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FREEDOMWAYS
FOURTH QUARTER 1968

In nearby Oakland, California, Merritt College (which has just named a black man to its presidency) is offering a major in Afro-American Studies under the direction of Professor Sid Walton. Both white and black students are enrolled in the program and there is a heavy component of involvement in the black Oakland community, which happens to be contiguous to the campus.
At UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) a team of black students has developed a prospectus for an ambitious Institute for the Study of American Cultures and Institutions which would include, in addition to an Afro-American Studies Center, study centers for Mexican Americans, for Oriental Americans, and for American Indians, plus an Urban Institute and publication of a Journal of American Cultures. The proposed Afro-American Studies Center projects a rich selection of course offerings in various aspects of Afro-American life, and via the Urban Institute integrates these courses with UCLA's other activities in the city of Los Angeles, especially those in the black community.
The West Coast definitely appears to be ahead of the East and the Middle West in the development of Black Studies Curricula, but it is not entirely clear why this is the case. It may be due to a greater flexibility on the part of the brash young western campuses relative to the stodgy eastern ones. Possibly the black students began sooner or were more aggressive. However, the militant Black Allied Student Association at New York University, which publishes a first rate newspaper, The Faith, has achieved a measure of success this year in the form of a university announcement that it is creating a Martin Luther King Afro-American Center and a proposed Black Studies Institute. The brilliant and controversial young philosopher-scholar, John Hatchett, was named to direct Black Student Affairs. His subsequent firing led to student protests. 
Further uptown, the Black Student Congress, composed largely of Columbia University students and including those who occupied Hamilton Hall and renamed it Nat Turner Hall of Malcom X University in what proved to be the initial phase of the famous Columbia student revolt, publishes another first rate newspaper, Mojo. It focuses on the task of uniting black students on all campuses and it hopes to develop an extensive Black Training Institute which can prepare leadership which will return to the community and mobilize it in programmatic fashion.
At Princeton, the Association of Black Collegians have already held their second annual conference of Negro undergraduates, attract-

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