Black Is Beautiful--and Belligerent

THE nation's increasingly militant black students last week were admonished by a black man who has spent most of his life trying to advance the cause of his race. Speaking at the annual corporate meeting of the N.A.A.C.P., Executive Director Roy Wilkins warned that students demanding separate, all-black departments of study on the nation's campuses are really seeking "what are, patently, Jim Crow schools." Though many black students consider Wilkins a tame, white man's Negro, his argument had a practical ring that was aimed at the moderates. Since the students are going to live in what is basically a white world, said Wilkins, "they had better learn what the white boys are learning." It was "simple suicide," he added, for the black minority to talk of "separatism and going it alone." Demands for separate dormitories and classrooms, moreover, would unquestionably lead to court action over the legality of using tax funds for such purposes.

Wilkins' warning reflected the growing gap between black moderates on the campus and the aggressive policies of their more militant Negro brothers--and it came at a time when U.S. higher education seemed to be the victim of an artfully orchestrated conspiracy of disruption. At campus after campus, militant black students slammed down lists of nonnegotiable demands on presidential desks, threatening to shut down colleges that would not comply and organizing protests, picket lines and strikes. San Francisco State was near paralysis after 73 days of a strike called by the college's Black Students Union. The militants were also out in force at Brandeis, the University of Minnesota and San Fernando Valley State College, at Wittenberg University in Ohio, Queens College in New York and Swarthmore. In deference to the sudden death last week of Swarthmore's president, Dr. Courtney C. Smith, 52, Afro-American Students Society members ended their occupation of the admissions office, but indicated that their grievances would still have to be resolved by the college.

Together By Ourselves. The assault on the schools was no conspiracy of black students, despite the similarity of tactics and goals. Negro student associations are as autonomous as their campuses; they have no central organization, and not even a common name. Some of them, in fact, are out-and-out competitors for power. Last week, after attending a stormy meeting of several rival black student groups at U.C.L.A., two black students were shot and killed on campus by unknown assailants.

The groups may call themselves Black Students Unions or Afro-American Associations. Whatever their names, they claim to speak for as many as 90% of the Negroes on their campuses. Some, like the B.S.U. at San Francisco, are run by left-wing militants who are at least as radical as Students for a Democratic Society. Others, like Harvard's Association of African and Afro-American Students, prefer the civilized techniques of negotiation to a formal confrontation with white society.

What all the black students want, fundamentally, is more equality, better facilities for themselves, more courses tailored to what they regard as their own needs--and above all, recognition of themselves as black people with their own history, heroes and culture. Michael Smith of Northwestern, where black students last spring briefly occupied the bursar's office (and thereby won an all-Negro center), defends the students desire for apartheid. "They say we are reverse racists, but the fraternity guys are mainly WASPS with money," he argues. "None of them really wants to associate with us, so it's necessary to have a place where we can get together by ourselves."

Limited Goals. The implacable way in which black students present their demands angers and unnerves college administrators. In fact, argue some students of the movement, most B.S.U. organizations represent something of a conservative force in the academic community. Students for a Democratic Society, for example, makes no bones about the fact that it seeks to overthrow the university as the first step toward total revolution. Despite their political phraseology, the black student groups tend to seek relatively limited goals. At Brandeis, students wanted "soul food" (see MODERN LIVING) in the cafeteria; when they got that, however, they went on to set forth ten demands, including the right to hire the chairman for the university's new black studies department.

B.S.U.s do not always use violent means to achieve their ends, and not all of their demands are unreasonable. They have also forced the universities to rethink their obligations to Negro students. Yale now offers for the first time a major in Afro-American Studies. The University of Illinois has agreed to admit 2,000 blacks over a four-year period. Last week a faculty committee at Harvard agreed to establish an Afro-American Studies center, subject to a faculty vote, and Berkeley's executive committee of the College of Letters and Science approved creation of a black studies department.

The White Response. One goal shared in common by all B.S.U. organizations is the end of racism on campus--by which they mean admitting more Negroes to colleges. The real issue, though, is not whether blacks should be given greater access to higher education, but whether they should have the exclusive right to say who should be admitted and what their education should be about. Faculties are unanimous in denying the black students the right to set their own standards and hire their own teachers.

So far, there is no indication that the young militants intend to moderate their demands. "The outcome will be determined by how the whites react," says Juan Cofield, a black student leader at the University of North Carolina. "They'll probably try to repel this, like they've repelled other black demands over the past century. If they do, this will become quite a violent situation. Black people are much more united now, and they're not willing to put up with the same old treatment."

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