 It's time for the Lawn Jean Chronoscope, a television journal of the important issues of the hour brought to you every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. A presentation of the Lawn Jean Wittner Watch Company. Maker of Lawn Jean, the world's most honored watch, and Wittner, distinguished companion to the world-honored Lawn Jean. Good evening. This is Frank Knight. Here is our editor-in-chief of the Lawn Jean Chronoscope, Larry Lesser. Our distinguished guests for this evening are Dr. Rufus E. Clement, President of Atlanta University, and Dr. Horace M. Bond, President of Lincoln University. The first steps have now been taken on an upheaval in our educational system. The Supreme Court decision on non-segregation in our public schools has affected 17 states and the District of Columbia. Now, our guests tonight are representative of the presidents of all the 31 Negro universities, and we'd like to ask them how this revolution in education is affecting them. And Dr. Clement, you represent a university in the South. Do you foresee a tremendous surge of students in your university for higher education as a result of this decision? Yes, partly as a result of that, and partly as a result of the great population surge which we are expecting. Children already born are in the world, are going to school, and in the next 10, 12 years, most of many of these students will be in college. And the colleges which we represent will be needed along with the other good colleges in the nation to educate these children in the way of democratic living which we pride ourselves upon in America. Dr. Bond, which you think is more important, the segregation decision or this surge in our population growth, isn't it true that under the segregation decision more Negro students will be entering high school and then I suppose going on to college? Yes, and combined with that, there will be the development of an equality of the percentages of Negroes attending high schools and colleges. There's now a lag perhaps of 20 or 30 years over the percentages apparent for Negroes in the South as compared to whites and Southern whites as compared to Northern. And when these two cumulative effects hit the high schools and colleges, there will be an even greater expansion indicated for higher education in the South than in the East or the West, to my opinion. Well, may I ask you gentlemen, what is going to happen to your Negro universities? They're private universities, aren't they? They're all private. The 31 colleges in the United Negro College fund are private. We started the fund, as you probably know, about 11 years ago in order to meet the needs of these private colleges. They're private institutions for current operating expenses like all other private colleges, while we've just had a difficult time getting enough money to keep our work at high level. All of these colleges are fully accredited. These students will be in school, Negro and other students in school in America. We think and we know that these colleges, along with the other good colleges in the nation, will be needed to educate the young people who will want college and professional education in the years ahead. Well, nevertheless, Dr. Clement, won't the economic forces make the Negro student rush to the state universities if they are non-racial after the decision? It really takes effect? Some of them will go and some of them ought to go. The private college is the sort of balance in the democracy, Mr. Lassour. There are good many things that we can do. There are certain freedoms that we have that no state colleges, white or Negro, North or South, can have. And just as you need Harvard, I think you will need FISC. Just as you will need the University of Chicago, I think you will need Lakeland or Atlanta University or Morehouse or some of the others. But actually, we will need to exist and we will find money from people, endowments, gifts and friends who believe in private education. And that's one of the things we've been doing here in New York. Interesting people in the continuation of good private colleges so that we can act still as a balance in American democracy for educational purposes for all these people. Well, Dr. Bond, do you think that it is the non-segregation ruling which will start a tremendous ingress of students into the colleges? Or will the old economic laws still hold forth and prevent Negroes from entering institutions of higher learning? They're bound to operate just as they have in the Northeast, where with free admission the handicap of family with an average income that is about one-half that of the American average, acts as a very effective barrier to the intrusion as many people once feared of a great many Negroes into many of the private colleges in the Northeastern states. I would like to say one thing, Ruth, is about the necessity for private education in the South where the constraints of the state are even less likely to be activated on the frontier of liberal thinking, which to my mind indicates a very great need for the persistence of private foundations under the control of public-spirited citizens who are not under the constraints that political activity always entails. Well, I may ask you, are you a people troubled by the nationwide shortage of teachers which exists in all institutions? Do the people who go to your universities become teachers or are they driven out of a fashion too by the low wages offered to teachers? No, you perhaps don't understand this, which it will serve, but actually in the South and 70% of the Negroes possibly in America still live in the South, education offers perhaps the surest economic base for a Negro family. Negroes don't go, they are not yet accepted in large numbers in industry and business, in the ordinary daily occupations in which the average boy or girl in the South earns his livelihood, so that in the teaching profession you have a larger number of Negroes entering than you