Liberal Union Starts Fund Drive To Rebuild Clinton High School

Money will be collected in all house dining halls tonight to help rebuild a recently bombed Clinton, Tenn., high school. The drive, sponsored by the Harvard Liberal Union, followed a plea circulated by Arnold R. Isaacs '61.

Isaacs received immediate support from the HLU after presenting his plan in a letter to five political organizations in the college. He stated last night that the suggested collection was "not so much for the purpose of raising $300,000, or even $3000, but rather in the nature of a protest, an exertion of some moral force."

The Clinton High School, which has been integrated for two years, was dynamited by segregationists on October 6, with damage estimated between $300,000 and $500,000.

School Lacks Insurance

The school carried only $73,000 in insurance and, consequently, the remaining funds must be raised by bond issues. Money has already been contributed by the neighboring city of Oak Ridge to reimburse students for personal damage.

Isaacs' letter follows one distributed previously by his father, Harold R. Isaacs, research associate at the Center for International Studies at M.I.T.

In his note, the elder Isaacs stated: "We are all profoundly humiliated and endangered by what is going on in Arkansas and Virginia and throughout the South wherever the diehard racists are in command.

"Let us not suffer this humiliation in private. Let us stop feeling helpless in the face of the danger from the school closers and the school wreckers.

"A Great Public Affirmation"

"Let us instead take part in a great public affirmation of the spirit in which recent decisions by the Federal Courts have been made and let us show the whole Federal establishment, including the Congress, that a massive national feeling stands behind the full enforcement of those decisions.

"Let us show how we feel about the maintenance of law and free, public, integrated education. Let us start reacting first by showing simply that we exist and that we are going to rebuild Clinton's high school to prove it.

"In this way we will help stiffen the spirit of the people of Clinton and people like them all over the South. We will also help stiffen our own."

Federal Aid Granted

It was announced last night that an undetermined amount of federal aid will be granted the high school, under a law permitting assistance to schools attended by children whose parents work at federal installations. Some children of employees at the Oak Ridge atomic energy plant attended the Clinton school.