University of Virginia Library

Leaders On The Lawn

The assembly which will occur on the
Lawn today is as profound in its implications
as it is in its goals. In a time when student
demonstrations are as commonplace as students
themselves, today's demonstration is,
ironically, as unusual as a Negro at the
University of Virginia. Those who will gather
on Mr. Jefferson's Lawn today are not hippies,
weirdos, or misfits in any sense. They are
rather the representatives and members of the
student establishment of the University —
they are the products and affects of 150 years
of carefully-preserved traditionalism. They are
rational idealists who have finally been moved
to constructive action by mounting frustration
with the unsatisfactory results of all
other courses of seeking change absurdly
overdue. They are the students who have
immediate access to the decision-makers of
the University, but who have finally been
convinced that access avails too little.
With them will be members of the faculty and
administration who share their convictions.

Today's demonstrators are committed to
the unshakable conviction that the racial
imbalance within the University and the state
must be corrected immediately. They are
calling for the University — as a public
corporation owned by the people of Virginia,
as the beacon of enlightenment and education
in the state, as the child of Thomas Jefferson
— to take positive and progressive steps to
lead the way toward equality for all, both in
fact and by its example.

We urge all right-thinking and concerned
members of the University community to join
them on the Lawn today for a few minutes if
not for the whole hour. We must show the
Board of Visitors, the legislature, the governor,
the people of the state — and the
nation — that inequity and oppression will not
be tolerated here any longer, that, instead,
positive redress for past wrongs will be combined
with active and unflinching pursuit of
unilateral establishment
of the ideals on which this state and this
nation were founded.

—Dante.