University Daily Kansan / Tuesday, February 23, 1988
Campus/Area
3
Ribbons show unity in wake of Klan debate
Bv Brenda Finnell
Kansan staff writer
Bright red ribbons, symbolizing solidarity against the Ku Klux Klan, fluttered in the wind yesterday as students distributed them in front of Wescoe Hall.
; Monique Malson, Topeka senior,
was one of the students who sat at
the table outside, giving ribbons to
students. She said that the students who
organized the ribbon distribution
received to promote unity on
campus after week ten, controversy
about a proposed campus visit by two
Klan members.
"It tended to be pretty divisive for the University," Malson said. "The whole idea is to bring the whole group back together that was divided."
Maison said no formal organization
was sponsoring the ribbon distribution. A group of students discussed the idea and decided to act on it, she said. Organizers said they plan to continue to distribute the ribbons through the end of the week.
She said the ribbons were protesting the Klan and could be worn by people who supported the right of the Klan to visit campus. People in Lawrence started wearing the ribbons last late
The Rev. Calvin Jackson of the First Regular Missionary Baptist Church, 1646 Vermont St., said many members of his congregation had been wearing the ribbons.
"Anyone who has been approached
has been ordered to leave."
Some students who stopped at the
"I
It tended to be pretty divisive for the University. The whole idea is to bring the whole group back together that was divided.'
— Monique Malson Toneka senior
table yesterday said they supported the right of the Klan members to visit the University, but chose to wear ribbons to show opposition to the
Jonathan Leahey, a Washburn University student visiting KU, pinned a ribbon to his jean jacket as he was
walking away from the table at Wescoe. He said he was concerned with the rise of the right-wing extremists.
"I'm seeing a new rise of racism in
he said. I 'm really
worried about it."
Mary Wortman, Hutchinson sophomore, said it was important for all students to be treated the same.
"We're all asking for equality, to be treated equally here on campus," she said after taking one of the ribbons. "We're all in together."
In addition to the ribbons, copies of pages of "The Patriot" were taped to the distribution table. The publication, which advocates white supremacy, contained such things as advertisements for Klan stickers.
white supremacist tapes and youth newsletters. It is published by the White American Freedom Fighters in Overland, Mo.
"They're pretty hard to believe," Maison said.
The articles were from the Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political Movements, which is housed at Spencer Research Library.
The collection contains political literature from both the left and right and was founded by Laird Wilcox, a former KU student who studies extremist groups.
Also on the table was a picture of a KU basketball player who wore one of the red ribbons in Saturday's game.
Alvin Gentry, assistant men's basketball coach, said the team members and coaches had been approached by a student and asked to wear the ribbons. Everyone supported the idea, Gentry said.
"It's important to show solidarity against any racist groups," Gentry said.
Jackson said last week's events opened many people's eyes, and that the ribbon distribution was symbolic of the need to create better harmony in the community.
Jackson said blacks are not the only group the Klan terrorizes. The Klan is against anyone who is opposed to its views, he said.
Planning commission nixes mall ideas
"Whatever they do, it has an effect on all of our lives," he said.
Recommendation cites reasons as litter, traffic, urban sprawl
Bv Christine Martin
Kansan staff writer
- The Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission last night voted unanimously to recommend denial of approval on one of three suburban mall rezoning requests.
The commission denied the Colliest proposal, which would be a 55-acre site at Highway 40 and Wakarusa Drive in west Lawrence. The proposal, submitted by Ed Colliest, a Lawrenceattorney, will go before the Douglas County Commission for final consideration on March 9.
Planning commissioners spent 2½ hours amending 13 pages of a 49-page report on the suburban mall proposal rezoning requests. The report was
prepared by the city's planning staff, which submitted the report to the planning commission Friday.
Planning commissioners amended the report because they did not agree totally on what was fact and what was opinion in the report.
"We've been going to great lengths and spending a lot of time to reach an agreement, planning commissioner J. Chamberls said. "That's unrealistic."
A suburban mail would hurt downtown Lawrence by shifting the center of retail business away from down-
The zoning requests would hurt surrounding areas by increased littering, endangered wildlife and lowering pearly property values.
- The zoning requests would increase traffic congestion, cause safety problems and would require major traffic improvements.
The Planning Commission also will consider the other two suburban mall
The planning staff first recommended denial of the proposed rezonings last September, and the report on the proposals submitted Friday to the planning commissioners backed up their conclusion with information from public hearings, which took
place from October through November.
The second proposal, submitted by Jacobs, Visconsi and Jacobs, a Cleveland developer, would be a 61-acre site at Iowa Street and Armstrong road in south Lawrence. The third, the Warmack proposal, subdivides the Warmack and Co. a Fort Smith, Ark. Ark., 401-site and 101-site处 at Clinton Parkway and Wakarusa Drive in southwest Lawrence.
After the proposals go before the Planning Commission, the VJJ proposal will go before the City Commission and the Warmack proposal will go before the County Commission, both for final action.
Exhibit presents history of black lawyers
By Kathleen Faddis
Kansan staff writer
"I have your telegram urging my support of the petition to bring the Civil Rights Bill to the Floor of the House."
The collection, titled, "African Americans in the Practice of Law," opened Friday.
This excerpt from a Sept. 11, 1959, letter from Rep. J. Floyd Breeding to Elmer Jackson, a Kansas City, Kan., lawyer, is part of a collection of ograms, letters and photographs from Kansas black lawyers on display at the Spencer Research Library.
