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Spelman Spotlight November 17, 1982 Page 2 Editorial Unity In The AUC By Karen Burroughs As Associate Editor of the Spelman Spotlight for this 1982 - 83 school year, I would like to welcome you all back to school. As this 1982 - 83 school year gets underway, I feel that we, as Black Americans, should be acutely conscious of the need for unity among our people. Es pecially now with unemploy ment, budget cuts and other blights upon our race, we need to come together, that is the only way we can hope to get ahead. The question of unity in the Atlanta University Center es pecially needs to be addressed. The ill feelings and animosity among the schools which com prise the AUC is not only un necessary but it is detrimental. From the time freshman enter the walls of the various AUC schools, myths and predjudices against the other schools in the center seem to be subtly drilled into their minds. Ideas such as the stuck - up Spelman Woman image are carried in the minds of the students of other schools throughout their college careers. It is because of these predjudices that the schools in the Atlanta University Center cannot come closer and work together. In order for us to become a more unified center, we will all have to first dispel any and all predjudices that may exist in our minds regarding the other AUC schools. Secondly, I think that the SGA's of all of the AUC schools should get together to plan more organizations and activities which will include all the schools in the Center, rather than just Spelman and Morehouse. We need to be able to benefit from sharing ex tracurricular activities, instead of just sharing a learning ex perience. Finally, I feel that we should make a point to meet students who attend the other AUC schools. Just because there is a wall around Spelman doesn’t mean that we can’t venture outside it. We must remember that even though we attend different schools of learning, we are all part of the AUC and above all, we are all black brothers and sisters. Two Freshmen Speak Out! by Veronica Peggy Green Entering into a new school year, we must take time to welcome a rising Freshman class. This class, like many others, has its own distinct individual per sonality. As the class of 1986 is welcomed into Spelman College, the opinions and at titudes of the class members must be noted. This survey attempts to gain insight as well as feedback from the 1986 Freshman Class of Spelman College. WELCOME LADIES Tara Littlejohn from San Diego, California had this to say. “I think the stereotype of the Spelman woman is off key. Everyone thinks that we are snobs, and we are not. That is part of the reason why we do not get along with the other schools. However, I do not like or dislike anyone .from Clark or Morris Brown, although, I have not had the opportunity to talk with someone from those schools. In most cases, it (Spelman) is worth the money but somethings need to beworked on. One example is organization on the ad ministrative level.” Janis Madden of Baltimore, Maryland uttered. ‘‘I like the A.U.C. because it represents Black people striving for their goals. The center produces qualified professionals. One of the main things it promotes is a good spiritual life, and a well rounded individual. I dislike the rivalry between the schools. In fun, it is O.K. but some people take it too far.” Crisis On Black Campuses by Manning Marable All educational institutions mirror the racial and class dynamics of the larger society. Black higher education was designed neither to promote the intellectual development of black youth, nor to advance the material prospects for black working class and poor people. Education for blacks, as first advanced by the white majority, was to maintain the structures of inequality within both the political economy and the culture and society as a whole. From their beginning after the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, predominately Black colleges were directly the products of racial segregation. Black scholars like H.E.B. DuBois, who graduated from Harvard with honors in 1895, were not hired to permanent posts in white universities simply on the basis of race. The historiclaly black college is largely the direct product of racial segragation. Ninety one of the 107 black colleges were established before 1910. Generally underfinanced and inadequately staffed, black higher education was permitted to exist only in skeletal form during the long night of White Supremacy. As late as 1946, only four black colleges, Howard University, Fisk University, Taladega College and North Carolina State, were accredited by the Association of American Universities. In the school year 1945 - 46, black undergraduate enrollment was 43, 878 in the black colleges. Less than eigh teen hundred attended black professional schools; only 116 were then training to become lawyers. Even after the passage of expanded educational legisla tion, the number of Afro - Americans who were financially able to attend universities was pitifully small. By 1950, 41,000 “minority” men and 42,000 “minority” women (Blacks, Asians, etc.) between ages 18-24 attended colleges, about 4.5 percent of their total age group ing. That same year, by way of contrast, 1,025,000 white males between 18-24 