The Educational Goals of Black Colleges

Abstract

Black colleges and universities are relatively young as the years of institutions are numbered. Some are more than a century old but most are younger, only two to four scores of years in age. From the beginning, black schools have struggled against heavy odds and severe criticism from outside and from within. In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. DuBois wrote that after the Civil War, the first major attempt to educate blacks showed itself in ashes, insult and blood [2, p. 32]. He said that opposition to Negro education in the South was... bitter [2]. Nevertheless, predominantly black schools such as Morehouse College, Fisk University, Atlanta University, Howard University, and Hampton Institute founded during the immediate post-Civil War period with public and private assistance from the Freedmen's Bureau, national religious organizations and other groups. These schools have endured. Not all of the black schools achieved the reputations of those mentioned. Some of the black colleges founded before the twentieth century, according to DuBois, were ... worthy of [2, p. 44]. They did the best they could do with what they had. But in the opinion of DuBois, this was not enough. Thus, from the very beginning, some black schools ridiculed or opposed by blacks as well as whites. Such an experience prompted one of the authors to state elsewhere that life for the black college president, in the words of Langston Hughes, ain't been no crystal stair [8, p. 92]. The criticism and ridicule has not abated. In the current century, Ralph