Death of the Middleman

"I die," Paul L. Cabell Jr. wrote to his students, "to emphasize to you and all minority people who ever dream to be free that it can only come through working together. It seems that there is no other way for me to get your attention." With that, Cabell, the black assistant principal of a racially troubled high school just outside Flint, Mich., put a shotgun to his head and pulled the trigger.

Cabell had apparently been frustrated by the racial incidents at Beecher High School, which has an enrollment of 1,000--65% white and 35% black. First a group of black students refused to attend classes, calling the curriculum irrelevant. Then fistfights between blacks and whites broke out for four days in a row; one white student was hit over the head with a chair. When he tried to make peace, Cabell, who was 26, found himself in the middle--"nigger" to some whites and "Uncle Tom" to some blacks.

His suicide seemed out of all proportion to the comparatively minor unrest at the school, but it did have a certain brutal eloquence. On the day last week that Cabell's death was announced over the school's public address system, some blacks in the cafeteria mistakenly thought a group of whites were applauding his death. The fighting started all over again.

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