AAAAS: Negro Students Test Liberalism

The campus organization now known as the Association of African and Afro - American Students (AAAS) is a product of the uniquely stimulating years from 1960 to 1963. The student demonstrations in the South, African independence, and the Black Muslims -- especially Malcolm X -- captured the imagination of Negroes in intellectual communities throughout the country.

Harvard's Negro students felt they were "sitting out the war," while Southern Negro students sat-in at lunch counters and Africans on campus discussed the task of running a country. "We were envious of the Africans," James Wiley '65, former president of AAAAS says. "They had something meaningful to talk about. The best American Negroes could aspire to was finding a slot in someone else's administration."

Brother Willie

A number of Muslims frequented the Square--Brother Roy and Brother Willie (seniors may remember futile arguments with Willie as he sold them innumerable copies of Muhammad Speaks). Malcolm X also came to the Square several times during those years, but at that time most black students were afraid to go hear him. Travis Williams '63 admits, "Though we revere him now that he's dead, most of us fled his naked language." Assistant Dean Archie Epps remembers being a "fat old satisfied guy" shocked out of his torpor by Malcolm's homely iconoclasm.

Martin Kilson, assistant professor of Government, and E.U. Essien-Udom, author of the famous Black Nationalism (written at Chicago under Edward C. Banfield) were anticipating, based on their knowledge of Negro lower class culture and the Muslim phenomenon, that the ghettoes would soon erupt into riot. "What's going to stop them?" Epps would ask. "Negroes like you," was their reply.

Before AAAAS ("Afro") was organized, standard procedure was for Negroes, passing one another in the Yard, to cast down their eyes or become immediately engrossed with tying their shoelaces. Kilson would address everyone as "Hey spook! Hey Negro!" and people began looking up and saying "Hi," as if they had been caught stealing cookies.

This was the setting. Out of it Harvard's Negro students formed two groups: the activists -- those who sought political power, and engaged in demonstrations in Roxbury and at the Portuguese consulate--and a "cultural discussion group"--interested in the exchange of ideas between Africans and Afro-Americans, the exploration of common problems. The activists felt strongest about excluding whites from their efforts.

In 1962, a general meeting was called, at which John Butler '63, and Aryee Quah (George) Armah '63 were the leaders. Others involved were Epps (then 1G), Claude Weaver '65, and Thomas Atkins (1G). A new concept was being formulated, of which Armah was the most articulate spokesman. It was Armah who originated both the name of the organization, AAAAS, and the membership clause -- "open to African and Afro-American students currently enrolled at Harvard and Radcliffe."

The first officers were elected in the spring of '63. An Afriran student, Martin Anochie '64, was elected president. Anochie '64, was a very persuasive spokesman and, as Traivs Williams put it, "a brilliant politician. He anticipated Stokely Carmichael and stitutions and points of strength in even, to some extent, Malcolm X."

Anochie summed up Armah's formulation as "anti-racist racialism." This entailed the development of inorder to realize objectives--integration for example. The concept of "Black Power" has been inarticulately expressed in the ghetto for 50 years; Armah and Anochie, however, gave it sophisticated formulation four years before Stokeley Carmichael or Floyd McKissick.

As these sessions broke out into the open, a number of letters and editorials on the subject began to cross paths in the CRIMSON. Two letters from whites summed up the thoughts both of the "cultural discussion group" and the activists. The former: "We are black human beings and white human beings. Only by understanding and isolating what it is to be black and what it is to be white, can we realize what it is to be simply human. Only then will race and color become insignificant." The latter: "Conscience is the motivation for the liberal only because real respect is absent. Colored pride and white respect must be enkindled, and if the white community cannot do it, some think the Muslims can."

Butler wrote to the CRIMSON that the AAAAS was formed to express "our thoughts on our particular problems.... There is nothing malicious in our desire to be ourselves." The HCUA and the Faculty Committee on Student Activities--focusing on Afros all black composition--felt it would be a bad precedent. In addition, at least two CRIMSON minority editorials charged "racism in reverse" as did the New York Times in response to "Black Power."

The use of the concept "anti-racist racialism' confused and frightened a number of people, as did the words "Black Power" four years later. People were accustomed to the Negro movement depending both for sustenance and initiative upon the good will of the white community; the development of the Negro institutions and points of strength could not be communicated on their own merits. The building of such institutions has been wrongly confused, since Plessy us Ferguson, with "perpetuating segregation."

"Don't Lie"

The dilemma was finally "resolved" because of the Administration's embarrassment over the final clubs. The AAAAS was urged to strike out the discriminatory clause and, implicitly, substitute one of membership by invitation. Armah would have none of this. He kept telling the undergraduates, especially the American Ntgroes who were willing to accept the "final club" compromise: "Don't lie, don't lie."

Armah argued that the issue should not be obscured but made clear; accepted on its own merits. There is no question that he, if anyone, was most qualified to argue the case before the Administration. (Currently, a novel of his is being read by Houghton and Mifflin.) Wiley remembers how Armah could "tease, chide, and coerce within the space of a few minutes. The experience of talking with him left many quite shaken." The question for AAAAS came to be one of "On whose terms will we be recognized?" Armah was unable to communicate the new concept to the Administration.

