Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

and quiver, caught in the conflict
between the new surge for black
equality and the death-bed contortions
of white supremacy and oppression
. It is a condition I have
known first hand for more than six
years and have studied thoroughly
with the combined tools of the sociologist
and the journalist .
I learned that Howard University,
which acquired its first set of
buildings illegally and became a
"monument" to General O . Howard
and his scheme, has never
broken entirely free from the grips
of a military-religious-political corruption
.
With this influence [criticized
also by the great Frederick
Douglas, a "colored" member
of the board of trustees, who
described the "ring" as "hungry
sharks, with professions of piety
upon their lips"]a there developed
[in the words of John Mercer
Langston who eventually resigned
in protest from his position
as Dean of the Law School
-the entire Law School faculty
with him-before going on to
become the first Negro ever
elected to public office in the
United States] appeared and
grew the feeling that the Negro,
whether as trusteee or member
of the faculty, is of small account,
indeed rather a pest only
as he serves to give color to the
enterprise . . . and with this
feeling has constantly grown the
idea that the Colored youth attending
the University are in-
4 2
capable of high intellectual
achievement .}
Still, by 1940 the University,
which opened in 1867 with an allwhite
faculty and student body,
had a student body one-half of one
per cent white and a faculty less
than nine per cent white . Today
the graduate and professional
schools, notable in the medical professions
where white rejects from
white schools frequently have high
enough scores to outdistance poorly
trained black applicants, are fast
developing a white majority ; and
this is also the trend for the liberal
arts faculty (where the average salary
is higher for white professors
than for black _professors at the
same rank ) .
Just prior to the emergence of
this trend, as Howard became `'the
Capstone of Negro education," it
also became an epitome of political
docility and academic nothingness,
groveling at the feet of outside
(mainly Government) expectations,
real or imagined, and fawning
upon white Congressional appropriators
. However, in an era of
greater access to white colleges and
"rising Negro expectations," this
footshuffling was proving inadequate,
as the Centennial year approached,
in the competition for
top students and professors . Faced
with this predicament, administratars
merely intensified their Stepin'
Fetchit tactics .
Then, in September 1966, President
James Nabrit announced
in the Washington Post a plan to
March 1968 NEGRO DIGEST