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6 MONDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2005 Law students saw doors open BY NATALIE HAMMEL STAfF WRITER 1951 was a catalyst year for social change at the University. That spring, a federal court reversed the decision of a lower court and mandated that the University grant full admission to graduate students when equal facilities did not exist elsewhere. And that summer, when five black students enrolled in UNC’s School of Law, they broke a more than 150-year tradition of segrega tion at the University. It was a victory for civil rights that cost almost a quarter of a mil lion dollars in legal fees and took several years, but its full value can not be measured in time or money alone. “If you think about social change as an ongoing process, this case was one more step in a forward movement to open up avenues of education to African Americans,” said Charles Daye, a law professor who has researched and examined integration at the University. Still, while unequal education may have been ruled unlawful in the courtroom, this did not mean that discrimination did not still persist elsewhere. J. Kenneth Lee, one of the first black students that summer and a 27-year-old father and husband at THE Daily Crossword ACROSS 1 Scale 6 Vote in 11 "Fawlty Towers" net work 14 "Chicago" star Zellweger 15 Singer Jones 16 Opposite of 'neath 17 Ireland 19 Thai language 20 Matador 21 Stockpiles 23 Tolkien's tree 24 Skirt's edge 26 Impulsive 27 Dorothy Gale's foot wear 32 Secure again, as a tent 35 Aviator Post 36 Itinerary word 37 Urgent acronym 38 Fizzy drinks co-star 60 Shaping tool 61 Gawks at 62 Steeple top 63 Roman gods 64 Browned bread 65 Superman's adoptive parents DOWN 1 Minotaur's isle 2 Whiskey sour ingredi ent 3 Like some gases 4 No more than 5 Enthusiastic greeting 6 Cut short 7 Ms. Nettleton 8 Formerly, formerly 9 Heat units 10 Shrink session 11 October Revolution participant 12 Suitor 13 Field yield 39 One from the sticks 40 Day break? 41 Muslim female quarters 42 Northern India monotheists 43 Arizona team 46 Part of AARP 47 Lanka 48 Exclamation of con tempt 51 Greaseproof paper 55 Chevy model 57 Peri on "Frasier" 58 "Carmen Jones" t| r I a I p B e I l I b I a H s 1 q 1 u I a T° HOP TBx I I IB< U R A E a M E xlßp E A nllf I A R A IAREHOI) S E_<3 T L E T |||lA"N||s lTr 1 M M r j_ f_t 9.li£lA.°AolA±ilA£. .s rTe AAA. AAI 0 AS.HB em m a S L OW E d|s E TJ_|s I T HIB c ois BB h o p IB s e rTs A N W A r|c H a D|< R E A La I v H t a c °[l tL k e|s|s|elnMsltlv|xMmle|t|e What's anaKty without a bar! Everyone could use a portable bar for their apartments and outdoor gatherings. Although this bar comes sans alcohol, HP' mmm no tools are required for assembly. For more information call toll free: 888-551-1171 ■■|gg|l| (Special shipping rates apply to Chapel Hill) www.Bar-ln-A-Box.com —-Cut and save---— —— Cut and save— —~— The Wcndv P. & I MfßfW >f H j [Wi II 219 Ham* Hall Den E. Painter Jr. 919-962-6507 Career UCS@UnC.edu 3 WALK-IN HOURS: Answers to career questions and resume reviews—Mon-Fri, 10 3p PROGRAM S g |j Teaching Options for Non-Education Majors: This workshop will -g Plprovide information on teaching options for students who are not certified teachers, eg gvelop a career Bj| ir possibilities mg Vlar. 1 4p inment: Leam I tut their careers Jgte : 4p 2398 Hanes 111, and how to de- |B ng your laptop! S| wto interview H anes o the Arts: ImM who will be per- K Students must be g| re available at 55. m ?r. j tervisor ter, Cartographer ■■ it Internship ID# and complete pronie the time, said people would “drop bombs” in his yard in Greensboro. Lee also received threatening phone calls. “I still remember the time (my son) became hysterical when he was alone in the house, answered the phone and someone told him, using the most vile language pos sible, what they were going to do to his father,” he said in “Offshoots: the H. F. Lee family book.” Although academically part of the University, Lee —and the other black students, Harvey Beech, Floyd McKissick, James Walker Jr. and James Lassiter were sepa rated from the rest of the student body in other manners. Lee and Beech applied for campus housing and received a whole floor to themselves in Steele Building, which was a dormitory at the time. “This was right after the war, and there were students standing on each others’ heads to get in, and they gave us the entire third floor,” Lee said in a past interview at the Greensboro Public Library. The black students also were initially excluded from sitting in the student section during football games and were given tickets to sit in the “colored section.” Walker turned in his tickets in protest. By Doug Peterson 18 Leopold's co-defendant 22 Psychic letters 25 Goodness me! 27 Corded fabric 28 Back of a tape 29 Andean pack 30 Wealthy 31 Fifth Avenue retailer 32 Author Ayn 33 Actor Morales 34 Those shooting stars? 