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The Panther MAY, 1968 19 King University Proposed By Gene Burt There is a very great possi bility of Martin Luther King, Jr. going down in history as one of the truly great men our country has produced. It will depend on how well the rest of us, black and white, pick up the banner of idealism that Martin Luther King, Jr. carried so well during the short period of time he had to live. What caused the voice of King and King’s death to have such an impact upon the Negro and upon the rest of us? The Negroes were able to identify with King more readily than with other Negro intellectuals because King spoke their lan guage. His emotional appeal was in the temper of the South ern Negro church which most Negroes are familiar with and could relate to. Egoism is na tural but arrogance is devel oped, and King exhibited pride in himself and in his race with out the detrimental aspect of superiority. He led; he did not order. The Negro came to feel pride in King and, as a conse quence, pride in himself. Even though King must have been a complex man, as all of us are complex, his singleness of purpose in his actions caused the Negroes to feel they knew him better and helped them to identify more closely with him. He won the Nobel Prize wfych has come to mean so much to the whites. This gave the Ne groes pride. His death dramatized his un selfish motivation and caused men of all races to see the comparison of King’s life with Christ’s life. This comparison cannot help but give the Ne groes pride and cause all men to question the validity of ra cial prejudice. Realistically, the violence that immediately flared caused the whites to realize chaos would reign in our cities unless the white man responds to this idealistic appeal of the Negro. The responsible Negroes real ize this, also. The ideals in herent in man are one of the few things that separates man from other evolved creatures. We must pay heed to these ideals if our nation is to sur vive. In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. and to further the ideals he exemplified I would like to propose that all colleges and universities in the Atlanta University Center consolidate into one university and that university be named King Uni versity. All great universities special ize in one or two fields even though they offer many types of degrees. I would propose that King University specialize in the fields of theology and education. We need the ideals as represented by our religions and education can be the means of causing these ideals to be im plemented. But just as we see the need of integration in our schools we should also see the need of integration in our reli gions, and I would further pro pose that the Theological Cen ter become an Ecumenical Cen ter. Even though we can realize the integrated school system is the ideal school system we must be realistic enough to see are predominately segregated and from all indications the situation will get worse as more and more of the whites are moving out of our cities. There is a need to supply outstanding teachers to our society and to these predominately segregated schools. The greatest need is in the hypercritical formative years of elementary education. I believe that if we devel oped self motivation in the in dividual at an early age then he would learn more and learn it better than what he presently learns under our system of in doctrination and patterning. A revolution in education has been going on for the last ten years but it is surprising how slowly it progresses. A program is being developed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for grades kindergarten through sixth grade that I feel is the most important thing to happen to education since free educa tion. The teaching of science is secondary of importance to the program. The developers of the program have defined the pro cesses of scientific thought which are nothing more than the reasoning processes such as observing, classifying, using numbers, measuring, communi cating, predicting, inferring and many others. They have devel oped experiences for the young sters to be exposed to that will develop these processes in the youngsters. It will benefit all students who take it, but I visualize it as having the most dramatic effect of helping break the cycle of the economi cally depressed. In our present society youngsters entering school from many of our economically de pressed areas have not expe rienced the wholesome back ground of more fortunate youngsters such as love, ap proval, encouragement with letters and numbers, indivi dual exploration and happily remembered family experiences. Instead, they get their hands slapped when they try to ex plore; they are subjected to mental and physical abuse from frustrated parents taking out their frustrations and hate of our society on their children. There is no teaching of the letters and numbers to these children. In many cases they do not even know their full names when they enter school. One of the basic premises of educational psychology is that success can be built upon suc cess, but how can these young sters succeed when they are placed in competition with youngsters from more whole some backgrounds. The letter grade itself is antithesis to this basic premise since in our nor mal curves we give as many D’s and F’s as we give A’s and B’s. The C has come to stand for mediocrity and certainly cannot be construed as success even though the majority of students make C’s. It would be far better if we eliminated the extrensic moti vation of letter grades, reduced the class load in order to give more individual attention to each student, and concentrated our efforts on developing self motivation in the individual by taking each student at his par ticular level and exposing him to successful experiences. In our present school expe riences many of these young sters are only exposed to ex periences denoting failure or disapproval. Too often they ac cept this indictment of failure by our system and live a life of self castigation. Is it any wonder that many of them drop out of school, have children, and take their frustrations out on their children — thus con tinuing the cycle? The cycle can be broken in our educational system by de veloping self motivation in the individual at an early age, de emphasizing the importance of the grade and placing more re sponsibility of the learning pro cess on the individual. