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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, May 14, 1963
Great Debate
Must Have Rights, Too
The wages of more than 100 years of bigotry and discrimination are being paid in Birmingham, Ala.
It is tragic, but hatred fed and nursed by more than 100 years of treating men, women and children as sub-humans has shown its face in retribution.
ONLY A complete fool can doubt that continued discrimination will bring anything but more of the same and worse.
The Negro in the United States has never been given preferential treatment when it came time to defend the American way of life, to use a phrase which is quite popular with the superpatriots.
In 1941, he wasn't good enough to eat at lunch counters but he was well suited for frontline duty against the people who threatened his right to Live as a second class citizen in the United States.
AGAIN IN 1950 when there was more dirty work to be done, no one suggested that a Negro wasn't good enough to carry an M-1. No one denied him the honor of dying for his country.
It's about time now for some stand-patter to withdraw his head from the sand and point out that the Negro's record is not spotless. He will be so right. Being human, the Negro has not taken his role as a subhuman with complete passivity. But who can blame him? He has laid down his life for the principles of democracy, and now he wants to enjoy them.
More than anything else, the Negro wants the opportunities the white man has to live a free, prosperous life. But he has learned that unless he fights for the rights guaranteed him in the Constitution, the powers that be will ignore his troubles and suffering.
THE TRAGEDY of the 100-year epic is that the Negro has had to fight to secure the rights his white "brother" enjoys. None of us is without guilt. If the truth of proverbs could work alchemy, every house in the United States would be made of glass.
Apparently, the malarkey of "all things in due course," has failed to lull the sensory perceptions of the Negro. He heard it 20 years ago, and he hears it today. He's tired of waiting.
If you are looking for the "Why?" of the current problems, look around you. You don't need much imagination. Ask a few questions:
WOULD YOU trade places with Jackie Robinson, Floyd Patterson, or Rafer Johnson? Or maybe Ralph Bunche?
Would you fight the people who told you that your children must go to second-rate schools?
Would you obey the laws which serve to perpetuate a double standard?
If you have answered these questions with honesty, don't respond by heaping scorn on the South. They are learning the price you must pay for maintaining false standards.
IF A sense of justice fails to motivate you, perhaps fear will do the job. The Negro has tried appeal to reason. When it has served to bring continuing improvement, he has been satisfied and patient.
But don't believe that he will be satisfied with anything short of complete equality. He won't. And he has no reason to be.
— Terry Murphy
Week in Review-
World Tenses for Future
Last week was a week of prewarnings in the news. It was a week of incidents which hinged solely on the future — a game of watch and wait.
The game reached a climax in Birmingham, Ala., last week as both sides in the racial crisis there came to an apparent agreement under the terms of limited desegregation. The truce ended five weeks of mass protests by Negroes. The end of the demonstrations in which nearly 2,500 Negro youths were arrested has been called "only a beginning." And as Negro-white rioting ended the "truce," one could conclude that a new "beginning" was now in order.
IN THE Caribbean, the crisis continued and the traffic between Haiti and Miami took the form of hundreds of escaping Americans as Dominican forces remained on the Haitian border ready to strike. But the Haitian government refuses to cease its harassments of Dominican refugees who were given asylum in embassies in the country's capital, Port-au-Prince.
Across the Pacific, the situation became more intense when pro-Communist troops fired on a helicopter carrying an international truce队. Souvanna Phouma, leader of the neutralist Laotian government, said chances for peaceful negotiations in Laoes are slim as the Communists in Pathet Lao continue to seize more territory from the neutralists.
America indeed had its sights for the future last week, and its aim was space. A second Telstar communications satellite was launched with reported improvements which included a higher orbit and increased protection against radiation.
THE LAUCHING is a projected effort to transmit radio and television from North America to Europe. Telstar II will replace the defective Telstar I which stopped transmitting in February.
Soon to accompany the new communications satellite in space will be America's newest astronaut, Gordon Cooper. At the week's end, all systems were considered A-OK for Cooper's 22-orbit flight early this week.
In between the crisis in Haiti and the racial strife in Alabama, President Kennedy resumed his role as world diplomat. Heading his list were talks with Canada's new Prime Minister, Lester Pearson.
An understanding may never be reached in the test-ban negotiations at Geneva, though. Kennedy said both the U.S. and Russia will resume testing if some agreement isn't made soon. His patience apparently wearing thin, the President said that if a treaty isn't signed before the end of 1963, there may never be one.
PEARSON AND the President discussed mainly the subject of nuclear weapons on Canadian soil. Sources said indications were that the two leaders will reach an understanding on the matter.
