Enmity in the North

With all the venom of a Southern mob barring a school door to a Negro child, a handful of Northern demon strators sought last week to deny the Dartmouth College auditorium floor to George Wallace. "Wallace is a racist, Wallace is a racist!" chanted Negro undergraduates as the Alabamian tried to address the student body. Then, led by a white instructor from Colby Junior College in New London, N.H., who yelled "Get out of here! Get out of here!", the students charged the stage.

Other students blocked the rush while Wallace's bodyguards hustled him to the wings. He soon returned, observing coolly, "Let's be in good humor now, I'll be gone in a little while."

When he did leave the hall, about 50 white and Negro students mobbed and rocked his car--with a frightened Wallace inside. No one was hurt, but the protesters dented the car roof and broke off the antenna. Wallace had gone to New Hampshire to drum up publicity for his third-party presidential candidacy, which he hopes to advance in that state's Democratic primary next year. The unruly reception at Dartmouth, besides violating his right to be heard and that of others to listen, only played into his hands by gaining him far more attention than his stock speech could have attracted.

While few in the overflow audience of 1,400 seemed to be Wallace partisans, most wanted to give him a hearing out of curiosity, courtesy or both. To the cries of "Throw him out!" one student yelled back: "We listened to Stokely Carmichael, so why don't you listen to Wallace?" (When the Negro militant appeared at the school last fall, he was subjected to a few boos.) When Wallace did manage to be heard, it was to correct "misunderstandings" about his state, to deny being a racist, and to denounce Americans who aid the Viet Cong by donating blood and money.

Dartmouth Dean Thaddeus Seymour and the student newspaper, which had invited Wallace, sent formal apologies, and the general feeling around the campus next day was one of sheepish embarrassment. It is impossible to embarrass Wallace. He described the demonstrators as pacifists who "don't want to fight the Viet Cong but sure can fight the police" and, alluding to the car-rocking episode, said the students were "expressing academic freedom--and academic freedom can get you killed."

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