school in Dayton called Stivers. The downtown school administration in Dayton had decided to integrate Stivers without any preparation for either the White or Black students or the families involved. So, naturally, Black and White students got into a bloody fight during the first day of school.

Harold Tucker, one of the 100 Black students, was hit in the head with either a crowbar or a tire iron. That night, the parents complained at a Model Cities Planning Council meeting and asked that something be done about Stivers. We all looked at the bandages and stitches on young Tucker's head. The militant brothers were ready to "take care of business."

Our chairman told everyone to be cool. Then he told Mr. Ed Campbell, chairman of the Education Committee, and me, as director of the Educational Component, to go to Stivers the next day.

We did. We were greeted by angry white folks and cruising cars. We helped the frightened principal and his staff keep order for three hours. There were 42 Black students there. They were angry. Some had weapons. I told them to be cool and trust me. Most of them had known me for years. I had been to their homes, and they trusted me.

After three hours of waiting for a bus to take the Black kids out of there, I walked the students to the Board of Education building. I was instructed by Model Cities to go back to Stivers and take more students out of there. When I returned to Stivers, I was arrested. After two months of hearings, I was fired by the School Board for "exceeding my authority." The Board felt that by removing Black students from an explosive situation I had exceeded my authority. Now one of the many things I learned from that nightmarish situation was that a great emphasis must immediately be placed on the problem of developing positive relations between poor Black and poor White people. Racial violence in this country will not, in my opinion, initially occur between middle class Black and White people. It will occur between poor white and poor Black people because these groups are victims, in many respects, of the same types of oppression. Forced to dislike, distrust, and misunderstand each other, they are bound to be the ones who end up fighting each other. Therefore, it is imperative that programs to bring them together be provided if we are to avoid potential genocide of poor Blacks and poor Whites in this country. Through these programs, poor Blacks and poor Whites could understand each other's culture and each other's problems.

You won't necessarily teach them to love one another. But at least they can be made to understand that one group's survival is dependent upon the other's. With this understanding, with the emotionalism removed from mutual problems, poor Blacks and poor Whites can together attack the problems perpetuated by the rick and powerful and sustained by institutionalized racism.

As a Black man, I have been victimized by stereotypes-Black people are dumb, all Black people steal, Black people are crazy, etc. I now see that the same things occur for poor whites. It is wrong, and grossly unfair, on the part of middle class Blacks and Whites to arbitrarily state that poor Whites are racists because the Whites do not want their children to go to school in a Black community-when that Black school is, in fact, an inferior school.

I cannot call a man prejudiced because he does not want his child to go to a school that is putrid. I cannot call a man prejudiced when he wants his child to go to a school nearest him. Black people want their kids to go to neighborhood schools, too.

Frederick Douglass once said:

"I esteem myself a good, persistent hater of injustice and oppression, but my resentment ceases when they cease, and I have no heart to visit upon children the sins of their fathers."

I do not have a clearcut answer to deal with the question of how to prevent young Blacks and young Whites from destroying each other because of the sins of their fathers. At our Student Rights Center in Dayton, we plan to start, in September, a series of regular rap sessions between so-called very militant Black brothers and so-called very conservative young Whites. Many eminent psychiatrists and psychologists are saying that if communication lines can be opened between these two groups, great possibilities for understanding exist.

Let me be very clear in stating that there is a need for Black folks to be together on certain issues with no one else around. I mean Black folks getting together among themselves. The same is true for White folks.

Let me also be very clear in stating that it is also imperative for the two groups to develop an understanding that will prevent them from physically destroying

each other. One example of what I'm saying is now taking place in Dayton, in a slightly different context. Rival gangs have recently been brought together by Black officers in the Dayton police Department's Conflict Management Team. These gangs, once bitter enemies, are no longer fighting each other. They are working together to improve the community. So, you see, it can be done.

The research in the second half of this report, which you have before you, talks about the impact of the 1964 civil rights decision. Although it left much to be desired, the decision kindled, in many different groups of people, a desire to be free and to share in all the good things this country can provide.

The civil rights movement that started with Black folks wanting to be free had the same impact on Mexican-Americans. Now Mexican-Americans are demanding to be free. And American Indians. And Puerto Ricans. And women. And-very importantly-students. Young people. Students now want to be free, to enjoy their human rights. Students are now demanding to be free.

What was started on paper is now in the hearts and souls of men and can't be stopped. If, by some miracle, Black people achieve equal educational opportunity, or equal opportunity in general, and poor Whites, Indians, MexicanAmericans and Puerto Ricans are still suffering, then we would have merely exchanged one oppressed group for another. Somehow, we must develop a strategy for freeing all oppressed groups in this country so that we don't have to worry about one group destroying another.

Lines of communication between oppressed groups must be established if these groups are to survive. School is a potential vehicle for this communication to occur. But, if it is to occur, this communication must be on the terms of poor Whites and Blacks, not on the terms of administrators, or congressmen or senators or educators.

