Students And Faculty
Gibson, William
The sit-in demonstrations begun by four A. and T. College freshmen in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960, had greater effect on the students of Alabama State College than most of...
...Such students rejected the charge of impatience, answering that they realized full well that time will change things, but there was a need occasionally to help time along...
...This was obviously an attempt to get the parents or relatives to open up...
...But it was not until the Governor demanded that the demonstrators be expelled that 85 per cent of the student body gave expression to the feeling that their fellow students had the same rights as anyone else in this country and to expel them for seeking to be served in a tax-supported place was a violation of elementary democracy...
...They believed that the students had a right to protest on campus, or off campus for that matter, without the Governor or the Board of Education interfering...
...To some the issues became very dear, because there was perhaps a greater compulsion to understanding in Montgomery than in other places...
...The thirty-five students who were arrested for demonstrating on March 8 were, with a few exceptions, all freshmen and sophomores...
...Those students who were in on the plans from the beginning believed that they had a right to demonstrate against injustices...
...After a discussion on possible targets, the students decided on the lunch room at the county court house...
...If this be true, it is a sad commentary upon the intelligence of the students, the administration and the teaching faculty...
...Some students put a particular stress on the right to vote and to come and go freely...
...Both of these groups were forthright in stating their beliefs as to the rights of Negroes...
...Others singled out individual students who were taking an active part and tried to use their influence to get them to drop out of the movement...
...It was for the above reasons that the students started going to meetings and taking 232 part in the demonstrations, including marching on the State Capitol in a peaceful and orderly manner...
...235...
...while there were some who were violently opposed to the demonstrations, so much so that they stopped speaking to fellow faculty members whom they suspected of aiding or abetting the students and thus, as they put it, "causing trouble for the President...
...But then they began to fall into the background...
...Many of our undergraduates came to college right off the plantation, where their parents or relatives still live...
...On the one hand, some attended school and have lived here practically all of their lives...
...The upper classmen took the lead at first and provided the movement with its early leadership...
...More directly, this group of faculty members showed their positive support by words of encouragement when the spirits of the students sagged, or when the indirect squeeze of the administration was upon the student leaders...
...Although no faculty member instigated the student protest, some endorsed the demonstrations once they got started...
...Finally, the thirty-five students who were arrested for demonstrating found stout defenders in the faculty...
...It is necessary to know and understand this section of the country to appreciate fully the position of both young and old from the smaller communities...
...As a whole the parents of the students were not against what was being done...
...They realized that they might go to jail, get hurt or even killed...
...As for the future of the student antisegregation movement at Alabama State, there are those who are determined to continue the fight...
...Some of these parents may have been subjected to pressures by the whites in the little towns the students came from...
...However, of the nine students that were expelled—at the beginning of the protest movement—seven of them were upper classmen, though the leader of the group, Bernard Lee, was a sophomore...
...Similarly, there were those who did not say anything outwardly, but would not raise a hand against the students nor condemn them...
...Some stated that the young men and women were merely acting as citizens and the college could not deny them that right...
...After a telephone call other parents volunteered that it was alright for their sons and daughters to participate...
...They believed that the students were within their rights to protest in an orderly manner...
...It was the lower classmen who formed the hard core group that continued the fight...
...They were willing to go to jail or die, if this was necessary to help the cause of the Negro...
...Some came to take their children home, but after listening to the students decided to let them stay...
...Students here, as in other colleges, began to discuss the reasons behind the demonstrations...
...The sit-in demonstrations begun by four A. and T. College freshmen in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960, had greater effect on the students of Alabama State College than most of us realized...
...Even the Negro migrants in the towns, big or small, for the most part live under the shade of the "old plantation...
...A fourth group was composed of those who did not express their feelings so fluently in words, but did so in deeds, often acts of heroism...
...Those faculty members who were active in civic affairs were inclined to accept the protest of the students as a part of the overall struggle of the Negro...
...In certain cases there is some truth in the reports...
...Their minds already made up, but believing that more experienced thinking than their own would be helpful, they sought the advice of Reverend Ralph D. Abernathy, President of the Montgomery Improvement Association...
...The conservatives were able to use some students as spies, who would attend meetings and report back what took place and what the demonstrators intended to do next...
...but they believed in what the group was doing...
...Another pressure came from whites who would call parents, pretending that the caller was in favor of what the students were doing, and wanted to congratulate them...
...grounds and reactions...
...Officials of the colleges and the communities affected stated that the students were within their constitutional rights to demonstrate peacefully...
...And this in spite of the threats of jail and show of force by the authorities...
...They also resented the Governor's treatment of the president of the college...
...Feeling strongly a need to identify with the movement, a small group initiated action on the campus without outside aid...
...In one place, the superintendent of schools called the principal of the Negro school where the mother of one of the "jailed" students worked and told the principal to tell the mother to talk to her daughter...
...There were reports from students that some faculty members lowered grades of participants in the demonstration...
...Some of them knew that they would lose their campus jobs, and some did...
...But, already it has been proved that the young Negro student here is not afraid and that he is not content with separate facilities even if occasionally they appear to be equal...
...in others, the validity is doubtful...
...In most of the other schools affected, the students were fortunate to have the support of the college community in some form or other...
...Some college presidents emphasized that they were for the demonstrations in principle as long as they were orderly and not destructive...
...Only a few withdrew their young ones because they feared that harm might come to them...
...Degrees of apprehension existed among the demonstrators at first...
...On the other hand, a fair share of the faculty was born and educated elsewhere, and is relatively free of localisms...
...In some instances this was done in the classes by instructors making such statements as, "You shouldn't be out there marching and holding meetings," "You are here to learn and I am here to teach," "You shouldn't be led astray by outsiders...
...The student body falls into several classifications, according to their back...
...Whether this determination will be carried out depends, of course, upon future developments...
...They knew that they were jeopardizing their chances of being hired as teachers when they graduated and that their families and relatives might be fired from their jobs or even harmed...
...From the reactionary or conservative group pressure, openly and subtly, was applied to some students...
...Nobody knows how many meals were furnished hungry students by their teachers...
...The reason for this was simply that they had more to lose because some would soon be up for graduation...
...Here at Alabama State College it was otherwise...
...Here, too, were those who made no bones about where they stood, and did not attempt to hide their views...
...The faculty, too, would fall into several classifications...
...to say that approximately 1800 students could be overwhelmed and led against their will by strangers...
...Some are from the larger cities in Alabama and others were born in Alabama but had been living in the North for several years...
...Their desire was to remove some of the restrictions imposed upon them by segregation and to be able to function within American society as free citizens...
...A third group would include those from smaller towns in Alabama who resented pressure exerted by white authorities...
...Freshmen and sophomores then moved in to take the place of the upper classmen...
...According to the Montgomery Advertiser March 11, 1960 and the AdvertiserJournal of March 13, 1960, college officials were quoted as saying 234 that the demonstrations were not planned by students here, but by outside "agitators" who were taking advantage of the students...
...The grandparents of one of the students in another small town received calls from several whites who said that 233 they thought that the granddaughter "had better sense" than to be a part of the "goings on" at Alabama State College, and that the grandparents should talk to her...
...Many of them had to face tough decisions and arrive at answers as individuals...
...Some have bought homes, reached the age where it would be difficult to start life anew some place else and are near retirement...
Vol. 7 • July 1960 • No. 3
