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[[newspaper article]]
August, 1936    237

Youth Exhibits A New Spirit
By Lyonel Florant

The Negro and white youth of the nation unite for militant action recognizing that problems of today have their origin in the struggle for existence, cutting across all race and color lines.

A NEW spirit manifests itself among Negro youth.  Dissatisfied with those patterns of thought and action bequeathed to them in the past, they have set about to determine their own solution to their problems, and to shape their own destiny.  The recently formed youth section of the National Negro Congress is not just another of the numerous organizations which tend to crop up on the racial horizon ever so often with a pet line of solution for this or that problem.  It represents an attempt of many organizations to combine their forces, for they have learned from experience the need for united effort on a minimum program—if the optimum good is to be achieved for the greatest number.

It was at the historic National Negro Congress held in Chicago, February 14—16, that two hundred youth delegates federated their strength into a youth section.  This was no new new organization, but an amalgamation of groups, all of which were interested in and struggling for economic opportunity for Negro youth, better educational facilities, adequate recreational provisions, decent living conditions, and a peaceful society—free from lynchings, fascist terror, and the imminence of war.  All types of organizations cast in their lots—church groups, Y's, Jr. N.A.A.C.P.'s, alumni clubs of many colleges, student groups, forums, trade unions, and political organizations.

To many, the importance of the undertaking has not yet struck home.  But it has had great significance to those who have worked in the student movement for years and can recognize its historical origin.  This youth section concretizes a development which has recently manifested itself in Negro student circles—a tendency to substitute for a narrow racial outlook an orientation based on class composition.  Negro students are rapidly realizing their identity of interest with the working class.

Militant Youth Confers

As far back as 1933, white and Negro students felt the need for calling a conference at Columbia university to discuss the problems of the Negro students.  It was not the old interracial get-together at which hands were shaken "for Jesus' sake," and, after a few sessions of intellectual back-slapping, Negroes and whites returned to their isolated way of living.  No, it was a fiery, militant conference, that brought students and professors out of the deep South.  The sugary spirit was absent;  instead there was a common resolve to go back to the South and, for that matter, many areas of the North, and tackle shoulder to shoulder the problems of discrimination.

Much has taken place since that conference.  Most of the Negro students who attended have become militant leaders, both on the campuses and in the working class movement.  A few of the events that show the trend of affairs will serve to indicate the development now reaching maturity.  Several conferences held in 1933 has as their major topic race prejudice, but two meetings stand out as very significant.  One was a conference of students from Negro colleges held at Howard, and the other was the meeting of the National Student League at the same university during the Christmas vacation.  This latter conference was again predominantly white, but a fact that it was held on a Negro campus and that several Negro students attended, indicates that already students of both races were coming to the realization that those problems formerly considered wholly Negro were well interlaced with those of white youth and vice versa.  The League resolved that only through common struggle against the forces of reaction could solutions be achieved.  It proposed militant student organization on the various Negro and white campuses in close cooperation with the labor movement in the locality.  About the same time, the Student League for Industrial Democracy, an organization which educated for socialism before its amalgamation with the National Student League to form the American Student Union, made overtures to Negro students to join its ranks.

Students Protesting Lynching of Cheek

The repercussions were many and interesting.  In Richmond, white students from the University of Virginia and Negroes from Virginia Union went to the state legislature in a body and demanded increased appropriations for their schools.  At Virginia State a militant strike was organized against the "Victorian and convent-like atmosphere" which prevailed under the administration.  Students at Fisk, under the leadership of the Denmark Vesey Forum, rose

[[image -  black & white photograph of William Gibson]]
[[caption]]William Marvin Gibson M.A.  Clark University, Mass.[[/caption]]

[[image -  black & white photograph of Dorothy Hawkins]]
[[caption]]Dorothy Hawkins Magna cum laude  Tennessee A. & I. State

[[image -  black & white photograph of Charles Brown]]
[[caption]]Charles Edward Brown Ranking Student Morgan College[[/caption]]

[[image -  black & white photograph of Alice Murrell]]
[[caption]]Alice N. Murrell  Magna cum laude  Schauffler College of Religious and Social Work[[/caption]]

[[image -  black & white photograph of Wiley Daniel]]
[[caption]]Wiley B. Daniel, Jr. Magna cum laude Fisk University[[/caption]]