Page 2
University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, Oct. 2, 1962
The Lesson of Oxford
"Demonstrators threw a 'Molotov cocktail' into a company of troops . . ."
into a company of troops "Truckload after truckload of troops poured into courthouse square. Ten army helicopters circled overhead."
"... troops with fixed bayonets moved out to break up the marauding demonstrators."
The answer will depend largely on who the elected state and local officials are at the time. If people like Gov. Ross Barnett still are in power, more bloodshed can probably be expected.
MANY AMERICANS, when they read these descriptions of the riots in Oxford, Miss., in their Monday newspaper, found it difficult to imagine that such events could occur in the United States. Many are now wondering if the same pattern will be repeated when desegregation is attempted in other towns in the Deep South.
It is clear that a large part of the blame for the Oxford riots can be placed on Gov. Barnett. He took no steps to prepare the people of Mississippi for desegregation; in fact, even after the Oxford riots and the entrance of federal troops, he still is claiming that segregation can be maintained.
EVEN WORSE, he indirectly approved of the violence by withdrawing state police when the riot was in progress, despite his promise to the federal government that Mississippi could and would maintain law and order.
In contrast, the results of enlightened leadership can be seen in the Atlanta situation a year ago. In Atlanta, public school and city officials, when they could fight desegregation no longer in the courts, accepted this fact and began a campaign to prepare the citizens of Georgia for desegregation. When desegregation actually occurred, plenty of police were on hand to stop potential trouble.
Oxford, it will be pointed out, is not the same as Atlanta. Atlanta is a fast-growing, industrialized city with considerable Northern influences, while Oxford is a small town in the heart of rural northern Mississippi.
YET THE POTENTIAL violence was present in both cities, and the difference in results can be largely credited or blamed on the elected officials. One can only wonder what would have occurred had Marvin Griffin still been Georgia's governor when Atlanta desegregated.
Gov Barnett may think he has a lifetime job as Governor if he wants it, and the success of Gov. Orval Faubus in Arkansas may bear this out. On the other hand, the defeat of ex-Gov. Griffin for the Democratic nomination this summer in Georgia may indicate that the most vocal racist does not always win, even in the Deep South.
Whether or not he has a lifetime job, Gov. Barnett has accomplished several things. He has dirtied the already-tarnished image of his state throughout the world. He has done immeasurable harm to the University of Mississippi, which is now threatened with loss of accreditation because of political meddling in its affairs. He has hurt the United States in its struggle with Russian communism in the new nations of Africa and Asia. And he has probably set back the cause for which he claimed he was fighting-state's rights by showing that state officials either will not or cannot maintain law and order in their own state.
GOV. BARNETT apparently didn't learn anything from Little Rock, and it seems he still hasn't learned anything from Oxford. Whether this holds true for other Southern officials remains to be seen.
Alabama and South Carolina now are the only states which have made no move toward desegregation, and Gov. John Patterson of Alabama has been the most vocal defender of Gov. Barnett since the Oxford riots. Alabama, too, will be desegregating in the near future. It is to be hoped that Gov. Patterson's defenses of Barnett are mere campaign speeches rather than indications of what will occur in Alabama.
—Clayton Keller
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
Cloistered Sun Dial
Editors
I realize that in this advanced age of computers and highly complicated mechanisms man does not need the simple time calibration of a sun dial. However, this instrument was a gift to the University and should be treated with the respect due its donors, the class of 1899. At present the sun dial is inoperable because of its cloistered location.
It is too bad the University is so busy removing the old to make way for the new that it forgets the small gifts miraculously intact. Namely—the sun dial of the University of Kansas.
Surely, if one entire building can be removed from the campus, someone, somewhere, should care enough to move the sun dial out into the sun.
Rebecca D. Hathaway
Lawrence freshman
*   *   *
Unwanted Inserts
Thursday evening, as is my habit, I picked up a copy of the Daily Kansas while walking along Jayhawk Boulevard. Nearly folded in the paper was a copy of the interesting and imposing document entitled "The Church Historically Traced." Being somewhat interested in the church, history, and tracing in general, I examined the
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
tristweek 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711. news room Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service and NCAA. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $3 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the Sundays, University holidays, and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
... Letters ...
remaining copies in the dispensing shelf and found, to my intense delight, that each of the copies held a similar tract. This fact forced me to conclude that someone had put them there.
Certainly these pompous pamphlets weren't included with the approval of a state and student supported editor in a state and student supported newspaper. I doubt that the dictum of the separation of sect and state has fallen into that much disrepute. Certainly it was not the author, Mr. Barber, or his apostolic following which inserted this yellow journalism in every copy of the Daily Kansan. Even the select of God are incapable of such a task. You see, Mr. Editor, I am stumped. Of cause, if this is simply the first in a series of tracts to be distributed in the Daily Kansan by representative religious blocs within the student body, I can scarcely request a screeching halt. If this is not the case, Mr. Editor, I trust that your readers will not be bludgeoned into religious submission by recurrent blitherings from scurrilous sects.
