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Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

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President Emeritus, Morehouse College<br />

yes-~""HE IDEA of a black<br />

university is not clear<br />

to me . I hear some advocates<br />

say that they<br />

want a black university<br />

large enough to enroll ten<br />

thousand students .<br />

new creation .<br />

They mean a<br />

This would be a very expensive<br />

enterprise . If half of the students<br />

lived in dormitories, cost for the<br />

construction of dormitories alone<br />

could be easily 30 or 40 million<br />

dollars . The academic plant to accommodate<br />

ten thousand students<br />

would cost another 30 or 40 million<br />

dollars, and this is a conservative<br />

estimate . Such a plant could<br />

cost between 75 and 100 million<br />

dollars . If money of this magnitude<br />

is to be gotten from the <strong>Negro</strong><br />

NEGRO DIGEST Mareh 1969<br />

community, we can forget it. The<br />

<strong>Negro</strong>es' record of supporting<br />

higher education leads me to predict<br />

that black people would never<br />

give that amount of money. If the<br />

<strong>Negro</strong>es' educational efforts were<br />

all centered in this one university,<br />

and they might be able to get the<br />

money from black people, who<br />

could get them united to give it?<br />

Do the advocates of a single black<br />

university expect to get the money<br />

from white people? White support<br />

of <strong>Negro</strong> educational institutions,<br />

over the past hundred years, has<br />

been niggardly. What would lead<br />

one to believe that white philanthropy<br />

would be more generous in<br />

its giving to a black university than<br />

it has been in giving to predominantly<br />

<strong>Negro</strong> colleges?<br />

69

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