Blacks Clarify Questions
This article describes meetings between administrators and black students in 1969. This and other articles may be found in the University Archives.Citation for this article is: "Meeting Proceeds as Blacks Clarify Questions with Standing Room Only" The East Carolinian, March 25, 1969.
There was standing room only as SOULS opened a meeting last Wednesday night in the Library auditorium to answer questions of students and faculty alike. Before the evening was through, the panel of black students had articulated and clarified their demands, while substantiating their actions with examples of racially discriminatory practices by certain members of the administration and faculty.
After explaining the purpose and reason for each demand, the panel opened the floor for debate.
Housing
Student housing rules concerning the assignment of roommates in the dorms have been violated and applied unfairly by the adminstration, according to the statements presented by several of the students at the meeting.
The black students pointed to the instance of a white student who discovered he had been assigned to a room with a black occupant and vocalized his objection. Typically unfair, they charged, is the loop-hole that allowed him to move out immediately, in violation of the current requirement for a thirteen-day period before which no changes in room assignments may be made.
Some points were brought out to indict certain faculty members for using racially-slurring language in the classroom and to note that there are professors who seem biased in their grading of black students.
Cited for this case was the professor who threatened to fail "every nigger" under his instruction, thereby intimidating a black student to drop the course. At the request of a faculty member present, the black students named two such professors charged with these practices, both of whom are tenured.
Black Instructors
Why is it necessary that only a black man teach "black history" courses? SOULS present answers of an emotional nature where these demands are concerned. "There is no white man in this country qualified to teach a black history course, because the black man has lived much of his history while the white man would be at a loss to emphathize with this."
There were no hecklers in the audience last Wednesday. The SOULS members moved easily through their explanations, in an effort as one put it, "to force concentration on, maybe even an understanding of the other 9.3 demands besides 'Dixie'."