"Too Hung Up"

In the end, the Administration and not Afro defined the nature of the organization. The idea was too new, and the Negro student too perplexed, "too hung up on integration," as Williams puts it, for the concept to be really understood. Williams says that even now, four years later and after the Black Power controversy, does he really understand the new formulation.

Anochie, angered by arguments which were to him irrevelant, said. "The big club (used by thoughtless whites) to smash such worthy endeavors (such as organizing the Negro potential) is always the same: frantic charges of 'reverse racism,' black supremacy,' and 'black paranoia.'... A sixteenth century English writer (Gerrard Winstanley) once said, 'Everyone talks of freedom, but there are few that act for freedom, and the actors for freedom are oppressed by the talkers and verbal professors of freedom.' However I am confident that the university and campus will come to realize what a meritorious group the AAAAS is, provided they stop looking at us with a jaundiced eye, and stopped turning everything we do or say from side to side in order to find the monster which we must have concealed somewhere."

Was Anochie right? Today, Dean Monro, a member at the time of the Faculty Committee on Student Activities, asks himself "If I were a Negro student at Harvard would I be a member of AAAAS. And the answer is 'Yes.'"

Dean Monro says that AAAAS, today, performs three valuable functions: it provides the Negro student with a place where "he can take off his shoes and be like people." Second, "It's clear that the Negro people have to develop their own institutional strength if they're going to get anywhere. That's the way our society works, and that's the way it will continue to work." And third, it helps, especially through its Journal, to put new concepts and formulations into language, a vital function and one that "must be done from a black point of view."

'It's clear that the Negro people have to develop their own institutional strength if they're going to get anywhere."-Monro

"Need for Afro"

The last two are perhaps most important: "The white community is a very tough community, inert and satisfied. It simply won't do for a splinter group |such as the Negro| to be dependent upon a highly organized majority. When Negroes develop an institutional strong point, they have a right to make it their own. Five or six years ago. I saw the need for integration but not for the AAAAS. Now I see the need for both." Monro continues.

Second. Monro feels language is of utmost importance: the problem is "more rhetorical than real." Language is at present "too stiff for proper analysis and statement of what is in fact going on. There is a need to put this thing down and get it right; when people put things to language, they control them. Then they can move on to something else." The "racism in reverse" argument about which Anochie complained typify this lack of communication. "If I had a group here that behaved like Mississippi racists," Monro says, "that would be one thing. But I don't."

The AAAAS today performs within these three broad functions. Hubert Sapp '67, outgoing President of the organization, feels that "because the Association, was, on its fact, contrary to established liberal tenets, the Administration and the Harvard community interpreted us as a step backward. But in the past two or three years. Afro has demonstrated the kind of contributions it can make, and that these functions could not have been performed if we did not exist specifically as an all-black organization." The point of these functions has been to get black students thinking about the problems of the black community, to urge them to take positions along the way. They should be given access to as much information as possible in the formulation of positions; they should begin to evaluate their relationship to the black community in terms of their own interests and skills."

Negro freshmen gain by seeing upperclassmen hammering out their problems. A substantial number of AAAAS members are also involved in other activities--the CRIMSON, WHRB, PBH, to name only a few. The Association also has its specific activities.

The Harvard Journal of Negro Affairs is the oldest of these. It is, according to Sapp, "an opportunity for expression of a highly sophisticated and relevent nature. It is also an opportunity to learn managerial skills and organizational technique." "Though Negro students can learn managerial skills with the Harvard Student Agency (and, in fact, are working with HSA at present on a evaluation of the Journal's business problems) working with the Journal they have the opportunity to enter something which is specifically theirs. As the Chinese proverb has it, "If you cut your own wood, it warms you twice."

AAAAS members have been proud of the Journal since it first came out; they are now working on its fourth issue. Dean Monro commends the Journal as "a distinguished and important magazine. It is attractive and intelligent. It hits on issues that help people understand what is going on."

The newsletter, L'ouverture, is less-sophisticated and more concerned with day-to-day communications. Jeffrey P. Howard '69, AAAAS president, wishes to include a periodic "President's Message" which will inform readers of "what the AAAAS is doing at any particular time why, and what its effects may be." Howard has considered expanding circulation and selling the newsletter in the Houses for perhaps ten cents per copy. This will help "fulfill the educational responsibility AAAAS has to the Harvard community. If the response is favorable, we would continue," he adds.

The Freedom Workshop, given at the Cambridge Community Center in conjunction with the Center's Freedom Workshop Committee, seeks to involve. Afro members with Negro high school students who are Center members. The workshop encourages the high school student to articulate his views, and will also utilize drama, art, music, and creative writing to explore the ghetto.

The Black Arts Colloquium has sponsored poetry readings by under graduates, will bring back artists to speak to the group, and encourages black students with artistic talents to express themselves to a black audience through their own organization.

The purpose of the "Seminar on Negro Politics," associated with the Kennedy Institute, is to prompt senior members of Afro to give seminars in the fields in which they are writing their thesis. A reading list is drawn up of books which they feel have particularly shaped their thinking. Sapp says that the seminar "offers the younger student an opportunity both for dialogue with senior members and for recognizing the benefits of majoring in certain areas while he still has a number of options open."

Richard Neustadt, head of the Kennedy Institute, is impressed with the seriousness and purpose of the seminar, the only spontaneously organized student group associated with the Institute. The seminar focuses directly upon the organization.2