ustxtxb_obs_1957_07_12_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

A TIME OF ANGUISH B e f or e unscrupulous political charlatans set race against race in 1954, a small streak of dawn was visible. The Negro was on his way to being accepted politically. To the sure-fire hatred raiser, “Do you want your sister to marry a nigger i” the reply, “No, and I don’t want her to marry a Republican, either,” was beginning to work as only ridicule can. But with the school integration issue brought forward, beginning political acceptance was erased in many areas, to be replaced by blind social and racial hatred.. We are all its victims, and for one this writer sees no solution short of the training of the young away from the terrible heritage of their parents and grandparents. In this field the colleges and the churches should lead the way, as indeed they are beginning to do. Not the public whirling dervishes of the “Let God do it” cult, but men of good will who are constantly urging upon church and college the social responsibilities that are justly theirs. MARSHALL Perhaps the worst victims of the seething emotional conflict on integration versus segregation are those who genuinely desire for the government to be closer to the people and abhor the thought of increased police power. It matters not on -which side of the controversy they may find themselves aligned, the result must inevitably be the same. Those who conscientiously oppose educational and social integration, yet desire political and governmental equality, find themselves in the camp of hte Ku Klux Klan and the prey of the cynics who distrust popular government but mask their work of sabotaging it behind their creation of racial hatred. These last seek to bring about stacked juries, rigged elections, and the myriad of additional devices through which the popular will may be denied a voice in government. They know where they are going, they ride the tide of ignorance and prejudice they exploit among voters who end up following their enemies, and thus they aid in keeping the unscrupulous at the controls of political parties. On the other side of the coin, those whom the Observer has humorously, but perhaps accurately, styled the perfervid egalitarians are faring little better. They find themselves supporters of a plan calling for extraordinary powers in a centralized commission, not answerable to the people of the states where it is to operate, and all powerful as a police force. Its decrees are to be enforced by the fist of appointed judges. Trial by injunction, one of the judicial processes most subject to abuse, is to be substituted for trial by jury. Swept along in this fervor for possible judicial abuse appear labor unions, the progenitors of which were being slowly strangled to death until the Norris-LaGuardia Act took the injunctive power away from the courts in labor disputes. If it was unwholesome to allow the practice in labor disputes, is there ess reason to condemn it as applied to ugh ! the Ku Kluxers, et al ? Here is a good testing ground for the precepts many of us hold in the abstract. Will they weather the temptation to consider representative government secondary to the rapid achievement of the end desired? If not, what is gained by giving one group representation in government, at the cost of denying it to another? The tragic truth is that the police power used as a foundation for the Texas segregation act is of a piece with the police power the federal The Listening Post …. Most politicians were quick to issue statements about the loss to the community after Hugh Roy Cullen, Houston oil millionaire, died. A Houston reporter was amazed when Senator Ralph Yarborough, invited to make such a statement, answered : “I’m sorry but I had never met the gentleman and therefore don’t feel qualified to’ speak ….” Later Yarborough commended Cullen’s help to education. …. Governor Daniel sent Mrs. R. D. Randolph a letter “acknowledging and thanking you for your letter suggesting party registration as a subject to be brought before the special session of the Legislature. I appreciate your writing me about this matter and assure you that I shall keep it in mind,” answered the governor. . The state Democratic executive committee’s advisory committees include one on urban problems. One newsman promptly observed that the biggest “urban problem” of the state committee is Mrs. Randolph. government is being urged to apply. The ends sought by each may be as far apart as the poles, but the corrupting power to be employed alike in each case. Long before an investigation or charge would reach the courts under the commissioner plan, however, those accused would be subpect to the nibbling, nabbling, and harassment that can come only from an appointed official or an agent protected by rules of civil service. The outlook on life of the majority of these is well characterized by a question once put to us by an Arkansas lawyer, thus : “Why is it that when you use a little political pull and get a ne-er do well appointed assistant janitor in a federal building, he immediately becomes a ‘building custodian’ and won’t speak to you when he carries you up on the elevator ?” Aside from what the future may hold, regard our suffering in the AUSTIN A university is students, teachers, buildings, books, cafeterias, stadium, mall, trees, lawns ; and all these, the University of Texas is. A university is also a place to think ; and this, the University of Texas is, less and less. When is a university first class ? It is no easy question. Perhaps when it induces its members to think. Yet some men in a third rate university will go on searching for truth alone in their studies, even if they must hide it when they find it. The true, the good, the beautiful, are elusive ; perhaps it is more “realistic,” as Professor Joseph K. Bailey said in justifying the removal of Negro Barbara Smith from the student opera at the University of Texas, to abide by “the Law of the Situation.” But a university distinctly is not first class when its students are barred from the sight of their teachers thinking together and its teachers are reprimanded for their thinking. The Faculty Council of the University of Texas met June 17. The proceedings opened with a request from a student, Donald Petesch, that he be permitted to attend. }le was asked why he wanted to attend. He said he was interested in the Barbara Smith student opera case and the report of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Responsibility, in the criticisms that might be made of President Logan Wilson’s report on the