September 12, 2014

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The Miami Student Established 1826

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2014

VOLUME 142 NO. 05

MIAMI UNIVERSITY OXFORD, OHIO

WWW.MIAMISTUDENT.NET

Former professor shares civil rights story My FBI file and why it should concern you as a Miami Student today CIVIL RIGHTS RICK MOMEYER

PROFESSOR EMERITUS

When I was an undergraduate at Allegheny College, beginning in 1960, I was greatly benefitted by three different opportunities that each in its own way transformed my life. The first was to have some extraordinarily good teachers — teachers who took a very raw, ill prepared, but earnest young person seriously and challenged me to see the world in very different ways than I had acquired in my first 18 years. The second was the occasion when Bayard Rustin visited campus, in the fall of 1961, to enlighten us as to what was happening in the burgeoning civil rights movement. The third, growing directly out of these first two, was to go to Fisk University as an exchange student the second semester of my second year, winter/spring of 1962. Taken together, these three events have led to living a very different, and I believe, far more rewarding, life than the one I had envisioned at 18. It also brought me to being noticed by the FBI and began a long period of surveillance. It is for good reason John D’emilio, in his biography of Bayard Rustin, subtitles the book “The Lost Prophet.” Rustin was a life long advocate for nonviolence, a close adviser to Dr. King, and the organizing genius behind the great

March on Washington in 1963. After he addressed a full house in the Allegheny College chapel, he sat down with about 12 of us for further discussion. Rustin’s opening remark was: “How come you all decided to come to a segregated college?” That was a revelation to us, who had not thought of Allegheny as segregated; merely as lacking a significant population of Negro students.

It is not what was in the file that should concern you, but what was left out.”

So some of us set out to change this, mostly by proposing to help the admissions office recruit students of color. In the course of that effort, we learned that other historically white colleges (Colby, Wooster, Grinnell, and more) had for some years conducted one-on-one semester long student exchanges with historically black colleges. At Allegheny, we arranged such an exchange with Fisk University in Nashville, and in January of 1962 three students from each institution changed places. The fourth day at Fisk, a picnic was held in Nashville’s park with a

Freedom Summer Reunion Conference Oct. 13-14 Visit Miami Alumni Association online to RSVP

replica of the ancient Greek Parthenon, and the other two Allegheny exchange students and I were invited. The rather bizarre replica of the Parthenon was of little interest; the other picnickers were so engaging, even captivating, for the persons they were and the stories they had to tell. Virtually all of the other 20 people at this well-integrated picnic were veterans of the “Nashville Movement,” the anti-segregation campaign that for two years had been one of the largest — and in some ways, most successful — parts of the protest and sit-in movement sweeping campuses and communities throughout the South. Probably half were also veterans of the previous summer’s Freedom Rides, most of whom were fairly fresh from Mississippi’s infamous Parchman Prison where Freedom Riders who made it as far as Jackson were routinely arrested and hustled off to spend the next three months. Their stories were compelling, and after they had been told, someone started playing a guitar and all broke out singing freedom songs that had so empowered and sustained the FBI »PAGE 4

CREATIVE COMMONS

FREEDOM FIGHTERS An FBI flier seeks information concerning the disappearance of Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney and Michael Henry Schwerner. Authorities later discoverd the three were killed by the Ku Klux Klan.

Freedom Summer portrait paints pictures of the past Civil rights activist Bob Moses earns spot in McGuffey gallery CIVIL RIGHTS EMILY TATE

UNIVERSITY EDITOR

CONTRIBUTED BY SMITH LIBRARY OF REGIONAL HISTORY

Freedom Summer workers and volunteers gather to sing and play guitar outside Clawson Hall on what is now Miami’s Western Campus.

TODAY IN MIAMI HISTORY

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but for those beneath the stroke of Robert Shetterly’s paintbrush, the portraits speak for themselves. Shetterly, an accomplished artist from Cincinnati, has seen his work fill the pages of various newspapers and span oceans to find new homes, but still many of his pieces have found their place here, at Miami University. For more than a decade now, Shetterly shifted his focus to an original series entitled “Americans Who Tell the Truth.” This collection features portraits of American citizens who, on scales both large and small, have pushed the boundaries of American society for the common good. “Some are legends who have long passed away — Martin Luther King, John Muir, Sojourner Truth,” Kevin Bush, Associate Dean of Partnership, Research and Grants for the College of Education, Health & Society, said. “But there are also some we may not recognize.” On the third floor of McGuffey Hall is an art gallery, where faces

PORTRAIT »PAGE 4

In 1979, The Miami Student reported instances of discrimination and segregation in Ohio’s higher eduction system would be investigated by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Miami president Phillip Shriver said the review would consider enrollment patterns, financial aid and retention rates.

UNIVERSITY

COMMUNITY

CULTURE

ASG ADDRESSES ALCOHOL

COMMUNITY CHARACTER

CHINESE CLUB

BIKE SAFETY

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both instantly recognizable and otherwise indistinguishable adorn the walls. Next month, a new face, that of Bob Moses, will join them — though this one, in particular, hits close to home. Moses played a key role in not only the Civil Rights Movement, but in Freedom Summer as well. Senior Program Assistant to the College of Education, Health & Society Monica Streit said he organized the Freedom Summer training at the Western College for Women (now Western Campus) in 1964, which brought in people from all across the country. Moses also challenged the allwhite delegates of Mississippi elected to the 1964 presidential convention because he felt they did not represent the black population of the state. As a result, he founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. This party did not earn any seats that year, but its creation alone gave a voice to people who had otherwise been silent. Shetterly recognized the important contributions of Moses’ civil rights activism and chose to make him the subject of one of his “Americans Who Tell the Truth” portraits. Since, Miami’s College of Education, Health & Society

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OPINION

SPORTS

SOCCER »PAGE 10


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