A WORLD TURNED BLACK

This little journal has a certain personal character about it. Far from being a denominational organ, it is based to a large degree, for good or ill, upon the personal experiences of the editor. For this reason I have from time to time shared with my readers some of my unusual experiences, especially those that I believe have something to say to our troubled world. These are drawn not only from my thinking about various controversial issues, but sometimes from my family and professional life.

So through 18 years of publication there have been stories about each of our children as we adopted them, descriptions of my tour around the world, accounts of my life at Harvard, and even essays on such bizarre experiences as a ride in a broken down ambulance in Dallas and incarceration at Henderson, Tenn., to name only a few.

Ouida’s mother, upon learning that her daughter was indeed going to take the dubious step of marrying me, assured her: “Well, as Leroy’s wife you may die of excitement, but one thing sure you’ll never die of boredom.” For some reason I keep hearing that quoted through the years! Life has truly been exciting, for I have often ventured out to the edge of things, and as an editor I am pleased to share such experiences with those who care to read me.

This experience about my world turning black is one that I have been waiting many months to tell, waiting for the experience to solidify so that I could write with more knowledge of it. It has certainly been one of my most unique experiences, but one that is not easily interpreted. So I have hesitated to put it into words. After all, how is one to describe his world when it suddenly turns black?

Most of my readers know that for years I was professor of philosophy at Texas Woman’s University. But I have not yet recorded the fact that I am no longer on that faculty and am now teaching at Bishop College in Dallas. This change occurred in September 1968, so it has now been well over a year since I have moved into my new black world. You see, Bishop is a Negro college, having in recent years moved to the big city from a small East Texas town. Under imaginative leadership, it is striving for excellence in education amidst serious handicaps, seeking to become not a good black college but a good college.

I came in contact with Bishop’s president, Milton Curry, by virtue of being president of the TWU chapter of the American Association of University Professors. Each year our chapter had a joint dinner meeting with the chapter at North Texas State University, also in Denton, at which time we have a speaker of some prominence. I persuaded those concerned to invite President Curry to talk to us about the education of Negroes. (I have learned to put it that way and not Negro education, for there is no reason why a black person’s education should be different from a white person’s.)

This handsome, stately, highly educated Negro made such an impression on the white professors present that the reaction was instantaneous: it was the best program we’d ever had! It was obvious that most of them had not had any previous professional contact with a black man who was as cultured and educated as themselves. Sitting with President Curry at the speaker’s table, I was able throughout the evening to learn even more about his work and his dreams for Bishop College.

As a result of the president’s appearance several of the abler professors at NTSU agreed to teach as Bishop on a part-time basis, and at President Curry’s invitation I decided to join his faculty on a full-time basis as professor of philosophy. I have since been commuting to Dallas from Denton, not having yet moved into Dallas.

Almost all of the 1900 students are Negro (a sprinkling of whites and orientals) and two-thirds of the faculty. It has proved to be a most interesting perspective from which to view our many deep-rooted social problems related to race. To say that it is an eye-opening experience is to put it mildly. I wish I could report that it has answered for me the many questions we face in regard to racial conflicts, but I cannot. I have taught special classes for the gifted and for the drifters, both high school and college; and I have taught all girls as well as the coed setup; and in the small college as well as the university. Now it is all-black. Still many of the answers I seek in reference to life’s greatest adventures elude me. I know not as I ought to know.

I know of no problem that the usual college has that a black college does not have. The black college has the usual problems plus still others, and the more serious problems at the ordinary college are even more serious at black institutions. If any young educator is interested in creating his own “Peace Corps” or in being a missionary to Africa, I have a suggestion on how he can do so in short order: give himself to the education of the black man right here in America.

This suggestion is especially well advised in view of the fact that there is now a premium on the Negro educator, for even southern universities are recruiting black professors. It is the thing to do, you know. They want to prove that they are liberal! The result is that the black institutions are going to have to have more help from white educators or be left out. This is to say that the young white teacher will have more and more opportunities to join black institutions, if he will but prepare himself in heart as well as mind for the challenge.

