JAMES BEVEL
Sees New Rights Fight
Bu Lee Burd
Birmingham '63, Selma '65, Chicago '66 . . . The Rev. James Bevel continues his quest "for a consensus of reason."
"The civil rights struggle is over," Rev. Bevel, top lieutenant of Dr. Martin Luther King, told 200 KU students yesterday.
"We now must wage our battle for economic gains—jobs, wages, housing, education—and eventually to win dignity and reason for all Americans."
Bevel, chief organizer of the Selma demonstrations and 1963 voter registration drive in Birmingham, is currently working with the Rev. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to organize an SCLC movement in Chicago.
"NON-VIOLENCE IS the key, but it's a principle, not a tactic," Bevel said.
"We can use non-violent pressures to win jobs or education in Chicago just as well as we could to defeat 'Jim Clark' in the South.
"Non-violence is merely people reasoning with one another, whatever form that might take." Bevel said. "If we can get people to agree on the principle of non-violence, rather than its use as a tactic, then our specific methods for solving problems will come as second nature."
Bevel said he believes in "the sacredness of human life," and insisted that; contemporary problems as Viet Nam and civil rights have common roots in a "profound disrespect for people.
"IN A COUPLE OF YEARS, if our economic programs in Chicago and other cities have worked out, I want to concentrate on extending the non-violent method between nations.
"Take the draft for example. Most every nation in the world builds its armies by this method. And most every young man doesn't want to serve for his nation, but he does because he's scared he'll be thrown in jail. It's surprising to me that there hasn't been a movement to consolidate the voices of these young men.
"I wouldn't serve in Viet Nam. It's insulting to be asked to go out and murder people," Bevel said. "If we can get everyone to believe that murder is bad, we have a consensus of reason from which we can overcome the problems of war—just as we got the American people to agree that voting restrictions were bad and won the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
PROBLEMS IN CHICAGO and elsewhere can always be traced to a small number of sources.
Take A Study Break! Come to A Movie!
"People tell us that we are fighting the whole power structure in Chicago, but that just isn't true. Only a comparatively small number of powerful men profit from the slums, while most of them suffer."
"Maybe the slum landlords benefit, but Standard Oil, for example, loses because Negroes and poor whites don't make enough money to buy gasoline. We get a lot of support from the so-called 'power structure.'
"Our biggest problem is not in finding ways to bring down 'power structures,' it is rather mobilizing the people who have the courage to fight them. Everybody is scared, but we are building a movement out of scared people.
"You've always got to build a mass consensus," Bevel said. "Politicians and legislators won't do it for you. When we met with President Kennedy, he assured us the time was not ripe for civil rights. That was what the men at Harvard, Yale and Princeton told him. So we demonstrated, and then Mr. Kennedy decided he would write a civil rights bill.
"WE WENT TO LBJ, who is a great talker. He agreed that there was a need for a voting bill, but
"I've been telling the Chicago Negroes, 'do you want to get rid of (School Supt. Benjamin C.) Willis, or do you want good education?' Concentrating too much on Willis is like knocking off the chiefs instead of educating the Indians. Down South we didn't say, 'Get rid of Jim Clark.' We said 'Let us vote.'
"We've got to deal creatively with our problems, or there will be violence. If we don't build cities where Negroes are respected, we'll get Watts and Rochester all over again."
"When people are radically evil, you've got to be radically loving. We are trying to build strength and character in the people. Then they will decide on the forms they want to use." Bevel said.
he said there was nothing he could do about it. We went out and won, the consensus he needed."
Chicago schools are Bevel's first target there. "The issues must not be obscured." Bevel said.
Daily Kansan
Wednesday, February 16, 1966
9
SPACE CENTER, Houston — (UPI)—Dangling at the end of a 75-foot lifeline, astronaut David Scott will "walk" almost twice around the world for about two hours on the Gemini 8 flight in man's most ambitious space solo.
Astronaut to Walk 2 Hours
Federal space agency's officials at the Manned Spacecraft Center disclosed details of the plans to send Scott on his 17,500-mile-an-hour spacewalk about 20 hours after the Gemini 8 capsule blasts into the heavens sometime late next month with command pilot Neil Armstrong at the controls.
The three-day flight was tentatively set for about March 15, but target satellite problems encountered in tests at Tullahoma, Tenn., last Saturday could cause a delay.
Flintstone on Skis
Although skis were believed used in the Stone Age, sport skiing was developed about 100 years ago when Sondre Nordheim of Norway learned that by binding ones heels to the skis fast turns on snow were possible, according to the Norwegian National Travel Office.
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