Those people responsible for living out the experience should be responsible for determining how the experience should occur.

Going back to the Stivers incident I described earlier, I am convinced that if poor Whites and Blacks in Dayton had been consulted about the new situation that would throw them together in school for the first time in their lives, if they had been allowed to prepare together for the experience, the results of that first day in school would not have been violence and anger.

We must stop dealing out of administrative convenience. In situations involving the integration of the races, we should start dealing forthrightly out of the concerns and feelings of the people involved. No matter how many degrees or how much administrative experience the so-called experts have, the real experts are the people who know their own fears, and who will have to live with the new situation.

Having dealt with young people and their parents all of my adult life as an educator, I am convinced that, given the chance, they can come from drastically different backgrounds and work something livable out. But when are they given a chance to do this? Since it is obvious that the Divine Right of Kings power theories do not work, succeed only in pushing people further apart and making them violent and destructive, it is time, on a mass, national basis, to let oppressed people have the power to determine their own fate. I believe that young White Appalachians and young Blacks can accomplish more good together than any administrator or so-called expert, no matter how well-intentioned. Perhaps you will agree with me that this is the decade to try this on a mass scale, and see if we can come up with something better than the violent failure that the expert educators have handed us in our schools.

RECOMMENDATION NUMBER NINE: INTEGRATION IN REVERSE

As I have stated previously, I cannot blame a white person for not wanting to send his child to an inferior school in the Black community. Consider the word "integration". What does this word mean to you? If integration is merely the placing of warm Black bodies next to warm White bodies, it is irrelevant to my life and to the lives of my Black brothers and sisters. My recommendation is to follow the suggestions in this presentation. I believe that, by following these suggestions, Black students and parents and teachers working together will make Black schools among the best, rather than the worst, schools in each city. If, in a given city, a Black school had the best facilities, the best staff, the best textbooks, the best supplies, the best equipment-the very best of everything available-then integration would be meaningful. It would be, for the first time in history, a two way street. As it is now, the typical situation is the

Black child supposedly improving himself by association with Whites and White educational institutions. But if the reverse were also true, a whole new world opens up, a world of creative exchange between equals in fact, not in theory or dreams.

RECOMMENDATION NUMBER TEN: STUDENT-CONTROLLED CABLE TV

The attorneys Edgar and Jean Cahn, in their aforementioned Yale Law Journal article "Power to the People or the Profession?-The Public Interest in Public Law", talk about a revolutionary use of cable television. They write that a "largely unexplored area for the creation of new 'legal' institutions is the potential provided by the mass media for informing people of their rights, bringing community disapproval to bear upon particular actions or particular officials, and generating support for norms eliminating the status of permissable behavior in a society where the ‘legal norms' on paper may have little reality or authority in the community. Cable TV and community owned and operated radio stations in particular have substantial potential for creating new, legitimated forums for community debate...'

Thomas Jefferson said that when the masses were educated, tyranny and oppression would disappear. Lack of access to information is the greatest cause of discrimination and mistreatment. If you don't know what your rights are, how are you going to know when someone is violating them? And if you know someone is taking advantage of you, but he seems all powerful and you don't know how to defend yourself, you will get messed over.

How can student-run cable TV programs affect the quality of life in school and contribute to equal educational opportunity? Let me give you an example. Suppose students made the following tape and broadcast it via TV to thousands of their fellow students. A seven year old comes into the Student Rights Center and says, "I'm tired of that teacher yelling at me. Next time she does it, I'm going to tear her up." A Center staff member instructs the child. "Listen. The next time that teacher is mean to you, be cool. Just sit there in the classroom and don't say anything for 20 minutes. Then, when you are completely calm and in control, raise your hand. When she calls on you, tell her coolly and calmly, "Mrs. X, what you did a few minutes ago, the way you talked to me, has psychologically dehumanized me, has made me feel like an animal, like a stupid animal. If that happens often enough, a child like me grows up thinking of himself as stupid and ugly and he can never function as a human being again. So unless you refrain from treating me in such a manner, I may have no alternative but to take you to the U. S. District Court and explain all this to the judge. And let me remind you, Mrs. X, that there is a good possibility that I can win a $100,000 damage suit against you if I charge you with "psychological tort."

Imagine what an impact we could have on teacher attitudes if young people learned to protect themselves in this way. By using cable TV, students can teach each other how to survive in school. The media is quick, mass-oriented, and convincing. It is a powerful teaching tool. Imagine programs on what to do about a guidance counselor who refuses to help you get into college, or what to do about an unfair suspension, or what to do about a teacher who spends the class time reading out of a book instead of explaining and tells a student who doesn't understand that he must be stupid.

Students can teach other students about the laws, rules, and forces that govern their lives in school. Suddenly, you have an apathetic and put-upon student body coming alive, realizing for the first time that they know enough to protect their interests, their dignity, and their psychological well-being.

