Black alumni should work to harness the resources of their alma maters as well as their own talents for the betterment of the Black community.
Alumni around the country encourage their universities to pump dollars into various programs and university departments. Black alumni should do the same by encouraging higher education institutions to funnel resources specifically into the Black community. The support of Black alumni of universities cuts to the core of what “Black power” can mean in the 21st century, for that sentiment means Black people collectively can use the resources at their disposal to help other Black people succeed.
When Brown University appointed Dr. Ruth Simmons its president in 2000, making her the first African-American to run an Ivy League institution, the university galvanized its Black alumni with the formation of the Inman Page Black Alumni Council (IPC). Four years later, president Simmons spoke at the Schomburg Research Library of Black Culture in Harlem before a gathering of 300 Black alumni. From that meeting, a New York metro area chapter of IPC was formed, holding its first meeting at the offices of Black Enterprise magazine.
During that first meeting, objectives like student mentoring, student summer internships and alumni networking were discussed. Feeling the camaraderie in the room, I added, “I think we have a chance to be SNCC 2.0.” Some of the younger alums asked, “what’s SNCC,” and some of the older alums asked, “what does Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown have to do with us?” I was surprised but let it go.
A detailed history of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is beyond this article’s scope, but suffice it to say that what started as a series of small sit-ins by Black college students was shepherded by people like Ella Baker, Robert Moses and others into one of the major organizations of the civil rights movement.
Clearly the history of any Black alumni group at any university is not as dramatic as the history of SNCC; yet I believe there is potential in the foundation set by SNCC. When those students took a stand, a framework existed to incorporate them into the struggle. No such framework exists for the activities of Black alumni groups throughout the country. This is due largely to the way that Black alumni view the role of the university in society.
Universities are society’s major problemsolvers. Universities like Brown, with their large endowments, represent hard resources that can be funneled into our communities. Creating structures and mechanisms that aid in this funneling should be the primary goal of all Black alumni associations.
