Since taking over Fisk University's Race Relations Institute two years ago, Dr. Raymond Winbush has been aggressive about revitalizing the once-prominent institute and resuscitating its showpiece -- an annual summer seminar which died sixteen years ago.

When former Fisk President Henry Ponder lured Winbush from his post as professor and director of the Black Cultural Center at Vanderbilt University, Fisk's institute had no director, no budget and few programs. Today, bolstered by more than $4 million in private and corporate grants and the renewed commitment from Fisk officials, the fifty-five-year-old institute is making a comeback.

Winbush is euphoric about the resurrection of the institute and mesmerized by the thought of unleashing it onto a society he says is more racially hostile than when it began. In 1942, the United States was allied with most of Europe in an attempt to dismantle Adolph Hitler's Nazi regime and its racial-superiority philosophy. That was the same year that Charles Spurgeon Johnson, Fisk's first African American president, created the Race Relations Institute to address divisions among racial, religious and ethnic groups.

The Tennessee campus--which once courted Fannie Lou Hamer, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph and Hubert Humphrey--will convene the institute's thirty-fourth conference July 8-13, the first major conference since 1983.

"We're inviting a lot of people," Winbush boasts.

Among the 300 people invited are: President Bill Clinton; Ralph Reed, former president of the Christian Coalition; Harry Allen, a member of the rap group Public Enemy; Lerone Bennett Jr., editor of Ebony Magazine, and 1996 Republican presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan.

"We want them to come to Fisk to discuss America's most troubling problem -- which is race -- just the way Johnson did it," says Winbush.

Decades ago, according to Winbush, "People were heating a path to the door of the Race Relations Institute." For three weeks, talks among whites, Blacks, Jews, preachers, politicians, parents, scientists, students and others dominated the days. Picnics on the lawn filled the nights Race was on everyone's lips

"People felt like they could provide sound solutions for what was at that time and still is today one of America's greatest problems," says Winbush.

What Johnson didn't do, Winhush says, was to take what he calls the "Kumbaya" approach that is currently popular with forums on race relations -- plenty of hugging, crying and lamenting of the past. Johnson, who headed Fisk's Social Science Department in the early 1940s, is credited with crafting the standard methodology for national dialogues on race. He mounted discussions on issues of economics, education, government policy, housing, employment and semantics. Then he drafted strategies for change, such as training Black veterans returning from the war, and bringing an end to segregation in public schools, the armed forces and in organizations like the League of Women Voters.

"Rather than say we are going to do something new, we're going to do something old." says Winhush. "We're going to take what Charles Johnson did -- take the model -- and adapt it for the twenty-first century."

Even as he plots the rebirth of the institute and the return to its original mission, more than a half century later, the institute remains the only--according to Winbush--think tank devoted to racial issues housed at an HBCU.

"In 1942 when Charles Johnson founded the Race Relations Institute white institutions were the [only] ones studying race. Now in 1997, fifty-five years later, no Black institution is studying race other than Fisk," says Winhush in amazement.

A year ago, Howard University pinched off a piece of the race debate by focusing on Black-Jewish relations when it teamed up with the American Jewish Committee to publish Common Quest: The magazine of Black Jewish Relations. Since the magazine's start Howard, with mixed success, has attempted to use the publication and the campus as safe havens for discussing the differences and commonalities between Blacks and Jews.

Earlier in the semester--in March--a group of Howard students stormed a class on Black-Jewish relations to protest the involvement of the Anti-Defamation League in the course taught jointly by professors from Howard and American University. The weekly course was created in 1994 following a campus speech by Nation of Islam representative Khalid Muhammed and subsequent charges of anti-Semitism at Howard.

Black-Jewish relations should he part of the dialogue on race, says Winbush who adds, "The moment it becomes politicized or forced on you, I have a real problem with that. The Race Relations Institute is not being forced on anybody."

A powerful blend of money, mission prestige and personalities has catapulted programs like Harvard University's W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research and Columbia University's Institute for Research in African-American Studies to the top of the list of think tanks devoted to racial issues. But none offer the scope that Fisk's institute does, according to Dr. Manning Marable, who ran the Race Relations Institute from 1983 to 1985. Marable now runs the think tank at Columbia.

As Fisk -- small' Black and not well-endowed -- jockeys for a spot among the larger and more prestigious institutions, the question of whether a Black institution has the capability to study race and society enters the conversation.

"I think a more credible question is whether a white institution can study race objectively in this culture and really talk about things the way they are," Winbush says.

Winbush is emphatic in his belief that a Black institution--particularly Fisk--can best shape how the nation deals with race relations. While Fisk has never had think tanks enjoy. Winbush noted, "We do have the history and the credibility."

In the 1950s and 1960s, says Dr. Ronald Walters, a professor of African American studies at the University of Maryland, "The institute thrived because people were anticipating a social movement. Emotions and activism were high."

As a young man in his twenties, Walters attended the Race Relations Institute's seminar at Fisk in the summer of 1959. Today, he notes, no such movement is agitating for change.

"What you do have," says Walters, "is a pregnant discussion going on about race."

But that, according to Walters, may not be enough to sustain the work of the institute or to change the course of race relations. National seminars on race like the one Fisk will hold this summer are not new. As an example, Walters points to a series of forums sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

"[NEA] did he same thing that Fisk is planning. You didn't hear much about them when they taking place. What did they accomplish? asks Walters. He suggests that instead of the head-on approach, the national discussion on race should focus on the issue fueling racial injustice -- the economy.

President Clinton in April announced that he plans to launch a race relations initiative during his second term. His efforts, however, may not yield the significant accomplishments other U.S. presidents made in the area of race relations during their administrations. White House officials said whatever form the Clinton initiative takes--a conference round-table discussions or a commission--it won't be designed to produce new government programs or policies. The purpose, says White House officials, is to spark a dialogue between the races.

"Lyndon Johnson had it right," says Walters of the president who, through federal programs and the passage of civil rights laws, "tried to enhance the material wealth of Blacks.... Johnson didn't talk much about race, but he was concerned with racial equity."

Whatever forum Clinton chooses, he must include "new and younger voices," says Winbush. For starters, he suggests people like rap artist Sistah Souliah, Congresswoman Maxine Waters and American Indian Movement founder Russell Means.