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University Daily Kansan
Friday, May 10, 1963
Birmingham 'Parades'
The Birmingham racial demonstrations are a sad commentary on the lack of progress toward integration in the South. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that public schools must be integrated, yet this is one of the "truce" demands of Birmingham integrationists today, nine years after the court decision.
At the time of the court decision, southerners asked for time to work out their own problems. This was a reasonable request. Segregation has been an integral part of southern society for too many years to be erased over night. But Southern whites have had the time they asked for. Integration will work only when someone makes it work, and the white southerner is the man who should take on this task. It can be done by federal troops and U.S. marshals as it was done in Little Rock and Oxford, but southerners are the first to protest against this kind of action.
GRANTED, ARMED force is the last resort. The resentment it stirs up gives rise to doubts that the overall effect actually represents a net gain toward solving the problem.
The Birmingham demonstrators appear to have found the next to the last resort. Instead of federal troops with tear gas and guns, NAACP officials have come with Bibles and organizing ability.
Great care has been taken to avoid violence. The demonstrations are orderly and well-organized. The demonstrators meet peacefully, sing hymns and march in the so-called parades in violation of a city ordinance.
THEIR IMMEDIATE purpose, evidently, is to be put in jail in sufficiently large numbers to focus national attention on the denial of their civil rights in Birmingham. Although the local police hardly are arresting the demonstrators out of a spirit of cooperation, they inadvertently are complying with the Negroes' wish to be arrested. Jails are full, and prisoners overflow into any available place of confinement.
The result — Birmingham is getting a bad name across the nation. Birmingham's white officials know this and they do not like it — they want a truce.
Now the integrationists have a bargaining point. Birmingham's white officials cannot stop the demonstrations because they cannot arrest all of the city's Negroes. Only the integrationists themselves can stop the demonstrations, and they are more than willing to do so — for a price.
THE PRICE dropping of charges against arrested demonstrators, desegregation of downtown eating facilities, equal employment opportunities and a permanent bi-racial committee to work out the city's integration problems, particularly in the schools.
They ask only for what is rightfully theirs.
- Dennis Branstiter
"If People Get Educated, And If They Can Vote, What's To Become Of Us?"
THE ILIAD, by Homer (Bantam Classics, 50 cents); THE ODYSSEY, by Homer (Bantam Classics, 50 cents)—two of the greatest pieces of writing of all times, in handsomely restyled paperback. The originals of these editions were published by Bantam a few years ago. "The Iliad" includes an introduction by the translators and a selection, "Troy: the Bible of Greece," by Herbert J. Muller, "The Odyssey" likewise has an introduction, by Howard N. Porter.
LORD JIM, by Joseph Conrad (Bantam Classics, 50 cents)—a reprint of the Bantam edition of Conrad's most famous novel. This is an exceptionally perceptive psychological story set in the south seas, describing how a young Englishman who once showed cowardice regains stature and solves his problems even as he sacrifices his life. The cover is a striking illustration of a ship and a seabird.
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INDIAN-FIGHTING ARMY, by Fairfax Downey (Bantam Pathfinder, 50 cents)—a new edition of a 1941 work, especially revised by the author. This book has drawings by Frederic Remington and is an absorbing addition to our understanding of the cavalry and the plains Indians the "horse soldiers" fought. Sherman, Custer, Crazy Horse, and Geronimo are among the characters in this worthwhile little volume.
Against Church School Aid Editor;
Seldom have I ever agreed wholeheartedly with any editorial, but I must say I do agree with Terry Murphy's article, "State Supports Church." It expresses my sentiments exactly on this controversial subject which should not even be a subject, much less controversial.
Every American has the right of free public education, just as every citizen has the right to send his child to a private school. If he
... Letters ...
should choose the latter, he should be willing to meet the cost.
Ray Killam
Topeka freshman
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For Church School Aid Editor:
Remember! Sunday Is Mother's Day
What was said about the issue of federal aid to non-public schools in "State Supports Church" was partially correct. True, to teach religion in public schools is held to be unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court; but this is not the case in Missouri at the present.
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The case is whether or not to allow Catholic school children the use of public buses. In the article "State Supports Church" the author has overlooked a very important point. Catholics are paying taxes the same way and to the same degree that the non-Catholics are. Why then should they be denied their rights as taxpayers to reap the benefits they rightly deserve.
There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that says it is unconstitutional for a religious sect to use public accommodations, only that a
public school may not teach religion of any form to its pupils. Certainly an education is not acquired riding in a bus to and from school.
Because a Catholic parent chooses to support the public educational system as well as the parochial system of his faith he is to be condemned? I hardly think so.
James Pestinger Jr.
Beloit sophomore
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