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THE DAILY TAK HEEL
76 Years of Editorial Freedom
Bill Amlong, Editor
Don Walton, Business Manager
.Non-Involved
Mockery
To
The memory of the Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr., the non
violent crusader for racial equali
ty, is being profaned.
This is not being done necessar
ily, by the Black people throughout
this nation who are rioting.
Instead, it is being done by
those white "moderates' who keep
praising Dr. King's non-violence,
but who neglect to take any
positive action toward achieving
his goal of racial equality.
And while it is true that Dr.
King did abhor violence, it is also
true that he was perhaps even
more strongly opposed to racism.
And if we hear one more white
moderate tell us that the violence
that is erupting throughout this
country now is simply "black
racism," we may vomit.
For it is these white moderates
who must bear a great deal of
the blame for what is happening
in American today.
They have sat back, mouthing
pious and well-intentioned tidibts
of liberalism, but neglecting to put
anything on the line for racial
equality. .
And it should be painfully ap
parent by now that all of their
good intentions and deep-down f eel-
'intrc nf hrnthfrhnnrl are. at the
f nittyritty level; 'completely h
relevant.
In fact, they are worse than
irrelevant: they are rankly
hypocritical.
Take Chapel Hill for example.
It was very well and good that
more than 600 students, faculty arid
townspeople among them
Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson and
Consolidated University President
William C. Friday marched
from Y Court to the First Baptist
Church Sunday to pay tribute to
the slain civil rights leader.
It was equally nice in a white
liberal sort of way that some
2,000 persons filled Memorial Hall
Monday morning, expressed their
grief over Dr. King's murder and
sang "We Shall Overcome."
The time has come, however,
for the singing to cease and the
overcoming to begin.
And if we are to overcome
especially in this town of Chapel
Hill this University is going
to have to lend leadership and sup
port. And by leadership, we " don't
mean that this University has any
place telling Black students how
equal they are going to be: instead,
this University should lead the
white people of Chapel Hill into
the 1960's, beginning with exertion
of pressure on the Board of
Aldermen to adopt an open housing
ordinance.
.
THIS UNIVERSITY should lend
economic leadership and support
Dy Deginning to pay its Negro
employees a decent wage, and by
white people of Chapel Hill into
hiring them in other than menial
capacities.
.Were it to do this, since it is
by far the largest employer in
town, it could raise the entire wage
scale for Chapel Hill and Carrboro
black people.
This University should lend
leadership and support to in
tegration by openly endorsing and
supporting the Carolina Talent
Search which, shamefully, had,
to be financed by Student Govern
ment funds alone instead of
spewing forth platitiudes about
how such a program would
discriminate against whites.
Pamela Hawkins, Associate Editor
Terry Gingras, Managing Editor
Rebel Good, News Editor
Kermit Buckner, Advertising Manager
Monrning
Dr. Kim
These are just some of the ways
in which this University should
begin to get involved with the Civil
Rights movement involved like,
it's never been before.
AND UNTIL IT. does get in
volved, until it really does start
to do something about discrimina
tion and economic inequality in
Chapel Hill, it is going to continue
to be a bastion of , the kind of
v aloof white liberalism that is not
at all in the context of its great
ness, nor in the tradition establish
ed here by Dr. Frank Porter
Graham, the Consolidated
University's first president and
foremost advocate of human
rights.
And until this University does
get involved, we don't want to hear
any more about-how liberal it is,
and we don't want to see any more
predominantly white marches and
memorial services for Dr. King.
His memory deserves much
more than such mockery.
MEANWHILE, NEITHER do
we want to hear any more
platitudes about "law and order."
It seems to be quite fashionable
to deplore Black peoples' lack of
respect for law and order, as
by ihepots
But look at law and order from
a Black man's point of view.
The only thing the law means
to a great many of this nation's
Negroes is that some .white cop
comes down to a ghetto on a Satur
day night and arrests somebody
on drunk and disorderly charges,
maybe slapping him around a bit
in the process.
So scratch any great respect
they're supposed to have for police
offices.
Or consider the rights of , pro
perty, rights which are so often
spoken of in the law and order
discussions. And consider that very
few Negroes own property.
- - -
THE IDEAL, OF course, is that
Negroes should have respect for
laws, rights and such.
The truth, however, is that these
laws and rights serve to oppress
rather than to benefit them.
Therefore they can hardly be ex
pected to embrace, lovingly, such
a legal system.
