[For most of the 16-year Honors Program War at the University of Massachusetts Boston, it was an international conflict fought on the base of race relations. There was an added dramatic effect and component when war hero, Hon. Wilmot Max Ramsay – 1989 UMass/Boston Chancellorian Scholar, Editor-in-Chief of The UMass Times and UMass Boston BA’05 – became a citizen of the United States of America on Tuesday, September 27, 2005, the 23rd anniversary of Wilmot Max Ramsay Week, as proclaimed by the Boston City Council, Massachusetts, on a motion from Councilor-at-large the Hon. Bruce C. Bolling, in 1982.
This huge shift, from international to civil war, and with, years earlier, the presentation of the Jamaican Flag to the University of Massachusetts at Boston by former Jamaican Councillor Wilmot Max Ramsay, became more manageable and the subsequent ‘gubernatorial intervention’ that followed with “the release” of Councillor Hon. Wilmot Max “Little David” Ramsay’s Diploma. This debacle, therefore, turned out to be a worthy crusade and hence a “Good War.” Max Ramsay became “the first person of color to be admitted” to the Honors Program at UMass Boston.
The Hon. Wilmot Max Ramsay is currently President and Executive Director of Global Youth Trust, Inc., a non-profit organization. Of the three major conspirators, James F. Brennan has become Vice President of Towson University; Professor Fiora A. Bassanese still lectures at UMass Boston and German Professor Emeritus Robert H. Spaethling went into retirement.
It is therefore, with much pleasure, that HERITAGE RESERVES reprints, on this anniversary occasion, the following Carl Rowan article which originates from our nation’s capital and was carried in The Boston Herald on Friday, April 13, 1990 – nine days after the beginning of the Honors Program War -- seventeen years ago.]
CARL ROWAN
Racism haunts black students
WASHINGTON – On CBS a few nights ago I saw a feature about how black students face the woes and insults of racism on predominantly white campuses. This is the umpteenth such report that I have seen or read in recent months.
The media is scaring many thousands of black high school seniors out of their wits.
Youngsters with the ability to excel in the most rigorous academic environments are passing up chances to go to Harvard, Stanford, Cornell and Brown because they don’t want to face what they fear might be four years of hassling by racists.
In reviewing more than 150 nominations for Project Excellence scholarships this year [1990], I have seen a remarkable jump in the percentage of top-level black students who are opting to attend historically black institutions. Some students state flat out that they are staying away from resurgent white-campus bigotry.
I wish I had the opportunity to tell every black youngster personally what the great boxing champion Joe Louis said to Billy Conn: “You can run, but you can’t hide.”
Every black person who lives or works in America is going to run up against the barrier and outrages of racism at some time, so the question is whether to learn to deal with it on a college campus or try to do it later in a newsroom, on a police force, in a giant corporation or wherever.
Let me emphasize that I am not arguing against bright black youngsters attending historically black colleges. These institutions serve a vital need in America. Many black teenagers come out of deprived family backgrounds, second-rate high schools and other elements of disadvantage, and they need the special attention and understanding that they can get on a black campus. Some black kids from advantaged environments need to find their “identity” on black campuses.
But there are other young blacks with other campus needs, such as one who is certain to get Project Excellence money because he excels in all fields, but especially in math, physics and the other sciences. In the most recent grading period he got 13 A’s and one B while taking “advanced placement” courses, the toughest available at his school.
Does that young man let stories of campus racism scare him away from institutions that offer him the best in computer science and other instruments of high technology?
I cannot ask the media to stop reporting on Skinheads and Kluxers and their outrages on “white” campuses. What’s news is news, and that is part of the educating of America. I can ask brilliant young blacks to be brave and resolute and not turn campuses over to bigots by default. I can ask the best and brightest of blacks to say, “Oberlin, Yale, the UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS [at Boston] are part of my birthright. I will not allow a few bigots to reimpose Jim Crow in any area simply because I capitulated to intimidation.”
I look at the magnificent brainpower of just these 150 Project Excellence nominees and I know that this nation needs desperately the fruits of their intellects and their leadership potential. White college presidents and other officials must make their campuses welcome places. But until they do, these brilliant black youngsters must say: “No bigot on any campus anyplace is going to turn me around.”
