The Crisis, vol 42, no. 8, Aug. 1935, pp. 232–233, 251.
232 Young people have always claimed that they are living in an unique age. The terrible newness of maturity, and the equally terrible problem of the world into which they have been precipitated make it difficult for past and present students to realize that there have always been pressing problems to face and to solve.
When we say, therefore, that we are facing a world that gives us new tasks and the possibility of new achievements, we must substantiate our assertions by facts. Three years ago the crisis was something to be joked about, unless one was in need of relief and Hoover’s optimistic promises almost believed. It was supposed to be only one of those recurrent apoplexies of the system, which was no worse, perhaps, than many America had seen. Now the situation is different. The sixth year of the crisis sees only the deepening of the shadow over the future facing youth. War and fascism are no longer theoretical problems. They are practical, concrete and pressing dangers. Wage cuts now apply to the student as well as to his family. The repression, which constitutes at least the initial skirmishes of fascism, has been increased until academic freedom has become more of an ideal than a right or privilege. We are living in an unique age, an age which surely must compel the attention of future historians.
It is therefore not surprising that three years ago discussion clubs and forums, which later grew into several national student organizations, were formed on college campuses. The phenomenal growth of these organizations can only be explained by the timeliness of their appearance; the objective factors were there.
Major questions which affected society had immediate repercussions on the campus. College enrollments began to decline steadily because parents were losing their jobs, having their wages cut, and were compelled to economize. Those who remained in school were also affected by this problem, and in addition the disorganization of American economy offered them no chance to enter their professions or use their technical skill and knowledge after they had been graduated. Year after year college graduates left the college rostrum with the pious unctions of a Nicholas Murray Butler ringing in their ears to present their graduation certificates to the nearest relief bureau.
But the grim paradox of it all! Educational funds began to disappear, a wave of economy swept the American school system, schools closed down, such schools as Crane Junior College at Chicago. Fees were levied where they had never existed before, and raised where they had previously existed. The institution of free text-books began to disappear at the College of the City of New York, Brooklyn College and elsewhere. But the war masters must be served! No funds for education, but billions for war and war preparations.
It was in this era that the Vinson Naval Bill, providing for the largest naval appropriation of any nation during peace time, was speeded through the two houses of Congress. Money intended for work projects was diverted to finance war preparations, by a President who time after time has declared his peaceful intentions. Huge amounts of money were expended for military and naval display; but for education, the myth of American Democracy, there were no funds. Schools and college departments began to tack up signs “Closed Until Further Notice.”
Only if college students were “inanimate automatons, could they remain immobile and silent. In no uncertain terms they began to speak out. No longer were they limited to discussions in isolated groups. Broad mass actions and demonstrations spread through the country. With mounting vigor the American college campus began to reecho the cries “All War Funds for Needy Students!,” “Down with Fascism!,” “Equal Opportunity to Negro Students!,” “Schools, not Battleships!.” Students who stood in the forefront of this birth of progress on the American campus, were faced with dire reaction. Mac Weiss, editor of Frontier and a leader in the Social Problems Club, was suspended from City College; Reed Harris, editor of the Columbia Spectator, was expelled for his support of a student delegation to the mining regions of Kentucky, for his investigation which revealed the professionalism of Columbia football, and for his investigation of the John Jay dining hall. A militant strike of Columbia students resulted in his reinstatement.
Twenty-one students were expelled from the College of the City of New York for protesting against an R.O.T.C. demonstration. The American student movement began to grow. No longer could one refer to docile students and academic celibates. It was the awakening of a virile, healthy student attitude conditioned by social forces. The American college campus rejected that which was dead and decaying, and sought for life outside of its rotten environment. Let the Butlers, Colligans, and Robinsons fester; the cry of the students was, “We Choose life. We choose to live!”
During all this the Negro student, isolated for the most part, from the main current of American student life, because of one of the most damnable features of the American social set-up—the Jim-crow educational system—remained nearly inarticulate. Old values still held for him. The old laissez-faire policy of dog eat dog competition, and the survival of the fittest, determined the ideology of the mass of Negro students. It mattered little that their parents at home suffered from the problems of unemployment and social discrimination, or that they themselves when they finished would find the sphere of Negro exploitation seriously restricted, and if they were to work at all it would probably have to be done as an elevator operator, janitor, or domestic servant. Certainly if any group had cause for protest and cause to remonstrate it was this group. Yet, the first few years except for few and isolated instances nothing was done, nothing was said. These few instances, however, were cheerful and heartening.
At Virginia Union a small group of socially-minded students formed a group called the Cooperative Independent Movement, led by James C. Jackson, now a member of the national executive committee of the National Student League. This group carried on a rather consistent campaign of education on such broad social questions as war and fascism, retrenchment in education, and Negro discrimination. It was on this latter point that they reached a very high level. Together with a like group of white students at the University of Virginia, they formed a delegation to the state legislature and demanded equal appropriations for Negro schools. This was a turn in the right direction; unity, a basic need, was achieved. Negro stu233dents together with their white student allies had challenged in the Jim-Crow state of Virginia, the monstrous segregation and racial inequality. The group at the University of Virginia was organized by the local chapter of the National Student League. It was but the carrying out of their clearly defined policy: “Because of their comparatively greater freedom, it is the duty of white students to take the initiative in the struggle to break down these barriers of race prejudice and discrimination which tend to divide the student body and weaken its fight. Only through the unity of Negro and white students can their common ends be attained.”
