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Duke
Didn't Admit Its First Black Student Until 1961
Privelege Meets
Protest at Duke
By KEVIN PROSEN and
DAVE ZIRIN
In Durham North Carolina, a scant three
miles separate Duke from historically black North Carolina Central
University (NCCU), but the divide more resembles a canyon. The
seismic shock of the recent and now notorious rape charges levied
against the Duke Lacrosse team has upturned this complex cultural
cocktail of a city, occupied by an aloof and narcissistic private
school catering mainly to wealthy students rarely seen outside
the gothic cloister of their campus. Tuition at Duke is $43,000
per year, more than four times the cost of NCCU and about $3,000
more than the median joint family income in Durham.
The case in question is by
now widely known; Lacrosse players at an elite campus hired two
young African-American women as exotic dancers, one a student
at NCCU. While details aren't yet clear, the woman has injuries
consistent with being raped and sodomized. Lawyers for the team
have gone on a remorseless counter-offensive. A new well-heeled
booster club called the Committee for Fairness to Duke Families
hired the ultimate authority in smearing women who "cry
rape: Bill Clinton,s former attorney Bob Bennett. Bennett has
already begun, saying, "A lot of innocent young people and
the families are being hurt, and unfortunately this situation
is being abused by people with separate agendas. It is grossly
unfair, and cool heads must prevail."
Bennett and his team have also
released personal details about the assault victim. This gets
the spotlight off the confirmed squalidness of the case. 911
calls report racist epithets being screamed by men in the party
house. Ryan McFayden, a sophomore on the Lacrosse squad, sent
an e-mail dated the night of the party describing in morbid detail
his fantasy of torturing the exotic dancers, saying, "I
plan on killing the bitches as soon as they walk in and proceeding
to cut their skin off while cumming in my Duke issue spandex."
The same McFayden had the unholy arrogance to show up at the
Take Back the Night Rally on campus and while sexual assault
survivors gathered in a circle, he stood on the sidelines giving
interviews with the Chronicle, Duke's odious student paper.
The racial climate on campus is utterly appalling and this isn,t
isolated in the world of Lacrosse. Others on campus have noted
parties with vile themes, like the "Viva Mexico" bash
where students handed out "Green Cards" for invitations.
Danielle Terrazas Williams, a grad student at Duke, told the
Independent, a local weekly "This [the rape] is not a different
experience for us [African-Americans] here at Duke University.
We go to class with racist classmates, we go to gym with people
who are racists. That's not special for us." Commenting
on the persistent sexual harassment faced by black women at Duke,
Williams continued, "[it's] as if they're re-enacting a
rap video or something. As if we're there to be their video ho
Many students, at least the
ones that speak from the conservative Chronicle's pulpit, don't
seem to grasp what the fuss is about. A screed by Duke junior
Stephen Miller is typical: "we are Durham's main attraction.
Every time we set foot off-campus, we're actually leaving the
best thing the city has to offer-and in turn, entering some of
the most violent neighborhoods in the state. Duke is Durham's
lifeblood, plain and simple. So if we want to stay on campus
or to limit our interaction with Durhamthen we have nothing to
apologize for. If anything, the insistence on interacting with
Durham locals is condescending to the town residents. Durham
isn't a petting zoo. The residents won't get lonely or irritable
if we don't play with them." Some have used the term "lynch
mob" to describe the reaction from the Durham community
to the alleged rape, a response that has included vigils, noisy
early morning protests, and sit-ins on campus by outraged and
offended students of both Duke and NCCU. These hardly resemble
the actual lynch mobs that lurked in the Carolina landscape not
so long ago.
Clearly a little historical
perspective is in order. Durham was a hub of civil rights activism
in the South, led by poor blacks in the city as well as students
at North Carolina College (renamed North Carolina Central University
in 1969). When the sit-ins of 1960 were sparked in nearby Greensboro,
Durham was one of the first cities in the country to join the
movement. Civil rights leaders like Howard Fuller and Ann Atwater
figure prominently in the city's history.
Duke did not admit its first
black student until 1961, two years after the first desegregated
school in Durham and seven years after Brown v. Board of Education.
In 1967 the Afro-American Society at Duke occupied the Allen
Administration Building after negotiations with the school administration
to improve the climate for blacks on campus led nowhere. Their
statement explained: "We seized the building because we
have been negotiating with Duke administration and faculty concerning
different issues that affect black students for 2 1/2 years and
we have no meaningful results. We have exhausted the so-called
'proper' channels." Progressive white students played a
positive role, holding off the police in defense of the black
students inside. The Allen Building occupation led directly to
the founding of Malcolm X Liberation University, which sought
to provide, in the words of its founders, "a real alternative
for black people seeking liberation from the misconception of
an institutionalized racist education." Professors were
recruited largely from NCCU, as well as from the non-academic
activist milieu in town. In an ultimate rejection of Duke's aloof
stance toward the city, they proclaimed "The accreditation
for the university will be granted by the Black community."
The student press seemed a
bit more swept up back then. Reading old issues of the Chronicle
feels more like finding a yellowed copy of Ramparts than the
servile stuff served up campus papers these days. The central
focus of the paper seemed to be Black Power, the anti-war movement,
"vanguard student action," and legalizing marijuana.
An editorial on the '69 Allen Building occupation read: "The
police were nothing more than robots; they performed an inhuman
act at the bidding of the administration. The administration
took this action against students who are trying to create a
more human place for themselves amidst the great machinery of
this university...The administration failed Duke's black students,
and these students then took a justified action to correct this
failure and handled themselves with dignity."
The campus press may have changed
but the fights of the sixties are hardly over. Activists on both
campuses that were separate just a few weeks ago have begun to
unite against the town,s class divide and racist bigotry. African-American
students at Duke occupied the Allen building again two weeks
ago. A large and inspiring vigil was held at the NCCU campus
last week, and activists have continued to put pressure on. The
solidarity built between activists on both campuses and in the
city is breaking down the walls meant to keep them apart. The
Lacrosse legal team has called on the woman to drop all charges
"so the community can heal. Durham will only heal if its
proud tradition can be recalled in the name of justice.
Kevin Prosen is a free-lance writer living in Durham,
North Carolina. He can be reached at kprosen@gmail.com.
Dave Zirin is the author of "'What's My
name Fool?'": Sports and Resistance in the united States.
Contact him at dave@edgeofsports.com
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