Editor's note; The literature which several Daily Kansan readers found inserted in their papers was not put there by the Daily Kansan staff. The staff, too, is extremely interested in ending the insertion of this unwanted material in the Daily Kansan.
Please clear up the arcane appearance of this insert in your newspaper. It has upset my life. Bon Dwells
Ron Dwelle
Any material readers found in their copies was inserted without the knowledge or consent of the staff, after the papers were delivered from the pressroom to the distribution boxes. This was pointed out in front-page articles last Wednesday and yesterday.
Anyone who has information which may help the Daily Kansan staff learn who is inserting this material is requested to telephone the Daily Kansan, extension 711 or 376, or the KU Police Department, extension 701.
"Choral Group" Slammed Editor;
Often in the confusion of this rapidly expanding University, talent goes unnoticed and unpraised. This may be the first of many articles written to rectify such a damning situation.
YESTERDAY EVENING the "Naughty Ninety" lustily (not to be confused with "lust," that is, to desire — there was nothing desirable about this performance) lifted their voices in song. Although this choral group was not identified, their center of activity was near the Kappa Alpha Theta house. They were accompanied by howling dogs, yelling boys, and firecrackers. Perhaps this was a form of a Greek "Chinese New Year."
One of the more popular songs which they sang to the boys was about their "hairy chests." As the above sentence indicates, your reporter was confused concerning the ownership of these "hairy chests." Did they belong to the young ladies or did they belong to the young gentlemen? It may well be that my failure in discrimination was the result of the hour — 1:30 a.m.
ALTHOUGH THE MUSIC was terrible, I am not criticizing the music, only the inappropriateness of the place and the hour. In this particular area of Lawrence live many married couples with young children. At least one small baby was awakened in tears as a result of this din. Also, in approximately the same block as the disturbance is a rest home. I feel confident that the noise did not contribute to a restful night by the occupants of this home.
In order not to crush such budding musical talent, I would like to suggest a more appropriate place for the presentation of these musical fares: the "Singing Silo." Without disturbing too greatly those who peacefully repose, at the Silo these cats could howl to their hearts' content about their hairy chests.
Name withheld upon request
"WELL, I SEE YOU DIDN'T GET HIM TO RAISE YERGRADE."
COMMENT
Spotting Sub-Humans
You there, in Mississippi—ever heard of Marcello Malpighi? I'll give you a hint: he wasn't a Freedom Rider or a civil rights agitator or a Civil War general.
Marcello Malpighi was an anatomist who discovered, among other things, a layer of human skin we call the Malpighian Layer. According to Webster, the Layer is "composed of cells whose protoplasm has not yet changed to horny material."
A thin layer of cells containing pigments—and it's raising more hell in the United States today than all the hydrogen bombs and war threats put together.
ONE OTHER THING about our Layer: it contains the pigments that color human skin. This is why I'm rosy-pink and why Mao Tse-tung is a funny olive color and why James Meredith is black.
A thin layer of skin so important that the President of the United States canceled a weekend at Newport to address the nation.
A THIN LAYER so important that Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett has sworn to go to jail because of it.
A layer so important that an amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed to provide for it.
A layer so important that it caused two deaths at Oxford, Miss.
In the good old days of prejudice, discrimination was a little harder to establish. Take the Inquisition, for example. There was no way to tell, just by looking, who you were to put on the rack. You had to grovel around in garbage to be sure.
TODAY, THANKS TO our Malpighian Layer, prejudice is a lot simpler. Just by looking, you can tell who is sub-human and who is not.
I think we should establish new criteria for prejudice. It's too simple today—takes all the fun out of being a bigot.
I'm brown-haired, so let's say that all people with red, black or white hair are not human. Let's call them "hairies."
OR MAYBE ALL PEOPLE with protruding Achilles tendons should be put in their place. We don't want them marrying our daughters, do we? Let's call them "tendies."
Or let's segregate everybody whose big toe isn't one-fourth of an inch longer than their index toe. We can't trust them with the vote, can we? Let's call them "toesies."
It makes as much sense as segregation because of a thin piece of human flesh.
—Zeke Wigglesworth
BOOK REVIEWS
MAN: HIS FIRST MILLION YEARS, by Ashley Montagu (Signet Science Library, 60 cents) an anthropological history of mankind, tracing the development of language, cultivation of food, marital customs, law, art, religion, and science. Montagu wrote the UNESCO statement on race.-CMP