Local News in Virginia
Black Students Protesting On College Campuses Is Not News
New Day … Old Story
But, it is an old story. On Feb. 25, 1960, a similar chain-of-events played out after nine Alabama State College students sat down at a segregated lunch counter in the Montgomery County Courthouse. (This happened only a few weeks after the Greensboro sit-in was held on Feb. 1, 1960). Four days later, on February 29, 1960, Alabama Governor John Patterson held a news conference to condemn the sit-in.
A few days later, on March 2, 1960 Alabama State expelled the nine students who led the courthouse sit-in. Their expulsions occurred after Patterson, who was also chairman of the State Board of Education, threatened to terminate Alabama State College’s funding unless it expelled the student organizers and warned that “someone [was] likely to be killed” if the protests continued.
More than 1000 students immediately pledged a mass strike, threatened to withdraw from the school, and staged days of demonstrations. Thirty seven students were arrested. Montgomery Police Commissioner L.B. Sullivan recommended closing the college, which he claimed produced only “graduates of hate and racial bitterness.”
Meanwhile, six of the nine expelled students sought reinstatement through a federal lawsuit. In August 1960, in Dixon v. Alabama, a federal court upheld the expulsions as “justified and, in fact, necessary” and barred the students’ readmission to the school.
Fast forward to Feb. 25, 2010, in a ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the sit-in, Alabama State University (formerly Alabama State College) President William Harris reinstated the nine students, criticized Governor Patterson’s “arbitrary, illegal and intrusive” role in forcing the expulsions, and praised the student protest as “an important moment in civil rights history.”
The problem is the University of Missouri aftermath sounds remarkably similar to the one that occurred in Montgomery about 50 years ago. Black students became targets on social media just a day after the president resigned at the University of Missouri.
For example, one post on Yik Yak read, “I’m going to stand my ground tomorrow and shoot every Black person I see.” Police arrested two suspects, both young white males for making the threats, according to news reports.
The point is students launched a troubling chain of events by sitting down at segregated lunch counters in the 1960s. And the same scenario seems to be playing out now. “The fact that Wolfe has stepped down is just the first step and we need more people to join our cause,” said Jovan Russell, a senior at Mizzou.
This means the issue was systematic racism back in the 1960s. And the same issue is launching campus protests now. Black students recently held demonstrations at Smith College in Massachusetts and at Claremont McKenna College in California. On Nov. 9, more than 1,000 students held a march over racism at Yale University. In upstate New York, hundreds of Ithaca College students and faculty said they would participate in a “solidarity walk out” on Nov. 11.
Racism Runs Deep In America
“Racism runs deep in the fiber of American society,” said Dr. Richard Koonce, a 1991 Norfolk State graduate and an educator in Sandusky, Ohio where he served on the school board.
“It tends to fester,” said Koonce, a military veteran who earned his doctoral degree in communication studies at Bowling Green State University. “It is reinforced every day in the media and in behavior for example in music and reality tv. People don’t realize the media is powerful.”
The solution is to teach critical thinking skills, Koonce said. “I believe many of our folks aren’t getting the proper education and not just in the public schools. I believe many students do not have an understanding of what being an American means. This means we often do not learn that violence is woven into the fabric of American society. We have placed a different label on it but that is basically what it is.”
“If we had a movement that pushed critical thinking it would help,” Koonce said. “They have all of these tools at their disposal but no one to connect the dots. And that goes back to what I said about education. It cannot happen by osmosis.”
“The current educational system teaches you how to follow a script,” Koonce said. “You are talking about years of education that teaches you to be zombies, to a certain extent. I think the bigger issue really is … we have the haves, have nots, middle income and the shrinking middle class.”
“There is a real class issue that should be addressed,” Koonce said. “And that is why we need to begin to talk about and to teach critical thinking because (it) teaches you not to take things at face value.”