Another investigating group, a naval court of inquiry, also was seeking vital information, but of a more delicate nature. In its hearings concerning the loss of the submarine Thresher, the court heard testimony that valves aboard the sub had purposely been installed backwards to check the flow of salt water through them, then they were re-installed properly.
The TFX contract conflict popped back into the news last week when Sen. McClellan's Senate Investigations Subcommittee proposed that contract competition be renewed between the supposedly accepted bidder, General Dynamics, and others, namely Boeing Aircraft.
The mysterious shroud over the loss of the Thresher became even more conspicuous when two workers were killed last week in a flash fire aboard the nuclear sub Flasher—the sister ship of Thresher.
GENERAL DYNAMICS, however, refused to cooperate with McClellan's sleuths amid reports that Boeing's design for the controversial fighter-bomber is superior.
AN OLD haunt (a federal grand jury) plagued Jimmy Hoffa also during the week. The Teamster boss was indicted on charges of trying to influence the jury in the trial that ended in a mistrial last December in an attempt to convict him of misuse of Teamster funds. No rest for the restless.
The busiest of the American investigators, the Central Intelligence Agency, was confronted once more by its old nemesis, Cuba. The CIA expressed "grave concern" that Soviet offensive missiles may be hidden in caves on the island. Once again the demand for on-site inspections rang out.
Russia, however, paid little heed to the CIA's latest accusation because few events could outshout the May Day celebrations throughout the country. One that did creep out, though, was the results of the spy trial which ended with the convictions of a Soviet scientist, Oleg Penkovsky, and a British businessman, Greville Wynne.
PENKOVSKY received the death penalty, but Wynne, who repeatedly claimed British authorities tricked him into becoming a spy and made him stick by it through threats, was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Rumors of Soviet Premier Khrushchev's retirement were practically stilled last week when the main contender for the Party leadership, Frol Kozlov, was said to have suffered a brain hemorrhage. No one else seemed to be close enough to warrant rekindling the flames of the Russian leader's internal problems.
Next month, according to Pekin, the Russians will stop celebrating and conducting tours for Cuban visitors long enough to attempt to straighten out their ideological differences with Red China.
In a final note in the news, the Russians added another first in their book of firsts when Soviet officers related to an author from the West that the Russians found Adolf Hitler's body shortly before the end of World War II, and supported the claim that the Nazi Fuehrer did commit suicide.
THE CHINESE Communists, however, still refuse to send their party boss, Mao Tse-tung, to meet with Khrushchev. Instead, a team of delegates will make the trip.
The Russians said they identified Hitler's body by his dentures, but refused to disclose the location of his body until a Russian author writes a book on the fall of the Nazi regime.
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Doubleday Dolphin, 95 cents); A STUDY IN SCARLET AND THE SIGN OF FOUR, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Doubleday Dolphin, 95 cents)—The English language probably has no hero who has lasted like Sherlock Holmes; persons who cannot identify Arthur Conan Doyle can readily describe the somewhat arrogant detective, Holmes. These are three of Doyle's best-known stories of Holmes. "The Hound of the Baskervilles" appeared after Doyle had allowed Holmes to vanish over the edge of the falls of Reichenbach, and it is a full-length novel, taking place in a Gothic setting which has such trappings as a family curse and a frightening killerhound. This is Doyle's best-known book. "A Study in Scarlet" finds Holmes mixed up with the Mormons in Utah; "The Sign of Four" is a classic adventure tale that appeared in the nineteens after the great success of the earlier book.
AMERICAN WAYS OF LIFE, by George R. Stewart (Doubleday Dolphin, 95 cents)—George R. Stewart has contributed two excellent novels to American literature, "Storm," and "Fire," as well as a history of the Donner party, "Ordeal by Hunger." "American Ways of Life" is in a different pattern, but like "Storm" it reveals his vast knowledge of Americans and their ways. The book grew out of Fulbright lectures in Greece about a decade ago, at which time he attempted to interpret his native land. So here we have a group of essays that consider the American nation, language, religions, food and drink, clothing and housing, sex habits, recreation, holidays and art. It is an amusing and entertaining, as well as discerning, book.
* *
AMELIA, by Henry Fielding (Doubleday Dolphin, $1.45)—Not as biting or as racy either "Tom Jones" or "Joseph Andrews" is this other great novel by Henry Fielding. The author considered it is his best book. It is the story of the adventures and mishaps of a lieutenant and his patient, forgiving wife. Like the other books it gives sharp and Hogarthian portrayals of England, and of London, in the 18th century—the courts, the taverns, Newgate prison. Like "Tom Jones" it is rambling and discursive, but also like that other great work it gives fine insights into the ways of man.
DailuTransan
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