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FREEDOMWAYS   FIRST QUARTER 1973

black youth "educated" into U.S. mainstream

Operating in a separate-and-unequal condition, Black schools up until the early sixties were very effective in producing Black youth who waved the red-white-and-blue and who aspired to become a part of the American mainstream, polluted by racism and capitalism. However, when the four Brothers from North Carolina A.& T. sparked the Sit-In Movement against segregation they provided the fuel for a fire that soon engulfed Black campuses throughout the south. However, many Black youth participated in the sit-in campaigns, freedom rides, and voter education campaigns at the risk of incurring the wrath of the administration. Black college campuses were run like feudal estates (Southern University still is), with the President the feudal lord, the administrators- his vassals, and the students-his serfs. Black students were not supposed to challenge the national and class oppression of their people. They were to accept their second-class citizenship and aspire to be a member of the Black petty bourgeoisie. Consequently, many students who became involved in the struggle for democratic rights were harassed and/or expelled from school. Notwithstanding this, Black youth by the hundreds took to the streets to fight for their democratic rights through the elimination of public segregation. In 1963 Southern students through massive demonstrations were instrumental in desegregating public facilities in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

With the development of the later phase of the national democratic struggles under the "Black power" slogan, Southern University students, like other Black youth, began to demand that black colleges begin serving the interests of the Black community.* In 1969 Students at the New Orleans campus led a massive demonstration and boycott demanding the institution of black oriented courses and the end of feudal-like administering of the Southern University system. The administration responded by summarily arresting and expelling over one hundred and fifty students. Although committees were set up to deal with the students' demands, little was done. As a matter of fact, many of the grievances that Students United presented to Dr. G. Leon Netterville in October 1971 included many of the 1969 demands. 

The struggle for Black oriented institutions and Black studies programs at predominantly white universities began to alarm the forces


* See Ernest Stephens' article "The Black University in America Today," FREEDOMWAYS, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1967.

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