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e waisgan Daily
Eighty-Seven Years of Editorial Freedom
420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, M1 48109
I4
Black Salvation -- 2
A Time of Turmoil: Struggle for Civil Rights
..... .
Friday, April 8, 1977
News Phone: 764-0552
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
Crter's registration. plan
will increase voter turnout
PRESIDENT CARTER is trying to
improve the election process in
this country. Last month he proposed
the abolition of they Electoral Col--
lege, and now he is trying to per-
mit previously unregistered voters to
register on Election Day. But in its
first hearing in Congress, the regis-
tration bill met virtually unanimous
Republican opposition.
Just what are these Republicans
up to? They claim that the bill
"makes it too easy to vote," or that
it would be "rejecting 180 years of
history," or even that it would be
unconstitutional - balderdash. Their
real gripe is that the majority-of un-
registered Americans are the less
affluent, under-educated and often
non-whites, who tend to vote Demo-
crat. Opposing this bill is nothing
less than blatant discrimination
against those people.
Some 55 million AmericAns voted
in last year's presidential election, but
45 million persons who were eligible
did not cast their ballots. With near-
ly half the people not voting, Con-
gress must act quickly to reverse the
trend towards declining voter turn-
out. We believe that Carter's pro-
posal would not only bring more peo-
ple to the polls, it would eradicate
TODAY'S STAFF:
News: Eileen Daley, Mark Eibert, Lisa
Fisher, Robb Holmes, Ann' Marie
Lipinski, Stu McConnell, Jim Tobin,
Mike Yellin
Editoria: Ken Parsigion
Arts: Lois Josimovich
Photo: Freeberg
Sports: Errol Shifman
the last vestiges of discrimination
from our election process.
VOTING IS AN inalienable right, not
a privilege. There can be no such
thing as "making it too easy to vote."
Since the right to cast one's ballot
is not something to be earned, we
should make it as easy as possible
to Vote. This country was founded on
the principle of majority rule, but
how can we pretend to live up to that
principle when barely a majority of
the public even votes? Jimmy Car-
ter's 52 per cent majority on Novem-
ber 3 was actually only a 28 per cent
plurality of those eligible to vote..
If our elected public officials are
going to be responsive to the public,
then we must encourage more peo-
ple to vote. President Carter's plan
(while it may give more votes to
the Democrats, will more importantly
get more people out to the polls, and
put us back on the road to true ma-
jority rule. Hopefully those Republi-
cans who oppose the plan will put
politics behind them, and cast a vote
for the future of democracy by sup-
porting this bill.
Sports Staff
KATHY HENNEGHAN............sports Editor
TOM CAMERON ........ Executive Sports Editor
SCOTT LEWIs .........Managing sports Editor
DON MacLACHLAN .... Associate' Sports Editor
Contributing Editors
JOHN NIEMEYER and ENID GOLDMAN
NIGHT EDITORS: Ernie Dunbar, Henry Engel-
hardt, Rick Maddock, Bob Miller, Patrick Rode,
Cub Schwartz.
ASST. NIGHT EDITORS: Jeff Frank, Cindy Gat-
ziolis, Mike Halpin, Brian Martin, Brian Miller,
Dave Renbarger, Errol Shifman and Jarnie Tur-
EDITOR'S NOTE: This sec-
and installment of a five-part
Easter series on the faith of
blacks deals with the modern
outbursts over their predica-
ment, a time of trauma.
By GEORGE W. CORNELL
AP Religion Writer
After the long silence, the
storm broke. After the drawn-
out, restrained waiting, after,
the years of degradation and
exclusion of American blacks,
after the accumulated dis-
appointments, postponement
and evasions, the pent-up ang
uish burst across the land - a
seething cry for the rights of a
race.
T h e long-suffering plea,
"How long, oh Lord?," became
a reverberating demand, "Now
is the time!"