38 California port 39 Towel ID 41 Lively nightclub 1 2 3 4 7 8 9 7o"“BM7T“ 12 13 _zi~ I 20 ?2 M 24 25 n9H126 28 29 30 31 3? 33 34 |Hp5 — HT36 37 wmfia -mJSP So mr!F 43 “ ' 44 " 45 51 52 53 Mjp 56 57 ■■sß ~ ~ “Bpi ' jwioL ~ Black History Month “I feel I am a part of the stu dent body and want to cheer and express school spirit as a part of the student body and not be set apart down behind the goal posts in an undignified and humiliating man ner,” he told The Daily Tar Heel in September 1951. Walker and the others were eventually given tickets, but in a letter with the tickets, Chancellor Robert B. House urged them to use caution, implicitly saying that they should not use them. They didn’t heed his request. As recounted by Lee, the white students generally were accepting of the presence of the black stu dents on campus, though he did say that he was a “novelty” in the beginning. The first time he entered Lenoir Dining Hall, he recalled in a past interview that “a deathly silence fell over the entire room.” “This was the first time I realized that my shoes squeaked,” he said. But before he graduated, Lee jokingly confessed that he could have “jumped up and down on the dining table ... and nobody would have missed a bite.” “This proves that people can accept change if they have to,” he said. Don Fowler, student government president at the time, described the (02005 Tribune Media Services, Inc. All rights reserved. 42 Head glove? 44 French pronoun 45 Corn bin 48 Michael of "Pole to Pole" 49 On one's toes 50 Grant's follower 51 Alum 52 Mineral vein 53 'The Lion King" lioness 54 "_Tu” (1974 hit) 56 Bubble maker 59 D-Day transport white student body as unconcerned with the presence of the black stu dents. “The presence of these Negroes causes so little interest that most of us are unaware they are here unless we happen to have a class with them,” he told the DTH in 1951. But the students’ trial and acceptance into the law school was front-page news, and they received a bombardment of media coverage. “There was always 10 or 12 news paper people when we’d come up to the dorms,” Lee said in a recent interview. “It just always made it impossible to study.” And in the beginning, the black students had extra security from police officers and highway patrol guards. “There were threats and that sort of thing, but we were not physically harmed,” Lee said in the interview at the Greensboro library. Lee and the other black law stu dents came to a university far dif ferent from the one today, which was ranked first among top public universities in overall measures of racial integration by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education in 2002. But Daye said this by no means implies that the University has finished its work toward complete integration. “As all social change takes time, we are still in the process of becom ing a better place.” Contact the Features Editor atfeatures@unc.edu. EARLY HISTORY OF BLACKS AT UNC Even before the first black students enrolled at UNC, a movement for equality was in place that would last for decades. Educational leaders establish a law school for blacks at North Carolina College for Negroes at Durham District court rules that educational facilities were equivalent McKissick v. Carmichael rules that facilities were not equivalent (In September 1951 Edward Diggs is enrolled in medical school) First black students graduate from law school First undergraduate black student is enrolled First black faculty member is appointed Food workers' strike DTH/MARY JANE KATZ ENGAGE. ENRICH. ENROLL. Which of over 300 courses will engage your interest this summer? HC* GEORGETOWN UO SUMMER SCHOOL Ready to enroll? Check out our website to learn more about undergraduate and graduate day and evening courses, high school programs, and partial-tuition scholarships. On-campus housing is available. Enrich your educational experience over three convenient sessions: PRE SESSION: MAY 23 -JUNE 17 l IST SESSION: JUNE 6 - JULY 8 2ND SESSION: JULY 11 - AUGUST 12 " Jf http://summerschool.georgetown.edu CONTACT: SUMMERtg'GEORGETOWN.EDU , ■.'