p Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from LYRASIS Members and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/facultyresear2721973sava FACULTY RESEARCH EDITION f The Savannah State College Bulletin Volume 27, No. 2 December, 1973 Published by SAVANNAH STATE COLLEGE STATE COLLEGE BRANCH SAVANNAH, GEORGIA Editorial Policies Which Govern The Savannah State College Research Bulletin 1. The Bulletin should contain pure research, as well as creative writing, e.g., essays, poetry, drama, fiction, etc. 2. Manuscripts that have already been published or accepted for publication in other journals will not be included in the Bulletin. 3. While it is recommended that the Chicago Manual of Style be followed, contributors are given freedom to employ other ac- cepted documentation rules. 4. Although the Bulletin is primarily a medium for the faculty of Savannah State College, scholarly papers from other faculties are invited. FACULTY RESEARCH EDITION of The Savannah State College Bulletin Published by The Savannah State College Volume 27, No. 2 Savannah, Georgia December, 1973 Prince A. Jackson, Jr. President Editorial Committee Thomas H. Byers Isaiah McIver Gian Ghuman George O'Neill Max Johns A. J. McLemore, Chairman Articles are presented on the authority of their writers, and neither the Editorial Committee nor Savannah State Collegt assumes responsibility for the views expressed by contributors. Contributors Dr. Kailash Chandra, Associate Professor, Savannah State College, Savannah, Georgia Dr. John H. Cochran, Jr., Associate Professor, Savannah State College, Savannah, Georgia Dr. Oscar Daub, Assistant Professor, Savannah State College, Savannah, Georgia Mr. Randolph Fisher, Professor, Savannah State College, Savannah, Georgia Dr. John W. Greene and Charles W. Moore, Department of Educational Technology, Howard University, Washington, D. C. Dr. Prince A. Jackson, Jr., President Savannah State College, Savannah, Georgia Mrs. Elizabeth Johns, Assistant Professor, Savannah State College, Savannah, Georgia Dr. Max Theo Johns, Associate Professor, Savannah State College, Savannah, Georgia Mr. Otis S. Johnson, Instructor, Savannah State College, Savannah, Georgia Levone Kornegay and Dr. M. P. Menon, Chemistry Professor, Savannah State College, Savannah, Georgia Dr. Joseph M. McCarthy, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, History and Philosophy of Education Suffolk University, Boston, Massachusetts Dr. John E. Simpson, Assistant Professor Savannah State College, Savannah, Georgia Dr. V. Anantha Narayanan, Professor of Physics, Savannah State College, Savannah, Georgia Winfred Verreen and Randolph Powell, Physics Students, Savannah State College, Savannah, Georgia Dr. Isaiah Mclver, Associate Professor, Savannah State College, Savannah, Georgia Dr. Hanes Walton, Jr., Associate Professor, Savannah State College, Savannah, Georgia TABLE OF CONTENTS Training Physics Teachers for Secondary Schools and Colleges Dr. Kailash Chandra 5 Opinions of Black and White Elementary Teachers about Economically Deprived Children Dr. John H. Cochran, Jr., Ph.D 13 The Function of Religious Language in Ibsen's Brand Dr. Oscar Daub 23 The Intent and Importance of Black Studies Mr. Randolph Fisher 36 Some Effects of the Application of Computer Assisted Mastery Learning Techniques on Black College Students Dr. John W. Greene, Ph.D. and Mr. Charles W. Moore, M.A 39 The Legal Quest by the American Negro for Equal Educational Opportunity Dr. Prince A. Jackson, Jr., Ph.D 44 Durrenmatt's Heroes Mrs. Elizabeth Johns 63 Income Profile of Savannah Residents; A Comparison of the Status of Black and Non-Black Families Dr. Max Theo Johns 83 The Evolving Black Church Mr. Otis S. Johnson 101 Measurement of the Solubility and Solubility Product of Zinc Chromate by the Radiotracer Method Levone Kornegay and Dr. M. P. Menon Ill Quintilian's Modernity: Implications for the Nature of Educational Theory Dr. Joseph M. McCarthy, Ph.D 116 The U. S. Bank and the Tarriff: A Jacksonian Dilemma Dr. John E. Simpson 123 Large Angle Oscillations of a Simple Pendulum A Computer Oriented Experimental Approach Dr. V. Anantha Narayanan, Winfred Verren, and Randolph Powell 127 Refraction in a Prism - A Computer Simulated Experiment To Calculate the Angles of Deviation and to Plot the I-D Curve Dr. V. Anantha Narayanan 131 Black Political Autobiographies; Panacea for a Race Dr. Hanes Walton, Jr. and Dr. Isaiah Mclver 136 The Political Theory of the Black Muslims Dr. Hanes Walton, Jr. and Dr. Isaiah Mclver 148 TRAINING PHYSICS TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES Kailash Chandra - Professor Mathematics and Physics Department Savannah State College One of the major problems faced by the Physics community today is "Despite the intense interactions between Physics and society, the understanding of the aims and contents of Physics by the general public is generally very poor." 1 The problem bears serious consequences for the future of Physicists and must be at- tacked at the high school level since half of the high school graduates do not get further higher education. These students as citizens take part in making decisions governing the support of science (through the ballot box) and their ignorance of Physics further increases the gap between the practicing physicists and the society which supports them. The efforts can be made and should be made at the college level also by offering the courses for non-professional students with an objective of developing an appreciation of Physics in them, but it is very difficult to attract them in college if they have been discouraged at the high school level. Early exposure of Physics is vital to the recruitment of new physicists also. It has been observed that those students who develop an early interest in science go to higher studies