This is excerpted from an open letter sent by Alvin Chambliss Jr.,
Esquire, of Texas Southern University, to Dr. Elias Blake Jr.,
executive director, Benjamin E. Mays Institute, concerning historically
Black colleges and universities.
Chambliss is the lead attorney in Ayers v. Fordice, a twenty-year
old case which argues that the state of Mississippi has an affirmative
obligation to eradicate all traces of segregation in its public higher
education system. Blake is a consultant to the plaintiffs in the same
case.,
NAFEO is the membership organization of all historically and predominantly Black colleges and universities.
Dear Dr. Blake:
After talking to you for a long period of time about the critical
situation public Black colleges find themselves in, I am compelled to
write you an open letter that can and should be shared with the world.
I will not mince words because to do so, I would be betraying the
trust of our young college students who I represent. Moreover, the
situation is critical and we have very few people who are willing to
put anything on the line. You and I have caught hell from our families
who allowed us to work in the struggle for free while Ph.D. personnel
walked around worrying not about their next meal, but rather, rank and
tenure, salaries and foreign travel. Good people like Dr. Arthur E.
Thomas, formerly of Central State, are chewed up and kicked to the curb
while NAFEO (the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher
Education) and its leadership looks on. I am not sure whether anything
positive can be done … but we must study this situation so that it
cannot be replicated elsewhere. Colleges and universities must operate
in the interest of students — or, stated another way, without students
they would cease to exist.
During April, 1992, the Mississippi congressional delegation asked, what do you people want?