Smith case, and in any discussion about sending out a minority report. The Faculty Council refused to let him stay in the room. He was a student ; he was attending as an individual ; he was merely interested in hearing his mentors’ views on a very troubling matter. He was ejected from their midst. A report on the case was submitted by the committee. Wilson’s decision, said the report, “was as just to the student and as wise as the social climate would permit at this time.” The basic error was selecting the Negro girl for the part in the first place, said the report. Then R. H. Williams, chairman of the Department of Romance Languages, read a statement for himself and R. C. Stephenson of the English faculty. He said it ought to be recorded that the incident “has left some troubled minds on this campus,” that “our conscience is not appeased by the official exposition.” He gave his reasons ; “we feel humiliated,” he said ; and he recalled, in passing, the time Eleanor Roosevelt was invited to the campus, then was told the invitation would have to be withdrawn ; of editorials suppressed in the student daily newspaper ; of the recent at Franklin Jones tempt to prohibit faculty members from taking part in specified political campaigns. “All of these reflect a tendency to yield to pressure from any direction,” Williams said. A continuation of such policies will prevent the University from attaining first class rank “within Dr. ‘ Wilson’s lifetime or ours.” We are now advised by parties other than ‘Williams that Dr. ‘Wilson called Williams into his office after this meeting and chewed him out interminably b for the speech he made that day. He told Williams to stop meddling in administration matters and go about his purely academic duties. Williams told him the maintenance of his opinions in faculty meetings was one of his duties to the university. First, professors barred a student hearing them debate a matter affecting the integrity of the institution of which they are a part ; second, Williams was bitterly reprimanded by the President for speaking his mind ; for thinking, and saying what he thought. W HAT, THEN, is a university ? Dr. Wilson has said on the essential issue that the board of regents and administration of the University of Texas “must be cognizant of the environment in which the University exists and of the mores prevailing within the state to which they are responsible.” To this Williams replied : “The university was established for the moral and intellectual benefit of our citizenry ; its mission is to improve both the mores and environment in which it exists.” Professor Charles Zlatkovich agreed with Wilson. According to the minutes, he said it is elemental that just as a business can survive only by giving its customers services or products they like, so also can the university survive only so long as it operates in a manner compatible with the social order in which it operates and in a manner acceptable to citizens whose tax payments make its very existence possible. Mr. Bailey, too, agreed with the President. The objectives of any organization must be in conformity with the desires of the society which the organization serves, he said. \(A university is now an “organization,” like General Motors. Does it then follow that university professors should be “organization John Silber, of the philosophy faculty, suggested some consequences of these latter doctrines The subordination of the university to the will of the legislature on matters of social import would hamper or destroy our University as a coin : munity of scholars in the iree pursuit of truth, he said. It would imply approval of the Tennessee legislature’s prohibition of teaching evolution in the public schools a-.1d t!.e action of the church in condemning Galileo. In some of the views of the legislators whose race bills passed were majority opinions, by the same reasoning competent geneticists, anthropologists, or philosophers would . be forbidden to disagree. FOR OUR PART, we will share cups with Messrs. Williams and Silber ; we will stand . apart from Dr. Wilson’s university of the public mores, and value, as the best ,institution of the culture, the first-class university passionately devoted to the rights of free inquiry and free debate. Yale President, A. Whitney Griswold was speaking for this institution when he said : “The creative power of the individual is more sorely needed today than ever before. This alone can save us from collective sterility … Nor shall we recover our self respect by chasing after it in crowds. … It comes to us when we are alone, in quiet moments, in quiet places, when we suddenly realize that, knowing the good, we have done it; knowing the beautiful, we have served it ; knowing the truth, we have spoken it.” The universities of South Africa have been opposing legislation intended to bar colored students. There is no doubt about the mores of the whites of South Africa on this issue, but the people in her universities feel they have a larger duty to certain traditions and ideals of the University of the Western World. The senior scholars of the Universities of Cape Town and of the Witwatersrand recently issued a statement, “the Open Universities in South Africa,” a part of which will serve here to close : “A university ceases to be true to its own nature if it becomes the tool of Church or State or any sectional interest. A university is characterizdd by the spirit of free inquiry, its ideal being the ideal of Socrates`to follow the argument where it leads.’ * ” It is the business of a university to provide that atmosphere which is most conducive to speculation, experiment and creation. It is an atmosphere in which there prevail ‘the four essential freedoms’ of a universityto determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.” R.D. THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 3 July 12, 1957 past and present. The Negro can’t pay his proper share of the taxes in many places because he has had insufficient training and opportunity to earn or accumulate wealth ; advantages that have been denied him, because one who doesn’t carry his part of the tax load is not entitled to the training and opportunities made possible by those who do. And ’round and ’round the vicious circle we have gone. Economically, many a community has remained blighted on account of the large proportion of Negro citizens who must not be allowed to compete with the white population. No federal aid or _community building programs may be entertained ; for this would tend to bring about integration. Ethos of the University