The most serious problem in a black institution, apart from the usual monetary headaches that plague all colleges, are those that grow out of social deprivation. Take the simple problem of an inferiority complex, which we all have and which may not be so simple after all. Well, the black student has a feeling of inadequacy that defies description, especially in the presence of a white professor. One would suppose that the feeling is deep inside his genes and reaches far back into the history of the black man. Considering the Negro’s unfortunate past, it is a fact that he is inferior, not from a natural incapacity but for lack of opportunity for cultural maturation.

If one has convinced himself (it may often be unconscious) that he cannot learn difficult material, he is defeated before he starts. To say the least, feelings of inferiority, whether justified or not, loom as a serious obstacle to one’s education. I have noticed it especially in teaching logic to black students, a difficult subject anywhere. In going over something like the fallacy in a syllogism, again and again, and am still faced with blankness as well as blackness, I am led to conclude: the student supposes that it is beyond him. While I have through the years had some confidence in my ability as a teacher, I have recently walked out of classes, subdued and chastened, and saying to myself: I thought I knew how to teach!

Coupled with the problem of feeling inadequate is the failure to concentrate. I am convinced that the ability to concentrate long and hard is mostly a matter of habit. It is a response to the many challenges through the years that most black students simply haven’t had. Classroom pressures and stiff competition build the habit of concentration, mental disciplines that are too often lacking in poorer schools. Getting and holding attention is hard to come by with black students, especially when the material is for them unplowed ground.

Cultural deprivation is therefore a problem of incalculable proportions. It is the stem that holds a cluster of other problems: inability to read and write well, lack of motivation, lack of mental discipline, not knowing how to study, limited interests, absenteeism, lack of punctuality, laziness. It is the bird that never learns to fly that is caught by the cat. It is fatal for a builder to erect the superstructure without laying his foundation.

It is now general knowledge that today’s college student is beset with serious emotional and personal problems. This is especially true with the Negro student. It is financially as well as academically difficult for him to get to college. His parents are nearly always uneducated and therefore unprepared to support and encourage his venture. There is often an indifference and even hostility toward education on the part of the family. Frequently there is but one parent in a broken home. If not broken, it is troubled by strife, ignorance, poverty, crime, and violence.

Besides all this he is black, with all that means in white America. A psychiatrist at Columbia University published a book recently entitled Black Suicide that reveals a high percentage of suicides among Negro youth. He says: “It is most apparent that the murderous rage and self-hatred that mark their suicide attempts are an integral part of their racial experience and form a part of the burden of being black in America.”

Having entered my black world from a woman’s university where nearly every student was white, I soon found myself comparing females. Not that one has to teach in a girls’ college to do that! (For years I was told by men who learned I taught at a woman’s university, That is where I want to teach! and usually they were not even teachers!) I found some, though not as many, who were just as smart, and many who were just as pretty and charming as girls anywhere. One day in particular I found myself observing with special interest two or three of the girls who were sitting and talking with each other while waiting for my philosophy class to start. They had all that attractive women are suppose to have: poise, intelligence, beauty, and pardon me for saying so in this journal, sex appeal. It must have been the newness of my black world that caused me to then have something of an existential experience. A kind of shocking and depressing thought overwhelmed my consciousness: They are black! They are black! I thought of them as little girls growing up, the time when they discovered that being a Negro made a big difference, their home life in a segregated neighborhood, their dating, their school days in black (perhaps ghetto) schools; the time they’ll go out to find employment; the time they’ll get married, have babies and build homes. They are just like those sweet TWU girls, I was saying to myself, except that they are darker. I found myself beginning to realize what it means to be a Negro. But I was uncomfortable. It saddened me, those lovely girls. I felt both a sense of guilt and frustration. Black! I thought. Why in man’s long, weary history has that made such a difference?