during their later years. Keeping this in mind, let us review the situation of Physics in the high schools of the United States. Most schools offer no more than one or two classes of Physics each year. Enrollment in these classes is dropping each year relative to the number of students, in spite of the decade of efforts on Physics project courses, the widespread interest in the space program, and the increasing realization that some knowledge of the physical science is essen- tial to the educated citizen. The main reason for this "flight from Physics" by today's students is the shortage of qualified high school Physics teachers. If we define minimally an adequate college preparation as 18 semester hours (27 quarter hours) in the discipline taught, we find the fraction of high school classes (throughout the nation) taught by inadequately trained teachers to be 2 Biology 21% Mathematics 23% Chemistry 34% Physics 66% These data indicate that the problem of the shortage of qualified high school physics teachers is nation-wide and needs immediate attention. The problem with regard to Georgia: People teaching Physics in Georgia high schools in 1966 had the following preparation in Physics. 3 Number of College Percentage of Teachers Courses in Physics With This Preparation 33.0 1 16.0 2 25.0 3 15.0 4 7.5 More than 4 3.5 It would be safe to estimate that each of the 385 state- supported schools offering physics in 1966 employed just one teacher of Physics in the State. There were only 3.5 percent of these, or 13 teachers, with more than four college physics courses. A personal correspondence with the State Superintendent of Schools, Department of Education, State of Georgia, has revealed that there have never been more than five or six physics teachers prepared in any one year in the past. Last year only eight physics teachers were certified, which is the most the State Department of Education has ever had. The NEA (National Education Association, Research Re- port, 1969-R 4) report shows that 22 states of the South produced four or fewer certified physics teachers only at the time of study in 1969. These data show though jobs for physical scientists are fewer and monies are scarcer; the outlook for secondary school physics teachers is still brighter. This study further points out that colleges and universities must bear the responsibility of promoting the programs for training qualified secondary school physics teachers for the benefits of schools and the future of the physics community as well. The training problem can be divided into three areas: Stan- dards of teacher certification, teacher training curricula, and student recruitment for these curricula. Standard of Georgia State Teacher Certification: The general requirements 4 for Physics teacher's professional four-year (T-4) certificates are: (1) The bachelors degree from a regionally accredited four- year college. (2) Approximately sixty quarter hours in General Education courses the freshmen and sophomore courses in English, science, social sciences, mathematics, and related subjects basic to the general needs of all students regardless of vocational or professional activities. (3) Requirements for teaching field: Physics: 40 quarter hours which may include a maximum of 10 quarter hours selected from chemistry, calculus, and analytical geometry. (4) Professional Education: 30 quarter hours which must in- clude a minimum of 10 quarter hours in each of the following areas: Foundations of Education (Human growth and develop- ment, educational psychology, adolescent psychology, history and philosophy of education, etc.) Curriculum and Methods (Secondary curriculum and methods, principles of secon- dary education, educational media, etc.) Secondary student teaching or an approved substitute (With at least one year of ac- ceptable teaching experience; the approved substitutes are secondary workshop or 10 quarter hours in education courses approved by the cer- tification office). Teacher Training Curricula: A three-leveled physics curriculum 5 has been outlined by the Panel on the Preparation of Physics Teachers (PPPT) to meet the various backgrounds and career goals of prospective teachers, which can be used as guidelines for developing the program for training students for secondary school teaching. However, the following points are suggested here which may be helpful in designing the program. 1. The prospective teacher must receive a broad and thorough education in Physics in order to understand the subject matter to be taught. Since most schools are generally unable to employ a teacher for one discipline only, the training must be broad enough to allow the teaching of at least one other field besides Physics. 2. The sequence of physics courses will affect recruitment and must accommodate likely sources of students. 5 3. The content of the Physics courses should reflect the need of the high school teachers. 4. The prospective teacher must have a functional under- standing of pedagogical theory, an opportunity to develop their skills in a realistic but controlled practice teaching situation, and familiarity with an environment in which they expect to teach. 5. A course in history and philosophy of physics is par- ticularly important for the teacher. 6. It is not desirable to have teacher candidates simply take the courses of the research oriented bachelor's degree program. New courses may be developed with an objec- tives: (a) the unity of the physical and biological sciences may be given greater emphasis. (b) the classes may be conducted in a laboratory- demonstration format which stresses students par- ticipation more than formal lectures. (c) the students become familiar with traditional and newly developed curriculum material. (d) the students interact directly with local high school students and teachers. 