New Projects Manifest Turn to Practical Goals

In the past year, students active in the campaign against racial discrimination in both the North and South have made a basic re-evaluation of their purposes and methods.

The sit-ins and Freedom Rides, which sought to alert the general public to the wide-spread violation of Negroes' civil rights, have done their job. Students are now turning to the more tedious, less publicized task of using this re-awakened public consciousness to secure for Negroes equal opportunities in housing, employment, and education.

In the North, the job is even more difficult because of the less obvious, though no less effective, policies of discrimination practiced above the Mason-Dixon line.

Stress Use of Ballot

Along with this concern for programs aimed at eliminating particular instances of discrimination has come the realization that the ultimate means of effecting enduring change is the ballot. Toward this end, students have instituted vigorous voter education and registration projects throughout the North and in key areas of the South, such as Terrell County, Georgia.

One important result of this voter registration drive was seen in Georgia, where an increased Negro turnout helped to elect the most moderate governor on civil rights in recent years.

The emphasis on urging Negroes to gain and utilize their voting rights implies, for these students, a more basic concern with the education of the Negro community. Last summer, tutorial projects for Negro elementary and high school students were established in Philadelphia and Harlem by the Northern Student movement and the National Student Association. These two groups have stimulated and organized most of the student civil rights activity in Northern areas in the last year.

NSM is currently seeking grants to finance tutorial projects in 15 cities throughout the North.

The University community has always supplied students for one-shot projects like the picketing two years ago of Woolworth's and the demonstrations this fall against Howard Johnson's. But it has never had a continuing organization to coordinate the civil rights activities, supply information to the student body, and recruit workers.

Even more important, student civil rights activists have not become involved to any significant degree in the new type of civil rights project: tutorial, recreation, and community development work; selective patronage, voter registration, and fair housing campaigns.

A new organization in the University community, the Civil Rights Coordinating Committee, will hold its first meeting Thursday. Its principle purpose will be to fill the role of publicist, recruiter, and coordinator of local participation in a number of projects now being carried on in Boston. The next article in this series will outline some of those specific projects.