Memorial College

Valdosta is a genial town. Its citizens are trig of garb, slow of speech; they have prosperity; more, they have a hero, Woodrow Wilson, late President of the U.S. They remember him in Valdosta. On a spring day, the triggest, the most prosperous of the citizens of Valdosta, those gentlemen who compose the Chamber of Commerce, met totgether, issued, presently a manifesto. They called upon their fellow citizens for funds to establish an institution of higher learning for man--a college which should be a memorial to President Wilson. "That would be a worthy thing for us to do," said the citizens of Valdosta, considering the plan. "It is just that this lonely man should at last thus come to honor in Valdosta." Nor were the citizens

Generously they responded to the request, pledged $500,000, bought a 100-acre tract for a campus.

Meanwhile, a committee of educational experts met, headed by Sideney E. Mezes, President of the College of the City of New York; David F. Houston, onetime member of the Wilson Cabinet, defined the sort of college-- that would rise in Valdosta when the total fund ($5,000,000) has been obtained. They suggested:

1) That the school should be limited to about 300 students.

2) That no student be admitted who did not give unmistakable promise of leadership.

3) That the standards of the curriculum should be from the first equal to those of any first-class college in the U.S.

4) That unusually high salaries should be offered to professors so that men of the highest ability might be satisfied to remain with the college for long periods.

Black and White

On a June afternoon in Tennessee, a man was talking Smoothly the ribbon of his voice unrolled, with here and there a knot. When, these knots came, his hearers stirred and looked at each other; sometimes they burst out clapping, some times they merely nodded their heads. They were alumni of Fisk University, Negro college of Nashville, Tennessee. He who addressed them was Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, Fisk graduate. He had taken this opportunity (it was Commencement Day, 1924) to bring certain painful things to their attention, he said.

He spoke of Fisk's President, Dr. Fayette McKenzie (white), spoke of him, for one thing, as a bigoted Puritan, for another, as a race partisan. He cited the case of a Negro girl who had been sent home because she could not explain how she happened to possess a $5 bill. Here there was a knot. Dr. Du Bois went on to tell how President McKensie had "jim-crowed" the students of Fisk, had caused a colored Bishop to be insulted. Said he: "I am told that the Jubilee Club gave a concert down town this year. Not only was the colored audience segregated, but the colored mothers were separated from the white teachers, and different windows were furnished where colored and white people were to buy their tickets. When lasaiah Scott, a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, went innocently to the white window, he was refused service and insulted."

Said another alumnus Dr. M. V. Boutte: '"The boys are not allowed to smoke. The girls are not allowed to wear decollete dresses in the evening and must wear only black decorations on their hats.

Nearly every Southern state has a Negro college. But Fisk, Hampton and Tuskegee are the three most important. Those who read in the press of the Fisk alumni's efforts to oust the Fisk President found it interesting to compare Fisk with Tuskegee, with Hampton.

Fisk was founded in 1866 by the American Missionary Association. Its first President was the Reverend Erastus M. Cravath*; all its presidents have been white; its present faculty consists of six black, and nine white professors. It is supported by over 50 Endowment and Annuity Funds, amounting to $260,333.54. College expenses per student are $43.50, including board for six weeks. They earn the remainder of this board. At the close of the 19th century, the Jubilee Singers of Fisk won wide repute, toured the U.S., went then to England where Queen Victoria gave them audience and William Gladstone made them his guests, went to France, to Germany, returned to Nashville with $150,000, erected "Jubilee Hall." Now Fisk has many halls as fine as befits an institution for "pupils of moderate means, high ideals, and gentle manners." Recently it completed a $1,000,000 endowment drive to which the Carnegie Foundation and the General Education Board contributed.

Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute was founded in Virginia in 1868 by the American Missionary Association, became independent of missionary control under the presidency of General Samuel Chapman Armstrong. He raised an endowment fund, getting his money from individuals, missionary societies, churches, in the North and South. The Hon. Josiah King gave $10,000; the American Missionary Association $9,000; the Board of Trustees, the Freeman's bureau have contributed, students raised funds by singing. Be side the usual courses of study, instruction is provided in blacksmithing, wheel-wrighting, printing, dressmaking, pianoplaying. Hampton is open to Indians, "to show," once said a famed Hampton graduate, "that the Negro is not alone in his struggle." That graduate was the late Booker T. Washington, LL.D., Class of 1875, who is said to have "done more for the Negro race than any black man that ever lived."

