Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

mentarily bolstered (or our minds momentarily deranged) beyond description
. Our black academic forefathers had never known such high
adventure, we thought.
Now, for a variety of reasons, a blessed but painful clarity has begun to
break into our euphoric white visions . We realize now that this situation is
clearly neither a matter for laughter nor for self-gratification . Rather it
seems evident that we were-and are-being tempted to sell out the black
colleges of the South . And it appears no less evident that many of you
were-and are-unwittingly acting as agents in the process, being used by
persons who are not unwitting at all .
What we see in the new black light is that we are being called upon by
the northern administrators (though your voices are often the ones on the
phones) to give our energies, our course outlines, and finally our full-time
talents to these institutions . So, for instance, programs in Afro-American
Studies begin to spring up from the Ithaca to Berkeley, and we are invited
to help staff them all . Again it also appears that northern-based financial
sources are more ready to fund Afro-American Studies in rural Ohio and
upstate New York than in the heart of the black South . This means, of
course, that it is possible for the northern schools in the post-assassination
period to offer salaries sometimes fifty to one hundred per cent higher than
the black schools-to say nothing of space, time, atmosphere and assistance
for research and publishing .
Not only is this happening to us as faculty persons, but we watch as you
count your numbers on the campuses . We hear you demanding more black
company, especially from among the ranks of the brilliant brothers and
sisters on the block, and it becomes clear what this means for us . It means
that recruiters (now often black) from the North move more fully than
ever before into the traditional southern territories of the black schools
and offer fabulous scholarships and other financial aid to the best black
students available . (They also offer, of course, the prestige of their names
to a still prestige-conscious black community . ) When college-bound
brothers and sisters weigh these offers against those of the black schools
(often late-moving black schools) it is understandably hard for them-for
you to resist. Thus the southern colleges face increased deracination on
every level.
By now it should be clear that this southern exposure provides a different
perspective . Therefore, it is not a matter of our begrudging you the
blackness you so sorely need in those bastions of whiteness . Rather it is a
matter of letting you know how it looks to us . For instance, as the white
administrators of the North (and South ) explain their newly discovered
love for black students and faculty, and their sudden conversion to black
studies, we who are the objects of that bulldozing love had to hear more
than the words which are spoken . We think our southern position allotis
NEGRO DIGEST March 1969