It began with the congrega-
tion of a black Methodist pastor
in Kansas, the Rev. Oliver
Brown, whose lawsuit brought
the historic U.S. Supreme Court
decision of 1954 outlawing pub-
lic school segregation. The
spark flared in the Montgom-
ery, Ala., bus boycott of 1955-
'56 to integrate public trans-
portation, led by the then little-
known black minister, the Rev.
Martin Luther King.;
Turmoil spilled into Little
Rock, Ark., where 16 pastors in
1957 raised the first organized
protest against the use of state,
troopers to bar black children
from Central High School, pre-;
cipitating federal military in-I
tervention.
Afterward cane the demon-I
strations that erupted across
the land from 1960 onward for a
decade, the lunch-counter "sit-
ins," the "freedom rides," the
massive marches, the arrests,
church bombings and burnings,
the slain ministers, black and
white, the manifestos, dis-
ruptions and riots, an un-
leashed fury that shook the
cities with fire and violence
frmn Los Angeles to Birming-
ham to Boston.
"And, there was darkness
over the whole land until the
ninth hour," relates Luke 23:44
of the dying agony of Christ's
crucifixion. An earthquake
shook the region, says Matthew
27:41. "And behold, the curtain
of the temple was torn in two,
from top to bottom; and the
earth shook, and the rocks
were split; the tombs also were
opened, and many bodies of the
saints who had fallen' asleep
were raised."
It was a shattering interlude
in that former time and also in
the rending, battering turbu-
lence that in modern times
shuddered through this nation.
Things had been quiet before,
subdued, controlled, in check.
And then it struck, a rumbling,
a clap of legal thunder, and
like a held-back flood bursting
its banks, the tide slammed
through the defiles, the indiffer-
ences, hesitations and barri-
cades of America.,. "
"I cane to cast fire on
earth," Jesus says in Luke
12:49. Acts 2:11 adds: "For
God shows no partiality."
The upheavals were not con-
fined to any particular region,,
North or South. Although the
e arly,mneaningfulcon-
frontations occurred in the
South where blacks and whites
knew each other closely and
where the "Jim Crow" segre-
gation system had been openly
legislated and plainly deli-
neated, the most destructive,
MSA NOTES:
CDIU:
By CHRIS BACHELDER ;
and MICHELE SPRAYREGEN {
IF ONE WERE GOING to char-
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curence of lines would certain-
ly be included in the discussion.
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blind violence took place in
cities of the North and West.
There, the discrimination
against blacks generally was
covert, inflicted without law
and carried on by surreptitious
cua.ooms and procedures - the
real estate agents who screened
clients for neighborhood houses
and city apartments, the labor
unions that racially restricted
certifications, the selective ad-
missions offices, the companies
that automatically chose only
white personnel.
In countless subtle and cir-
cuitous ways, blacks com-
paratively got brushed aside;
turned down and refused. In
that veiled, yet pervasively in-
hibiting system, the adversary
was shadowy, hidden, hard to
pinpoint, and for that reason,
seemed all the more frustrating
and threatening.
It spawned the squalor of
Harlem, of Chicago's West
Side, Boston's Roxbury and
Cleveland's East End. The pat-
tern formed the backdrop for
the conflagrations and devas-
tation that exploded in the
Watts section of Los Angeles, in
Newark, N.J., in Detroit, that
convulsed Boston over school
busing.
The disorders seemed largely
sheer chaos, directionless deto-
nations of rage, harum-scarum
and ambiguous, yet they ex-
posed a smoldering malady.
Rampages flared in more than
135 communities in the last half
of the 1960s, small-scale and
large, waves of destruction,
looting, arson and shootings,
usually of blacks. More than
130 blacks were killed in riots
of that period.
Black church leaders, along
with whites, condemned the
violence. Baptist minister King,
who had organized the Southern
Christian Leadership Confer-
ence to press the integration
cause and who himself had
gone to jail 17 times despite his
insistence on a Gandhi style of
nonviolence, deplored the out-
breaks saying: "We must all
live together as brothers or we
will perish together as fools."