It was five years before the Civil War became inclement in Breeding's letter because he
Jackson, a 1955 graduate of KU's law school, was an early figure in the struggle for civil rights. He was president of the National Bar Association from 1959 to 1961 and successfully led the fight for appointments of black lawyers to federal judgeships.
The National Bar Association, which is also represented in the display, was organized in 1925 by black attorneys who were excluded from the American Bar Association until 1943.
Sheryl K. Williams, Kansas Collection curator, and Jacob Gordon, associate professor of African and African-American studies, are codirectors of the Kansas Black History Collection project, from which most of the documents were drawn for this display.
"This is something the Kansas Collection did to promote our project and to observe Black History Month." Williams said.
The project is federally financed to identify and acquire materials from churches, organizations, businesses and black experience in Kansas, she said.
Also on display are letters and other papers documenting the career of Charles S. Scott, a Topeka attorney who represented the black
schoolchildren in the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. the Topeka Board of Education. In that decision, the court ruled that segregation in schools on the basis of race was illegal.
Scott and his brother, John J. Scott, a Kansas attorney who also worked on the Brown case, are the sons of James and Ava Brown, the owner who is represented in the display.
Elisha Scott, who graduated from Washburn Law School in 1916, was considered one of the most famous trial lawyers in early 20th-century Kansas. In 1924 he presented his first court case against Jim Crow practices in Kansas. Jim Crow was a term used to refer to legal racial segregation before the Civil Rights Act.
Lawyers whose materials are displayed are considered black pioneers in jurisprudence in the state, but not necessarily the most important, said Deborah Dandridge, field archivist for the Black History Collection project.
Williams said, "We were looking for people who had made substantial contributions, and who had also been working with us on our project."
Other lawyers represented in the exhibit include:
Sherman A. Parks, the first black to be appointed to an appellate judgeship in Kansas.
Cordell Meeks Sr., a Wyandotte County commissioner for 24 years and the first black to be elected to a district judgeship in Kansas.
I. F. Bradley, an 1887 KU Law School graduate who became one of the first blacks to sit as a judge in Kansas when he was elected justice of the peace in 1900.
The exhibit will be on display through April in the Kansas Collection at Spencer Research Library. Hours are 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. Saturdays.
Spring fling
The 50-degree temperatures bring David Creagar, Topeka junior, and a dog out to play Frisbee. Creagar, John Mueller, St. Louis senior, and the dog played with the Frisbee between classes Monday near the Art and Design building.
Embarrassment still a hindrance for students buying condoms
By Mark McCormick
Special to the Kansan
Antony Jackson didn't think buy condoms would be too embarrassing.
And it wasn't, until his mother found out "She knee that I had bought them but
I knew that I had bought them but she'd joke with me and ask, "What were you buying?" and call me 'Rubber-band Man,' " said Jackson, Junction city freshman. "I'd bear her on the phone telling her friends, who thought I was so innocent, that I bought some condoms. That was more embarrassing than actually buying them."
- Like Jackson, many KU students view condoms as an embarrassing but
Jackson said birth control, not AIDS, was his main reason for buying condoms.
"I wasn't even thinking about it then," he said. "At the time, I didn't even know what it was."
Jackson said he thought that buying the condoms would be easy the first time he was pregnant.
"I thought I was cool and I thought I could go right in there and buy them," he said.
"But when I got in there, I just walked around for a while, and I picked up some other things with them. I just felt more comfortable with something else on the counter besides the condoms."
led to the purchase.
Jackson's father offered to spare him the embarrassment and buy the condoms for him.
"My dad told me to buy some. He said, 'Let's not have any little Jacksons running around here.'"
Jackson said a suggestion from his father
"I thought I should get them because I'd have to get them sometime," he said. "My dad won't always be there to buy them for me."
Jackson said he had found a few ways to ease the embarrassment of buying condoms.
"I try to crack jokes while I'm buying
thee be said, if the person behind the
counter is telling a joke."
won't feel stupid."
Jackson said the joking sometimes was at the expense of his friends who asked him to buy the condoms for them while they hid in a nearby aisle.
"I'll point at them and say, 'Look at him, he scared to buy them,'" he said.
Kathy Lange, Jackson City junior, said she understood Jackson's embarrassment.
Lange said that while she worked at Wal-Mart Discount Cities, 2727 st. St., she rang up customers buying condoms at her register without embarrassment.
"It was no big deal, I just rung them up," she said.
"If we see them looking at them, we'll go over to them and inject our opinion and see if we can help them make a decision," he said.
offered cashiers informal advice on how to be tactful when customers bought condoms.
W tom Wileo, a pharmacist at Round Co. ner drug Co., 801 Massachusetts St., said the amount of general sales at the drugstore made condom purchases routine.
Lange said the Wal-Mart management
Mark Smith, a pharmacist at Gibson Pharmacy, 2525 Iowa St., said most of Gibson's cashiers were pharmacy students and were sensitive to those situations.
"We sell condoms like we sell toothpaste," Wilcox says. "Condoms have been a part of our lives."
The University of Kansas Department of Music and Dance Division of Bands PRESENTS
The KU Symphonic Band
Robert E. Foster. Conductor
WINTER CONCERT
FEATURING
Col. John Bourgeois, Guest Conductor
Conductor of the United States Marine Band
Susan Hicks Brashier, Oboe Soloist
Free and open to the Public
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3:30 p.m.
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