Over the past year there has been, upon American campuses, an increase in incidents where Black students have been targets of violence or intimidation. Cases have occurred in the northeast, the south, and the midwest—notably at Harvard and Rutgers Universities, at Purdue, Columbia, and the Citadel, and the Universities of Massachusetts, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Students, too, were the main participants in the Howard Beach incident that claimed the life of one young Black man.
We, who have signed this statement, are among the historians participating in the Fifth Citadel Conference on the South. We are concerned with the history of the South, with African-American history, with serious study of race relations in the United States. We wish to express our concern over continued racial incidents upon the nation’s campuses. Beyond that, we wish to go on record in pointing out that the inaction of the academic community, in the face of increased racial threats, is part of the problem that we need to confront and to try to overcome. We, college teachers and administrators, have it in our power to contribute directly to the checking of racial antagonism and violence.
This purpose, we would suggest, may be advanced by the following means:
Work to promote a rapid increase in the training and recruitment of Black faculty, both women and men.
Urge a major expansion in tuition scholarships and stipends for Black students. In this way our campuses in the first instance and our communities later on may be further enriched by the contributions of Black artists, musicians, scientists, and intellectuals.
Pay far greater attention to African-American history. This subject, we are convinced, is of critical importance to all our students; yet in many schools it stands in danger of becoming the cinderella of American studies. We must take care that African-American history not merely be taught well, but in intimate connection with the wider American history of which it is an integral part.
Roger Biles, Oklahoma State University
Vernon Burton, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Catherine Clinton, Harvard University
Edmund L. Drago, The College of Charleston
Robert F. Durden, Duke University
Paul Escott, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
Gary M. Fink, Georgia State University
Michael W. Fitzgerald, St. Olaf College
Eric Foner, Columbia University
Alan Gallay, University of Notre Dame
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Emory University
Eugene D. Genovese, University of Rochester
J. William Harris, University of New Hampshire
Joan R. Gundersen, St. Olaf College
George W. Hopkins, The College of Charleston
Thomas E. Jeffrey, Rutgers University
Ralph Mann, University of Colorado
Lawrence T. McDonnell, University of Maryland
Henry M. McKiven, Jr., Vanderbilt University
Melton A. Mclaurin, University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Robert C. McMath, Jr., Georgia Institute of Technology
Winfred B. Moore, Jr., The Citadel
William D. Piersen, Fisk University
James M. Russell, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga
Constance B. Schulz, University of South Carolina
John Anthony Scott, Rutgers University, Co-Chair, Committee on History in the Classroom
Mitchell Snay, Denison University
Herbert Shapiro, University of Cincinnati
Morton Sosna, Stanford University
Joseph F. Tripp, The Citadel
Bertram Wyatt-Brown, University of Florida
Lewis N. Wynne, University of South Florida
April and May 1987
