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University Daily Kansan Thursday, Oct. 24, 1963
An Answer?
"There is no question that racial tensions are eventually going to make life impossible for all of us unless we develop an educational program that enables the Negro to enter our society and the white man to place a high value on his entry."
This fearful statement is the key to a new proposal toward what one man feels may be the next step in our nation's current Negro revolt.
The man behind the idea is Joseph P. Lyford, an executive of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, and his demanding program, recently expressed in Saturday Review, looks like this:
Raise the compulsory school attendance age from 16 to 18.
- Decrease the ratio of teachers to pupils to one to 15.
- Provide special services for children who start their education with severe economic, psychological, or cultural handicaps.
The enormous cost of such an expanded system, says Lyford, could be financed by the government at three or four times the present level of our public education program if we could realize now that "more and better education is more important to our national security than bigger and cleaner bombs."
He calls, too, for a revised educational philosophy preparing young people "to achieve an independent position in adult life and to distinguish between sentimental fairy tales about America and current realities."
THOSE EDUCATED in such a manner, he feels, would be "emancipated from the sort of tribal attitudes that have turned Birmingham, Ala., into a fratricidal society."
These are radical ideas with widespread consequences and will meet with plenty of determined opposition, as well as with more than a few disbelieving guffaws. But change is nothing new in America, and education, though a laggard at first, now tends to lead the way.
IN 1950, for example, about one-fourth of the non-white population had attended high school or college, while twice as many white children did the same. Ten years later, four of every ten non-whites had attended some high school or college, compared to six of every ten in the white population.
between the qualifications of workers and hiring requirements steadily widens, and the Negro, educated or not, bears the heavier burden.
But, even as educational levels struggle upwards, automation and technology make the average job more complex. As a result, the gap
The non-white unemployment rate, almost double that of white job hunters, provides ample evidence to confirm this fact. And the unemployment situation shows little sign of immediate improvement for any segment of the working force.
Lyford, predicting a general unemployment level of 14 million by 1970, sees in this the possible downfall of the American system as a whole. He says the Negro merely has begun to react to the deteriorating conditions first because, being economically in the most exposed position, he is far more sensitive to the "shock signals that are traveling through the country."
His most frightening point is that if the Negro does not prevail over the forces that are driving him downward, the white Americans will go down with him.
THOUGH PROBABLY a gross overstatement of the situation, this prediction may well reflect a growing amount of pessimism in the general public attitude toward the Negro movement because of the uncertainty of its development and the possibility of its getting out of hand.
In fact, the prevailing tone of Lyford's suggestions is one of urgent necessity in avoidance of such threatening consequences. And here his recommendations will undoubtedly meet the greatest resistance should an attempt be made to convert them into public policy.
The practical citizen may think it fanciful enough to dream of replacing bombs with books, but making the transition from a defense industry budget to one centered around the lower income-producing educational system could be quite a nightmare in itself.
True, the economy may be at an important turning point, and education is without a doubt an imminent key to the future. But Mr. Lyford needs only to look at the progress of President Kennedy's civil rights legislation in Congress to realize that the American people are not about to be stamped into anything so closely connected with their personal sense of values.
This is not to say the proposals he suggests are not sound—certainly here is a logical means toward extending the Negro's campaign for freedom. But to hitch equality to such a potentially explosive process would be inviting other, possibly more frustrating problems that a more sensible approach might well avoid.
Larry Schmidt
"What A Dirty Trick, Sneaking Up On Us From Behind Like That!"
Dailij Hansan
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Negro Gets Up From a Bed of Indifference
Such a topic has a pointed lesson to the Negro. Observation has instructed me that religious loyalty is largely associated with the lower socio-economic classes—the position into which the Negro has been forced for decades. A legitimate question, then, is whether the Negro will remain faithful to the church after our cause is won, or abandon the church as no longer necessary.
The subject of the sermon was "The Other Side of Job." Job was the man who served God while he was poor as well as when he was rich.
BUT WHATEVER relationship may develop between the Negro and his church after full equality is achieved, it is clear
[Editor's Note: The following article was written by Lacy Banks, Kansas City, Mo., junior, who participated in the March on Washington in Augstr. Banks is a Negro, and the article below is his interpretation of the march, what it meant to his race, and what his race meant by marching, although many of the marchers were, of course, white]
Forty-two delegates to the "March on Washington" met at a Kansas City, Kan., church late in August of this year. The purpose—to have a worship service—a sermon and prayer.
By Lacy Banks
that the relationship between the Negro and the rest of society is not what it should be.
That was proven Aug. 28, when more than 200,000 demonstrators in the mammoth "March on Washington for jobs and freedom" choked the gates of Washington, D.C.
About 2000 buses (these figures vary according to sources), 21 special and 10 regular trains, 20 planes and hundreds of cars were used. The crowd was composed of representatives from every state in the union.
When I look at the March, I cannot help but consider the historical, economic, sociological issues involved. The Washington Protest was the zenith of all other demonstrations staged thus far and it inspired each demonstrator to leave with a story to tell: a story about a dream and a vision. The dream concerns a nation of democracy and brotherhood, concrete through and through. The vision is a prediction that that nation will be America. The dream is not to spontaneously fulfill itself alone. Neither will it come true overnight. Our period today is pregnant with a nation of true democracy and brotherhood.
At every period in history when the times were pregnant with freedom and progress, there was activity within and without when the times of deliverance were at hand.
America is the offspring of such a period. The activity was expressed in our forefathers' quest for freedom and independence, the British resistance, the American protest demonstrations against the Greenville Acts, the Townsend Acts, the Stamp Act, the tea tax, taxation without representation, etc. Frederick Douglass, the father of this protest movement said, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. Power conceded nothing without a demand. . . . Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get."
THERE ARE MANY people who underestimate the gravity of the Washington Movement. Some say that it was not a cry for deliverance but rather a sign. Others say that it was just the Negro's turning over in the bed of his subordinate status. Others
say that the March merely served as an outlet for the Negro's steam that has been built up for the last 244 years. Still others believe the March to be the "swan song" of our freedom march.
These are all grave underestimations. The March was not a weak sign but a strong cry for freedom. We are not turning over in the bed of our subordinate status, we are getting up from it.
Our sentiments are expressed in the classic speech by Martin Luther King when he said, "Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be no rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges." We were expecting a speech but not one like that. The gravity of the speech was so concentrated that it seemed to compensate for the 244 years of failures in protests or getting the message across for our part.
The dream he gave us is the
Sometimes we tried to pretend that the dream was real or at least to make it so. We conformed to American ideals. We cleaned our clothes, greased our ashy skin, learned about the poetry of Homer, mastered French, straightened our hair, use nadinola (skin whitener), only to no avail.
dream that we have dreamed all our lives.
The door of acceptance was slammed in our faces and we were told, like Jonathan Bean, who tried so desperately to see the king, that we did not have the right clothes for color came before character.
There are those who label us communists, warmongers, and other names. They say, "But things are much better for you now than they ever have been before. What are you hollering about"?
We "holler" because we measure America not by her achievement but by her potential. Louis E. Lomax expresses this idea a little better when he said in The Negro Revolt, "America is too good not to be better."
There are those who so often harp, "But you cause violence. You are unjustified in doing so.
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