University of Virginia Library

The University's Ministry

The illumination of discriminatory practices
and policies among local barbers has brought to
the surface an increasing amount of information
which provides insight into the real nature of the
racial problem in Charlottesville. It is becoming
more and more apparent that the attitude of a
great many of the citizens of Charlottesville
would best be described as "racist."

As evidence of this there are the barbers'
refusals to cut Negroes' hair (one faculty member
told us that he had personally contacted every
barber shop in the Yellow Pages and had been
told by each that it would not cut Negroes' hair),
the date list imbroglio, and reports of incidents
such as the following which have been brought to
our attention since last week: a secretary within
the University, while performing her duty, said
that Negroes have smaller brains than white men;
a significant dean, when asked what he would do
if a Negro faculty member wanted to go get a
haircut with him at his regular barber shop, gave
the pat response - it's not his business how the
barbers run theirs; a nine-year old white child
explained his aversion to Negroes in terms of
"they cause trouble; they cause riots;" realtors
somehow become unable to get the keys to
houses for sale when Negroes come looking for a
house to buy; a young girl scout said that she was
afraid of Negroes in her scout troop; and so on
and on and on. The extent of the racist brainwashing
in this community, such examples indicate,
is immeasurable.

And yet this is the community in which
Thomas Jefferson's university must operate. In
that it must operate here, and in that it insists
that its founder's spirit lives on within it today,
the time has come (it's long overdue) when it
must assume a different attitude toward the
community in which it is located.

Pious official decrees of non-discrimination,
of back-bending efforts to recruit Negro faculty
and students, of withholding University money
from any organization which is discriminatory,
of official loathing of discrimination, discriminators,
and discriminatory establishments - pious
statements which "look good" - are not
adequate for satisfying the demands of the
University's proper role in guarding the mores of
contemporary society. The time has come for
this university, in the name of Thomas Jefferson
and of his pursuit of the "truth," and in the
name of higher education, to take an obtrusively
active role in bringing up to date (and to reason)
the attitudes of the community in which it is
located.

Efforts to recruit Negro faculty and students
are efforts wasted and pathetically silly within
the context of the community in which the
"recruits" are expected to reside - they are
efforts wasted in the face of the dualism between
official or idealistic attitudes and personal or
real attitudes such as those exemplified by
the dean above. The University will never achieve
any measurable success in its professed efforts to
bring its own community up to date until it is
able to bring up to date the larger community
within which it must work.

The time has come for the University's
administration officially to join its students (the
Student Council) in encouraging boycotts of
establishments which will not serve some of its
students or some of its faculty; until it does so,
its efforts to recruit more of the students which
those places (which it will not denounce) will not
serve hardly appear genuine, In order to avoid
being obtrusively hypocritical, it must make
every effort to encourage - to force, if necessary
- establishments which serve its students and
faculty to serve every one of them, or it must not
try to convince us or even expect us to believe
that its efforts to recruit those whom those
establishments will not serve are genuine.

There are those who would question the right
or rationale behind the University's assuming
such an active role. Our feeling is that as a center
of higher learning and education, it has a distinct
ethical responsibility to enlighten those around it
who lag behind what it considers are the minimum
standards for living in our society today;
more important, though, it has a distinct moral
obligation to see that everyone who pays his
tuition to attend the University has an equal
right and opportunity to carry on his life as he
chooses while in residence. For those middle-of-the-roaders
who would prefer a less active role
for the University, we ask, can right be pursued
too vigorously?

Individual students or faculty members will
not be able to achieve in this community what so
desperately needs to be achieved. The University
must join those individuals in their efforts
officially and with full realization that every time
one of its officials or even one of its students
patronizes an establishment not available to all
its members, a mockery is made of its efforts. To
fail to assume an active, official attitude of this
sort, with such a realization, is to fail to fulfill its
deepest obligations to mankind.