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University Daily Kansan Friday, Sept. 26, 19
The Land of the Free
The head of the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, Mr. E. R. Zook, was the author of several extraordinary statements yesterday.
Mr. Zook said he realizes that some Lawrence restaurants will not serve Negroes.
After a city-University conference two years ago, Mr. Zook explained, some restaurants began serving Negroes.
"We have worked on this problem on a gradual basis," he said. "If those people in that party on the Hill would go to the chancellor, they would find out that rushing this thing isn't going to do any good."
"If there is a lot of demanding made about it, the confusion will increase," he said.
Those are noble, moderate sentiments, despite the veiled threats. There are some missing facts, however. Facts like these:
Kansas was a free territory and a free state, standing with the Union in the Civil War. State law forbids racial discrimination in schools, public offices, universities, public conveyances, and "any place of public amusement or entertainment" which requires a state license. While restaurants are not mentioned specifically, the implication is clear.
Obviously, in the free state of Kansas, segregation is more than something read about in dispatches from the deep South.
"Those" people in "that" party...If that means the Group for the Improvement of Human Relations, its members consulted the chancellor on their program last year, and accepted modification.
It has been 90 years since the 14th amendment to the United States constitution was passed. Is 90 years sufficiently gradual, or would the restauranters like another century or two to prepare
public opinion? Apparently the local idea of agitation or "demanding" is any request for progress or amelioration of an injustice in racial problems.
We present nothing new—just a cry for common decency: A request that no university student should have to stand at the counter like a poor relation waiting for a handout, that no foreign student be humiliated by the ignorance of a waitress.
We have never heard a restaurant owner admit he was prejudiced. The pleas are "I can't be the first." or "I'd lose my business." Hogwash and balderdash!
We know at least one restaurant that has served Negroes for the past two years without incident. None of the holdouts is in danger of being the first.
Lose business? If every restaurant started serving Negroes, would people suddenly start taking all their meals at home? Hardly. The owner might lose the trade of the illiterate and the bigoted. If he is forced out of business by their loss, he is in the wrong business. He should be working for a White Citizens' Council somewhere south of here.
Few of our restaurant owners really know whether they would lose business, because they lack guts enough to try it. These same timorous merchants are probably making loud noises about the Little Rock trouble, and see no relation between that cancer and Lawrence's own malignancy.
In Arkansas, at least, they can claim a southern tradition of intolerance and tyranny. In Lawrence we have our own version, home-grown and free-lance, just as vicious, and just as stupid.
-A. J.
Open Stadium Later?
Another minor controversy has taken to the wind. This time students in the throes of self-pity are raising Cain about the football stadium opening too early.
Seemingly, these mal-treated fans find it impossible to arrive at the stadium at noon when the gates open, so for generations they have been exempt from the choice seats. Now, these tardyites went and wore their white shirts Saturday and still wound up in the corner. That has irked them.
For cons and cons our stadium has opened at noon and everybody appeared to be happy about it. Now that is changed. The dissatisfied spectators desire that the opening time be forwarded
to 12:30 p.m. to give late-comers a fairer grab for seats—white shirt or no white shirt.
This can lead to complications. Leave us surmise that the change in time went through as proposed. Students would have to come early to be first in line. And then a line would form for students who want to get in line. All these lines just might cause further havoc to our traffic and parking problem, with people running around trying to find the right line to get in line. Finally, the tardy-ites would be too late to even find the end of the line and would think up a new complaint.
A doctor warns that pony-tails may make you bald, because of strain on the scalp. But at least they keep your eyes open in class.
Right now we have enough dissension about student seating. Let's leave it go for a while.
—John Husar
Lancelot Lecher, the BMOC, is hoping for a wet winter. He wants Potter Lake full for his spring maneuvers.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
"TIME TO WAKE UP-- CAN I BORROW THESE FOR MY HISTORY CLASS?"
We don't wish any harm to anyone, but when we read about a 58-year-old breaking a hip with a hula hoop, we figure they deserve it.
A government agency says our economy would collapse if American women left their jobs, and the office misanthropy says it just might be worth it.
Short Ones
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
boundary, became bwnews 18, 1924,
triway 18, 1925, 16, 1912.
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Telephone Viking 3-2700 Extension 711 news
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Associated Collegiate Press.
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420 Madison Ave., New York,
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a semester or $6 a year in
Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except
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holidays, and examination periods. En-
trance is free. Subscription matter Sept. 17,
1910, at Lawrence, Ks. post office
under act of March 3, 1879.
Extension 111, news room Extension 376, business office
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Malsolm Applegate, Mansfield
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Malcolm Applegate ... Managing Editor
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bill Irving Business Manager
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Al Jones Editorial Editor
It Looks This Way . . .
This is a bit about the golden season. Although the clock of the year says late September, the sun skylarking with the clouds knows better. It's late summer, not autumn, and the days are near perfection.
By Al Jones
A walk under the trees is still a pleasant respite, though it isn't really hot. Equinox or no, the cicadas are still ripsawing the quiet nights, and the birds are lounging about as if winter would never arrive.
The breeze still comes from the south of the hill, and the girls wear their summer dresses with a balmy disregard for October.
Saturday afternoons in the stadium are still more sweat than shiver, and dreams of snowstorms and skating are in the closet with the woolens.
Walkers still dawdle through the grove, and a squirrel trots insolently along the rim of the sidewalk to inspect a young pine shrub.
There are just enough tired elm leaves littering the street to rustle your feet through, but no sign of the red-gold blaze of autumn.
In—how long? a week, a month?—autumn will come bugling in from Canada in a gaudy burst of color, and the ducks will start slanting down the flyways.
The air will clear and tingle, with a hint and a memory of winter's wind-knives, and the hills will be lit by that firebug, frost.
Then we'll hibernate in steam heat, with a twwinging memory of things undone—of walks and beach parties and bonfires, souvenirs we hold to warm our freezing fingers in the dead and dreary time of winter.
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