Malcolm
X"? Watch .
Naturally ; because of our commitment to the creation of a major
Black University in the South and our belief that most northern programs
should be of the "catch" type, we were predisposed to believing that the
proposed "College of Malcolm X" was a bad idea . Objections were
both primary and secondary . The latter centered around what appeared
to some of us to be an insidious, even if unconscious, attempt to "legitimize
Malcolm X . Our concern about this was based on an unusual
NEGRO DIGEST March 1970 17