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BLACK COLLEGES, BLACK STUDIES     FOSTER

plans for its bi-centennial, the federal government seems ready, for a second time, to abdicate its responsibility to Black people and concentrate on anti-busing, law and order, and other meaningless rhetoric.

By no means, then, has the role of the Black college changed.  One hundred years ago when Black colleges were established the major concern among Southern whites was that there would be Black rule and thus an end to white supremacy.  At that time, as has happened to the dreams and aspirations of Black people before and since, the ex-slaves were disappointed in their hope of obtaining forty acres of land and a mule, two vital possessions at the time if the freedmen were to earn a decent livelihood.  Furthermore, the Freedmen's Bureau began losing its promise as a useful agency for lack of federal support as Black Codes littered the Southland.  Amidst that setting of despair burst forth the Ku Klux Klan, unchecked in its violence and murder, creating unlimited problems for Black Americans.  All of this, however, is quite similar to the 1960's and 70's.  For example, the Office of Economic Opportunity of the 1960's has met the same fate as did the Freedmen's Bureau.  The Jackson State College killings, and the Attica prison slaughter are remindful of the post-Civil War Klan days.

In the former days there was worry that the Blacks might take over the South and misuse the white citizens there.  Today, the fear is that Black people are going to take over public schools and American cities.  In the summer of 1971, in the midst of Charles Evers' bid to become governor of Mississippi, at least one Jackson, Mississippi, newspaper ran an ad which stated "Prevent Black Rule."  While this may be an extreme example of the sickness in this nation, not for one minute can Black people afford to take these advocates lightly.  Most people are familiar with the fact that when white supremacy is seriously threatened by any significant migration of Blacks, whites hurriedly pack their bags and reherd in newer suburbia pastures.

In 1965, one hundred years after the Civil War, of the ten largest cities in the United States, at least eight has 25 percent of more Black people in their populations.  Significantly, while the approximately 25 million Black Americans constitute around 10 percent of this country's population, that percentage increases to no less than 20 percent in the inner cities.  From 1950 to 1966 some 5.2 million Black Americans, mostly from the rural South, moved to the city.⁴ Migration to the city by Blacks has accelerated recently, but it is by no means new.  As early as 1820, thirty-four years before the

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