7. The prospective teacher must have the necessary rigorous training in the sciences to be able to utilize effectively new curriculum material and ideas without spending an excessive amount of time in reviewing (or learning) the material. 8. Many high schools lack in adequate space and money for materials. It means that the teacher must be able to use the environment and materials at hand to create ex- periments and demonstrations by which the students can experience the scientific principles being studied. 9. The prospective teacher must be able to present Physics in a manner which the students will understand, without sacrificing the content of the subject matter. In order to do this the teacher will have to find ways of releasing the confidence and creative ability that the students show outside the school in the classroom. He must be trained to establish a rapport between himself and the student which depends critically upon the teacher's understan- ding of the total social, cultural, and educational background of the school, and how the background af- fects the classroom performance. 10. It is desirable to provide students with technical drawing and workshop practice to make them well rounded ex- perimentalists. 11. The program should enable teachers already in service to get further training in Physics. A new in-service program can also be designed. 12. It is desirable to provide students with early practice teaching experience, either through participation in high school visitation or through some other activity associated with the course. 13. For the prospective teacher, Physics must be stimulating, interesting, personally useful, and socially, politically, and historically significant. Because the attitude that the teacher takes towards his subject influences the attitude of his students towards it. 14. Prospective teachers must like Teaching. The fundamen- tal problems involved in teaching Physics in any high school is as follows: How to make Physics interesting, 8 relevant, and comprehensible: that is to teach Physics to students in such a way that they are excited by it, feel that they are gaining knowledge about things previously not understood or less clear, and believe that this knowledge is important in their lives and to society. The teacher trained to demonstrate that Physics has much to offer towards the solutions of many of the problems of our society as we contend, will certainly be an asset to the institution and Physics community. Recruitment for These Curricula: 1. The existence of the program at the College should be made known to the students while they are still in school. This can be done by sending the details of the program to school principals, counselors and also by participation in the career week program of the high schools. 2. Greater efforts to recruit new teachers should be focussed from those areas, rural ones in particular, which are ex- periencing teacher shortages, as in all probability, it is these schools which will be hiring the future graduates of the teacher training program. 3. From time to time visits by a faculty member of the Physics department to the schools and physics teachers will be very useful for recruiting prospective candidates. 4. Many of the students are oriented toward teaching from the very beginning; hence the direction of recruitment ef- fort should be to sell physics to the teachers instead of selling the teaching to physicists. Each secondary education major who enters the required physical science course or general physics course should be regarded as a potential candidate. If he does well above average in these courses, one of the faculty members may counsel him and discuss the possibility of going into physics teaching. 5. Teachers' salary schedule (1971-72) of the Chatham Board of Education is attached herewith as Appendix. The teacher's salary in other counties of the State of Georgia will be nearly the same with a difference of one or two hundred dollars. As it can be seen, salary is not very alluring to attract very brilliant young students for the school teaching profession, though some schools give salary supplements to physics teachers. But the question of salary supplements will depend upon supply and demand. Hence efforts should be made to recruit only those students who really are interested in making teaching their career. Students should be made aware of the fact that there is still a great demand for science teachers particularly in the area of Physics. 6. The profession of secondary school physics teacher will be more suitable to married girls, as they can easily find a suitable job as physics teacher at any place their husbands plan to move. 7. To popularize Physics, colleges should offer a variety of physics courses appealing to a broader spectrum of students interests, abilities and needs. Special emphasis should be put upon inclusion of course objectives with strong appeal to girls, to students of low average academic abilities, to students not planning academic work after graduation and to students who tend to be people oriented. This emphasis implies greater inclusion of social, historical and political aspects of physics in course objectives. 