The ideal could be attained,
however, if the laws were extended
to protect Negroes as well as white
businessmen. Open Housing
legislation is an example of the
kind of laws which are needed
before the system can begin to
benefit Negroes, thereby earning
their respect for it.
But as long as Negroes are pro-
secuted but not protected, by the
laws il does't make sense to
talk about they're respecting
them.
And as long as predominantly
white legislative bodies, such as
both Congress and the Chapel Hill
Board of Aldermen, refuse to act
favorably on Civil Rights legisla
tion the only lobby open to
Negroes will continue to be the
street, the only effective political
tactic to be a brick put through
a window.
And if white America doesn't
wake up to this fact, she's sure
as hell going to be killed in her
sleep.
4k 94 fa
We White Can Learn
And Can Be Decent
To The Editor:
Since leaving the memorial service
for Martin Luther King at Memorial
Hall a few minutes ago, I have run
into two markedly different responses
to the remarks made by James Robert
Wagoner. As I walked back .toward my
office I talked with a couple who essen
tially agreed with me, and then a few
minutes later ran into-some people who
had a strikingly different reaction to
his words. Since this difference of un
derstanding may well be widespread,
I would like to express my in
terpretation. Mr. Wagoner said the white people
had done poorly by the black people
of this community, and country, and
around the world. He said the black
people were on the, verge of reacting
to mis by destroying the white people.
He said this community could exercise
leadership ,in creating a Situation in
' '" Which an 'alternative ;6Md be peached.
He said a number of other things, but
these breif lines connote the parts of
his address which seemed to me to
dead to the alternative interpretations.
Mr. Wagoner's words were bitter and
angry ones. They carried a threat of
future violence. They were demanding
in that they called for a major change
of behavior on the part of the University,
and of the white community. On the
other hand, his tone of voice was con
Dastardly Deed
. . .
To Silent Saim
To The Editor
If you haven't already, go see the
paint job somebody did on Silent Sam,
hurry, because it's being scrubbed away
-now. '"'
It's like expecting to see a clown's
face and instead finding a grinning
skull.
The campus police don't know who
did it. They discovered it at 4:14 Sunday
morning.
Ah, the harmless pranks of
schoolboys! My word yes.
Please find the ones who did it and
lock them away in padded cells, and
when you pass by their cells speak
softly so they will not howl and jerk
about on the floor, because they've got
to be very, very crazy. Look at Sam
and you'll know why.
The only other possibility is that they
were only temporarily maddened by
- anger and blind vengefumess, perhaps.
Carzy! That's the only word for what
they did to Sam.
People going to the Folk Music
Festival at GM Sunday afternoon stopped
to look. Tfaev didn't say much.
A boy wearing sunglasses and a girl
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From the Temple University News
trolled, his thoughts were reasoned, and
his demeanor was one of concern. In
circumstances in which many would vent
anger by attempting to hurt others,
he spoke what seems to me to be
truth. When others would give up efforts
to achieve reconciliation, he tried to
tell us what it will take to find our
way out of the . dilemma history and
our ancestors left us in. Whereas he
could have led the Litany and left us
feeling that we had done something im
portant, he chose to speak from his
own heart and try to achieve something
really of value.
This black man, at a time of terrible
tragedy for himself and all of us, but
a time when he could easily have said,
"There is no hope", expressed his con
fidence and trust that we who are white
can learn, and can change, can be decent
to our fellow men. Despite all the
evidence - he might : well , have used to
reach the contrary conclusion, he
asserted with has addressto us t h a t
ihe was willing to believe that we could
;face truth, and deal with people honestly,
and, in all of its meaning, love our
fellow man. I think he did us great
honor, and I hope we cart live up to
it
T John P. Fflley, MJ).
Associate Professor
r School of Public Health
in a flowerirint dress walked up to
Sam slowly, holding hands their faces
frozen in identical dumb, open-mouthed
stares..
There was red paint on Sam's face
and chest and legs. Not blood red. Make
believe, candy-cane red,
f There was green paint on the rolled
blanket over his shoulder. There was
brown paint all around the base, and
-splattered red and green paint on the
plaque that Shows a woman calling a
boy away from his books and giving
firm a sword.
? Red paint, orange paint, green, yel
low, brown paint. On the back of the
base, a red hammer and sickle. On the
front, in green, tins: "Who did it, E2i?"