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream. I have a similar dream. I, also, would like to see our children playing hand in hand and the end of racial prejudice, but, looking further, I would like to see each indi vidual develop to his full po tential no matter what his race might be. Houston Blacks Celebrate Black Easter Houston, Texas—Over 13,- 000 brothers and sisters par ticipated in an Easter Sunday march and rally, which com pletely shook-up the hunky powers-that-be in that city. The march began with only 300 persons at Jefferson Stadium, and as they made their way through the Black Community, thousands joined them, until their numbers reached 8,000. Waiting for the marchers at Emancipation Park were over 5,000 more people. On the speakers platform were a line up of Black leaders and spokes men, including Lee Otis John son of Friends of SNCC, State Senator Barabara Jordan, Rev. William Lawson & Earl Allen. The mayor and several white city and state officials were there to witness the program, but were not allowed to speak to the Black Community, which had turned out 13,000 strong. Several memorial speeches were made in honor of slain Brother Martin Luther King. The high point of the program came when Brother Lee Otis Johnson “made it plain” to our people as to “where we have to go from here” and “what must be done.” He got wild ovations as he continued to “tell it like it is.” The crowd fell out when he told the hunky mayor, sitting there, that he was a “functional retard” and that when he went home “his mother should come from un der the porch since she was a dog.” Not being able to take Brother Johnson’s comments, the mayor sent his goon squad out “to get” Lee Otis on Tues day, April 16. Three car loads of cops came to his home, ar resting him on five charges, taking him to jail, and indict ing him without a hearing. Bond was set at $2500, and an attorney from the Black community bonded him out later on that evening. Several Black leaders, including Rev. Bill Lawson, State Senator Barbara Jordan, and Earl Al len are planning to hold a press conference and other meetings to expose this frame-up of Lee Otis and declare their complete support for his efforts to lib erate “our” people. The University I visualize, with the campus stretching to include all of the present col leges and universities within the Atlanta University Center, can play a leading role in the education revolution taking place at present and can help break the chains of the eco nomically oppressed. What more fitting memorial can we leave Martin Luther King, Jr. than this? Memphis By Mike McDaniel Staff Writer, College Heights Herald Western Kentucky University Memphis, Tenn., is a stero- type of the American city. Walking around the town, one can easily spot the incon gruities that prevail in a town this size — dirty avenues with new street signs, elegantly-dec orated bars with dirty windows, wooden shacks near massive concrete structures. A shot rings out — a black minister is killed. And a white American sports car creeps away in the darkness. At the end of historic Beale Street, in a park named for the famous composer of Dixieland blues, the statue of W. C. Handy stands in a vigil, appearing to pray for the restoration of peace in the city he loved so well. Beale Street, where the strains of Dixieland jazz once drove both white and black into an other world. The joints are gone now, largely replaced by pawn shops and small businesses run by Jews and Negroes. Downtown, the concrete, mortar and brick of the Peabody Hotel encases a horrid homo genization of faces and voices and minds which have long since been trained to speak. “I’m glad somebody finally got rid of that damned “Communist,” says a salesman. The hotel barber, al ways on top of the news, replies, “Yeah, maybe now those peo ple will know their rightful place . . .” The search continues for an assassin. The Tennessee-Arkan sas Bridge haunts the commun ity with an awesome steel struc ture while down in Orange Mound a young Negro shouts, “Let’s go get them honkies! At the National Guard Arm ory, the Memphis Belle, a plane flown in World War II, sits permanently grounded, wonder ing like an old soldier why peo ple can’t notice that the Amer ican sky overhead is peaceful Out in Whitehaven, a subdi vision made famous by the resi- indence of Elvis Presley, a pro minent homeowner tells his wife and children, “It should have been Stokely Carmichael or H. Rap Brown . . .” There have been strange feet milling around the grounds of Booker T. Washington High School and the same strange feet at Melrose High and tearful whispers ask, “Why, baby, why? White America will pay . . .” At Overton Park a marble doughboy hears the strains of “When Johnny Comes March ing Home” running rapidly through his head, and passersby notice an imaginary tear trick ling down his cheek. Millington Naval Base, holds trained or semi-trained seamen who feel saddened, ashamed for the world of the civilian. And at Germantown, where the horse farms house the famous Tennessee Walker, the animals sleep, peacefully un aware, soon to awake to a bright day to be spent grazing and basking in the sun. Memphis, a city of contrasts, not any different from any other piece of metropolitan America.