This week in Chronicle history

Oct 26 2011, Written by Margot Tuchler in Backpages,Chronicle History, 0 Comments

Today, the most actively discussed issue of equality is LGBT rights. 50 years ago this week, however, our campus and our country were struggling with an issue that, thankfully, does not exist to the same extent today—anti-black racism.

The Chronicle wrote about this problem on Oct. 31, 1961 in an article called “Duke University Freshman, Negro See Alleged Assaulter Freed.”

It described the acquittal of white Durham resident Frederick Jones after he was charged with assault and battery for spitting in the face of an African American picketer, Burnice Toomer, and then charging at Duke student Donald Williams who took a picture of him being arrested. The article reports that in the incident, Jones also smashed Willams’s camera to the ground.

Both the article and the incident reported reflect a very different society than the one in which we currently live. First of all, the use of the word “Negro,” though used completely innocently and within conformity with the era, is immediately noticeable and slightly off-putting from a modern perspective, given that its use has nearly died out  due to connotations of bigotry.

And then, the article tells the tale of a judicial system that failed to convict a man who very obviously assaulted another. It seems fair to assume that today, such a breach in justice would not conceivably take place. Much has changed for the better for black Americans, but the same cannot be said for all minorities.

This 1961 article in The Chronicle is disconcerting—it’s uncomfortable to remember a time when this inequality was so glaringly obvious. It’s even more uncomfortable, though, to realize that today, members of a different minority are all too frequently being bullied, harassed and driven to suicide. Members of the LGBT community are not put at such a disadvantage in the legal system the way Burnice Toomis was, but still they are denied rights that other citizens have.

Mush has improved in the past fifty years, but sometimes it’s important to remember that there is still progress to be made.