I I I 1 - , _71 .l rMiigan Uatt Seventy-Sixth Year EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNTVERSTTY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS ' _ .4. ._ ' Z, _ : i 7 # " . e t Stereotypes, Cliches Mark Riot Dialogue Where 01 nn Are Free' 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MICH. Trbth Wl rvi iIHll NEWS PHONE: 764-0552 Editornals ,Printed in The Michigan Daily ex press the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. THURSDAY, AUGUST 3, 1967 NIGHT EDITOR: WALLACE IMMEN Constitutional Storm Swirls -1 . - .r t ' 0 Y ^ , ,. ; - Around D.C. School System -- "I z Second of Three Parts WASHINGTON - Judge S k e l11 y Wright's landmark decision on de facto segregation in; public schools here caught many by surprise, and a wave of sympathy for School Superintendent Carl F. Hansen followed. Moreover, edi-. torals in both Washington newspapers, the Post, and the Star, questioned the method by which Wright planned to implement the integration of the schools in Washington, D.C. Alexander M. Bickel in a New Republic article posed the following: ...When courts undertake to issue a 'go' order, as Skelly Wright has done, they need resources which are not at their disposal. "Judge Wright's indictment of the superintendent and the school administration is rife with imputa- tions of bad faith, but in the end it comes to rest on a charge of com- placency only, not on a charge of intentional segregation." So here was the situation: Washing- ton had stumbled into a formidable dilemma, and Hansen had become the scapegoat of the city's problem. JUST HOW DIFFICULT and unpleas- ant Hansen's job became as his years in office accumulated, was relat- ed by Representative Fred Schwengle (R-Iowa). Schwengle noted: "As a member of the District Committee, I worked with Carl F. Hansen for many years. As a former educator I have the highest respect for Hansen. He is the finest top level administrator in the field of education that I have ever met. His job was made untenable due to the nature of the various groups that exist in the D.C. area. The fact that Hansen had to go to Congress for appropria- tions made it doubly difficult for him." Schwengle added that "Congress really doesn't give a damn about the District." In fact Schwengle was de- feated for re-election in 1964 (he won in 1966) partly because "In 1964, my opponent used as one of his charges against me that I spent too much time on the District committee and not enough time on my own district. This charge helped him to defeat me and it illustrates what can happen to a rep- resentative when he tries to help solve the problems of Washington, D.C." Carl S. Smuck, a Hansen supporter and a member of the District school board, told The Daily "Judge Wright says he finds racial and economic dis- crimination in the D.C. schools, but what I would like to know is how is anyone supposed to integrate a school system in which 93 per cent of the students are Negro to begin with. You would have to be a Houdini to do it and even then it couldn't be done." Smuck also said that "Hansen had been blamed for things he couldn't be blamed for and that in effect he (Han- sen) had been made a scapegoat for factors that were far beyond his con- . trol." Smuck then added that what had happened to Hansen "is sickening." Smuck added that a consequence of Judge Wright's decision and Hansen's resignation could be, "To relegate our children to the junk heap." J UDGE WRIGHT'S DECISION could indeed have a tremendous impact on the American educational system. The opinion seems to pivot on a basic conclusion he draws from hearing ar- guments both for Hobson and Hansen. Says Judge Wright in his opinion, "From these considerations the court draws the conclusion that the doc- trine of equal educational opportunity (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954)- the equal protection clause in its ap- plication to public school education- is in its full sweep a component of due process binding on the District under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. To fathom and apply the content of the principle of equal edu- cational opportunity is the court's next project." Judge Wright then decrees that all the defendants (Hansen and school of- . . . permanently enjoined from dis- criminating on the basis of racial or economic status in the operation of the District of Columbia public school system." The decree to abolish the track sys- tem and provide transportation for vol- unteering students follows. In all cases the school board must submit a report of the progress to Judge Wright. THE IMPLICATION of this is clear to one high ranking school board of- ficial: "If Judge Wright doesn't like or approve of what the school board poli- cy is, he will change it," he said. Superintendent Hansen was more emphatic. He told The Daily "that in effect Judge Wright now becomes the board of education if he so desires." Hansen added, "This is not a judicial function." Judge Wright himself seems aware of the broad scope covered by his deci- sion. As a parting word in his opinion he writes: "It is regrettable, of course, that in deciding this case this court must act in an area so alien to its expertise. It would be far better in- deed for these great social and politi- cal problems to be resolved in the poli- tical arena by other branches of gov- ernment. But these are social and poli- tical problems which seem at times