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Summer Session Kansan Tuesday, June 25, 1963
Social Revolution
Apparently, this country is headed towards a social revolution which will tear at the moral fiber of nearly every man, woman and child.
After more than a century of de jure and de facto slavery, the American Negro is literally marching towards a significant measure of equality. There will be no stopping this drive; it has been too long overdue.
BUT IT IS not enough to legislate equality in the Congress of the United States. Rights of any sort have meaning only when individuals are permitted to enjoy and exercise them.
We have had, since the Emancipation Proclamation, legislated equality. It is not enough. It has been meaningless; just so many words printed on paper.
The protest riots, concentrated in the South, warn all but the dogmatic ignorant that nothing short of the full exercise of his rights will satisfy the Negro. Nothing less should, for that matter.
AND LIKE the newly rich, the emancipated Negro will likely be guilty of excesses. This is not a prediction, just a reasonable projection of like- lihoods.
These excesses will cause increased bitterness among those already so inclined, and likely will cool the zeal of many who presently sympathize with the Negro's cause.
This will be especially so in the areas where there is a high percentage of Negroes in the population. People in these areas have the immediate
contact with the problems of transition. This closeness gives birth to anxieties.
IT WOULD BE nice to be able to say that the transition will be made without trouble. But revolution does not travel the road smoothly.
The coming social revolution will hammer and sledge its way through the barriers which have blocked the road of equal opportunity for the Negro. Such deep-rooted barriers will not fall without great battles.
And as the Negro works at tearing down the barriers, he will be denounced for excesses. But if he is "guilty" of such excesses, it will be the wage of necessity.
HE HAS WAITED patiently for the barriers to wither away with time. This failed. So now, he will pull, grab, and tug until his road of opportunities is as free of obstacles as the white man's.
In the coming revolution, "innocent bystanders" will have their toes tread on. But it will be the payment of past transgressions. Every white man is about to reap a partial harvest of the seed of hatred he has sown.
There will be those who say, "I had nothing to do with suppressing the Negro; It's not my fault."
Nothing could be further from the truth. Those who have not actively joined the Negro in his battle for what rightfully is his has done his labor in the suppression. —Terry Murphy
Independent Work, Competition Believed Kev Suicide Factors
By Delos Smith
NEW YORK—(UPI)A study of suicide records for a 12-year period reveals that physicians, dentists and lawyers destroyed themselves at a rate three times higher than that of white collar workers.
This bore out a scientific suspicion that professional people are more given to suicide than other groups, but there was a contradiction. During the same 12 years, school teachers killed themselves at a rate much below average.
PROF. P. H. BLACLY and H.
T. Osterud of the University of
Oregon in Portland checked over
all Oregon death certificates involving
suicide issued during 1950
through 1961. They would have
studied the rates for the whole country if that had been possible.
They couldn't because suicide records are not classified by occupations by official statistics-keepers, nor do organizations of professions keep such records. However, the scientific literature contains many references to suicides among professional people.
Blachly and Osterud, in reporting their findings to the New England Journal of Medicine, reminded that "factors leading to suicide are exceedingly complex," and therefore conclusions from statistical evidence are not wholly trustworthy.
NEVERTHELESS, psychiatric science has little doubt that virtually all suicides represent the
culmination of an emotional illness. Against this background, the scientists commented as follows:
"It is apparent that attorneys, dentists and physicians are engaged in activities that are highly independent. Other groups that share this characteristic and in which suicide is purportedly high, but for which we have no data, are brokers, commission salesmen and prostitutes.
"All these professions are characterized by marked dependence on individual performance, emphasis on individual prestige and frequent rivalry with other persons of the same profession in a setting in which such a rivalry may not be overtly expressed.
"I Was Doing A Little Slicing——"
"THE BUSINESS man is in much the same situation, but he is more likely to sell a product than himself. When he has difficulties he may be able to blame them on his product."
This left Blachly and Osterud with the task of explaining the exceptionally low rate in the profession of school-teaching. They suggest that "the continuing contact with healthy, growing children in a situation where one may regulate his emotional involvement may have a preventive effect on the development of depression.
"The results of the teachers' efforts show many more pupils who make gains than losses. This is not at all true for physicians, dentists and attorneys, and—neither do they have the emotional buffer provided by a hierarchy such as a school system.
