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EDITORIAL
By Debbi Newton
On March 3rd Atlanta Constitution ed
itorial feature writer, Hal Gulliver, charged
Atlanta City Mayor Maynard Jackson with
‘snubbing’ a visiting group of international
journalists to the city; the journalists also
toured the Spelman College campus. Presi
dent Manley’s response to the editorial was
in itself an academic creation and must not
go unobserved in the cultural fabric of what
actor Ossie Davis calls, “the profoundest
committment possible to a black creator in
this country today ... to bring before his
people the scent of freedom.”
Novelist Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man,
honored with the National Book Award in
1952 and judged in 1965, “the most disting
uished single work published in the last
twenty years” by a Book Week poll of some
two hundred critics, authors, and editors, is
an outstanding paragon of a cultural literary
element that ironically succeeds in illuminat
ing the ‘visibility’ attributed to Mayor May
nard Jackson by President Manley in his let
ter to Reginald Murphy, Atlanta Journal Con
stitution Editor and Hal Gulliver, the writer
of the editorial.
Projecting the symbolism portrayed in
Ellison’s novel, President Manley, in his letter
to the Atlanta Newspapers, Inc. (i.e., The
Constitution and The Journal) cited, “May
nard Jackson is a highly visible young man
but to you the Atlanta Newspapers. . . almost
invisible.”
President Albert E. Manley
“It is sometimes advantageous to be un
seen,” was the raw assertion of Invisible
Man, “although it is most often rather wear
ing on the nerves. . . you’re constantly
bumped up against by those of poor vision . . .
you often doubt if you really exist . . . you
ache with the need to convince yourself that
you do exist in part of all the sound and
anguish, and you strike out with your
fists. . . ” declared the novel’s author “. . . to
make them recognize you.”
Assessing the ethical transformation of
the Atlanta Constitution’s journalistic princi
ples since the past editorships of Pulitzer
Prize recipient Ralph McGill and Eugene Pat-
From 1881 to 1975. . .
Dean Williams Questions
"Black Enterprises’s”
Selection of Top Scholars
By Rita D. Ford
In the March 1975 issue of “Black Enter
prise” magazine there was a short profile of
“some of the top Black college students in
America today.” “Black Enterprise” regard
ed these as being “a randomly selected repre
sentative sampling of the many intelligent
and capable young black students found on
college campuses ranging from Talladega Col
lege to the U.S. Military Academy at West
Point."
i
Dean Williams had a different viewpoint.
Commenting on the profile she said, “I didn’t
care too much for their selection and I ques
tion their criterion.” Her appraisal stemmed
from the fact that there was such a large
representation of black students from pre
dominately white eastern universities in pro
portion to the number represented by our
own black colleges and universities. “There
are many fine black young people,” she said,
“who should have been recognized from our
black schools who weren’t, while some east
ern universities had numerous representa
tives.” There were spatial limitations, of
course, but M.I.T. and Barnard had as many
as three representatives, while schools such
as Fisk, Wilberforce, and Clark, to name a
few, had none.
Spelman had one representative, Sheery
Faye Shaw, a senior mathematics major from
Memphis, Tennessee. Dean Williams paid
tribute to her saying, “Sherry was an excel
lent choice, but we should have had more
equal representation.”
terson, President Manley replied in his letter
to Constitution Editor Reginald Murphy,
“the dilemma you are now experiencing ap
pears to be systematic in nature, for you see
he (Mayor Jackson) still remains in the
reality of your minds, invisible.”
President Manley disputed the Constitu
tion’s claim that Mayor Jackson did not
spend any time with the visiting journalists
and added that he (Manley) himself had
spent hours “giving them some facts about
the contributions of black higher education
to this country, of which,” concluded the
twenty-one-year Spelman College President,
“Mayor Jackson is a resplendent example.”
It is fortunate indeed that President Man-
ley has maintained the strength and convic
tion of his phenomenal vision, for like El
lison in his day, President Manley also
realizes that the accomplishments of Mayor
Jackson, the Atlanta University Center, and
the needs of its surrounding communities
have historically, and continue today to be
“invisible . . . simply because people refuse
to see. . .”.
“When you have lived invisibly . . .”
stated Ellison in his novel, “you develop a
certain ingenuity.” Asserted Invisible Man,
“I’ll solve the problem . . .”. Charged Presi
dent Manley, “No, Mr. Gulliver (Constitu
tion editorial writer), your ‘claims’ are in
accurate and your ‘cause’ is riddled by the
wrongs of years of ignoring the other sides
of issues. Mayor Jackson,”assessed Manley,
“has hurdled the barrier of invisibility and
in many ways he will carry us (the Atlanta
University Center institutions) with him.”
“Because of our resiliency,” Manley
further asserted, “we shall continue to sur
vive, despite your efforts to keep us invisible.”
Hats off to Spelman’s leading administra
tive ‘creator’ whose 21st Founders Day
tenure at the nation’s oldest institution of
higher learning for black women, rediscovers
in him, what he himself has noted as lacking
in the ethics of Atlanta’s leading journalistic
instrumentality-The Atlanta Journal Consti
tution. And that is, “the innocent and youth
ful vigor of truthfulness.”
President Manley’s visibility, and vision,
has precipitated the progression of culture
at Spelman College throughout these years,
throughout the Atlanta University Center,
and thus, necessarily of the entire black race.
An historical phenomena, one might say,
founded upon the legacy of “the committ
ment ... to bring before his people the
scent of freedom.”