Black Pride

After a summer of race riots, Negro students are returning to college campuses with a new and aggressive pride in being black. It shows up in a revival of all-Negro fraternities, surging membership in "Afro-American" student-action groups, demands for more "black culture" in the curriculum, and a growing scorn for the white, middle-class world that lies within reach of the college-trained Negro. The new mood ranges from angry militancy to a brotherly desire for mutual improvement--and it does not reject violence as one way to make the black presence felt.

At Yale, most of the 90 Negro undergraduates have joined the campus Black Student Alliance and consider "assimilation" with tradition-oriented student societies an act of Uncle Tomism. Half of Harvard's 180 Negro undergraduates belong to the Association of African and Afro-American Students, which publishes a sophisticated Harvard Journal of Negro Affairs.

The Students' Afro-American Society at Columbia has some 150 members, publishes a similar journal, and is pushing quietly for more Negro faculty appointments, more black art, music, literature and history courses. "We have had to learn the white man's way of thinking," argues Senior Reginald Thompkins. "He must learn the black man's way of thinking." The 500-member Black Student Union at San Francisco State has become so aloof that some white students have accused it of "reverse racism." The union's executive director, Senior Jimmy Garrett, 24, says defiantly: "We see ourselves as black people--exploited, oppressed. Some have masters' degrees, some are honor students--but we're still just niggers."

More Sophistication. Officials at both Northwestern and Columbia are reluctantly going along with the revival of all-Negro fraternities. After fighting to get white frats to drop discriminatory practices, Columbia administrators find that some Negroes do not consider fraternity life with whites worth bothering about. "They just sit around and drink beer and exchange old exams," complains Marvin Kelly, a member of the new Omega Psi Phi Negro fraternity. "Negro social culture is much more sophisticated," argues Thompkins. A Northwestern Negro explains more simply that "instead of trying to buck the tide, we thought we would take a shot at going our own way."

Negro students seem to be withdrawing more and more from out-of-class socializing with their white peers. At the University of Wisconsin, Negroes have virtually taken over one section of the student rathskeller, which is now known as the "CC" (colored corner). "There's a sense of wanting to be together--we can depend on each other," explains one. Some Negroes at Harvard are tired of finding themselves alone at dining tables, fending off questions about civil rights from groups of white classmates. "There might be one or two white cats you might feel close to," says Yale's Junior Craig Foster, "but there comes a time when you say 'To hell with them all.' "

Exterminate or Prostitute? College Negroes nonetheless feel schizophrenic about their climb out of the ghettos into the white world. Somewhat bitterly, a member of Northwestern's new Kappa Alpha Psi Negro fraternity concedes that his goals are "pretty honkie-oriented--the corporation game, suburbia, upper middle--the works." At Wisconsin, Junior Clarence Brown takes a calmer view. "To better yourself is the first thing," he says. "Then you may be able to help others some day." But Graduate Student Brown McGhee scoffs: "Let me tell you how it is, baby. When I get out, I have two choices--to exterminate the white man or to prostitute myself to the white man. I haven't decided what I'll do."

The new mood is also sweeping U.S. Negro colleges, where coeds increasingly show up for class in African-style dress. Administrators at these schools--most of which are in the South--are increasingly under student fire for appearing to cooperate with local white leaders. "Even among the apathetic students, there's a feeling that they are not going to find solutions with white people any more," says George McMillan, a white journalism teacher at Clark College. "There is more sense of blackness," agrees Spelman College Senior Eulalia Harris, a Negro, "and more desire to make the black community stronger rather than integrate."

"Close It Down." Students at Negro colleges are bitterly resentful of their own lack of campus freedom. Dillard students recently boycotted Sunday vesper services simply because they were compulsory. At Washington's Howard University, even though retiring President James M. Nabrit Jr., 67, praised "the spirit of revolt" at a convocation, more than 100 students walked out to protest his dismissal of 23 faculty and student activists this summer. The militant students cheered Sociology Professor Nathan Hare's declaration that "you got to close this place down."

Although Negro students by and large reject Detroit-style rioting as deplorable, they are willing to use the threat of violence to gain their campus goals. At no school has that threat proved more effective than at California's San Jose State College (enrollment: 23,000), where a mere 60 Negro students last month threatened to burn the campus down unless discrimination against them was stopped. The students' leader, Sociology Teacher Harry Edwards, a towering (6 ft. 8 in.) former San Jose basketball star, contended that Negro students could not find decent housing in San Jose, Negro athletes on road trips were assigned rooms by race, and white fraternities banned Negroes.

San Jose President Robert D. Clark immediately ordered public hearings on all the charges. As counterthreats against Edwards' life mounted, he canceled a football game that Edwards had promised to disrupt. Clark then conceded that the charges were valid, ordered prompt steps to correct the conditions. "The first step is rational debate," explained the triumphant Edwards, "but the biggest single lever we had is the threat of violence." The new Negro mood means that few college administrators can be confident that the new academic year will be nonviolent.

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