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University Daily Kansas Tuesday, April 26, 1967
The American Way
One year ago yesterday a group of white citizens of Poplarville, Miss., put their fair city on the map — by lynching Mack Charles Parker, a Negro.
Nothing has been done to bring the killers to trial, although a year has passed and the people of Poplarville know which of their neighbors were members of the lynch gang. A brutal double standard of justice still exists in that part of the U.S. Evidently all Americans don't really believe in the rights and freedoms set forth in our constitution.
- Parker, a 23-year-old truck driver who was being held on a charge of raping a white woman, was dragged from his jail cell, beaten, shot and tossed into the nearby Pearl River.
A COUNTY grand jury ignored the incident and failed to report that a prisoner was missing from the county jail.
A federal grand jury, made up of men from
southern Mississippi, announced that it could find no federal violations in the case.
A force of 60 FBI agents spent a month gathering evidence in the case. An FBI report lists 23 white men as "known and suspected participants in the abduction."
THE CASE is not yet dead. It may not be possible to ignore justice forever. The U.S. attorney general's office is studying possible further moves.
But even if something is done later on, the world has seen American democracy at work. A one-year look at our system of justice tells the story.
We are in a bitter fight—perhaps a fight for survival—to convince the "backward" peoples of the world that they should choose democracy over communism as their way of life.
It certainly helps our cause to have incidents like the Mack Parker case as commentaries on the wonderful American way.
Jack Harrison
More Exotic Music
Editor:
This is in answer to Mr. Jim Heaton's enlightening critique (UDK, April 20) of the Martin Denny Group. First of all, although the point of his letter was entirely lacking, it would appear as though Mr. Heaton is making a desperate attempt to be elevated to the heights of a great music critic along with John Husar.
DESPIE T his failure to state what his complaint actually was, I was very happy to see a student air his views as he did. I was somewhat disappointed, however, to see that the Senior Class of 1560 had the somewhat dubious distinction of claiming him as a member. It would appear that Mr. Heaton has fallen short — he has the musical intelligence of a high school junior.
Granted, modern jazz plays an important part in the American musical knowledge of today, but to say that there is no place for exotic sounds in our music is to display the same lack of intelligence as saying there is no place for Brahma, Ravel or Tschalovsky.
HAD MR. HEATON taken the time to investigate his figures a little. he would have found that like his beloved Modern Jazz Quartet and Count Basie, the Martin Denny concert also lost money. The only possible indication here is that, contrary to Mr. Heaton's assumption, exotic music is not dominating our American musical scene. Therefore, it would seem that we are not doomed to a death from exotic sounds until that "wonderful day" (which I assume marks that emergence of jazz as the dominating factor in American music), but rather we are free to enjoy any type of music we wish, whether it be classical, jazz, rock 'n roll or exotic.
Last of all, I am sorry to hear that Mr. Heaton was offended by the pictures of "limnidly, leering Hawaiian girls." Taking further note of his repulsion by an attractive, well-built American girl, Miss
...Letters ...
Sandy Warner, it would appear that it is he, not the fans of exotic music, who belongs in the class of mongoloids, Paranoiacs and Perverted Pimps.
Jan Banker
Russell senior
* * *
I should like to take this opportunity to explain the position of the ASC concerning Foreign student representation in the Student Council.
The Vote
In one of the meetings immediately following Mr. Kennedy's (former foreign student representative to the ASC) election to the ASC, Mr. Kennedy's privilege to vote was challenged. At the following meeting the chairman ruled that he, the chairman, had been incorrect to allow Mr. Kennedy a vote, and that the foreign student representatives would not be allowed voting privileges. The chair's decision was not challenged and was therefore upheld.
THERE IS good reason for this ruling and I cite it now. I differ with the opinions of the International Club's officers stated in their letter to the editor. Tuesday, April 19. There they stated the decision to disallow the foreign student representative a vote is unconstitutional. It is not! Nowhere in the Constitution can one find any provision for a foreign student academic division or a foreign student living district. Foreign students are represented as are the other members of the entire body poitie, ue Associated Students of the University of Kansas.
Dailu Hansan
The foreign students, however, are allowed another representative in the ASC as provided by Bill 2. But, because this representative is established nowhere in the constitution it would be clearly unconstitutional to allow this representative a vote!
AT ONE of the last meetings of the ASC a constitutional amendment that would establish the foreign students within their own
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone Viking 3-2700
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50th St., New York 22, N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the university year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays, and examination periods. Entered as second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.
Jack Morton ... Managing Editor
Ray Willer, Carol Heller, George DeBord and Carolyn Frailey, Assistant Manager, Editors; Jane Royal, City Editor; Ralph (Gabby) Wilson and Warren Haskins, Sports Editors; Carrie Edwards and Prisella Burton, Society Editors.
