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University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, Jan. 7, 1964
Two Chips
The Mummer's Parade, an annual event in Philadelphia, finally took place Jan. 4 under heavy police guard.
The police were there to enforce a double-barreled court order which banned blackface minstrels from the parade, and restrained both the NAACP and the Congress On Racial Equality from picketing the parade.
(Blackface minstrels are just that—men who have blackened their faces and donned the traditional colorful coats and trousers of the old touring minstrel shows.)
THE WHOLE HASSLE started in December when the parade marshall banned blackface marchers, a part of the Mummer's Parade for 64 years. He rescinded the ban after receiving a flood of protests from marching clubs.
THE NAACP then threatened to boycott and CORE threatened pickets.
An appeal was filed with the State Supreme Court, but the appeal will not be heard until March.
The NAACP promptly went to court asking for an order banning blackface minstrels from the parade—and got turned down.
Representatives from three religious groups then went to court seeking the double-barreled injunction—and they got it. The court said the facts presented to it showed "a clear and present danger of racial violence and possible bloodshed," and added that the court could not permit a blackface to march under his Constitutional rights when such marching could result in public disorder.
And the whole affair is disgusting.
IN THE FIRST place, why should the Philadelphia court, or any other, prohibit a man from exercising Constitutional rights simply because
to do so might prick someone else's hypersensitivity?
In the second, why should the Philadelphia court, or any other, prohibit anyone from picketing anything he wants to, for any reason? That right too is guaranteed in the Constitution.
And why should not blackface marchers be allowed anyway?
Because CORE and the NAACP do not like it? Nonsense.
GRANTED, THE NEGRO has a point, and a valid one, in that blackface marchers might add to the image and stereotype of the Negro, and these images must be broken down. They are, in fact, one of the largest single obstacles which the Negro must overcome in his rightful drive toward equality.
However, it seems to be stretching a point a bit far to insist that some man parading down a Philadelphia street with lampblack on his face is discriminatory, or is somehow detrimental to the Negro cause.
Negro cause.
We have stopped telling accent jokes, at least in public, because we didn't want to hurt someone's feelings. We have stopped telling jokes about religion, at least in public, because someone might be offended. And some slowdown in such jokes no doubt was needed, since many times the jokes were told with evident malice.
BUT FOR THE NAACP to go to court seeking an injunction against blackface marchers would be roughly analogous to President Johnson asking Congress for a law forbidding political cartoonists to use the rather large Presidential nose as a handy way to identify LBJ.
It would be nice if the Negro groups, regardless of their undeniably just cause, would quit walking around with a chip on each shoulder.
Blaine King
Gallows Made John Brown Hero When Battlefield Failed
By Patti Behen
John Brown's body lies a-mould'ring in the grave. His soul goes marching on.
And the Osawatomie martyrhero stands tall even today. His soul marches on through American literature, pages of history and tales of martyrdom.
Dedicated to the abolitionist cause, John Brown saw himself leading the slaves out of darkness, a fiery torch in his hand. He saw himself as the Moses of the Negro, with the God-given mission of ridding the slaves of their chains.
And this is the way legend sees him yet—a hero, a champion of freedom.
BUT JOHN BROWN is viewed in a different light by many historians. He was ironwilled, narrowly ignorant and obsessed with his one mission in life.
Becoming involved in questionable activities, including horse-stealing. Brown moved from Ohio to Kansas with a part of his large family. Perhaps he saw the situation in Kansas as part of his compelling mission. Perhaps he felt the hand of God was calling him to the troubled frontier.
But more likely he felt he was a failure and went looking for new horizons upon which to make his impact.
JOHN BROWN came to Kansas to "see if something would not turn up to his advantage." in the opinion of one of his daughters.
John Brown led a small band of abolitionists to Pottawatomie Creek one night and butchered five men believed to be pro-slaveryites.
Thus "Old Osawatomie Brown" made his entrance onto the stage of history. And the civil war which flared forth in 1856 continued in Kansas until it merged with the national Civil Wars a few years later.
ALL THESE events at first were not of national importance. Kansas was not the focal point of conflict. It was not the "last thread" which held the Union together.
