"BUcK. p*WCY~^ovu
GREENSBORO DAILY NEWS
Published Every Day in the Year By Greensboro Nowi Company
c.o. jepf-ress, Publisher
PETER B. BUSH, General Manager
WILLIAM D. SNIDER Editor CHARLES HAUSER Executive News Editor
EDWIN M. YODER JR Associate Editor WILLIAM T. SAUNDERS. ...Advertising Director
IRWIN SMALLWOOD Managing Editor DEREK DUNN-RANKIN Circulation Manager
Page 8
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1967
Sec. A
Education in action
In an editorial entitled "Lapse In Greensboro" the Raleigh News and Observer
critiri7.es the University of North Carolina
et Greensboro for "permitting: itself to be
used" by participants in the Black Power
forum last week. (Sec editorial elsewhere
on this page.)
Who is being "used" and who is getting
"educated" may sometimes be confused.
The N & 0, without much investigation,
jumped quickly to a stereotyped conclusion.
Undoubtedly the Black Power forum
turned out to be a shocker. Not many
UNC-G students attended. Its speakers
sometimes seemed more like cheerleaders
at. a pep rally than students interested in
analyzing a serious sociological problem.
"If I had closed my eyes and substituted
'white supremacy' for 'black power'," commented one knowledgeable observer, "several of those sessions could have been KKK
or White Citizens Council meetings."
Even the forum's sponsor — the UNC-G
Student Government Association — gained
valuable education-in-hindsight about, how
to invite responsible speakers for an objective study befitting a university campus.
But was the university "used"?
11 We think not.
One of the principal speakers, Nathan
Hare, a sociologist who said he was fired
last June from Howard University for "ex- .
cessivc activism", offered a poorly prepared, bitter tirade, which seemed to embarrass many of his friends in the audience.
As a proponent of black power, he flunked
his own course.
A second speaker, Howard Fuller of Durham, turned out to be pure propagandist, '
but clever. His highly emotional speech,
charged with invective, was intended to
arouse his own claque. It did. And yet as
a fair presentation, it left much to be desired.
The third night's speaker, Dr. James
Brewer, a history professor at North Carolina College at Durham, offered a less
strident presentation—one more scholarly
and analytical in tone.
The university administration properly
refused to ban these speakers in advance.
By allowing them ample opportunity to be
heard, it let their opinions sneak for themselves — and they spoke, often shrilly and
foolishly, but certainly emphatically and
without equivocation.
If that isn't an educational process, we
don't know what the terms means.
Lapse in Greensboro
There is a difference between
a university protecting freedom
of its students and permitting
itself to be used. The latter was
evidently the case in the Black
Power forum held at the University of North Carolina in
Greensboro last week.
"The audience," wrote Owen
Lewis in the Greensboro Daily
News, "has been predominantly
Negro and predominantly male.
It is apparent that very few of
the hundreds of persons attending have any connection
with UNC-G. They come in
buses from as far away as
Durham, and they are holding
a black power pep rally."
CtV-*U>.t.v>WOvo A«-*\<
Undoubtedly men and women
students in our colleges should
be permitted to hear views of
all kinds, including some regarded as extreme. Speakers should
not be banned because their
ideas are unpopular. Obviously in this case, however, officials at the Greensboro branch
of the university permitted outsiders to use the university as
their platform while other outsiders were largely substituted
for students in the audience.
There is a difference between
guarding freedom and not
guarding the character of an Institution. The latter happened
at Greensboro last week.
1