"It is well known that alcoholism is a factor in about 20 per cent of suicides. It is common knowledge that some professional persons can drink and still hold a practice, whereas this is not possible for teachers working in a good school system."
Short Ones
***
Vivian Malone, one of three Negroes scheduled to enroll at the previously all-white University of Alabama:
"I am going to Alabama for the purpose of getting an education."
TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY, by John Steinbeck (Bantam, 75 cents).
Right about the time Steinbeck was receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature this non-fictional account of American travel appeared. The reviews were mixed, but the book is likely to hold up, for Steinbeck, even writing weakly, is a perceptive observer.
"Travels with Charley" takes Steinbeck and his dog "in search of America," through 40 states, from Long Island to Maine, through the Midwest to Chicago, to the Northwest through Minnesota, the Dakotas, Montana and Idaho, along the coast to San Francisco and Salinas, the "Steinbeck country," east through the Southwest to Texas, through the South and up the coast through Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Much of this is obvious, his observations on the South, for example. But it is overall a quiet, entertaining, reflective look at the land about which Steinbeck wrote so beautifully in the thirties.
* *
THE BIRTH OF BRITAIN, by Winston Churchill (Bantam, $1.25).
Now, to join Churchill's six-volume history of World War II in paperback, comes "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples." This is the first volume, and it is a real buy.
Churchill's approach is epic. In "The Birth of Britain" he recreates the early years of England, in the days of the barbarians, when Caesar and his legions marched in, when the Nordic hordes followed, when the Norman conquerors made Britain part of Europe. The story comes up to the discovery of the New World, and includes Richard the Lion-Hearted, the Crusades, King John and the Magna Carta, the Black Death and the War of the Roses.
* *
MY LIFE AND HARD TIMES, by James Thurber (Bantam Classics, 60 cents)—a reprint, newly styled, of the celebrated collection of writings by the late James Thurber. Here are some of Thurber's funniest and warmest sketches: "The Night the Bed Fell," "The Day the Dam Broke," "The Night the Ghost Got In," "University Days," "Draft Board Nights" and so on. Here are the celebrated illustrations: a whole town rushing madly from the coming flood, the botany professor quivering all over like Lionel Barrymore because Thurber couldn't see through a microscope, Thurber's dog Muggs, who bit people.
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AWAY ALL BOATS, by Kenneth Dodson (Bantam, 75 cents) a reprint of a paperback first published in 1956, about the time the film version appeared. "Away All Boats" is a good story of war, concerning the Navy's Attack Transport Service, which was in on so many landings in the Pacific. Its mood is different from several recent war novels, being essentially affirmative and concerned more with action at sea than abed.
THE AENEID, by Vergil (Bantam Classics)—a reprint, with a new cover, of an earlier Bantam Classic. The translation of this epic story is by T.H. Delabere-May, and the editing and an introduction are provided by Moses Hadas. For the uninitiated, "The Aeneid" is a chronicle of the Trojan hero who founded Rome, of his adventures and wanderings in the Mediterranean. This is one of the greatest of all classics.
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101 FREE PLANS FOR THE HANDY HOME-OWNER, by Walter Ian Fischam (Bantam, 75 cents)—a guide, well illustrated, by the home repair editor of the New York Daily News. Fischam provides descriptions, lists of needed materials, costs, tools needed, and where to write for more details.
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BY STARLIGHT, by Thomas Sancton (Bantam, 75 cents)a book that will sell, from the cover if for no other reason. It deals with a teenage boy, confused and mystified by life, and a woman in her thirties, loveless and frustrated and on the make.
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HIGH GEAR, edited by Evan Jones (Bantam Pathfinder, 45 cents) a series of stories about fast cars and fast car drivers. The writers include Bill Mauldin, James Thurber, William Saroyan, Cameron Hawley, Frank Luther Mott and John Steinbeck.
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THE COMMON SENSE BOOK OF PUPPY AND DOG CARE, by Harry Miller (Bantam. 50 cents)—A guide for dog-owners, with information on feeding, caring for pups, teaching dogs tricks, spaying, illness, care and grooming, housebreaking, and choosing breeds.
Summer Session Kansan University of Kansas student newspaper 111 Flint Hall Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
Managing Editor Terry Murphy
Staff Writer & Editor Linda Machin
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bob Brooks
FACULTY
Prof. James Dykes