The Black Student At Harvard

The Harvard-Radcliffe Association of African and Afro-American Students unanimously endorsed last weekend a program which will involve black students in Roxbury. Jeffrey Howard '69, President of H-R AAAAS, announced the program after a Friday night planning meeting coordinated by Harvard AAAAS in which the New England Regional Association of African and Afro-American Students approved a two-fold action program. Its aims are:

* to establish a 'Liberation School' in Roxbury, manned by black college students in the New England area, to teach school age children a curriculum of black history and culture;

* to help interested leaders in the community with the establishment of community school boards similar to those which won legislative approval in New York City last spring. This program, Howard said, "is an attempt to move black students into the roles usually filled by PBH and white, missionary types."

At the same meeting, Howard announced that investigation is already underway into "the means by which black students can get more black courses in the Harvard curriculum, and more black instructors on the Faculty."

Howard defined 'black courses' as "courses relevant to a black person in terms of his history and culture, both here and abroad ... of the type which will provide better analysis and understanding of the racial crisis in this country."

The initiation of action in both areas--Harvard curriculum and Roxbury community--marks a fundamental change in AAAAS policy and activity. The change was seen only partially last spring in the demonstration coordinated by Harvard AAAAS of 200 black students against the involvement of black people in Vietnam. The change in AAAAS policy and activity can be attributed largely, but not totally, to the change in AAAAS leadership. Howard is far more action-oriented than his predecessor, Hubert Sapp '67.

Time and Newsweek magazines last week chalked up the rise of Afro-American groups on campus to the summer's unrest and its effect on returning black students. But this is too simple an answer. Afro-American groups, at least in the Ivy League, have been active, if not totally activist, for the last four or five years. Also, black students are arriving on the white campus in greater numbers this year. And they have been affected not much by the summer unrest per se, but more from the forces which caused that unrest; the increased militancy within the black ghetto, the shift in emphasis in the Civil Rights Movement towards greater activism and a greater concern with political issues affecting the Negro community.

For many years the black student on the white campus existed in, struggled through, and exited from a four-year vacuum. Rather than a prototype for black awareness and identity, the black student was the model of accomodation and acculturation. But for the black college student this was often the route taken by necessity not by choice.

Many contemporary black students are taking a different route, this time of their own volition. The role that these students are assuming is tied very closely to the idea of black identity and awareness. It has been the ideas and activity of Afro-American groups which have most meaningfully penetrated the isolation of the black student on the white campus. Afro-American organizations have given a sense of unity and expression to black students who have found their token presence in other campus organizations unmeaningful and unrewarding.

Thus, these students, who felt themselves in somewhat disadvantaged positions found points of strength in group solidarity: they are now better able to interact with the larger college community by defining, both as a group and as individauls, the terms on which they will participate in the total campus framework.

The two programatic points of strength that Harvard AAAAS has outlined as its central activity thus indicate the actual motivation of increased activism on the part of Harvard blacks. They are reacting to the Harvard community which for many black students is insufficient in academic, social and cultural aspects. Most black students feel greater empathy with Roxbury than they do with Harvard Square.

Yet the AAAAS activity also shows that black students will be confronting University Hall on the broader issue of making the academic curriculum more relevant to the increasing number of black students--now close to 200--on Harvard's campus.

George W. Ware, Campus Coordinator of SNCC, who sat in on last Friday's meeting, stated: "Now is the time that black students must move from easy chair intellectualizing." Jeff Howard and the majority of the Harvard AAAAS membership agree with him. In Howard's words: "We have a great deal of research on both the curriculum idea and the Roxbury project. We are moving from the intellectual chair to make ourselves felt as a constructive force in the Harvard community but are ever cognizant of our obligation to confront the broader issues facing the black community."

In both aspects, AAAAS's ultimate success will rely a great deal on the administration's and Roxbury's acceptance of Harvard Afro-Americans' new voice. Whether they choose to accept it or not, Harvard's black voice this year will be heard.