All of us have of course had some contact with Negroes through the years, but I now am made to realize how limited mine have been, and I suppose I have been a typical white man in this regard. The first Negro I remember seeing was one on horseback near our rural home in Mineral Wells, Texas. I was but 5 or 6 years old, and I was so impressed by the sight that I ran all the way home to tell Mother about it. In all my growing up I was never in a black man’s home nor was a black ever in our home, except on those very rare occasions when they were hired to do some work, which was very rare indeed since we were almost as poor as they were. I was almost grown before I realized that a “Nigger shooter,” our name for a slingshot, had any reference to Negroes.

I recall how my dear Mother, who had no way of knowing better, would correct me for referring to a female Negro as a lady. I was to say woman. The few times Negroes had any business at our house, it was understood that they would call at the back door. I was impressed that Mother would boil the drinking glass used by the yard man and consider it virtually unusable for any other purpose. I distinctly recall scrutinizing the glass on one occasion to see if I could detect any black on it! It is easy enough to see how I got the idea that about the worse thing that could happen to a person would be to be born black.

I have been going to Churches of Christ since I was a babe in arms, but I never saw a black person in any congregation ever, and never heard a black minister until I went away to our colleges, which introduced me to one such person—Marshall Keeble. At Freed-Hardeman there was a huge Negro named Spence who had served the college as janitor since its founding. We students thought we’d honor the old Negro with a birthday present, to be received before the students in assembly. President Hardeman thought the gift was all right, but ruled that it would be inappropriate to present it to him in chapel. I got the idea that it would be inappropriate because he was black, not because he was the janitor; and I do not recall questioning it. A while afterwards brother Hardeman went to the Negro church in Henderson to preach at Spence’s funeral. The benevolent gesture impressed me, for surely only an unusually good man would preach a Negro’s funeral.

In all my days at Freed-Hardeman and Abilene, including all my church life, I recall no issue ever being raised about social justice and the Negro. Other than an occasional missionary-minded youth who wanted to go to Africa, it was as if the Negroes did not exist. It was not until I went away to study at Princeton and Harvard that I ever sat in the same classroom with a Negro.

I grew to manhood with the notion that the blacks were somewhat less persons than were whites. A tragedy on the highway might be viewed with horror, but still minimized by the fact that “It was only a bunch of Niggers.” Most of the preachers who influenced my younger years acknowledged that Negroes had souls like the rest of us, but it was a subject that could be debated. In all my contacts with some of our leading preachers in those formative years, not once did I witness any social intercourse between white and Negro ministers, not even so much as sitting down in the same room to eat. I recall one conversation with a noted minister as to what should be done if a Negro brother called late at night at your door with no place to stay. It was a cold night, I remember, which seemed to intensify the dilemma. It was resolved that it would be unchristian to turn him away. He should be allowed in and a pallet bed should be made for him in the living room!

With the passing of the years there has been little or no change from this picture insofar as our congregations are concerned. Even now a visit to all our white churches would hardly bring into view a single black person, and I know of no black church that has even the first white person as a member. We are as segregated as ever. A Negro did not enroll in any of our Christian colleges until long after the supreme court decision and the conformity of state universities made it “appropriate.” Somehow it was always appropriate through the years for us to send missionaries to Africa.

So my America is a white America, and it was a white world out of which I stepped when I became a part of the Bishop community. I am integrated for the first time in my life. My bosses are black and my colleagues are black as well as white. All the problems and issues that concern this little world nestled in the hills of south Dallas are irrevocably tied in with the black man’s predicament throughout the nation.

A look at political concerns will illustrate how these Negroes are a culture set apart from the rest of Dallas. In a straw vote on this campus Humphrey got 96%, Nixon 4%, and Wallace 0%, and that in a city that went substantially for Nixon both times that he ran, and where the Alabamian did so well that the black folk had just as soon forget it. Life on this hill will convince one of the truths of Gov. Kerner’s report to President Johnson on civil disorders that this nation is rapidly solidifying into two separate cultures, one white and one black. And in this city of more than a thousand churches that profess Christ, more than a hundred of which are Churches of Christ, the blessed example of Jesus seems to have made little difference.