" Students have always played tricks
on Sam and be has always borne them
with quiet good humor. There have been
balloons tied to the barrel of his rifle
and feathers stuck on his hat He has
keen festooned with toilet paper after
Tar Heel victories and with flowers in
the spring. The one tiling all the good
jokes on Sam have had in common
is that they were labors of love.
; But now he has been smeared and
splattered, and it seems a work of
neither love nor even of hate but of
-sheer unreason.
And maybe the way to understand
& is to see it not as the work of
people but of a thing, of irrationality,
flf this understanding is right, then
It doesn't matter whether the ones who
4id it were students, or whether they
Were white, black or multi-colored like
Sam. What matters is that they were
infected with the same dank, poisonous
,r mat choked and crazed a man
o 5A. m rifle in Memphis, that
- tin 1 1 1 a. -
- ,s through the streets of Washington
Durham and Raleigh.
NTow, it seems, a whiff of it has
blown 'into Chapel Hill and splattered
SUent Sam with paint.
Mike Jennings
Raw Hatred Amd
PoMiieai
By WAYNE KING
Special To The Daily Tar Heel
(Editor's Note: Wayne King, past
editor of the DTH, is metropolitan bureau
chief for the Detroit Free Press. As
a student and correspondent for
Newsweek Magazine, King has covered
demonstrations and riots at Ole Miss,
Birmingham, Savannah and other south
ern cities.)
It was Hemingway, as I remember
who said that courage is grace under
pressure. I remembered the quotation
Sunday when I wandered over to GM to
hear the lawn concert somebody told
me was being held.
I came over with vague remem
brances of .emerald green grass that
smell ed so good you could take a big
bite out of it; a pleasant, sunny Sunday
screen door summer and all that. Silent
Sam, I'd noticed in the morning, had
been, as the administration would put
it, "defaced." I didn't think the old
boy looked bad at all in fact, I assumed
the day-glo decoration had been applied
by a Black and that it was all nicely
sympbolic: Silent Sam, the symbol of
the dead confereracy, and thus the sym
bol of all that's wrong with Chapel
HOI, now looked like be was wearing
an African mu-mu.
Then I noticed that there was , no
crowd on the lawn, just a few scattered
guys and couples studying or lying in
the shade. I figured the concert had
been called off in memoriam to Dr.
King.
Out of respect, I thought.
"No," a guy named George La Monte,
who used to be my roommate, told
me. "They moved it inside because the
slack-jawed idiots think it might cause
a riot. -
That's when I remembered the quota
tion. . .a good one. . .especially for
catching the mood of the mior
catastrophe that was happening. Moving
that concert inside seemed the most
graceless, and the most gutless, thing
I could remember happening in Chapel
ttm . "
Hill.
It was not true, of course
Thousands
of gutless, graceless, outrageously stupid
things have been done in Chapel Hill
and will continue to be, no doubt. But
this One seemed particularly sad. Things
are obviously an a sorry state in Chapel
Hill when the supposedly enlightened,
liberal segment of UNC is so bone-weary,
scared or just plain beaten that they
get spooked at the drop of the word
riot.
Earlier, LaMonte had been telling
me about a contingent of Blacks who
had marched up to the Deke house.
When they did, someone had poked a
shotgun or a rifle out of a window.
The leader of the Negro marchers said:
"I see your gun, but you ain't seen
ours yet." He asked what the name
of the place was and a Deke answered
Xlike they always do, like they're an
nouncing the second coming of Christ)
"This is the Deke House." Flourish of
trumpets.
The Black militant wasn't impressed.
He turned to his man and said: "Deke
House, man. Write that down."
Grace? Courage?
If the Deke with the rifle had possess
ed etiher one, he would have invited
the Negro in for a beer. As it was,
the Negro turned out to be the coolest -guy
around, the guy with more poise,
more grace, and thus more courage.
The same goes for the lawn concert.
If the organizers had had any grace,
they would have held the concert, and
if trouble had come, it would have
come. You don't avoid it by hiding
in the corner, pulling down the shades
and pretending you're having a great
time nervously applauding a strained
performance in a shadowy room.
But the frightening thing is that
Chapel Hill and the University have
allowed themselves to get into such a
mess that it might be too late even
for a massive infusion of grace.
The gutlessness of thousands who have .
gone before is now being visited, like
original sin, on the present population.
And theirs, in turn, will fall even more
heavily on those who are to come.
