Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

~G~~GON ~ ~OGe~
The first point to be made clear in any discussion of the Black University
is that the concept is not to be defined within the limits of the
university as it traditionally has existed in this country and as it is
imagined by the academics . The concept is revolutionary; that is, it is
concerned with breaking out of-indeed, leveling-the existing university
structure and instituting in its stead new a~~ -oaches to education. Where
existing universities are scholar-oriented,~Tie Black University will be
community-oriented ; where the traditional university has emphasized the
intellectual and cultural development of the student toward the ends of
academic excellence and elitism, the Black University will seek to involve
the total community and its institutions in a system of interrelated
and interlocking "schools" and programs of study which are designed
to serve the black community in its reach toward unity, self-determination,
the acquisition and use of political and economic power, and the
protection of the freedom of the human spirit ; where the American university
has sought to prepare the student to assume a meaningful role
in the mainstream of American life, the Black University's goal will be
to destroy in the minds of black people the validity of the values of the
"mainstream," those values which, for nearly 400 years, have been used
to debase and to dehumanize black people and to generally diminish
the respect for human dignity, and to resurrect and to glorify within the
black community the spirit of Muntu.*
Nor will the proliferating Black Studies Programs now being hurriedly
'' established at major white colleges and universities across the country
succeed in co-opting the Black University concept and in de-fusing the
drive toward its realization, despite the expressed hopes of some in the
academic and political Establishments . Hard on the heels of the announcement
from Harvard University that that queen of educational institutions
would offer a degree in Afro-American Studies beginning in
the Autumn of 19b9 (joining such other Establishment schools as Yale
and Stanford), the New York Times published an editorial commending -
Harvard's move as "an important step in depoliticalizing an issue that
has become enmeshed in unnecessary controversy . . ." As is the custom,
after the fact, the Times editorial admitted that "Even without the
protest of black students across the country, it should have been evident
to college curriculum-builders that a significant part of American social,
economic and cultural history has long been shamefully neglected," but
p ~ontinued on page 95)
March 1969 NEGRO DIGEST