At Fisk University there was formed the Denmark Vesey Forum, a student group which discussed contemporary sociological and economic questions. It was, however, also in the field of Negro discrimination and on lynching that they reached their highest level. When Cordie Cheek was lynched at the edge of the Fisk campus, it was this group which stimulated and organized the campus protest, staging a parade and open-air protest meeting. This group was mainly under the leadership of Ishmael Flory, a graduate student from the University of California. It was this same group which led the protests and picketing of a local theatre and prevented a group of Fisk singers from appearing at a theatre where Negroes would be forced to an entrance on an alley way and a seat in a top gallery. Dr. Thomas Elsa Jones, the president of Fisk University, expelled Flory for his activities “detrimental to the best interests of the University.”
At Virginia State College, students, sickened by the Victorian atmosphere and the convent-like restrictions imposed upon them by that amiable czar. Dr. John M. Gandy, rebelled and called a student strike, which for organization far surpasses that of any other similar student activity in the history of the American student movement. The school administration was forced to accede to a part of the demands, and this year President Gandy, who does not believe in student government, but student participation in government, has announced a Student Self-Government plan.
I think the turning point in the attitude of the Negro student to the growing militant student movement was the December conference of the National Student League, held at Howard University in 1933. This conference was invited to the campus by the faculty committee and later it became known that President Mordecai Johnson objected to the sessions being held. The students of Howard were conspicuous by their absence. This no doubt was due to the fear of association with “radicals.” The Negro newspapers, in not too good an imitation of the press of William Randolph Hearst, had attempted and did partly succeed in producing a “Red-scare.”
However, a few students, who had been impressed with the importance of the social problems to be discussed at the conference did attend and contributed greatly to the wealth of the discussion. This small group of students certainly are entitled to the most profound respect, because it was they who set themselves the task of making the students at Howard conscious of vital, living forces around them, thus setting an example for other schools to follow. The difficulty and the vastness of this task can be easily gauged when one considers that hitherto for the most part the students at Howard despite their social and economic position, had contented themselves with a middle class outlook. It was slow work, and one watched and wondered. The effect is just now being felt.
The first outstanding event among Negro students during the past school year was the picket line thrown around the National Crime Conference last December in Washington, D. C. This conference, called by the administration to discuss crime, omitted from their agenda the crime of lynching. On the first day of the session, the picketing was carried on by the District of Columbia branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, but the four pickets were arrested and released on bail. More than sixty students at Howard met with the N.A.A.C.P. branch that night and the next day appeared at the conference hall in a dramatic picket line, each student wearing a noose of rope about his neck, grim reminders of the terror used against a whole people.
Facing the serious problem of militarism in the schools, students at Howard University met together with students from the University of Maryland, George Washington and John Hopkins, at the latter school for an anti-war conference, where they discussed the growing intensity of war preparations, war propaganda and fascist tendencies on the campus. Having thoroughly discussed the several questions, they formulated a wide program of action. Probably nothing else, would serve as well, to indicate their seriousness, as the sight of these some three hundred students, Negro and white, who stood at the end of the conference and recited in concert the Oxford Pledge: “We students, solemnly pledge ourselves, not to support the government of the United States in any war it may conduct.”
The anti-war sentiment has not lagged at other colleges, for at Virginia Union University, a similar anti-war conference was held and the Oxford Pledge taken by a large group of students.
It remained, however, for the student anti-war strike of April 12 to crystalize that sentiment and direct it into organized channels. This was true not only for students in Negro schools, but for the American student Movement as a whole. The April 12 strike was called by six student organizations including the Methodist Student Federation, and the National Student League, in answer to the call of the International Student Congress Against War and Fascism, held at Brussels, Belgium, during the Christmas holidays.
One hundred fifty thousand students struck for one hour against war and fascism. Of this number at least three thousand were Negro students. This, of course, is not a very large number but it certainly shows the direction the Negro students are beginning to take. This is more clearly emphasized when it is remembered that the previous school year, no Negro school took part in the strike.
The Negro colleges which took part in the strike of April 12 were Howard University, Virginia Union, Virginia State, Morgan College and several other schools which held small meetings during the strike hour.
The strike served as a warning to the war makers and those interested in the spread of fascism that if they persist in their course they do so at their own peril. Students, Negro and white, will not allow themselves to blindly be drawn into another war to become the fuel for the perpetuation of a system which, to put it extremely mildly, is inadequate for the great masses of people.
251 Not only will they not be drawn into such a conflict, but they will actively resist any attempt in that direction with all the means at their disposal.
Important also is the attitude of the white student to his newly found allies. I cite a recent case which shows very clearly the potentialities of such an alignment.
At East Lansing, Michigan, Negro students taking teacher-training courses are not allowed to practice teaching in the East Lansing schools. The chapter of the National Student League at the Teacher’s College circulated a petition among the college students to remove this form of discrimination and succeeded in getting six hundred signatures of white students out of the three thousand students enrolled.
Two hundred fifty out of the three hundred fifty students in the East Lansing high school spontaneously signed a petition to have the Negro students teach. Also one of the parent-teacher groups passed a resolution 72-3 to allow the Negro students to teach. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union also participated in this fight.
Although the American Student Movement is making tremendous strides and positive achievements can be pointed out, it still lags far behind the needs and demands of the students. Nor can it be denied that the Negro student is far behind the white student in his awareness and challenge of social problems. Yet the development that has taken place in the past three years both among Negro students and among white students seems to indicate that the basis has been established for a broad powerful mass student movement.
The Negro student can and must form a vital section of that movement. To speak of a powerful student movement without speaking of the Negro student is impossible. The white student needs the Negro student in his struggle and the Negro student needs the white student. Success will be achieved in just such measures as this is realized. We move swiftly ahead to unity, forging new weapons, blazing new trails, challenging social forces, which before seemingly resisted all challenge. We move in the direction of freedom and security for all, in the direction of a student body fully conscious of the society in which we live and aware of the problems it presents and the historic tasks it imposes.