Southern Negro Students: The College and the Movement

“Where we differ,” the administrator said, “is that you think a college should be a democracy; you forget that it is a corporation.” The student wrote: “To be a Negro in America is a perpetual wonder and bewilderment.”

The remarks of the administrator and the student help to explain why the Negro college is both the most stifling and the most exciting educational setting in the United States today.

If my own experience before going South to teach in a Negro college is typical, graduate students in the North know next to nothing about the world of Negro education. They may be vaguely aware of Howard University in Washington, D.C., and of Fisk University in Nashville. But the typical Northe...