There is no question but what Jesus would (and probably did) wash the black man’s feet. He died for him on the cross. He has gone to prepare a place for us—one that will presumably be integrated. And yet Dallas, with all of its Christians, is the purveyor of two distinct cultures—one white and one black. It is not the point to criticize, for it is a situation into which we were born. The tragedy is that we seem content to leave it the way we find it. We feel no constraint, not even as disciples of Jesus, to use our homes, our businesses, our churches to correct the wrong.

Life on this campus has impressed upon me what might be called the sensitivity of the black man. They are a people who have been deeply hurt, and their feelings are a mixture of fear, hate, resentment, and resignation. The sensitivity seems to show up in the courses that I teach more than they normally would, for philosophy deals with social ethics and questions related to life’s meaning. I do not always relate successfully, failing sometime to present controversial ideas with sufficient tact. After one class I was told “You’re like the rest of white folks,” and once an irate militant accused me of being a racist in my presentation.

The occasion was a lecture I had given on Edmund Burke, the British economic philosopher that I identified as “the champion of conservatism.” I pointed to Burke’s view that reckless and irresponsible revolt is more damaging to society than “the Establishment,” however insipid and sterile it may become. Reform should take place within the institutions, not from without. A conservative like Burke believes in conserving the values that one finds in the existing establishments, whether in religion or politics. I observed that the revolt against the modern church is mostly liberal in nature in that it is willing to destroy the church and start over. I referred to my concern for my own religious communion. “I shouldn’t leave it,” I told the class, “but stay with it and seek to improve it from within.” This is what Burke is saying.

I showed how Burke warned against the idea that one can build utopias in this world, for bliss will be only in heaven. Change must come slowly if it is to be for the ultimate good of all, and one must face the fact that human nature is such that there will always be some injustices. By working patiently within the existing social structures we can gradually reduce the evils, though never completely eliminate them. It is folly to destroy the progress of a thousand years only to displace it with something new and untested.

Though Burke was attacking those responsible for the French Revolution, this black militant supposed it was all aimed at him. “That was a racist lecture,” he told me. “You were saying, ‘Nigger, be quiet and be satisfied with what you’ve got.’”

I pointed out to him that the Negro’s progress in this country has been on the basis that Burke was talking about: through the existing political order, such as the courts and congress (the very systems that some seek to destroy). But I could not get him to agree that there had been any progress for the blacks.

Such thinking is however in the minority, even among the blacks. Most people around here realize that education is the answer to the Negro’s problems. Various measures may momentarily bring respite, but it is only when the black man can compete with others in the free market that he will emerge victorious, and this can come only with education. And education takes lots of time, even when many people are lending a helping hand.

Only the Other day a student who is having lots of trouble understanding the materials I assign in philosophy walked haltingly into my office. He was black black and had that forlorn look, as if he had just walked out of a Mississippi cotton field. “I just want you to know that I’m trying, but its real hard for me.” I had given him an F for the midterm report and he was worried. I explained to him that lots of people in all colleges have trouble with philosophy and that he must not be discouraged, that I would help him. He was trying to control his emotions, I could tell, but a few tears rolled down his cheek, which for some reason came from but one eye.

Something tugged at my insides as he stood there, eager to achieve but with limited equipment. I thought of the words of Jesus: “I have come not to be ministered to, but to minister. I cannot think of a better place to minister for Jesus than in the classroom—a black classroom.

Perhaps that is the answer I should have given to some girls who were asking me one day after class why I left a state university to come to Bishop. Well, I was in no humour to talk to them about educational challenge and stuff like that. “Was it for more money?”, asked one of them with a scrutinizing look into my eyes. “I wouldn’t say so,” I answered. “Then why?”, they insisted.

“Let’s just say that it is because I love you,” I quietly replied.

They backed away a few feet as if to be able to size me up a little better. “Really? . . . Really?”, they said with disbelief. Having learned that it is difficult around here to deal with distrust toward the white man, I merely turned back towards them as I was walking away, and said:—Really!

—the Editor

I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes every man an opportunity to make a living.—John D. Rockefeller, Jr.