Civil Rights & Earlham Archives

This typewritten letter is from the Black Leadership Action Committee.  Although there is no addressee, it is clearly written to the Earlham faculty.  In this two page document, Earlham’s Black Student Union asks for more support from people in the Earlham community. They want a black professor in the English department, and a black professor  in the history department . They also want more support for black students on campus, especially in the form of  a reading tutor in the writing center, and better counselors for their race. They are particularly concerned with getting help for student support services, so that the the program, which exists mostly for the benefit of minority students, would no longer rely on a single person. One can see how the Black Leadership Action Commitee was part of a movement for black control of schools as they leave the college only one month to come up with answers to their “requests.” The letter is written in polite language, but it is clear that instead of making “recommendations” as the Black  Leadership  Action Committee claims to be doing, these students want more control than they have, which was the case in many black student organizations at the time.  They were also typical of other BSUs in their demands for black professors, as most BSUs wanted studies to be more relevant to African American life.