Viewing page 12 of 40
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
232 The Crisis The Going Is Rough but They Make It By G. James Fleming A great deal of attention is devoted to the inequalities in separate school systems and the consequent difficulties of Negro students in gaining an adequate education. Recently there has been discussion of the obstacles in the path of Negro students in mixed colleges. The article here, by a man who attended a Negro college as well as a great northern university, seems to give a comprehensive survey of campus life for Negro students in the North ONE of the most interesting and valuable purposes of the CRISIS Education Number is that it presents for the first time each commencement season what may be called the gains and losses of the Negro race in the educational world during the preceding school year, and brings together samples of the body graduate, not only from the numerous institutions dedicated primarily to the education of the Negro, but especially from the so-called white colleges and universities. Reader interest is always particularly attracted to the news coming from leading (non-Negro) institutions. "What new barriers have been raised in the way of Negro young men and young women this past year?" "What obstacles have these young people been able to overcome successfully?" "What high honors have they won, or what high honors were they entitled to, but did not get because they happen to be colored?" "Have the most recent crop of American students been sent into the world crammed with the latest facts and figures in every field of endeavor, except the very important one of respecting human personality, of discovering true values in their fellows, of learning to work and live with other people, regardless of their race for colour?" Answers to these questions, affording a cross-section of American college life in its bearing on the Negro, come with the Education Number, aswell As pertinent information concerning the state of the education-for-life process going on in the purely Negro schools. This article essays to till some of the experiences behind the Negroes graduating from white institutions of learning. Not All Olympian The prominent part being played by Negroes in the Olympics this year, representing as they do American universities in the East, the Middle West, and on the Pacific Coast, might be called striking examples of opportunity held open to a minority group in America, is contrasted with the divers and devious ways in which German Jews are reportedly being kept out of this historic athletic extravaganza. It is too true, however, that in some, if not all, of these very institutions, Negroes are systematically and consistently barred from other student activities as they are seemingly being pushed in the Olympic track and field events. It is scarcely news any longer that in the majority of leading universities in America, a Negro just cannot make the varsity basketball team. He is not permitted to. If the coach allows him to play on the freshman five, that one season is the beginning and end of his competition. Some way will be found to keep him off the varsity. Is not just lack of material, for instance, that the schools of the Big Ten produce many outstanding football players, but no basketball players. Some universities open wide their doors to Negro football players, that will allow no Negro to make the track team; others will welcome them on track and football teams, but will have none of them on swimming or fencing teams. There is apparently neither rime nor reason why the same institution will accept Negroes in one sport and give them every chance to achieve, and will at the same time, under the same administration, absolutely raise bars against Negroes in other sports. In baseball, of course, the excuse is that northern colleges must go South on practice tours during the Spring and play against teens below the Mason and Dixon lines; therefore, negroes would be embarrassing to southern host teams. When the South comes north to play football in the fall, these northern institutions again oblige, and bench first string Negro players, in order not to offend their southern guests. Even those schools that are most liberal towards Negro athletes, and whose names become more famous as the result of a Negro's stellar performance, may represent the case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing, as those institutions which for some reason or other tolerate having Negro students, but do not ever fully accept them as integral and welcomed members of the student body. Barred From Unions One year when two Negroes were starring on the football and track teams of a leading state university, these other Negro students were exposed to one of the most bitter cases of prejudice and discrimination from eating places on the campus that refused to serve them, and from the student social union that somehow made rules that kept Negroes out what was intended to be a center of rest, relaxation, recreation and culture for all students. In one state, where there are more Negro members in the two bodies of the legislature than in any other state, until very recently the student union at the atate university was also closed against Negrows and Negro students are still barred from all the campus restaurants. Besides little annoyances and taunts from instructors and professors in this same institution, the dean of the law school went so far as to greet a Negro student (a son of taxpaying parents, incidentally) with these words: "I want to warn you in advance that you can't make an 'A' or a 'B' in any course I give." No white student could be found who had been warned similarly. In a privately endowed university, which was established by one of the leading Protestant nominations, Negro girls majoring in physical education are not permission to use the university's swimming pool, although swimming is one of the courses required for graduation. When the president was approached by citizens' committee on the subject, he said conclusively: "The Negro students here do not pay enough money to buy the coal used in any one year by this university, much less buy anything else. If they don't like the arrangements we have here, they can leave of course." No one could talk to this many-degreed veteran educator of the right versus wrong, of the immorality of his position. He had spoken and the issue was closed. Preachers of Honesty, But– Then there are institutions which preach individual honesty, but act very dishonestly themselves. This group is best represented by that western teacher's college which, after years of awarding a silver loving cup to the sorority maintaining the highest scholarship
