'Racial' Views Affect Georgia Firing

'A Georgia college president may have been pushed to resign last summer because of "radical racial views." He is James A. Coiston, who resigned as head of Georgia State 'College for Negroes is Savannak last August.

The day after his resignation, Colsion told the Atlanta Associated Press over the telephone that he had been accused of sponsoring "racial" ideas." Colsion said that Harmon Caldwell, chancellor of the University System of Georgia, had questioned him about reports detailing these "radical racial ideas." The chancellor then, Colston told the AP, investigated the college and submitted a report which, "in effect," called for his resignation. During the investigation Caldwell and a committee of the Board of Regents found that the college had overspent its budget: Colston told the AP that "there must have been something more."

Colston said the reports charging him with radical racial ideas," stated:

1.) That a visiting speaker had called for the end of racial segregation.

2.) That a student from the college's N.A.A.C.P. chapter had gone to a Washington meeting of that organization at state expense.

3.) That another student, allegedly representing the same chapter, had protested a Negro educator's stand calling for a "gradual approach to the racial question."

Budget 'Overspent'

Colston denied all three reports as "absolutely false and vicious."

Chancellor Caldwell says that Colston's racial views had nothing to do with his resignation. According to Caldwell, Colston's administration had overspent its budget by $40,000 in 1947-43, and by substantially the same amount in 1948-49 after receiving a warning from the Board of Regents. There was no charge of misappropriation of funds.

"Unaware" of interview

Colston, who at present is a lecturer in education at New York University, new claims he was not "aware" of the Associated Press interview. He has written the CRIMSON that "with regard to my leaving Georgia State College, I did not interpret it personally as a dismissal. As far as I know the matters that led up to my resigning were in essence the same as the statement made by Chancellor Caldwell."