Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

In Chicago, movement toward the Black University is
taking place on two frouts : both outside and inside the traditional
public educational structure . The Communiversity,
though drawing most of its staff and some of its students,
from the established system of education, is completely independent
and therefore free to divest itself of conventional
approaches to education . Its policies and programs, consequently,
are designed to deal directly with the problems of
the community, with the all-important proviso that the people
from the community participate in the generation and the
execution of educational programs and approaches . Community
cooperation is the keynote . The descriptive paper
which follows on the next page, for example, was prepared
by a representative group of staff members, parents and students
. At the conclusion of their work, the paper's writers
made the following statement:
"It would not be suffzcient to conclude a proposal for AN
ALTERNATIVE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION without making
some reference to the most fundamental aspect of this
entire treatise: That an ideological seed can now fend the
nourishment to germinate to take root and grow-as only
an ideology can emerge and grow-from out of the myths,
out of the rituals, out of the symbols, out of the natural and
rhythmical flow of the lifestyle of any people . . .
Across town from the Communiversity, the Malcolm X
Community College operates under very different conditions .
The institution is only one of several similarly constituted
units in the city's far-hung City College system, and it is,
naturally, subject to the general regulations which control
all the colleges in the system .
Nevertheless, Malcolm X Com-
munity College is blessed with a strong and imaginative Black
president, Charles G. Hurst Jr ., a man who recognizes the
ultimate futility of imposing on Black youngsters an educational
format which was not created with their needs and
prospects in mind, and he is proceeding to recreate-within
the limits of his powers-a format which will serve the interests
of the Black Community .
Together, the two educational institutions are bringing new
hope to Black Chicago .
March 1970 NEGRO DIGEST