Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

leaders and professors posing as
militants echoed this advice . Now,
students who previously had urged
me not to round up and bring in
"outside" forces, informed me that
there would be no boycott and suggested
that I use the outside forces .
They had just learned that members
of the Black Power Committee,
which had stolen the campus
leadership from the liberal-moderate
student establishment the year
before, were now away in jail .
At about this time the local affiliates
of Newark's National Black
Power Conference formed a Washington
Committee for Black Power,
of which I was elected chairman . I
sought help with the Howard movement
from them and from other
black militants, but none came
forward . Nor did any black group
raise funds or contribute to the bill
for court costs, although some area
white professors held a fund-raising
party and some American University
students held a fund-raising
concert . Howard students did nothing
along these lines, although the
mi~itants put on a party to raise
bail money for a person never connected
with Howard and who had,
in fact, help persuade the Washington
Committee for Black Power
to evade the Howard struggle .
On the formal opening of Howard,
a walkout was planned by militant
students for President Nabrit's
address . Only three professorsagain
all white--could be persuaded
to take an active part . Keith
Lowe, Harvard-trained English
NEGRO DIGEST March 1968
professor who had been part of
the summer's purge, stood with me
on the sidewalk to greet students
and faculty members walking out
of the auditorium . As students
gathered round and cheered, the
voice of Professor Lowe, an Oriental
reared in Jamaica, grew
hoarse as he implored : "I have
seen you act as full human beings
Don't let your struggle slip
back." I warned the students that
the only hope is to close Howard
down indefinitely until a ruthless,
helter-skelter administration buckles
under in repentance . I did not
know that that also had been the
view of Mordecai Johnson, former
president of Howard, when the
Congressional Appropriations
Committee attemped to suppress
academic freedom at Howard early
in the McCarthy era .
But, as in the case of last year's
boycott, student militants, mistakenly
seeking "wide participation,"
had turned the leadership of
the protest over to establishment
students . I know now that the major
reason for the Black Power
Committee's relative strength last
year rested in its exclusiveness, although
this angered many students
who regarded themselves as "black
radicals" and had reputations for
constant espousals of the glory of
blackness and revolutionary rhetoric.
These students may still be
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