A U.S. presidential commis-
sion, after a seven-month inves-
tigation in 1969, blamed the
riots on white racism, a failure
of the white majority to deal
justly with a black minority.
Without massive remedies, the
plans
around CRISP appointment poli-
cies. In response to long CRISP
lines last fall, the administration
has instituted a system calling
for random distribution of
CRISP appointment times for
pre-registration. At first glance,
it appears to be an eminently
reasonable alternative to the
current procedure.
Unfortunately, one's first
glance is deceiving; one finds
that the Academic Services
Board implemented a policy
lacking any provision for sen-
ior priority. Michigan Student
Assembly (MSA) has empow-
ered Brian Laskey to work with
the Office of Academic Affairs
toward implementing a system
which guarantees senior priori-
ty.
This all points to the fact, how-
ever, that the University has
botched it for the students
again. The entire matter would
have been more aptly handled
by students instead of the ad-
ministration. Consider how the
MSA responded in the face of
a similar situation.
LAST FALL, MSA received
a flood of complaints from stu-
commission said, "he condition
would split the nation into "two
societies, one black, one white
- separate and unequal."
Although slavery ended for
blacks with the Civil War, the
virus of racism had tough,
knotted roots, passed on from
parent to child, instilled by
habit, phrases, supposition,
self-aggrandizement and casual
but cruel stereotypes.
"The bows of the mighty are
broken, but the feeble gird on
strength," records the prophet
in first Samuel 2. "The Lord
kills and brings to life; he
brings down to Sheolrand raises
up... He brings low, he also
exalts. He raises up the poor
from the dust; he lifts the
needy from the ash heap, to
make them sit with princes and
inherit a seat of honor."
Remarkably, to an unprece-
dented extent, religious forces
joined together in the purpose-
ful aspects of that process:
Protestant, Roman Catholic,
Eastern Orthodox and Jewish,
North and South, black and
white. Despite dissent, to a de-
gree unmatched in American
history before or since, the sep-
arate bands of Christians as
well as Jews locked arms in
the early 1960s on behalf of
greater human brotherhood.
"We shall be one," they sang,
striding side by side, ranks of
varied creed and complexion,
nuns and ministers, 'bishops,
priests and, rabbis, poor folk,
rich folk, bumptious youths and
gray-haired oldsters. "We shall
overcome."
They made up a dedicatedly
non-violent but stubborn pha-
lanx, resisted by tangled prej-
udices, power structures and
sneering toughs; by beatings,
bombings and imprisonments.
:You share a deepening ecume-
nical fellowship in jail," ob-
served Presbyterian theologian
Robert McAfee Brown,'one of
about 500 clergy jailed between
1961 and 1965."
The multireligious, inter-
racial alliance first took gener-
al shape in January 1963, in
Chicago at a conference on
race, the first national meeting
in U.S. history convened jointly
by all the major branches of
faith. They planned together,
prayed together, sounded a
c o in in o n determination to
eradicate racism with "all dili-
gence and speed."
A wave of interracial, inter-
religious undertakings bur-
geoned across the nation in the
wake of that conference. The
scenes, the strife, the concerted
stands unfolded in many cities.
In joint testimony before the
U.S. Congress on July 24, 1963,
officially representative Protes-
tant, Orthodox and Catholic or-
ganizations - speaking unite-
dly for the first time - urged
strengthened civil rights protec-
t i o n s, calling racism a
'blasphemy against God."
A month later, 200,000 people
engulfed Washington on Aug.
