Tensions Rise

     Following the Chancellor’s Liaison meeting on November 1, African American students stepped up their campaign for the Print Shop and an African American cultural center. A special edition of Touché, a short-run Student Media produced campus magazine,appeared on November 9 in which several African American students expressed how being racial minorities on a growing campus impacted their daily lives. Through interviews, African American students shared their feelings of neglect. Although many of the Touché articles appear to have been written by white students, the authors declared they believed the interviewees provided candid and honest answers. In an article entitled “Do blacks want integration?” Anita Haynes, described as a “black senior,” defended the actions of SAAC stating that the organization had previously sought assistance to establish a campus cultural center but that “the proper channels hadn’t produced the results blacks wanted so they talked to Chancellor Caldwell.” Touché quoted Haynes stating, “He [Caldwell] more than anyone else is going to try to keep us (blacks) happy because they’ll (federal government) take his funds away…” To Haynes, the federal government was the only force on campus capable of providing African American students with the support they deserved. Al Langley, a “black student in math,” described that African American students felt “alienated, neglected, and only ‘tolerated’” on campus. It was these concerns that encouraged African American students to pursue a cultural center.

     Black Culture Centers: Politics and Survival of Identity (2005) contains a series of essays which seeks to explain how African American cultural centers can enhance student life on campus for African American students.According to Molefi Kete Asante’s “Challenging Orthodoxies: The Case for the Black Cultural Center,” Black Cultural Centers are “a bridge between continental and diasporan Africans, as well as a bridge between blacks and whites…if anything, [the Cultural Center] is an oasis in a desert.” This sentiment could have ringed true for African Americans at NC State, who represented less than 5 percent of the student population. Fred Lee Hord’s “Black Culture Centers and Afrocentric Strategies,” declares that not only do African American cultural centers provide students with the tools to strengthen their campus African American community, but they also serve “as a liaison with other units on campus, both academic and co-curricular.” The proposed African American cultural center designed by Don Bell and the SAAC sought to also make the described relationship a reality on campus, with plans to open up the cultural center for other student groups to use for social activities.

Visit other Exhibits in Crossing the Color Line.