Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

World publication of the Caribbean,
with Presence Africaine, and
with other lesser known publications
of the non-Western intellectuals
.
The university would be serviceoriented
in the largest sense of that
term . It would set up skills banks
for developing nations and it would
urge those students who do not return
to the black American communities
to offer their skills in
Africa, Latin America and wherever
else they are needed and
desired . Conceivably, a blackoriented
Overseas Service Corps
might develop, and this would not
only provide excellent nationbuilding
opportunities, but it could
become an alternative to action
with the United States military
forces . For it is likely that the international
orientation of a Black
University will create many dissenters
to the foreign policy which
our armed forces now enforce .
Should it refuse to enter the lists
of American foreign policy supporters,
should it become a significant
source of dissent and the
center of a search for new ways of
international life, it is not easy to
know how the Black University
would be funded. Indeed, if it saw
reason to move beyond experiments
in nation-building to the
search for a new world society in
which nations played a far less significant
role, its enemies might
come from the nationalistic left as
well as the right. Certain monies
would not be available . Others
NEGRO DfGEST March 1968
(like some connected with black
Chicago slums or African diamond
mining) might not be accepted . A
Free Black University might be
forced into existence .
For the present that is the problem
of other writers and other moments
. At this moment it may
suffice to say that the Black University
must seek to be faithful to
the best dreams of our greatest
twentieth century black dreamers,
from Du Bois to (Frantz) Fanon .
It should at least attempt to place
the rise of the West in proper historical
perspective, refusing either
to do homage to-or to be terrified
by-what may well prove to be no
more than a hyper-active aberration
in the context of mankind's
long, essentially non-Western pilgrimage
. Such a service to truth
would be no mean accomplishment
in itself .
Nevertheless, to speak of Fanon
is to suggest even more . For it may
be that, in its international aspects,
such an institution might well take
as its fiercely driving theme the call
of his last chapter in The Wretched
of the F_arth . There his words were
a call out of the darkness of hopeless,
cynical reaction on the one
hand, and out of ersatz brightness
of imitative European styles on the
other . It was a call to the lightfilled
(sometimes blinding), grueiling
search for new shapes and
forms, for patterns which deal
wisely with the longer lines of history
and the deepest needs of men .
Ultimately, of course, he urged,
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