Tuskegee. Booker Taliafero Washington, most distinguished graduate of Hampton, was the founder of Tuskegee. He worked as a house servant after the Civil War in a family that encouraged his ambition to study. Walking, "copping lifts," he journeyed 500 miles to Hampton, entered the Institute with 50-c-. in his pocket. He paid for his education by working as a dormitory janitor, graduated, taught a night-school for Indians. Tuskegee was founded by Mr. Washington, in 1881, in a shanty in Tuskegee, Alabama. Now it has 42 buildings, 88 instructors, teaches 26 industries. The President, all students, all instructors, are black. Tuition is free. There is an entrance fee of $15. Board, light, room, laundry, cost $14 per month. It. is supported by missionary, state and individual contributions.

Trumpet Blast

At Cambridge. Bells altoed. Morning classes were over at Harvard University. Through snow-beleagured quads, Harvard students began to march or slink to their luncheons. Outside Langdell Hall, a group loitered long, seemed, in fact, to have taken up a permanent station there. Others, curious, joined them. More and more kept coming, some with tippets, some with ear-tabs (for it was cold)--tall young men who waddled, short young men who strode; the worried, the weasel-faced, the debonair; men distinguished by their intelligence, by their apparel; lambs, lions, scoffers, leaders, bleaters, men who, in other clothing might have been artists. Seven hundred idle, able, rowdy, snobbish, gay, amused, determined, casual, dismal Harvard lads (as motley as only an assembly of U.S. students can be) stared up at a window in Langdell Hall. It was the window of Roscoe Pound, Dean of the Harvard Law School, who has recently been offered the Presidency of the University of Wisconsin.

The window was shut, but they knew that Dean Pound was up there. One of their number had conspired to effect this by making a private appointment with the Dean for just that hour. The 700 shouted "Open the window!" Moved by an unseen hand, the pane swung from the frost-rimmed sill. Then from the motley group stepped a man of older years, George R. Nutter, a Harvard graduate, President of the Boston Bar Association. Circumstances forced him to speak in the manner of a tragedian uttering an aside--addressing the 700, but speaking to the window. He urged Dean Pound to refuse the offer of the University of Wisconsin, asserted that it was to emphasize this request that the 700 stood in the cold beneath. Said he: "Dean Pound is making a choice between scholarship and administration. The profession of the Law needs a scholar today more than ever before."

He stated that it was the wish of all Harvard students that the Dean remain.

"Yeah," bellowed a voice from the edge of the crowd. "Please, Pound!"

Now another bellower cupped his hands, vociferated: "Long cheer for Pound!" A tense arm ticked off three hips; through the bleak air, refracted by the wall of Langdell Hall, came from 700 leather throats a stupendous roar--Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, with nine POUNDS on the end. The Dean did not appear. Reluctantly, in little groups, the 700 went away.

Next day, said the Harvard Crimson, undergraduate paper: ". . . Dean Pound's offer from the University of Wisconsin is a trumpet blast. . . . It is no exaggeration to say that undergraduates await Dean Pound's decision almost as eagerly as the Law Students. . . . Many of these undergraduates plan to enter the Law School themselves and there is, in part, a selfish interest. . . . Undergraduates join the men of the Law School in hoping that Dean Pound will choose scholarship as his portion."

In Manhattan, graduates* of the Harvard Law School met, adopted a resolution which declared: 1) That Dean Pound was the "acknowledged leader of legal education throughout those parts of the world where Common Law prevails"; 2) that the "loss of Dean Pound to Harvard Law School and to the profession of law would be irreparable."

In Wisconsin, meanwhile, were being enacted scenes far less sane, less normally boyish than the spectacle of 700 exuberant students cheering on a winter day under the window of their overseer. Rapine, carnival, all-night carousals, drinking-brawls, Babylonian revels--these said the press, have been going forward at the University of Wisconsin. Sorely, sorely, if the press is to be credenced, does the University of Wisconsin need an administrator. Judge Ole Stolen, magistrate of Madison, Wis., where the University is situate, stated last week that many students were of such licentious habits that frequently, at cockcrow, persons believed to be female, but smelling dismally of alcohol, were carried in blankets from fraternity houses. "Liquor and women have become a craze." Crime increases; "the County jail would be filled twice a week if every offender were sent up." University officials denied that such revels ever occurred except possibly in vacation periods but agreed with Judge Stolen that dissolute students should suffer for their vices the severest penalty that the law allows.

From Dean Pound came a telegram requesting more time in which to weigh the offer of Wisconsin's Presidency, saying that "a situation had arisen in the East which made immediate decision impossible."

Later, to a committee which had journeyed from Madison to interview him, Dean Pound definitely declined the presidency of the University of Wisconsin.

*Among the more able graduates of the Harvard Law School are: Francis G. Caffey, onetime U. S. Attorney; Wilson M. Powell, Treasurer of the N.Y. Bar Association; Charles H. Strong, Secretary of the Bar Association; Elihu Root Jr.; Norman Hapgood; Charles E. Hughes Jr., Greenville Clark.

*Father of Paul D. Cravath, millionaire lawyer of Manhattan.