8. Dr. Fletcher Watson, Professor of science education at Harvard University, remarks 6 that, as a professional group, we demonstrate a negative bias towards teaching which is felt by and transmitted to our students. In many departments, if a person decides to major in physics and go into teaching, he is not well received by the majority of the physics faculty members. As we commonly say, he becomes a "second-class citizen." This negative bias is something that we need to try to eliminate if we are to improve our recruitment. It is also needed to bring into college teaching some exam- ples of methods of teaching which prospective teachers are expec- ted to use when they themselves begin to teach. Most likely these students are to do the same things to their students as they are taught themselves in the college, no matter what they are told by their professor in methods of teaching. It increases, further, the responsibility of colleges and universities to train suitable students for college teaching also. The colleges offer the courses to both science majors and non-science majors. The faculty of the college has to teach research oriented courses as well as courses for non-science majors. It, therefore, appears desirable that along with the present physics preparation and course, training must be given to prospective college teachers in learning theory, use of teaching aids, instructional use of computers, design and development of laboratory experiments and science related to Physics. One or two educational psychology courses should also be added in their curriculum along with teaching experience using demonstrations. This problem has been given deep consideration during recent years and two fine articles (references 7 and 8) have recently ap- peared which are concerned with college physics teacher preparation. These will be helpful in developing a curriculum for these students. It is certain that, with this combination of personal ties with high schools and physics teachers, a rapport between teacher and student, design of new courses appealing to a broader spectrum of student's interests, abilities, and needs, good college teaching, 10 and a strong aggressive faculty, colleges and universities are bound to attract better and more students to both the professional major and teacher training program. REFERENCES 1. National Academy of Sciences, Physics: Survey and Outlook (Washington, D. C, 1966), p. 23. 2. Ben A. Green, Jr., Newsletter, Commission on College Physics, May 1967. 3. State Department of Education, unpublished report, "The Present Status of High School Physics in Georgia," 1966. 4. Source - Office of Instructional Services, Division of Teacher Education and Certification, State Department of Education, Atlanta, (IC-91a, Revised August 1971). 5. "Preparing High School Physics Teachers" Commission on College Physics, 1968. 6. Newsletter No. 20, Commission on College Physics, September 1969, p. 5. 7. 'A Course for Graduate Preparation for Teaching,' F. B. Stumf, American Journal of Physics, Vol. 39, October 1971, p. 1223. 8. 'College Physics Teacher Preparation How to Do It,' A. A. Strassenburg, American Journal of Physics, Vol. 39, November 1971, p. 1307. 11 APPENDIX BOARD OF PUBLIC EDUCATION - SAVANNAH, GEORGIA TEACHERS' SALARY SCHEDULE 1971-72 Yr. XB-4* B-4* T-4* B-5* T-5* T-6* T-7* Yr. 1 6175 6288 6400 6810 7219 1 2 6558 6983 7408 2 3 6715 7156 7597 3 4 6873 7329 7786 8700 4 5 7030 7503 7975 8920 5 6 7188 7676 8164 9141 10,117 6 7 7345 7849 8353 9361 10,369 7 8 7503 8022 8542 9582 10,621 8 9 7660 8196 8731 9802 10,873 9 10 7818 8369 8920 10,023 11,125 10 11 7975 8542 9109 10,243 11,377 11 12 8133 8715 9298 10,464 11,629 12 13 8290 8889 9487 10,684 11,881 13 14 8448 9062 9676 10,905 12,133 14 15 8605 9215 9865 11,125 12,385 15 16 9865 11,125 12,385 16 *This salary will be paid in 12 monthly payments - September 30 through August 31. 12 OPINIONS OF BLACK AND WHITE ELEMENTARY TEACHERS ABOUT ECONOMICALLY DEPRIVED CHILDREN John H. Cochran, Jr., Ed.D. Division of Education Savannah State College Savannah, Georgia Rationale for the Study If the primary activity of schools is the teaching of children, then all children should benefit from an education consistent with their actual capabilities, regardless of their socio-economic condition. Teachers who are sensitive to the capabilities and needs of children can promote learning through a curriculum planned with these capabilities and needs in mind. Attempts have been made to assess the sensitivites of teachers through research which measured attitudes and opinions. An attitude has a cognitive element and an affective reaction (White, 1969, p. 95). An opinion is an unverified judgment, usually used interchangeably with belief and is direc- ted to the cognitive domain (White, 1969, p. 95). Opinions often influence attitudes. Ulibarri (1960) in a study regarding teacher awareness notes that ghetto teachers are often unaware of cultural differences in the motivation of students, and are insensitive to socio-cultural factors as they impinge on the classroom behavior of different ethnic groups. Clark (1965) stresses the significance of teacher at- titudes in the success or failure of students in Harlem ghetto schools. This researcher believes it is important that teachers demonstrate those behaviors that will encourage the child to learn and at the same time minimize negative-type behaviors. Many teachers' attitudes can be modified as a result of in- creased awareness, exposure, and knowledge. Teachers should ac- tively seek the information and experience that will give them a better understanding of economically deprived children (Stone, 1969). The development of positive attitudes and opinions by teachers can significantly affect the learning opportunities provided these children. Although teachers may bring positive behaviors to a learning situation, there may be other problems to encounter. Teachers who are sincere in their efforts to teach all children, regardless of 13 their academic levels, sometimes are hindered more through ad- ministrative limitations or blocks than any other source. Williams (1970), elaborating upon some of the limitations, asserts, "An analysis of opinions regarding hindrances to programs for disadvantaged youth reveals that . . . uniform and large classes throughout the system is number one." He also suggests that lack of equipment and teacher-denial of permission to try new procedures are