Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

tablishment of an information retrieval
system connected with the
regional resources of our best
schools, and even with the special
resources of the nation's largest
graduate schools . (I see the irony
in this latter statement, but what do
you do at a Black University, if
someone else has your ancestral
artifacts-raid the British Museum?
) Ultimately, the purpose of
such a system would be to stimulate
students and faculty alike to
visit the institutions where the originals
exist .
This brings us to the next point,
human resources . These resources
are, naturally, faculty and students .
The problem, of course, is to get
them together on a meaningful
basis across institutional lines .
Now, some few students and faculty
might be stimulated enough,
or may have the financial resources,
to visit schools with special library
or art holdings, but this is not
enough . What is needed, it seems
to me, is some plan whereby a continual
interchange of ideas and
opinions may be insured on a personal,
face-to-face basis . This can
be done by a system of student exchange
between centers of Blackness
and Negro colleges . Oddly
enough, a good deal of this was
done a few years ago, only the exchange
was, in effect, between centers
of Whiteness and Negro colleges
. (I remember a boy from the
Mid-west who left after a few days
on my campus, suffering, I was
2 6
(Continued on page 80)
told, from "culture shock .") Obviously,
such a system can work
only if the administration of the
Negro school is sympathetic, or
apathetic . It remains for students
and faculty to will the change, to
create the structure . At any rate,
the visits could last anywhere from
a week-end to a semester, depending
on the academic standards of
the institution and other such sticky
business .
A visitation period of a semester
would presuppose that the student
would find something worth his
time in one of the regional Black
Centers . What he should find is a
group of gifted Black humanists
who have assembled, or have
been assembled, at a center for
the express purposes of the Black
University as stated above . Presumably,
at first, there wouldn't be
enough of these people to staff all
of the schools which may require
them . Presumably, some of the
schools may not be able to afford
to pay them . (And one couldn't expect
them to starve ; black starvation
is still starvation, no matter
how soulful . ) Still it would be possible
(especially for the politically
aggressive and the academically
and artistically talented) for a
sizeable number of students, no
matter how poor, to be brought
into dialogue with this group of
dedicated and gifted teachers . The
student might even spend time in
two or more such situations, obtaining
the kind of experience
March 1968 NEGRO DIGEST