to defy such resolution. In such situatiors, under our system, the judiciary must bear a hand and accept its responsibil ity to assist in the solution where con- stitutional rights hang in the balance." MURRAY SHEARER, principal of Washington's predominantly white Wilson High School, commented on the economic implications of the decision: "Judge Wright says there is to be an end to economic segregation, but he doesn't say how. I suppose that one way of doing it would be to mix, for example, children who came from fam- ily incomes of $15,000 with those who came from family incomes of $4000 un- til there is an average income mixture. But what are we supposed to do in this case? Transport children from af- fluent neighborhoods to less affluent. ones and vice versa? It would never work out for those students made to move from more affluent to less af- fluent neighborhoods would balk at the idea." But Shearer joined the chorus of dissidents over the court's proper sphere: "Judge Wright had taken on for himself a function that was not that of the judiciary but was of the legislative or executive powers. That it is the function of the judiciary to interpret what is wrong and what is right, but it is an executive-legislative function to show how the correction is to be made." When asked about the flexibility of the track system Shearer emphasized. "It was indeed flexible at Wilson and that students could take courses in any track level they desired, even if school authorities advised against it." ACROSS TOWN, at Washington's pre- dominantly Negro Roosevelt High, principal Robert Boyd said, "I've been with the track system since 1956 and it is highly flexible. In the hands of individuals who wish to use it so, this is not necessarily so. It depends more on the individual administrator than anything else." Boyd added that Superintendent Hansen, "Never implied such rigid stratification that pupils would be in a position of taking courses they did not wish to take." He also said that, "At Roosevelt there is a great deal of cross tracking." Of the judicial proceeding itself, one source in the District said that the de- cision represented beautiful legal ma- neuvering on the part of Hobson and his attorneys. "In fact," the source continued, "there is a great deal of question as to what extent Judge Wright already had his mind made up before he was even asked to decide the rnR 1 Xa Tribune Synd ..t sra ' C yy.Sa' 4I KIL .......... WMWAMW Behind Every Successful Man There Stands A Woman.. Letters to the Editor Emergency Funds TO MEMBERS OF THE UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY: We the undersigned members of SACUA, sensing a deeply felt and widely shared desire among members of the University com- munity to take a contribution to the effort required to meet the emergency needs of displayed fam- ilies and individuals who are vic- tims of the recent disorder in De- troit, have made arrangements for receiving financial contributions from members of the University community for this purpose to be forwarded to the Interfaith Emer- gency Center in Detroit. Checks may be made payable to the "Interfaith Emergency Committee" and mailed or de- livered to the SACUA Office, Room 2512, Administration Building, University of Michigan. A 11l amounts received prior to August 15 will be turned over to the In- terfaith Center on that date, in the name of the University com- munity. All amounts received thereafter but prior to September 15 will be turned over to the Cen- ter on the latter date, and the account will then be closed unless there appears to be good cause for its continuation. In view of the purpose and in- tended disposition of these con- tributions, we believe no question can be raised regarding their de- ductibility for income tax pur- poses. -Paul Alexander -John Bardach -Alexander Eckstein -John Gosling --Robert Howe -Frank R. Kennedy -Thomas McClure -Joseph Payne -James Wendel -Ben Yablonky 'Rap' Control Too impoverished a few weeks ago to enact LBJ's rat control bill, Congress now intends to pass a "Rap" control bill, provide federal aid to local police, and improve the National Guard. This might cost a bit more than the $2 mil- lion President Johnson wanted to keep babies from being eaten. Meanwhile, plans to amend the Federal Aid to Education proposal to allow rurally-dominated state legislature to reassign monies in- tended for metropolitan school districts proceed at full speed. I am glad to see that the U.S. government is following Johnson's admonition to let the search for a solution to the outbreaks be un- trammeled by "conventional wis- dom." -Ralph Shamie Law and Order I suppose that in viewing the urban unsurrection scene every- one tends to find a new verse for his own favorite tune, be it un- employment, outmoded peace-pre- servation tactics, slum despair, revolution of rising expectations, racial cleavage, or just plain hooliganism. And I'm no excep- tion. What I tend to see in the looting, burning, and killing is the grass-roots extension of the "doc- trine of social responsibility" (in which the social milieu is deemed responsible for the actions of in- dividuals) far past its value limit. Am I denying the doctrine of social responsibility? No, not ex- actly; that would be a pretty fool- hardy undertaking for the pres- ent-day student of the "social sciences." But I am worried about what seems to be a basic contra- diction between this