University of Virginia Library

Reversing Attitudes

Black Culture Week officially began last
night with the University Hall program
featuring Julian Bond, the controversial
Georgia legislator, who started to bring home
more understanding and awareness of black
thought and culture to the predominantly
white audience. The lectures and discussions
the rest of this week hopefully will continue
to give a feeling of solidarity to the black
students at the University and effect
"attitudinal changes among white people."

A high point of the week's activities is sure
to be the lectures today by Roy S.
Bryce-Laporte, Director of the Afro-American
Studies Program, at Yale University, and
Harold Cruse, Director of the Afro-American
Studies Program at the University of
Michigan. Students and faculty will have an
enlightening opportunity to speak with
Messrs. Bryce-Laporte and Cruse at an Open
House given by President and Mrs. Shannon
today 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Carr's Hill.

All people who are determined to exercise
our society of racism face the momentous
task of reversing attitudes that started to
build in this country when the first black
people were brought in bondage to
Jamestown in 1619. That year of our history
is in one way representative of our present
duality since the year saw the forced arrival of
blacks and the real beginnings of the House of
Burgesses, the political organ which we
proudly remember as the start of autonomy
and free government for the budding nation.
As long as racism lives, we live in that
mutually contradictory duality.

Black Culture Week is only a small step,
but for significant results we must continue to
make these small, personal steps and look to
our homeland and our immediate neighbors
before we forge a new world. If the task is to
be completed, each individual must look
about himself attempting to make the
University and Charlottesville free from racial
blight and widening his perspective to become
more aware of the world and people around
him. The reality that Black Culture Week lays
before us is one for individuals to study and
relying on some amorphous
to clear away the complex
problem of America. It is foremost a
personal task that must continue for some
and begin for others today.