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"And All He Asks of us is
To Give Each Other Love"
By Minnette Coleman
Black Children Can: Purpose to give Black Children more
freedom to develop the hidden talents they may have, or simply
freedom to do what they like to do. We must let the children know
they have good ideas and help them establish a goal-because we
care. B.A.S.I.B., Brothers and Sisters in Blackness, the Black Student
Organization on Guilford College Campus wishes to make itself
available and useful to some facet of our surrounding Black
Community. We chose the children because they are the most
neglected. Black Children today have great potential and a great deal
of stored up energy which many teachers fail to recognize mainly
because they can't or won't take the time to recognize it. We hope
to give each child who participates in our program the freedom to
discover his talents and potential by offering him or her a chance to
do what he really likes to do. In order to do this we have planned
activities in athletics, art, needlecraft, music, dancing, as well as a
child oriented Black History course. For our purposes we felt that
children between the ages of five and ten years of age would benefit
most. We would appreciate a chance to work with your children."
When everybody gets right down to rapping about love, how
many people actually do something about it? That is what Black
'Children Can is all about, love, from the roots. The above is a
statement issued to the parents of the children we work with during
the course of the year to let them know what's going on. At the end
of the year they know—love.
In September of 1970, the real beginning of school desegration,
we, the members of BASIB, took it upon ourselves to organize BCC
so that we might put our physical and mental resources to work. Our
first thought was wherever there is a section of rich or upper class
white schools, there is a section of the area set aside for the blacks.
There is where we found our prospective leaders of the future. We
interviewed each child personally and we interviewed them away
from parents and teachers. That way we could get their ideas. We
learned that the ideas of the parent or teacher are what you get if
you interview a child or ask him what he wants to be in front of his
parents. We found out their dreams and ambitions and they began to
talk to us, all we had to do was talk to them as people-"give each
other love".
The next step was arranging programs for them. Athletic
programs were things like basketball, weight lifting, dance lessens,
. co-ed baseball, etc. We gave them ideas about Black art, taught them
some Black history. And the most fun we had was just playing or
talking with them.
The final step was to succeed with the project. This required the
strength and stamina to get up at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning. And
if you've never gotten up on a Saturday morning after the night
before, then you haven't sacrificed for someone you love. The arrival
of 20 energetic youngsters and the patience required to restrain
yourself from murder at 9 in the morning are part of the
programming that just happened to fit itself in.
The first Saturday we took them on a hike through the Greater
Guilford Forest. It was a two-hour hike and was probably the most
energy draining Saturday I ever spent. But we went through similar
strenuous exercises each Saturday.
We plan to do the same this year. We plan to have them fed and
eat with them. We plan to make them feel that there is someone who
cares, by being there. People resent charity that is there one day and
gone the next, and this is what little kids resent. They get over it,
but they never forget it. We must be there.
We are Black Students, Black adults concerned with our younger
brothers and sisters who are being pressured in a new system of
integration (a new synonym, I find, for slavery). What happens when
a Black child becomes the subject of a teacher's racism? Perhaps an
18-year-old can handle it, but not a 6-year-old first-grader who has
known nothing but love from parents all his life. Why must a child
be taught hatred? Why must a child be taught that the color of his
skin is supposed to be the state of his mind— empty? Why is it that
when a Black child makes 100 he is cheating, but when a White child
makes 100 he is brilliant? The only reason is that a White teacher
made up the test with the idea that only a mind racially equal to
hers could pass it.
This fall, if you make it to lunch on Saturday, you may see
twenty to thirty little black kids with their big brothers and sisters
who love them. Who love them enough to be up with them on
Saturday mornings just to be there, because we care.
And that is the best way I know to give each other love.