BROWN HIMSELF knew the Kansas situation was being overrated; he was helping to overrate it. On several fund-raising trips to the East, he presented the situation so as best to benefit his campaign.
Yet "Bleeding Kansas" turned out to be a convenient, made-to-order political issue in the 1850's. Republican leaders blew up the situation, giving it a significance it did not have, and John Brown was seen as leading the conflict and pulling the nation closer to civil strife.
The imposing figure of John Brown was not yet important. Certainly neither civil strife in Kansas nor John Brown started the Civil War.
After the bloody collapse of the raid on Harper's Ferry, when it appeared that John Brown might be hanged for his actions, the argument was not about John Brown. He had become a symbol, a cipher.
To the South, Brown was the hated abolitionist. Antislavery northerners saw all the ideals they were fighting for enshrined in him.
AND THE whole nation turned curious eyes on this old man who was causing all the excitement.
The Kansas career of John Brown — horse-stealing and butchery — was pointed out. But John Brown had denied these things, and pictured himself as a mild man who did not like bloodshed.
Thus was created the martyr. We created him and history has kept him on the pedestal of martyrdom.
"I HAVE BEEN whipped as the saying is," he wrote to his wife, "but am sure I can recover all the lost capital occasioned by that disaster; by only hanging a few moments by the neck; and I feel quite determined to make the utmost possible out of a defeat."
On the day of Brown's execution, bells were tolled, guns were fired, flags were half-masted and meetings were held in various cities throughout the North.
And so he did. John Brown knew he was worth more to the abolitionist cause dangling from a rope than any other way.
RALPH WALDO Emerson compared the new martyr hero with Christ. He said that the "new saint awaiting his martyrdom, if he shall suffer, will make the gallows glorious like the cross."
And history has never forgotten him. Whatever his actual significance, he made his impact.
As one historian commented, "Grass grows more quickly over battlefields than over scaffolds."
Slight Change In The Slogan
Christmas Cheerless In Nation's Capital
By Larry Schmidt
There was something cold and lonely about Christmas time in Washington, D.C. Maybe it was simply that a national capital was mourning the loss of a young and energetic leader, but that answer won't quite suffice.
won't quite suffice.
The avenues were wide enough and busy. But the rows upon rows of heavy granite and marble buildings standing lifeless in frozen bureaucracy conveyed a sense of spiritual death.
THERE WERE FEW street decorations to cheer downtown shoppers. And the mechanical voices of public address system Salvation Army workers mingled with the hollow jangle of cash registers to drown out the true sounds of Christmas.
Much of the brighter side of Washington was lost in an abundance of contrasts.
While secretaries and friends echoed the familiar carols through the marble-columned congressional office buildings, the pro and con of business as usual isolated the men on the floors of the House and Senate.
THE NATIONAL SYMPHONY in Constitution Hall accompanied 115 voices in Handel's "Messiah." Outside, the night was filled with sirens and the reality of crime and death.
Cadets from the West Point military academy joined in a service of evensong at the great Washington Cathedral. But a steady downpour spotted their long grey line with flecks of mud, and the sermon was of cold war tensions tempered with the maintenance of spiritual values.
The bus depot was a chorus of holiday-bound travelers. In the adjoining restaurant, a soldier's dime urged the jukebox into the dreary "I'm 500 Miles From My Home."
BUT THE REAL conflict seemed to exist between the people themselves and the silent indifference of a government too much a part of their daily lives to be noticed.
The people of Washington, D.C., are no less human than folks anywhere else in America. Many of them, as public servants, take pride in living up to the label.
But there's something overly tangible about the exterior face of the government. Aside from the several truly beautiful structures, the houses of government appeared as so many great tombstones: immobile, unchanging, asleep.
Still they were inspiring. How better could the consistency of our institutions be depicted? Who does not sense awe and amazement in their presence?
Yet, where was Christmas? In the tree on the White House lawn? In the wreath on a congressman's office door? In the pealing of church bells across Pennsylvania Avenue or the brave notes of a street-corner trumpeter's carol?
Yes, of course. But these can be counted on one hand. In Weahing.
Yes, of course. But these can be counted. Christmas should be everywhere. In Washington, D.C., it was hard to find.
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