hindrances. Elementary teachers in- dicated that system-wide policies and procedures which are in- flexible are their second greatest hindrance to effective programs. To some degree, the literature supports the fact that teacher expectation influences pupil-achievement (Rosenthal and Jacob- son, 1968). There is little research evidence relative to the opinions of teachers about children in poverty areas. This study may provide needed data on the opinions of teachers about economically deprived children. Purpose of the Study The purpose of this study was to determine certain opinions that Black and White elementary teachers had about economically deprived children. Methodology Population The inner city population in this study was composed of the teachers from five elementary schools in the Atlanta Public School System and five elementary schools in the City of Savan- nah and Chatham County System. The rural population was composed of teachers from schools located in a North Georgia shared services area, and a South Georgia shared services area. The final numbers in the population were 104 rural elemen- tary teachers and 171 inner city elementary teachers. The rural areas, to qualify for this study, had to be located outside a 50- mile radius of a metropolitan area (100,000 or more in population). The teachers that participated in the study taught in elemen- tary schools whose student population was considered economically deprived. This condition was determined by the requirement of a school's having 50% or more of its student population eligible to receive free or partial-pay lunches. Fifty-nine percent of the teachers in this study were white. However, Whites and Blacks in the urban group were almost identical in percentage, as contrasted to 22 percent Blacks and 78 percent Whites in the rural group. Only 51, or 19 percent, held the master's degree or had approximately 30 semester hours beyond that level; 81 percent held the bachelor's degree; one person did 14 not respond to this question. Seventeen percent of the inner city group held the master's degree, and nine percent of the rural group held that degree. In contrast, three percent of those in the inner city group and eight percent of the rural population had earned the master's degree plus 30 semester hours. Instrumentation The survey instrument for the study consisted of an opinion- naire totaling 54 items. In order to obtain certain opinions of teachers about economically deprived children, it was necessary for the researcher to develop the instrument, Opinions About Economically Deprived Children (OEDC). This opinionnaire was a modification of the Culturally and Economically Disadvan- taged Children and Youth Opinion Questionnaire, Form S-l (Torrance and Cichoke, 1967). 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This was done by combining the percen- tages in the "strongly agree" and "agree" columns to form one response, agreed. The same was done for the "strongly disagree" and "disagree" columns to form one response, disagreed. Differences between the responses of Black and White elementary teachers to the same item occurred in approximately 50 percent of the items on the OEDC. The responses of Black and White teachers differed 10 percent or more on the several items. White teachers agreed 10 percent or more than Black teachers on items: 1.5, 1.8, 1.10, 2.4, 2.7, 3.6, 3.8, 4.3, 4.6, 5.4, 5.6, and item 6.5. Black teachers agreed 10 percent or more than White teachers on items: 1.9, 2.5, 3.5, and item 5.3. White teachers disagreed 10 per- cent or more than Black teachers on items: 1.1, 1.9, 1.13, 3.12, and item 5.3. Black teachers disagreed 10 percent or more than White teachers on items: 1.5, 1.7, 1.10, 2.4, 2.7, 3.2, 3.6, 3.10, 4.6, and item 6.5. Summary and Conclusions This study sought to determine certain opinions that Black and White elementary teachers had about economically deprived children. On the basis of the findings these conclusions were made: 1. The overall responses of Black and White elementary teachers to the OEDC were similar. 2. Economically deprived persons would be successful if they only exerted themselves. 3. Economically deprived persons lack ambition to obtain an education. 4. Parents of economically deprived children want their children to earn a living as soon as possible. 5. Poor parents trust teachers and other school personnel. 6. In order for economically deprived children to be suc- cessful, they must accept middle-class values. 7. Teachers must insist that middle-class values are adop- ted by economically deprived children. 8. Economically deprived children have shorter attention spans than other children. 9. Textbooks are not necessary for economically deprived children. 10. Economically deprived children use their poverty background as an excuse to do slipshod work. 11. White teachers believed that a salable skill is more im- portant to poor children than did Black teachers. 21 12. Black teachers disagreed that economically deprived children feared corporal punishment from teachers they did not know. 13. White teachers agreed that economically deprived per- sons lacked enough ambition to sacrifice present pleasure to obtain an education. 14. White teachers, more than Black teachers, disagreed that poverty level parents were vitally interested in national and world affairs. 