Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

tion. (This would not exempt the existing white foundations, of
course ; it would simply mean that this black institution would be
able to give all of its time and energies to the task . ) So far it has
been relatively easy to get white institutions to perform certain kinds
of money-producing acts on behalf of black education on their
own campuses . Perhaps the time has come to press them to use
part of their budgets, even sections of their endowment funds, to
help establish such a foundation, or otherwise to make long-term
substantial investments in the black academic institutions . These
would, of course, constitute no more than preliminary steps towards
restitution . (Certainly it is no accident that such proposals, fit the
pattern of what the former colonizing nations must do to be of
significant assistance to the areas they crippled . )
4 . Finally, it is apparent in the current rush to blackness on the part
of white institutions that there simply is not the beginning of an
adequate supply of persons trainedrn Afro-American studies . It
is imperative for us-and for you-that we move urgently to fill
that gap in ways other than the stripping of the southern black
campuses .
The various Institutes and Ph.D . programs in this field which have
appeared over the past year are obviously meant to meet the need
(as well as to satisfy you and to keep you off certain backs) but I
would argue that most of them cannot and will not do the job .
(Indeed some of them may die as soon as you stop blowing . ) On
the other hand, it is only logical that black institutions in the black
community, if properly funded, organized and led, could probably
do the best job of creating new scholars in the field of Afro-American
studies . This seems especially likely in those places where
traditions, libraries and faculties seem at least adequate even now,
and where students are pressing sometimes reluctant "others"
towards blackness .
In Atlanta, that has been our basic assumption, and a group of us
have moved towards the creation of such an Institute for Afro-
American Studies. We think that black students throughout the
nation should know this, and should ponder its possible meaning
for your own presents and futures .
As some of you know, there are in the Atlanta University Center
six "Negro" institutions in various stages of their search for blackness
. On the faculties are more than 30 persons whose training,
experience and teaching in the field of Afro-American life and
culture are at least significant. The Slaughter Collection of Negro
Literature, the Georgia State Archives and the newly begun Martin
70 March 1970 NEGRO DIGEST