do in the industry of business, and the white boy would largely go into industry of business. Actually, in our own situation there in Atlanta, I suppose 50% of our students go into education in some phase or form of it. Well, you represent a school in the North, so to speak, in Pennsylvania. Do your students actually stay in the state or do they migrate elsewhere once they have graduated from Lincoln University, Dr. Bond? Well, you have a considerable migration, but at the same time the yet appreciable number of students from the South we now receive on the whole return to the South. I'm thinking of two very interesting alumni, one in South Carolina, one in Tennessee, both physicians who have the extraordinary feature of having a clientele that is principally white in those two southern states. Hometown boys, one who went back to South Carolina, the other back to Tennessee, and many people in the North won't believe it, but both cases are very profitable and able men who have this very large constituency of white patients. Hey, gentlemen, I'd like to ask you this question. It may seem far afield from education, but it seems to me that this country has a tremendous problem right now with Asia. Do you think that the American Negro could be at all helpful in increasing our alliance potential with Africa or Asia? I'm quite sure of that, Mr. Leshure, and I know that even recently I've heard members, high-ranking officials in the State Department say that they want and need the services of intelligent American Negroes who will interpret American democracy and American goals and aims to the darker peoples of the world. There are 1,800 million more or less uncommitted peoples of Africa and Asia. The communists are trying to get them. We want them on our side, and possibly the whole future of the world depends on which way this uncommitted block swings. Now, these darker peoples of Africa and Asia will listen to American Negroes. They feel freer in talking with them, and the State Department right now feels that they ought to get, and they're trying to get many more of these American Negroes in official positions with the American government. I think you ought to know also that places like Lincoln and Atlanta and Fisk and others are training many foreign students, both from Asia and from Africa, and as these students see American democracy and see it actually live on the campuses of these colleges for Negroes, presently for Negroes, they go back to their own countries and say that America is a place which does try to do what the Constitution and what the Declaration of Independence and these other things say America stands for. And Dr. Von, it seems to me you already had a mission, haven't you? Not to British West Africa to discuss the American Negro and the... Yes, well, our institution was founded 101 years ago curiously enough for the purpose of training leadership for Africa, not for America. It seemed too hopeless then, and that was seven years before the Civil War, you see. And as a result, we've had 165 Africans who have come to our college. Many of them have gone back, attained to positions of great importance, two prime ministers, men who were educated in an American liberal arts college in the great tradition of American democracy and equality, and their presence is a tremendous advantage to the United States and this curious world in which we now live. Of course. And Dr. Von, I'd like to ask you, what do you think is the greatest problem facing the American Negro today? I have the curious disposition to put a bias upon economic factors, Mr. Lisseur. I believe the economic handicaps with which the X-Lays began in 1865, yet constitute the greatest handicap to the American Negro. And to relieve these economic difficulties seems to me the parable of necessity. How do you feel about that, Dr. Von? I'd like to add something else. I know it's a difficult question. It's the old question, which came first, or which should, the egg or the chicken. But actually, you can open all the jobs you want. If you do not have intelligent trained people to fill them, you do not improve your economic situation. And that's one reason why I am intensely interested in the best possible educational opportunities for every single individual in America, North, South, Negro, white, Jew, Gentile, everybody else. We need our manpower. It's wasteful for us in this present age to try to compete in the world market, to try to compete with our enemies without making the fullest possible use of all of our human resources to say nothing of the moral implications and others of our situation. But unless we educate people, we do not have people ready for jobs, and if we have jobs and do not have educated people, then we're no good. I see. We're just impractical not to educate every single person in the United States to the best of our abilities. Well, thank you very much, Dr. Rufus E. Clement of Atlanta University and Dr. Horace M. Bond of Lincoln University. The opinions expressed on the long gene chronoscope were those of the speakers. Our editor-in-chief of the long gene chronoscope is Larry Lesser. Our distinguished guests were Dr. Rufus E. Clement, president of Atlanta University and Dr. Horace M. Bond, president of Lincoln University. Long Gene is indeed helping to make important sports news. In this month of March, there are 22 major sports events on the Long Gene calendar. For the official timing of these events, some $100,000 worth of Long Gene Olympic timers, the world's finest timing watches, will be employed. Now, among these front page events are the United States National and US Olympic Ski Trials at Franconia, New Hampshire. The American International Ski Meet at Stowe, Vermont. The Knights of Columbus track meets in New York and in Cleveland. The Chicago Daily News Meet in Chicago. The Eastern International Swimming Championship at New Haven, Connecticut. 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