In other words, they know enough to protect their equal educational opportunity.

CONCLUSION

I would like to conclude by saying that I will never be a violent revolutionary because I sincerely believe that enough young people and Black people and poor people have been killed, maimed, and destroyed. The line of senseless tragedy stretches from southern lynchings to Kent State to Jackson State, to what seems to me like the systematic murder and incarceration of Black Panther brothers. I sincerely believe that the only real revolution that can take place in this country, and in this world, is a revolution of peace-of love, trust, and respect for each other.

There is nothing revolutionary about Black folks and young folks dying in this country. Life is a very precious and dear thing. We have, in our brief history, made dying as routine as going to the bathroom, and that is as shameful as it is absurd. We must somehow emphasize the importance of living and of developing strategies to see to it that our young are able to develop to the fullest of their potential. To strive for anything less is to say that all of the Black people who have bled and suffered and died, and all of the young people who have bled and suffered and died, have done so for nothing.

When students protest conditions under which they are forced to live, when Panthers protest conditions under which they are forced to live, when MexicanAmericans and Puerto Ricans and American Indians and women protest conditions under which they are forced to live, and over which they have absolutely no control, the criticism cast upon them by those people in control is that they are unreasonable. But, consider for a moment that they are not unreasonable to cry out against the rat-infested dwellings in which people are forced to live, and the murderous psychological deaths that people are forced to endure for no other reason than the Blackness of their skin. They are not unreasonable when you think about the arms, and legs, and eyes, and ears being blown off the limbs of 17 and 18 and 19 and 20 year-olds. They are not unreasonable, in fact they are most reasonable. The idea of having the right to bear arms was not originated by them. It came from an important document written by some famous men. Our children were forced to memorize this document, along with other famous documents in institutions designed to transmit the cultural heritage. I hear young Blacks and Whites screaming about injustice. Why shouldn't they scream? The nation that fed them democracy from the cradle has been pretending to be deaf, dumb, and blind to the tremendous injustices imposed upon the Black and the Red, the Brown and the Young, the very Old and the Very Poor and Women for quite a while.

As a child, I attended the New Central Baptist Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania every Sunday. I can still see and hear Reverend Augustus Habershaw saying, while he looked at a black book called the Holy Bible, "If you train a child in the way he should go, when he becomes a man he will not depart from that training.'

We have trained our children with these words:

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them to one another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

"That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness. . . . But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security."

So, when you sit down to do something about all the testimony you have heard concerning equal educational opportunity, I hope that some practical results will come out of this committee. And soon. We have already seen, especially in recent years, what non-action and unkept promises and refusal to listen results in. What it results in is not a pretty sight for our children and their children to witness.

I have a very different vision of what this country can be than the vision I saw in the newsreels of Detroit and Watts and Kent State and Orangeburg, South Carolina, after people got through expressing their frustrations and their desperation.

I hope that, through men like yourselves, the nightmares of recent years will be replaced by something far more humane and closer to what we like to think of ourselves as capable of achieving.

DON'T QUIT

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest, if you must-but don't you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,

When he might have won had he stuck it out,
Don't give up, though the pace seems slow-
You might succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than

It seems to a faint and faltering man,

Often the struggle has given up

When he might have captured the victor's cup.

And he learned too late, when the night slipped down,

How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt

And you never can tell how close you are,

It may be near when it seems afar;

So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit

It's when things seem worst that you must'nt quit.
-Author Unknown

Thank you for your time, and for your consideration.

NOTE.-The Legal staff of the Student Rights Center is currently doing detailed in depth legal research into potential applications of the Ohio criminal code. At your request, we will be glad to furnish you with the detailed research when it is completed.

Senator MONDALE. Our final witness is Dr. Donald Smith, director of educational development, Bernard Baruch College, New York City. STATEMENT OF DONALD H. SMITH, DIRECTOR OF EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, BERNARD BARUCH COLLEGE, NEW YORK CITY

Dr. SMITH. Thank you, Senator. It is a privilege for me to follow my able colleagues Drs. Watson and Thomas in testifying before this distinguished committee of the U.S. Senate.

I am reminded of an occasion a number of years ago when, after I had finished giving a high school commencement address, a young black student said to me: "That's the first time I've ever heard an educated person tell the truth."

The anticipation of appearing before this committee was heightened by the knowledge that Art Thomas and Bernie Watson would be eloquently truthful in their discussions of the denial of equal educational opportunity for black children and youth. I hope I can be equally so.

It is with a high degree of difficulty and a lesser degree of pessimism that I have responded to the committee's invitation to discuss higher education opportunities for black and other nonwhite youth. Difficult, because the main problem areas have been well articulated by other black educators whom the committee has had the wisdom to invite. Pessimistic, because I am not convinced that my testimony or the sum