28, 1963, a moving sea of hu-
manity of many skin tones, of
many churches, the great and
humble of many ages and
places, North and South, East
and West. With that multitude
assembled at the Lincoln Me-
morial at noon on the 100th an-
niversary of Lincoln's emanci-
pation proclamation, its ideal
was revivified by King:
"I have a dream that one day
this nation will rise up and live
out the true meaning of its
creed: 'We hold these truths to
be self-evident, that all men
are created equal.' I have a
dream that one day on the red
hills of Georgia the sons of for-
iner slaves and the sons of for-
met slave-owners will be able
to sit down together at the
table of brotherhood. .'."
'Black churches became the
mobilizing centers and deploy-
ment points in the Southern
struggle. More than 150 of them
were bombed or burned from
1954 to 1964.
It happened, amid. rising
tremors of protests and repris-
als springing up sporadically,
of ministers jailed, black and
white, of police dogs and fire
hoses turned on demonstrators
- with black churches resound-
ing nightly with prayers, shout-'
, ing and hymns.
What had drawn the reli-
giously divided whites together
had been the blacks and their
travail. Their cross strangely
had effected a new reality for
whites. It had acted unexpect-
edly to blot out old religious es-
trangements in that tortuous
time and forged a previously
unparalleled bond of conscience
and companionship.
In the heart of the South, 275
Atlanta clergymen, Protestant,
Roman Catholic and Jewish,
pleaded with believers to "im-
plement the principles" of their
faith so "brotherhood shall be-
come a 'reality in our
land.. .without regard to race,
class or creed."
The Delta Ministry got under-
way in 1964, a trained inter-
religious crew headed by
clergymen and working for
health, literacy and voters reg-
istration among Mississippi
blacks. Three workers were
slain June 21, their bodies
found a month later in a newly
filled-in dirt dam.
Then came Selma, Ala., the
"bloody Sunday" of March 7,
1965. "Troopers -advance." A
company of helmeted state
troopers in gas masks and
mounted sheriff's possemen
moved into a throng of 550
blacks at the Pettus bridge and
drove them back to their
church refuge with tear gas,
cattle prods, gun butts and bull-
whips, the exploding clouds of
gas obscuring in eerie con-
fusion the victims and flailing
weapons. Eighty-four were in-
jured, 17 severely
The crisis, sharpened by two
months of futile efforts by
blacks to register to vote and
3,800 arrests, had come as they
started a protest march to the
state capital, Montgomery, only
to be turned back in bloody
rout. At the call of King, an
army of clergy from across the
country converged on Selma:
archbishops, theologians, pas-
tors, seminarians and lay
people.
They bunked on mats in black
homes, massed in the humble
black church, Brown's Chapel,
paraded the streets, hand-
clapping, praying, singing. "His
truth is marching on." Nuns,
serene, smiling, in their flow-
i n g , old-fashioned habits,
clasped hands with preachers
and black youths in the "free-
dom stomp."
Finally came the strange,
massive trek of 54 miles to
Montgomery, five days of heat,
rains and chill nights. "Walk
together children, don't you get
weary," King told 3,400 blacks
and whites as they left Selma
March 21.
Their numbers alternately
thinned and grew, swelling to
25,000 as they entered Mont-
gomery to present a voting-
rights petition. "We're on the
move now," King told the jubi-
lant throng. ". . .We are mov-
big to the land of freedom."
Indeed, many things were
changing. Obstructions were
coming down, and more would
come down. New laws we
being written and implemented,
and out of the death throes of
black subjugation had sprung a
new fellowship of races and
faiths.
But a heavy haze lingered,
lanced with lightning rancor.
King, who had won the Nobel
Peace Prize for his reconciling
work, said that he had been to
the mountaintop mid looked
over into the promised land,
but doubted if he himself would
get there.. But, he said, the
people would get there.
Next day, on April 4, 19%8, he
was shot down at the age of 39
as he stood on a hotel baleony
in Memphis.
"You will weep and lament,"
Jesus said of his own dying in
John 16:20. ... .You will be
sorrowful, but your sorrow will
turn into joy."
TOMORROW: The Rising.
Nr -
Input
Student Organizations Board has
serious reservations about try-
ing to implement such a policy
for basketball tickets, however.