15. More White than Black teachers agreed that teachers lowered academic standards for economically deprived youth. However, the majority of White teachers did not agree that this was so. Implications Many teachers tended to be undecided in regard to many of their opinions about economically deprived children. On certain items, teachers seemed to respond in terms of middle-class values. Teachers according to the present study seem to be primarily middle-class in their orientation, regardless of race and size of school system. Teachers probably need more training in regard to accep- tance of people according to their situation and economic con- dition. They need to be trained, pre-service and in-service, to adapt themselves to almost any setting and provide an ap- propriate instructional program. Those who are not interested in public education for all people should be separated from the ser- vice. This should apply to administrators, teachers and others in- volved in professional education. References Beck, R. H. Culturally and economically disadvantaged children (opinion questionnaire). College of Education, University of Minnesota, 1963. Clark, K. B. Dark ghetto: Dilemmas of social power. New York: Harper and Row, 1965. Cochran, J. H., Jr. Opinions of rural and inner city elementary teachers about economically deprived children and appropriate procedures for curriculum development. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The University of Georgia, 1971. Rosenthal, R. and Jacobson, L. Pygmalion in the classroom. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968. Stone, J. C. Teachers for the disadvantaged. San Francisco: Hossey-Bass, 1969. Torrence, E. P. and Cichoke, A. J. Culturally and economically disadvantaged children and youth opinion questionnaire. Form S-l. Department of Educational Psychology, The University of Georgia, 1967. Ulibarri, H. Teacher awareness of sociocultural differences in multicultural classroom. Sociology and Social Research, 1960. White, W. F. Psychosocial principles applied to classroom teaching. New York: McGraw Hill, 1969. Williams, P. V. Education of disadvantaged youth: vs. administrators. The Educational Forum, 1970, 34 (2). 22 THE FUNCTION OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE IN IBSEN'S BRAND Oscar C. Daub The significance of Brand in Ibsen's career both as an ar- tistic achievement and as a turning point is widely recognized, 1 yet there is very little scholarship in English about this important play. Some of the reasons for this virtual disregard are obvious: as a verse play it almost demands to be read in Norwegian; for the same reason, translations are even less reliable than usual; there are many allusions to contemporary events which are remote from English readers in significance, as well as time; and the sense of mission to his countrymen which impelled Ibsen to write the drama in the first place 2 is obscured and undercut by lack of familiarity with nineteenth-century Scandinavian cultural development. Nevertheless, now that Gathorne-Hardy has provided a full translation, in verse, 3 it behooves those readers of Ibsen restricted to reading him in English to attempt to come to terms with what is certainly one of his greatest and most impor- tant plays. To examine the use of religious language in the play simultaneously excludes many other avenues of meaning and challenges Ibsen's stated position that he could just as well have written the play about a sculptor or a politician. 4 Gathorne- Hardy has provided a succinct rebuttal of Ibsen's contention by observing, "This perhaps was not in a sense untrue, but it was certainly an equivocation. After all, he had in fact written a play on the same subject with Peer Gynt as the central figure, but the whole moral effectiveness of Brand certainly depends on arguments drawn from religion, and the Bible, which Ibsen had stated at the time was his only reading." 5 Ibsen's protestations notwithstanding, then, one of the important entrances into the significance of the play as it is not as it might have been is to carefully trace the use of religious language in it. The religious terms in which Brand conceives of himself and his mission, the religious words in which he is characterized by the other charac- ters, and the language devoted to the explicitly religious aspects of the play's meaning all contribute to such a study. The results of such a reading of the play provide interesting insights into the character of Brand and, by extension, into some of the basic meanings of the play. In the brief first act, some of the basic religious tensions which inform the entire play are established. These issues are verbalized in two ways: either through one of Brand's soliloquies or monologues, or through Brand's conversations with Einar and Agnes and, later, Gerd. The central image of Brand's first soliloquy is his recollection of two childhood fancies which always caused him to laugh: "The figure of an owl scared by the dark,/ Or a fish afraid of water . . ." (p. 37). While these figures are not religious in nature, the humor they caused the young 23 Brand is analyzed by the mature Brand as consisting in "just the contradiction, dimly felt,/ Between the thing that is, and that should be" (p. 38). The real significance of this analysis rests in the application which Brand makes of it to his present situation. He is now a clergyman who sees a majority of the people involved in such a contradiction in that they "think that burden is too hard/ Which they were specifically designed to bear" (p. 38). It is important to notice that when Brand applies his childhood fan- cies to the present situation he is doing so in religious, but pre- Christian, terms. There is Biblical allusion to Matthew 11: 28-29, where Jesus urges his followers, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest . . . For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light," but despite the New Testament referent, the pre-Christian nature of Brand's allusion is apparent: he is not concerned with the quality of the people's faith, but with their ability to endure their own suffering, much as the pre- Christian Israelites were called on to do. This Old Testament theme is more explicitly verbalized when Brand, in his second soliloquy, spoken while