%: W _ Ht -A JjSSgL DTH FILE PHOTO Students eat in Lenoir Dining Hall in 1966, three years before state troopers took over campus on the orders of then-Gov. Robert Scott. Activism aided dining hall strike BYTORRYE JONES ASSISTANT FEATURES EDITOR Fistfights, overturned tables and food throwing marked the scene at Lenoir Dining Hall on March 5,1969. But Buck Goldstein, a UNC junior at the time, said his most memorable moment was when armed state troopers took over campus, following the orders of Gov. Robert Scott to keep guard. The outbreak stemmed from a strike in February of 140 food service workers who claimed that previous efforts to bring atten tion to their problems with racism and exploitation were ignored by University officials. The strike ended in late March, when Scott announced that all of the lowest-paid state workers would receive raises. But it took a month of strife to reach this conclusion. “It was quite a time,” said Virginia Carson, a sophomore at UNC dur ing the strike and now director of the Campus Y. “For workers to assert their rights, it came threaten ing to folks who had been in charge of things for a very long time. They weren’t too keen on that” Workers who were mostly black women demanded better working conditions and a pay raise from $1.60 to SI.BO. Grievances also included a request for courtesy titles of Mr. or Miss for each worker, a lack of black supervisors and a dislike of UNC Food Service Director George Prillaman. The workers teamed up with leaders of the Black Student Movement, urging them and other students to boycott the dining halls until their needs were met. Elizabeth Brooks, one of the strik ing workers who worked in the Pine Room cafeteria, told The (Raleigh) News & Observer in March 1969 that she and her co-workers would not return to work until the food service director was fired. She said she had a check stub showing that she worked 105 hours in two weeks and received no over time compensation. “We just can’t go back on a lot of promises,” Brooks said in the interview. ©ljp iaily Hrd With hardly any staff, University officials were forced to shut down the four campus dining halls Chase Cafeteria, Lenoir Dining Hall, Pine Room and the Monogram Club. This angered many students, who had to find alternate places to eat. Fearing more outbreaks of violence, Scott ordered that Lenoir be reopened. He also called about 350 National Guard members to stay on call in Durham in case riots escalated. Although University officials hired about 60 students and several cafeteria supervisors to man the caf eteria lines and help cook at Lenoir for $1.60 an hour, it was still hard to get a meal on campus, Carson said. Student groups such as BSM and the YMCA on campus started a “slowdown” in the cafeteria’s serv ing lines where students walked through lines slowly so fewer could be served —a successful attempt to reduce the number of students who ate at Lenoir. Workers and BSM members also set up a “Freedom Kitchen” in Manning Hall, where they served lunch and dinner to students sup porting their cause. Norman Gustaveson, who was a YMCA director at the Campus Y at the time, said he’s sure workers at UNC today are still not getting a fair shake. “(The strike) illustrated a deep er problem that is still persistent today,” he said. “Often, service workers at the University have tal ents and possibilities that call for far more opportunity than what they are engaged in.” Goldstein said the success of the strike was due to the remark able leadership of the workers and students. “It was on the one hand, a very empowering time where I think students had the sense of responsibility to do things right.” “Students had, for the same reason, a sense of what you said and what you did could make a difference,” he said. “People were watching, the press was watching, the state and even the nation was watching the stakes were high.” Contact the Features Editor atfeatures@unc.edu.
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Feb. 28, 2005, edition 1
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