It's quite possible that abolish-
ing ticket lines for basketball
would result in an increase in
demand for tickets, perhaps
forcing the athletic department
to resort to some sort of a lot-
tery. But, this isn't our inten-
tion; since the random alloca-
tioa plan won't go into effect
this fall. The Student Organiza-
tions Board will be recommend-
ing to the Board in Control that
the following procedures be en-
forced for the 1977 football tick-
et lines:
* Two lines should be estab-
lished, one for people seeking
individual tickets and one for
blocks. (The current athletic
ticket policy already' requires
this.)
* In the indivtdual lines, a
.person may represent up to four
people. In the block lines, a per-
son may represent a group of
any size.
* A 24-hour continuous phy-
sical presence must be main-
tained by each individual or
need student
Distributed by os %geles'Vanes SYNDICATE
Letters
Hash Bash
To The Daily:
This is in response to The Daily
editorial of March 31st concerning the
Hash Bash. While I certainly agree
with you about the need for complete
legalization of marijuana, I cannot
agree with you about the value of the
Hash Bash. It was a good idea when
it was begun, but it has lost its rele-
vance and has gotten out of hand.
The original purpose of the Bash,
to demonstrate in favor of the $5 pot
fine to be voted on three days later;
is largelv irrelevant now. While pot-
to
the Daily
ceived student feedback on the
subject. The Board quickly
drafted five alternative propos-
als for conducting athletic tick-
et lines and placed it on the
fall All-Campus Election ballot.
Student opinion voted strongly
in favor of a computerized sys-
tem of random allocation for
home football games. The Stu-
dent Organizations Board work-
ed out the mechanics of such
a program in a proposal to the
Board in Control of Intercollegi-
ate Athletics. Included with the
proposal was a random-samp-
ling telephone survey done by
the Student Organizationsi Board
in conjunction with the Statisti-
cal Research Laboratory. The
results of the survey showed
again that students favored a
randomized computer system
over the current system by a
margin of 66 to 34 per cent.
THE PROPOSED computer
system retains the current sen-
iors receiving first priority; jun-
iors, second; and so forth. Each
student would be issued a com-
puter card at CRISP which
would act as their football cou-
pon. Students desiring to form
ets. The need for waiting in line,
though, is eliminated, since tick-
et selection has already taken
place.
Armed with election and sur-
vev results to illustrate student
support for the random alloca-
tion plan, MSA's representatives
on the Board in Control of In-
tercollegiate Athletics presented
the proposal at the Board's
March meeting. The Board in
Control refused to implement
the policy for the upcoming
football season, however, citing
the needs for further feasibility
studies, operating costs data,
and trial runs. It is clear to
these authors that more work
needs to be done to implement
the policy. We intend to work
with the Board in Control to-
ward implementing the policy
for 1978.
THE BOARD also contended
tha: a ticket system which ask-
ed for student responses in the
spring would pass over many
students who were not "think-
ing football" at that time, but
developed an interest in the
latter part of the summer and
early fall. These authors be-
ing for the condition of the Diag or the
mess they leave behind in the form of
beer cans, cigarette butts, and, of
course, the remnants of joints. This
litter is left all over the Diag for the
"benefit" of the University students
who must pick their way through it
and the University service workers who
must clean it up.
Most importantly, I must disagree
with The Daily when it states that the
Hash Bash is reminiscent of the six-
ties, when students were concerned with
such vital issues as the Viet Nam war
and racial discrimination. I can think
I couldn't agree more with The
Daily when it states that "if people
would get out and voice their opinions
on issues more vital than marijuana
smoking, we'd be better off." But this
won't happen as long as those people
spend their time sitting on the .Diag
getting high.
Virginia R. Boynton
To The Daily:
You and I don't want an atomic
war! Here is how to learn these laws:
* What you plant will grow. The
planted murder in Russia in 1918
I