philosophy and another of the fundamental gorders of our society: "rule of law." (One should live overseas for a while, in Asia, for instance, in order to fully appreciate the blessedness of this concept). Is it not fundamental to social learning that individuals be pun- ished, preferably when they are young, for wrongdoing (i.e. acts sunjectively defined as detrimental to the well-being of the society)? And is it not fundamental to a society regulated by law that in- dividuals be held responsible for, and learn to hold themselves re- sponsible for, violations of the so- cial order? And would it not be impossible to sustain the efficacy of law and regulation with the disappearance of individual guilt? Perhaps the situation can be saved by providing everyone with dignifiedbwork and worthwhile leisure; but can the machinery necessary to accomplish such a monumental task be set up amid snafoo and confusion? I AM PESSIMISTIC enough to contemplate our semi-deified "rule of law" being completely under- mined by "social responsibility" ; and I am open-ended enough to allow that it might be time for "rule of law" to abdicate in favor of some other regulator. Trouble is I can't spy any alternatives to "rule of law" in the hopper just now, so I'd rather fish for a new (rather than renewed) concept of individual responsibility and guilt somewhere between the beginning of "social responsibility" and its catastrophic end. If you think I'm all wet, blame it on my undergraduate institu- tion. and on my parents who couldn't afford to send me to Rad- cliffe, and on the System that wouldn't let my dad get ahead, and on . . and on .... -Lynn Struve, Grad. The following editorial is re- printed from the July 31 issue of The National Observer: So much that is being said and written about the anarchy in the cities is terribly unsatisfactory. Take, for example, the various explanations being put forward these days as the cause of the outbreaks. The most common one is that the disturbances are a re- sult of Negro frustrations over poor housing in cities, low eco- nomic standing, lack of job op- portunities, and racial discrimina- tion. The frustrations' are so flammable, this reasoning goes, that any incident can trigger ex- plosion. If this general argument is ac- cepted, the way to aver't future outbreaks is to produce some sort of instant equality, not only in civil rights but in economic posi- tion as well. This is manifestly impossible. A great deal has been done and is being done to cope with the Negroes' very real prob- lems, butkmiracle-making is be- yond the ken of even the Federal Government. Given the best of intentions, progress will necessar- ily be slow. Not enough has been done, perhaps, but can enough ever be done by outsiders? The unsatisfactory conclusion, therefore, is that the cities will remain vulnerable for some time to come, no matter how many new programs, funds, and fiats are pumped out by the Federal Gov- ernment. ANOTHER explanation gaining some credence these days is that the outbreaks have little or noth- ing to do with civil rights. Advo- cates of this argument hold that the troubles were fomented by a Communist or criminal element. Support for this theory comes from the firecracker pattern of outbreaks and the similarity of tactics used. If, indeed, this was the case- and presumably the Presiden's new commission will be checking this possibility very carefully- the cure is essentially a police action, rounding up and jailing the conspirators. B'ut it's doubtful that the problems facing the cities are that simple. Conspirators, if there were, could cause trouble all right, but not the ravage left in Newark and Detroit and other places. There had to be something more, something that was there before the conspirators came and probably will linger after they have gone. A third explanation of the cause of the cities' latest torment centers on the apparent growth of the black-power movement. Such advocates of Negro militance as H. Rap Brown and Stokely Car- michael have spread their mes- sages of racial hate and destruc- tion well, splattering the janguage with words that reek and wreck- 'Soul brother," "honkies," "Burn, baby, burn." The Browns and the Car- michaels have demonstrated a talent for attracting troublemak- ers over whom the more moderate Negro leaders have no influence or control. And it's precisely this element - the Negro extremists with anarchyin theirhearts - that makes up the hard core of the ravagers. STILL ANOTHER reason ad- vanced for the widespread havoc in the cities is, ironically enough, the charge that local law enforce- ment was too slow and too timid. Negroes and whites alike in var- ious cities have insisted that the rioting and pillaging might have been nipped if the police had moved swiftly in the initial stages. Yet, over the years, the accusa- tions of "police brutality," shouted from the streets and echoed in decisions by our courts, have made policemen the unwitting scapegoats for all kinds of cri- ticism. No wonder they're wary. But even if they weren't, no police force in any city is pre- pared in numbers, training. or equipment, to handle the kind of chaos that characterized most of the rioting. To set up local forces that could handle such situations would turn the country into a police state. If the various explanations of the causes of the rioting are un- satisfactory, it is at least partly due to a kind of cliche-ridden