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FREEDOMWAYS    FIRST QUARTER 1973

on-going basis, but he must also keep constantly up to date on him-self making sure that his thoughts and actions do more than lead him around in never-ending circles.  Knowing the implications of one's ideas and actions is vital knowledge for him who would constructively change the world.

In 1925 Alain Locke described Harlem as having drawn Brothers and Sisters to it as though it were one huge magnet.  This Harlem-type attractability must somehow be demonstrated by Black Studies.  Describing Harlem in the twenties, Locke wrote:

It has attracted the African, the West Indian, the Negro Amer-ican; it has brought together the Negro of the North and the Negro of the South; the man from the city and the man from the town and village; the peasant, the student, the businessman, the professional man, artist, poet, musician, adventurer and worker, preacher and criminal, exploiter and social outcast.¹⁶

This is what Black Studies must do for the many diverse elements which now comprise the Black community.  Bring them together, blend them into one united and dynamically progressive mass.  This can be done.  Indeed, it has to be done; after which the real Black Revolution will have begun.


¹Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro.  (Washington, D.C., 1933), p. 22.
²Nathan Hare, "The Battle for Black Studies," The Black Scholar (Vol. 8, No. 9, May, 1972), p. 33.
³Kelly Miller, "Howard: The National Negro University," in Alain Locke, ed., The New Negro.  (New York, 1968 edition), p. 313.
⁴Erwin Isenberg, ed., The City in Crisis.  (New York, 1968), p. 160.
⁵Richard C. Wade, "The City in History: Some American Perspectives," Werner Z. Hirsch, ed., Urban Life and Form (New York, 1936), p. 66.
⁶Woodson, op. cit., p. 128.
⁷Richard Hofstader, The Age of Reform (New York, 1955), p. 154.
⁸Woodson, op. cit., p. 134.
⁹Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York, 1968 edition), p. 311.
¹⁰Woodson, op. cit., p. 117.
¹¹Ibid., p. 139.
¹²For many years one or two courses on the Negro had been offered by the Black College.  In fact, it is not overly generous to suggest that predominantly Black institutions have demonstrated a partial commitment to project Black humanity long before the national mood made it popular to do so.
¹³Students may obtain a Minor in the area but Jackson State College does not yet offer a Major in Black Studies.
¹⁴The Workshops in the summer of 1971 and 1972 were made possible by grants from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.  
¹⁵Woodson, op. cit., p. 126.
¹⁶Alain Locke, The New Negro (New York, 1968 edition), p. 6.

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