The handwriting has . been on the
wall in Chapel Hill hundreds. of times
before, and each time, it has been
whitewashed over, obliterated only to
appear again in an even more awesome
script.
The last time, a few years ago,
Negroes and whites hit the bricks in
the longest sustained avil rights
demonstration in modern U.. history.
Arrests mounted into four figures, the
demonstrators were beaten, doused with
ammonia, and in one staggering instance,
urinated on by a white waitress. Over
in Hillsioro, Judge Mallard handed down
sentences reminiscent more of Selma
than Chapel Hill.
And what did
University do?
Chapel Hill and the
They hid in a comer, called the
concerts indoors, and prayed for rain
and more policemen.
No wonder everybody is scared.
They've got damn good reason to be.
They've done nothing, they plan to do
nothing and thus they have no hope,
only fear a vague, debilitating angst
that has Dekes brandishing guns and
concerts being pulled indoors.
Out at a local restaruant, I'm told,
two shotguns and a pitchfork rest in
the corner. A few years ago, another
restuarant owner used a water hose
and his wife's bladder capacity to ward
off demonstrators.
But now it's guns and pitchforks.
A startling escalation over just a few
years. And the Negroes have upped the
ante, too. Remember when they just
sat down in the streets and tied up
a little traffic? In those days, THAT
scared hell out of the white folks.
But, still they dont do anything.
I passed a student on the dorner,
in front of Harry's, and he was collecting
signatures on a petition for open hous
ing. .
Open housing. In 1968, after all that
has gone before, one sad-eyed, bearded,
political science student sitting forlornly
on the corner, entreating passersby to
sign on the dotted line in support of
the Twentieth Century. And Bill Amlong,
th DTH editor, tells me that President
Friday and the rest haVent yet screwed
up enough courage to formally support
it.
Great God Almighty.
-
Oh, you might say, "this is different.
Things are bad because Dr. King was
killed, because he's a martyr, and our
colored people are mad about that."
You can forget that argument. In
the first place, most of the young Black
militants that are throwing those bricks
and firebombs thought of Dr.
King whom they sneeringly referred to
as "de Lawd" as just slightly more
likable than George Wallace.
Not, it's not grief, sorrow, or righteous
anger being poured out over the grave
of a fallen hero. What's happening in
the country and what is certain to happen
in Chapel Hill today or tomorrow or
next-year ifr nothing ., is done, as made
up of-vequal parts-raw hatred and a
feeling of political necessity.
Negroes are throwing bricks, setting
fires, looting stores and sniping 21
policemen because they can see no other
way to get whitey to do sometbir?
other than pull down the shades or
reach for a shotgun. That's the political
part the part many Negroes feel x
necessary to blast the President Fridr;
and the Sandy McClamrochs and iY.
rest out of their false feeling that A:
wlH all go away if you just stay indoor
long enough.
The hatred part is more complex.
That's the part that comes from be
insulted three times a day, seven dajs
a week, 52 weeks a year, every wakf-;f
moment from cradle to grave.
But you treat the colored deceX
you say?
Think about this a minute. You p
into a store tor try on a pair of shoes.
The clerk looks at you like you've g-
syphillis. You're embarrassed, so yea
pick out a pair of loafers without even
trying them on. Then the cashier wont
take your check until he checks your
driver's license, your student ID, your
birth certificate, your voter registration,
your bank and the birthmark juebeloTr
your navel.
What would your reaction be? You'd
want to burn the goddam store down,
right?
Now multiply that experience by, say,
ten thousand, and you begin to get
the idea of why "those people" are
throwing those bricks.
What do you do about it?
I don't know. But I do know that
you don't do It by buying a shotgun,
canceling a concert or mealymouthing
around on something as self-evident as
open housing.
it ail nas to do with courage nt
the courage to reach for a shotgun,
or call out the National Guard, but
the kind it takes to tell the State
Legislature and the racist restaur at
owners and the people "of the state
that the University and Chapel Hill is
going the whole route recruiting Negro
students actively, and giving them full
scholarships, thousands of them, not just
a few; boycotting every business that
even looks like it's discriminating; pro
viding jobs, housing and education in
massive doses; moving on every front,
not only with force, but with the grace
that comes when you do it because
it's right, .not because you're too scared
to do anything else.
Will it work?
Probably not, because its a atle
late in the development of a literate
community for anyone to even have
to say it.
... 1 ydnt say it in fact, if I didnt
hke those lawn concerts so much.