Students: Black Pride

After a summer of race riots, Negro students are returning to college campuses with a new and aggressive pride in being black. It shows up in a revival of all-Negro fraternities, surging membership in "Afro-American" student-action groups, demands for more "black culture" in the curriculum, and a growing scorn for the white, middle-class world that lies within reach of the college-trained Negro. The new mood ranges from angry militancy to a brotherly desire for mutual improvement—and it does not reject violence as one way to make the black presence felt.

At Yale, most of the 90 Negro undergraduates have joined the campus Black Student Alliance and consider "assimilation" with tradition-oriented student societies an act of Uncle Tomism. Half of Harvard's 180 Negro undergraduates belong to the Association of African and Afro-American Students, which publishes a sophisticated Harvard Journal of Negro Affairs.

The Students' Afro-American Society at Columbia has some 150 members, publishes a similar journal, and is pushing quietly for more Negro faculty appointments, more black art, music, literature and history courses. "We have had to learn the white man's way of thinking," argues Senior Reginald Thompkins. "He must learn the black man's way of thinking." The 500-member Black Student Union at San Francisco State has become so aloof that some white students have accused it of "reverse racism." The union's executive director, Senior Jimmy Garrett, 24, says defiantly: "We see ourselves as black people—exploited, oppressed. Some have masters' degrees, some are honor students—but we're still just niggers."

More Sophistication. Officials at both Northwestern and Columbia are reluctantly going along with the revival of all-Negro fraternities. After fighting to get white frats to drop discriminatory practices, Columbia administrators find that some Negroes do not consider fraternity life with whites worth bothering about. "They just sit around and drink beer and exchange old exams," complains Marvin Kelly, a member of the new Omega Psi Phi Negro fraternity. "Negro social culture is much more sophisticated," argues Thompkins. A Northwestern Negro explains more simply that "instead of trying to buck the tide, we thought we would take a shot at going our own way."

Negro students seem to be withdrawing more and more from out-of-class socializing with their white peers. At the University of Wisconsin, Negroes have virtually taken over one section of the student rathskeller, which is now known as the "CC" (colored corner). "There's a sense of wanting to be together—we can depend on each other," explains one. Some Negroes at Harvard are tired of finding themselves alone at dining tables, fending off questions about civil rights from groups of white classmates. "There might be one or two white cats you might feel close to," says Yale's Junior Craig Foster, "but there comes a time when you say 'To hell with them all.' "