he is surveying the village from the moun- tainside, likens the extent of his powerlessness to act in the local situation to that of Samson, "shorn and tamed" (p. 51). The culmination of the act, and of Brand's evolving sense of the nature of his mission, occurs in the closing soliloquy. Here Brand concludes: "I recognize my task: These monsters three [Frivolity, Slackness, madness] / Must fall, and thus redeem the suffering world" (p. 55). The remarkable aspect of this formulation is its essentially un-Biblical nature; it certainly makes Brand sound more like a social reformer than a Christian priest. The tone of Brand's conclusion, as well as the language of it, effectively dramatizes the fact that Brand considers himself a type of prophet. Brand's personal reflections are both corroborated and modified by his dialogue with other characters during the act. In his conversation with Einar and Agnes, Brand is forced to at- tempt to explain himself and his mission. In the course of this ex- planation he makes it apparent that the state of contemporary religious life with which he is so impatient transcends, at this point in the play, any one-to-one equation with specifically Nor- wegian religious practice: as far as Brand is concerned, his call lies in the regions to the south. The most important piece of infor- mation which Brand divulges about himself in this scene occurs when he attempts to differentiate between himself and other reformers: "No I'm no pulpit-thumping Puritan,/ I am not speaking of or for the church,/ I hardly know if I'm a Christian;/ But that I am a man that I know quite well:/ And I am sure that I can see the flaw/ Which saps our nation's marrow everywhere" (p. 45). This remarkable little speech clearly establishes two things. In the first place, the speech underscores the basically pre-Christian nature of Brand's evolving sense of mission. When seen in the perspective on the Judeo-Christian 24 tradition, however, his emphasis on his own manhood, and the fact that he is genuinely interested in a type of religious reform, again align him with the prophets of the Old Testament. This association is further borne out by Brand's posturing throughout the scene with Einar and Agnes, and in his warning to them which opens the scene, "Stop! Stop! There is a precipice beyond" (p. 39), which has overtones of much of the prophetic rhetoric found in the Old Testament. In the second place, a fact related to but importantly different from, Brand's conception of himself as a kind of prophet becomes apparent: Brand has a profound sense of his unique position as an aloof observer and judge of his society. The quality of egoism involved in such a position could, when applied to a religious crisis, result in martyrdom. Given Brand's confessedly uncertain convictions, however, his ego- strength must always be regarded as an essentially secular trait. Even later in the play, when his sense of mission begins to define itself in more explicitly New Testament terms, his reliance on his own strength and will disallows the assigning of particularly Christian commitment to his purpose. As the conversation with Einar and Agnes proceeds, Brand finds that he is required to articulate for them precisely what his conception of God is. He combines his delineation of his God's at- tributes with an attack on the formalized, benign God of the state churches. The dual concern makes it clear that Brand conceives of his mission as one of purification through commitment, but it is noteworthy that he formulates his own perception of God in purely Old Testament, hence, pre-Christian, terms. Brand's God is "a storm . . . inflexible . . . all-loving . . . His voice with thunder and with terror rang/ When, in the burning bush of Horeb's mount,/ He fronted Moses . . ." (p. 47). With such a conception of God, it is not surprising that Brand then asserts, "I stand to champion the eternal law" (p. 49). There is an almost directly anti-Christian element in his desire to pursue his goal "till God shall know/ Once more His masterpiece, the man He made,/ His offspring, Adam, young and strong once more!" (p. 48) According to the New Testament, Christ was the "second Adam" who restored man's lost status in the cosmos, so Brand's ambition here even suggests an element of blasphemy. Quite apart from this, however, Brand has now clearly aligned himself with Moses and the tradition of law, as opposed to Jesus and the tradition of grace. In the subsequent dialogue with Gerd Brand develops the first notion that his mission might be more local than world-wide. Refusing Gerd's invitation to accompany her to the Ice Church, Brand says, "You mustn't ever go there: It's not safe"; to which Gerd retorts, gesturing at the village in the valley, "There you must never go: it's ugly there" (p. 54). This retort causes Brand to begin to countenance the idea that his mission might be directed to the local situation. In spite of the continuing uncer- tainty about the object of his mission, however, he persists in ver- 25 balizing the nature of it in terms which are reformist and Old Testament. Thus, by the end of the first act Brand has begun to narrow the scope of his mission as well as to define the object of his attack. Debilitating, institutionalized, apathetic State Christianity and, increasingly, that branch of it found in Nor- way emerges as his opponent, and his attack is conceived and verbalized in predominantly Old Testament language. The primary action of the second act is Brand's decision to become the parson of the local village church. The language in which this decision is contemplated, made, and substantiated again underscores the basically Old Testament perspective in which Brand sees himself and in which he functions. As in the first act, an interplay between three monologues by Brand and