Telephone Being 3-2700
Extension 376, business office
Extension 376, business office
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Jack Morton
Douglas Yocom and Jack Harrison Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bruce Lewellyn Business Manager
Now, in another letter to the editor, Thursday, April 21, I have been credited with this quote, confused and prejudiced, unquote, statement. My direct reply must be that I did not provide you, Mr. Singh, with this launching pad for your poetic miscarriage. But may I return you the favor?
living-voting districts was called to a vote and was defeated. The status remains the same. However, during the debate someone attempted to draw an analogy to the situation that would be created if foreign students were to be exclusively represented. He tried to point up the implied segregation embodied within such a move, by paralleling it with the notorious Negro-white segregation situation. His statement was misconstrued, and the International Club's officers have attempted to indicate prejudice and confusion on the part of the council member who made the statement. I would like to ask the representatives of the foreign students to examine their own motives. Why is it that you do not accept the representatives who are elected from your respective living and academic divisions? Could the reasons be confusion and prejudice?
Indian Graduate Student and writer of letters:
No malice must I bear toward you.
Oh! Intelligent Jasbir Singh.
For you have not in the reading clinic
followed a valuable course. I'm trying to say
Rather be it remorse.
'cause your poetry is good,
but your reading is bad!
Rudy J. Vondracek
Rudy J. Vondracek Timken senior and ASC chairman
Sculpture Lover
Last Tuesday as I walked by the chancellor's fountain behind Watkins Hall, in the haunted hollow, I was amazed and amused to see atop that livid stone structure, where once only a nondescript gurgle spouted, a truly exciting piece of fountain sculpture.
To my surprise and disgust, it was gone on Wednesday. Why was this fine expression of individual initiative and creative endeavor destroyed so quickly — nipped in the proverbial bud, keeping from all but a few campus dwellers its vital message?
The bright aluminum pipe glistened as water flowed over its parts, and a high triumphal parabolic spray made the original gurge look like a mere blob or gulp.
Alas, I guess we will never know and maybe just as well, "For that which springs from the well of man's creation, only to be seen by a few, will come again in other forms to inspire the many."
Jim Gibran
New York senior
Short Ones
We have a few nominees for this last lecture series — if they'll promise to make it their last.
By Edward F. Grier
Associate Professor of English
NORMS FOR THE NOVEL (revised) by Harold C. Gardiner, S. J., Hanover House, $2.95.
In "Norms for the Novel" Father Gardiner mediates to the general reader the fruitful discussion of the nature and function of art which has been a feature of the maturing of American Catholic thought in the last twenty years. As chief literary reviewer for America, he found himself in the position of having, in effect, to tell his readers, shocked by Graham Greene, not to mention the stronger meat of Francois Mauriac, not to be more Catholic than the Pope. "Norms for the Novel" grew out of the resultant controversy.
FATHER GARDINER OF COURSE believes that sin is sin, but he insists that, since fiction must depict conflict, it inevitably must depict sin. Although he limits the degree and intention of the depiction, he is far from insisting that every novel show virtue triumphant and vice prostrate. The temper of his treatment may be gathered from his remark that "the critic who is dealing with adult literature cannot in all conscience be expected to assume a function that is the responsibility of the parents of impressionable children."
Father Gardiner rejects naturalistic fiction because it is false to the nature of man. He proposes a theory of "idealistic realism": that is, a realism which recognizes man for the weak creature that he is, but recognizes also that he is not wholly an animal, that he is not a mere victim, that he has, broadly speaking, spiritual capacities and a purpose in life. In the latter part of his brief essay he urges the character of fiction as religious and moral. He does mean that literature need deal with explicitly religious topics — salvation, for example — nor that fiction should be didactic. What he means is that, although literature is and should be designed to give pleasure, it is implicitly and unavoidably concerned with morality. He believes that fiction based on a principle of idealistic realism can illuminate life for us, challenge our fixed responses to experience, and renew the common moral culture which is significantly disappearing from the contemporary world.
NORMS FOR THE NOVEL may not please every reader. Secularists may snort at Father Gardiner's insistence that man is "immersed in the flesh, but constituted by the spirit; occupied with matter, but drawn toward God." The serious student of literature may regret that he has chosen to pass over the questions of style and form. In particular readers who are not afraid of experimentalism may regret his evident admiration for Van Wyck Brooks and J. Donald Adams, who, however sound their morality (this reader thinks it is sound), are prime examples of ossified taste. One may also wish that he had not chosen to confine himself chiefly to what Allan Tate has called "good' popular fiction."
But Father Gardiner had an audience in mind, and he is dealing with a problem which is perennial for readers who accept traditional morality. His essay, in particular the tone it takes toward the function of fiction, is also strikingly in key with that of recent criticism and of fiction itself (Faulkner, for example) as the novel moves from naturalistic treatment of sociological material to a more profound grasp of the human situation. "Norms for the Novel," despite its misleading title, is a liberal and humane book. It has in it the heart of the matter.
Worth Repeating
The Ph.D. of today is likely to become the bureaucrat of tomorrow.—James B. Conant
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