thinking that's being done about the problems. PRESIDENT Johnson promises more legislation and more Federal aid, although a slew of such laws and uplift programs in recent years has not noticeably dimin- ished the problems. In fact, they probablycontributed to the prob- lem by raising false hopes that the .politicians knew could not be easily or quickly fulfilled, leading to further disillusionment. Equally unsatisfactory is the stand of some congressmen and governors that more repressive laws and ac- tion ought to get first priority. Running through all the talk, in- furiatingly, is politics as usual. Mr. Johnson couldn't resist jab- bing Governor Romney for not being able to maintain order in Michigan, and the Republican Co- ordinating Committee in Wash- ington tried to score points by blaming the whole mess on the Johnson Administration. What has been happening in the cities in the past month is a revolution, in the sense that things after July 1967 are not'the same as they were before and will not be the same again. The think- ing about the problems, therefore, also has to change; cliches of the past must go. It is clear, for example, that the multitude of Federal programs for the cities need to be re-ex- amined and probably overhauled. If one of the aims of the projects was to prevent the kind of out- break we've been experiencing, they plainly haven't. Additionally, something has to be done to prevent outbreaks, if they occur, from getting com- pletely out of hand as they did in Newark and Detroit. Training of National Guardsmen for riot- control is a good step, even be- latedly. A crackdown on the sale and transport of guns is in order: how many more people have to be killed or maimed by snipers for that to be clear? THE NEGRO power structure ought to be analyzed anew. It's plain that a small but possibly growing group of Negroes listens to no one except the hate ped- dlers, to the despair of the older, maturer leaders. The evidence suggests that the extremists are becoming increasingly active. If they cannot be reasoned with, ef- forts must be made to isolate them from the larger community of law-abiding Negroes on whom the curse of extremism invariably falls. Nothing good has come of the July rampage except perhaps the chance to see things as they truly are, stripped of the stale stereo- types and the crippled cliches. OPINION The Daily has begun accept- ing articles from faculty, ad- ministration, and students on subjects of their choice. They are to be 600-900 words in length and should be submitted to the Editorial Director. A 1 I 00 4 .BARRY GOLDWATER se ... Urban Guerrilla Warfare' There is urgent need to reorient our thinking in regard to the riots that are sweeping the nation; the kiling, looting and rampaging that has hit every sort of community from metropolitan centers to rural townships. It is no longer sufficient, or even decently moral, to view them only as the understandable result of civil frustrations and injustice. Certainly such factors are in- volved in the environmental back- ground of the riots. Certainly these are factors that men of good will shall continue trying to al- leviate. BUT THE TIME is now past due to put such factors into sharp and proper perspective-which is to put those factors well into the background and view these hor- rible riots as exactly what, in un- varnished truth, they are. They are acts of urban guer- rilla warfare. They are violence unredeemed by reason of any sort. They are sheer demonstrations of terror, by terrorists, thugs, bullies Waterloo, Iowa, or wherever else the flames have burned, and see even a causal trace of rights, civil or otherwise, in the smoke. If we do not face these hard facts we cannot face the future itself with any confidence. In- stead we will be able to look for- ward only to more of the violent same. THOSE WHO NOW remain silent in this matter actually are loudly encouraging the most law- less elements of our society to continue to wage war on the rest of the nation. As a tragic example of that si- lence, you need look no farther than the strongest statement made by the President of the United States prior to the time that Detroit went up in flames. The President's strongest state- ment to that time was only that no one could "condone or ap- prove" rioting. Condone or approve is weak talk indeed for what has- been going that he is at war not with "social frustrations" but that he is at war with the people of the United States. He must know that he is doing in this country nothing less than what the Viet Cong terrorists have been doing in South Viet- nam. Also, our law enforcement de- partments, in every city, large or small, should have the fullest as- surance that when faced by civil warfare, that they have the firm insurrection, or urban guerrilla backing of the rest of us to fight back and 'fight back hard to re- store peace and punish the guilty, even as they bear in mind, also their solemn injunction always to protect the innocent as they go about this tough, demanding, dangerous job. LET US, above all, drop imme- diately the word racial from de- scriptions of the urban guerrilla warfare that has broken out. These are not race riots and the majority of Negro Americans have .every right to feel deeply offended "There's -Now, Money Enough To Support Both Of You' Doesn't That Make You Feel Better?." - '" : - - , Y ._ r, u. r: J'1 r ' . V ti 1/ , 5:d - .,.,. NFFy. A ,; ;°. F " ; :