1961 US Commission on Civil Rights Report Book 2 - University of ...

serves. Thus, Oak Park and Carver pupils would be segregated until
junior high school. But plans include development of Carver's educational
program to the level of the other Oak Park elementary schools to
be financed by a 25 percent weighting of budget allowances in favor
of Carver until that goal is reached. 102
Dillard University program
In 1959 Dillard University used a foundation grant to start a 3-year
experimental summer program designed to help students prepare for
college by stimulating their study skills and broadening their perspectives
and involvement in significant movements and ideas. 108
Dr. A. W. Dent, president of Dillard University, explained the need
for this program to the <strong>Commission</strong> at Williamsburg: 104
. . . From what I hear, nearly all colleges are faced with the
problem of bridging the gap by one means or another between a
student's achievement at the time of high school graduation and
what is expected of a college freshman. For colleges with predominantly
Negro students, the problem is particularly acute and
additionally complicated by the many deprivations inherent in
racial segregation.
The particular aim of the Dillard program, Dr. Dent said— 105
... is to provide motivation, which they have not had up to this
point, and to ... [show them] that they do not necessarily need
to be deprived from this point on. If I may tell you just a story
which I told to these youngsters who came in last year, I was told
the story of a little boy 6 years old who went to public school for
the first time . . . and when everybody else was sitting, the little
boy wanted to stand, and he just stood up, and the teacher said to
him: "Sit down, Johnny." But Johnny didn't sit. And she said
to him a second time: "Sit down, Johnny." And he didn't sit.
The third time she walked over to his seat and put her two hands on
his shoulders and just pushed him down in his seat, and he looked
up at her and said: "You can push me down, if you want to, but
in my mind I'm still standing up."
The Dillard program is one to teach the Negro youth of the South to
stand up in their minds.
Dillard's approach, Dr. Dent explained, is based upon the following
assumptions 108 —
134
(i) that most graduates of Negro high schools in the South are
inadequately prepared for standard college work;