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STUDENT MOVEMENT, SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY

gone to land-grant colleges in the south. The first land-grant schools were started by the Morrill Act of 1862. This act gave impetus to the development of agriculture and engineering schools which brought the industrial white working class into the pursuit of higher education. This move also fulfilled the need for technicians to guide the rapid industrialization taking place in America at this time. Freed Blacks were barred by racism and the rest were barred by slavery from entering these land-grant institutions. However, the Second Morrill Act in 1890, while increasing the assistance to the original schools, also created Black land-grant colleges. Legislators in the South generally transformed a private teachers college into an agriculture, industrial, and normal (teachers) college. The intent of the Morrill Acts was that the schools created would engage in public service projects and would have a practical involvement in the development of the community. However, the whites who controlled this country didn't foresee this function for Black colleges. Their ideological basis was developed by the Conference for Education in the South.

Organized by Dr. Edward Abbott, an Episcopal clergyman from Cambridge, and William H. Sale from Virginia this organization first met on June 29, 1898. The first meeting included fourteen ministers, nine white Presidents of Black colleges, and several northern and southern businessmen. The Conference for Education met six times between 1898 and 1914. At its first meeting it set up two prototypes of schools for Blacks. Certain Black schools were to be developed for the purpose of training ministers, physicians, and lawyers. Such a school would be assigned the task of developing a strong professional (petty bourgeois) class that would be responsible for controlling the "internal colony" for their white masters. The second type of schools would be for the masses of Blacks. Their educational thrust would be towards industrial and agricultural education. Besides providing working class youth with pro-American nationalist attitudes, these schools would also provide cheap farm and industrial laborers for the northern capitalist expansion taking place in the south. Historically then there have been two types of schools in the Black community-those for developing the petty bourgeoisie and those for developing a working class that would be subservient in its attitude and thus work against its own class interest. The struggle taking place at Southern University, a school composed predominantly of working class youths, is a struggle to transform that school from the path it has historically traveled.

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