years old attend ed college, 15 percent of the total white age group. The function of the black college was, at least from the view of white society, to train the Negro to accept a “separage and une qual” psoition within American life. Despite these institutional barriers to quality education, the black schools did a remarkable job in preparing black youth for productive careers in the natural and social sciences, in the trades and humanities. A brief review of one black college, Fisk Universi ty, provides an illustration. Fisk was the home for a major number of black intellectuals during the era of segregation: DuBois, historian John Hope Franklin: sociologist E. Franklin Frazier: artists/novelists James Weldon Johnson, Arna Bontemps, Sterling Brown, Nikki Giovanni, John Oliver Killens, and Frank Yerby. A number of Fisk alumni joined the ranks of the black elite in the twentieth centruy as decisive leaders in public policy, representing a variety of political tendencies: U.S. Representative William L. Dawson; Marion Berry, mayor of Washington, D.C.; Wade H. McCree, U.S. Solicitor General during the Carter Administra tion; LJ.S. district judge Con stance Baker Motley; Civil Rights activist John Lewis; Texas State Representative Wilhelmina Delco; Federal judge James Kimbrough. Other Fisk graduates moved into the private sector to establish an economic program for black development along capitalist lines, such as A. Maceo Walker, president of Universal Life Insurance Com pany. One out of every six balck physicians, lawyers and dentists in the United States today are Fisk graduates. A similar profile could be obtained from Atlanta University, Morehouse College of Atlanta, Spelman College of Atlanta, Tougaloo College of Mississippi, Tuskegee Instituteof Alabama, Howard University of Washington, D.C., and other black institutions of higher lear ning. My point here is not that these schools ever developed a clear pedagagy for black libera tion, nor that they were organically linked to the daily struggles of the black masses. The conservatism of many black college administrators, as represented by Tuskegee’s Booker T. Washington, is almost legent among black people. These schools operated under the rigid constraints of race/class tyranny, and often suffered under benign - to - malignant administrations imposed by ■white trustees and state governments. But despite these and other contradictions, the black univerities have on the balance been much more open to progressive and liberal faculty - particularly during the period of the Cold War of the 1940s and 1950s. They created the intellec tual and social space necessary for the developmetn of militant political reformers, dedicated public school teachedrs, physicians, and other skilled professionals within the black community. Without such in- situttions, the nightmare of Jim Crow might still exist, and the material conditions of the black ghetto and working class would unquestionably be worse. The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, combined with a political shift of the U.S government under the Johnson Administration toward im plementation of some affir mative action guidelines within white civil society, accellerated this educational process. By 1970, 192,00 black men and 225,000 black women between ages 18 - 24 attended college. The overall percentage of black youth enrolled in college, 15.5 percent, contrasted with white atten dance figures of 34 percent for males and 21 percent for females. Five years later, 294,000 black men and 372,000 black women between ages 18 - 24 were in college, respectively 20 and 21 percent of their age groups. The most recent available statistics, for the years 1976 and 1977, reveal a slight decline in black college enroll ment - a testament to the political assaults against balck educational opportunity of the 1970s. The total numbers of black college youth slipped from 749,- 000 to 721,000, and ther percen tage of black men who were college students within the 18 - 24 age group declined from 22.0 to 20.2 percent. Despite the desegregation of white univer sities, traditionally black in stitutions continue to serve a majority of black seeking college or professional training. 25 per cent of all blacks in higher education attend the 35 state - supported black colleges. 62 percent of all black M.D.’s and 73 percent of all black Ph.D.’s are products of black institutions. The Crisis on Black Campuses. Part Two Of A Two Part Series. Dr. Manning Marable/“From The Grassroots”/November, 1982. Lay-out Editor Lynne Shipley Photography Editors Jo-Anne Griffith Stacy Williams Whitney Young Reporters Veronica Green Lisa Hobbs Angela Jackson Sharon Jones Sharon Sellars Spotlight Advisor Judy Gebre-Hiwet Art Editor Debra Johnson The Spelman Spotlight is a bi-monthly publicat ion produced by and for the students of Spelman College. The Spotlight office is located in the Manley College Center, lower concourse, of Spelman College. Mail should be addressed to Box 50, Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia 30314. Telephone numbers are 525-1743. Editor-in-Chief R. Denise Reynolds Associate Editor Karen M. Burroughs Office Manager Carla Thomas News Editor Veronica Greene Feature Editors Stephanie Greene Lisa P. Turner Business Manager Michelle Bundridge