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Ingredient in Minority Capitalism," Journal of Small Business Management (Fall, 1973), pp. 1 I-I6. 8. Bates, op. cit., pp. 66-67. 9. Andrew Brimmer and Henry Terrell, "The Economic Potential of Black Capitalism," Public Policy, a paper presented before the 82nd annual meeting of the Am. Economic Association, New Orleans, Dec. 29, 1969. 10. Bates, op, cit., pp. 22-23. 11. Ibid., p. 30. Bates defined "protected firms" as "barber shops and beauty shops, funeral parlors, eating and drinking places, entertainment, hotels, convalescent and rest homes, cosmetic manufacturers and distributors, photographic studios, insurance and real estate, and medical services." See note 10. 12. Ibid., pp. 26-27. 13. Ibid., pp. 38-41. 14. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1972, Survey of Minority Owned Business Enterprises (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Superintendent of Document, Nov. 1974). 15. See Roberts, op. cit. and Arnold Cooper, op. cit.

THE EDUCATION OF BLACK FOLK: THE AFRO AMERICAN STRUGGLE

FOR KNOWLEDGE

IN WHITE AMERICA

By Allen B. Ballard (New York: Harper and Row, 1974, 173 pp.)

The author, a seasoned black administrator and teacher in one of America's most integrated urban (New York City) educational institutions of higher learning, addressed himself to a thought-provoking and currently pertinent issue in this book. The Education of Black Folk is at once readable, scholarly, and advocating. In the eight chapters, Allen Ballard paints a dynamic portrait of the black struggle for knowledge (and education), tracing its historical development through the days of slavery, emancipation, reconstruction, and the most recent tumultuous campus revolutions of the mid-sixties and early seventies. His masterly description of the activities of some of the giants in the black quest for knowledge was equally penetrating and vivid: "The only avenue for captive African people in America was through the knowledge contained in books." Like the famous Black abolitionist, David Walker, Ballard argued that American Blacks"must obtain the best education possible." The awareness and movement for black education in institutions of higher learning did not come into full swing until well after the Civil War, when " a good number of institutions of higher learning (colleges) for Blacks were created by white philanthropists and churches." White America concocted these "pseudo-colleges," as they saw it, "to educate the second class Black minds and civilize the instincts of at least a portion of the

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wild Africa in them." When it openly became clear that the colleges were in most cases little more than high schools and that general level of education in them, as DuBois later noted, "was of very low calibre," Blacks came to realize that the task of black education must be resolved by Blacks themselves. The thought of a truly liberating education for Blacks frightened most southern white minds to such an extent as to make it impossible---even when northern philanthropists would have had it otherwise--to create a segregated system of higher education for Blacks devoted to a knowledge of the social sciences and philosophy. It was far better for the south that the education of Blacks be confined to the Bible rather than venture into studies of the American and French Revolutions. Moreover, too much education tended to disturb the good relations between the races. Philanthropists, the churches, and the government concurred, and thus began an institutional downgrading of black (higher) education--a move that has since persisted even into the very present. In practice, the decision meant that black people would be educated minimally, and possibly vocationally; and that such education Blacks would receive should be subordinate to the needs of white America. Black institutions of higher learning, they thought, were to prepare a cadre of Blacks who would spread the words of God to their heathen brethrens. The majority of black youths went through such a manipulated "educational system," while only a handful sometimes managed to find their way to the predominantly white campuses where true education was taking place. By the turn of the century, however, the general black student population had undergone radical changes. For one thing, they were no longer a bunch of newly emancipated slaves without property or human dignity, or dumped willy nilly into the American dream. Gradually but firmly they (black students) began to agitate and even demand more voice in the educational policies that affected their lives. Among the prominent black educators involved in this movement were Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. Philosophically, the contradicting views of DuBois and Washington exemplified the diversity of opinions and concensus in the educational direction of American Blacks. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee Institute, was a strict accomodationist. He articulated and personified white America's agenda for black higher education--vocational and industrial college geared toward black self-sufficiency in a rural environment. He (Washington) came to be rewarded with enormous power and prestige that could only be financed and maintained by the white establishment. So it was that Washington became the spokesman and Tuskegee became the capital of black American power structure; and government and philanthropists consulted with him on all black related decisions. Washington did not hesitate to bring his power to bear on anyone who dared to oppose him or threatened the status quo, while he reserved his greatest scorn for those northern-educated black "agitators" and intellectuals--' 'frequently of fair or light color' ' - - w h o seemed to him to be ignorant of the real needs of black people. The major opposition to

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Washington came from W.E.B. DuBois, a light-skinned Harvard-educated black intellectual who outlined a brilliant counter-plan for the marriage of black scholarship and practice within a black controlled academic environment. Unlike Washington, who taught Blacks to be submissive, humble, and patient to the white establishment, DuBois lent himself and his talent in every major struggle for ideological latitude, freedom of expression, and the pursuit of educational ideals that swept the black college campuses of his time. Black educational direction, meanwhile, seemed to be evolving neither into the vocational institutes desired by Washington, nor into the black catalyst of change advocated by DuBois. It would be gratuitous to pretend that Blacks are any less inclined than whites to swallow the philosophical bait glorified by the conventional intelligence. In other words, Blacks did not doubt that the white world was moving in the right direction. They only wanted to be a part of that movement. They wanted to be doctors and lawyers--professions which they saw as passport to the good things of life in the American society. The college campus, thus, became the proving ground then and today but not without a stiff white opposition. In the south, the black thrust was in the public and private predominantly black colleges which provided refuge and haven for black intellectual intent on exclusive black scholarship. The predominantly white northern campuses, on the other hand, increasingly became the battleground for black demands for equality, equity, and fair representation. The explosion of the black student population, especially on the white campuses, was a phenomenon for which neither the colleges nor the black intellectual community was quite prepared. The result has been a chaotic and somewhat nonproductive epoch in the higher education of black youths. The academic world, it seemed, received the onslaught of the black student population with whom they had no previous experience, and expected that a mere act of admission would show enough goodwill, while making no significant effort to do more. The general black community, on the other hand, made little or no significant attempt to develop concrete position on a black educational agenda that looked beyond white concessions like the E.O.E (Equal Opportunity Programs), the Black Studies, and other similar remedial stopgaps. In other words, black people need to address themselves to the basic question of "what do we want for our children, given the hard facts that they need to be educated and function within the context of a white dominated world?" Ballard suggests, among other steps, the following:

I. The creation of urban black colleges to counter the apparent white conspiracy to divert urban black students into bustling mediocre two-year vocation-oriented community colleges. 2. The redirecting of black youths into southern black colleges, where the environment may be more conducive to their psychic, academic, and social

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growth, while providing at the same time fiscal and enrollment boost to the black campuses. 3. The provision of one-year college compensatory crash programs in lieu of the last year of high school for underprepared black students, prior to college admission. In conclusion, Ballard reminds Blacks to preserve and protect the network of black colleges that are now being threatened out of existence. He sees the consequences of any systematic erosion of black institutions of higher learning as disastrous for black scholarship, and suggests the formation of a national body of black scholars to serve as a political and intellectual lobby to advance the cause of education of black folks. If the book, The Education of Black Folk, is Allen Ballard's way of renewing the call for a meaningful agenda for a national policy on black higher education, then, I must say that he has done an excellent job at it. I may not agree totally with all the details and points of Mr. Ballard's view that are articulated in the book, but I think that every aspiring black intellectual who is dedicated to black excellence and scholarship should take out time and read The Education of Black Folk. Dr. Wm. N. Ikemma Texas Southern University