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BLACK STUDENTS                                      BROWNE

those from middle-class backgrounds. In addition, however, a high percentage of the swollen numbers of black students in college today are from poverty backgrounds and have been thrust into college through special programs designed to narrow the opportunities gap between whites and blacks. Although some of these students from so-called "disadvantaged" backgrounds are extremely conservative and eager to "make good" in an individualistic sense, others of them see their educational opportunity as a means not for personal aggrandizement but as a lever to force the changes in society which will liberate all blacks from their oppressive bondage. 
     Furthermore, the mood of the black students is enriched by an ingredient which is absent from the white students' makeup. The total black community in America is undergoing a process of inner re-examination and of incipient group self-awareness of such dimensions as to force a total restructuring of the Afro-American self-image. Black students are not insulated from this mood. Indeed, they are at the very center of it. Although the ferment which precipitated this explosion of black consciousness was created by others-by the civil rights movement and the nation's inadequate response thereto; by the rebellions in the urban centers and the white reaction thereto; by the growing disillusion with the integration concept and the increased popularity of black separation; by the squandering of the nation's resources, and of black men in particular, in imperialistic and racist foreign adventures while domestic needs cried out for fulfillment-contemporary black youth has taken it upon itself to institutionalize this new mood of black Americans. 
Beginning about five years ago, black-awareness organizations began to be formed on both white and Negro college campuses. Essentially, they were nuclei consisting of the more militant, more activist black students and their objective seemed to be to stimulate the black students to think creatively and constructively about the black condition and to consider what the role of black college students should be in the achieving of a new level of dignity for the Afro-American community. On some campuses emphasis was placed on assisting the black students to adjust to campus life and to provide a sort of "black orientation" program to supplement the official university orientation program which often failed to deal with the special problem of black students. Often the black student groups functioned as a channel for transmitting grievances to the authorities where existing channels were likely to be blocked for one reason or another. In many cases the black student groups provided tutoring services for

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