intervening dialogue structure this act. After the heroic, almost melodramatic, crossing of the fjord to schrive the man who has murdered his child and taken his own life, Brand emerges from the cottage in which the man has just died and he reflects on the nature of death and guilt. His dismissal of his ad- ministration of priestly comfort as "vain illusion" (p. 64), allows him to discourse on his perception of the true nature of the dead man's guilt e.g. the effect of the murder-suicide on the two children who witnessed it but who were not physically touched by it. Brand calls the survivors "the victims of his homicide," and anticipates that, from them, "perchance, [there] shall issue forth/ For generations, further sin and crime" (p. 65), because of the Old Testament precept that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. This theme becomes one of the major motifs of the en- tire act, for later Brand exclaims to Agnes, "But how discharge the load of debt/ Inherited from generations past" (p. 71), and his exclamation is immediately followed by the symbolic entrance of his own mother. In the course of his encounter with her, Brand again digresses on the theme of guilt, but he makes a much more personal statement in which he recounts to his mother how he had hidden in the room where his father was laid out and had watched her ransack the room looking for money. This infor- mation does much to explain Brand's obsession with inherited guilt; it also prepares for his decision to remain in the village church for the unarticulated, but dramatically inevitable, motive in this decision is the sense of reparation for the sins of his own fathers, the chief o." which is that his parents were guilty of a loveless marriage. In the third monologue of this act, Brand recognizes the many self-serving elements in his former vision of a world crusade, and he finally relinquishes that vision for a life of dedicated work in the village. He claims, "The one thing needful is to rouse the will;/ Will, which can either liberate or destroy," and he specifies his goal for the populace by saying, "We serve alike the dignity of man:/ We have one common object to become/ Fit writing-tablets for the hand of God" (p. 81). Thus, 26 through the use of another image alluding to the Mosaic revelation, Brand indicates his genuine desire to serve God, but the way he proposes to attain this end through the main strength of his will simultaneously measures the dangerous power of his own ego, and the Old Testament, legalistic cast of his mind. The irony of the decision to remain consists, of course, in the fact that when Brand renounces one crusade because of its personally gratifying aspects, he fails to recognize the same forces operative although on a more subtle level in the choice he does make. The thematically important dialogues of the second act begin in the second scene, after Brand has crossed the fjord. The first scene presented him with the opportunity for action; the second scene initiates the process of his decision to remain in the village, ostensibly as a consequence of that action. Brand's action has demonstrated to the people the degree of commitment which governs his life, and they appeal to him to serve them. In an ironic turning of Brand's own words upon him, one of the men counters his refusal to remain by observing, "If life you grudge, though all things else are bought,/ Remember that your sacrifice is nought" (p. 68). The irony is compounded by Brand's response to this challenge. He had originally scoffed at the idea of such a limited ministry, but, confronted by his own words, his ego is seduced into reconsidering the matter. The process of recon- sideration is reinforced through Agnes' vision. Agnes relates a vision of a barren world in which a voice commands her to "Discharge the solemn task assigned to thee,/ People this land" (p. 70). After she relates more details, the im- port of the vision breaks upon Brand, who exclaims, "That is the call! It is written . . . there the new Adam must be born," (p. 70) and who demands the privilege "To be oneself/ Wholly" (p. 70). As if to undercut this possibility, while Brand ponders the role of inherited guilt in a man's life, his mother enters. It is most significant that in the subsequent encounter with his mother Brand reaffirms the appropriateness of the preceding Old Testament allusions by placing her under an injunction to "voluntarily cast aside/ All that which now is binding you to earth," (p. 78) before he will ever come to her spiritual aid. Thus he imposes upon her a standard of behaviour which is similar to, but which also exceeds, that which God imposed upon Job. Job underwent a process of loss and suffering imposed by God in a way which progressively tested his faith, but in which he, himself, was passive; Brand demands that his mother subject herself to only the final phase of a similar process without allowing her to undergo a progressive testing and without assuring her of faith as its outcome. Brand's demand also echoes the New Testament in- junction, "Go, sell all thou hast," but in a way which again measures his dangerously pre-Christian mindset, for the end which he foresees for such casting aside is not faith but his own spiritual aid. Focusing on such a New Testament allusion one 27 might even argue that Brand commits a kind of blasphemy, for he inserts himself into the role which Christ fulfills in the source of the allusion. The culmination of the decisions made in this act is, of course, Brand's decision to stay in the village, but this is not the only decision made: it is complemented by Agnes' decision to stay with Brand, rather than to go with Einar. The contrast between the two decisions could not be more marked. Brand's decision is a willful response to his call to serve the village; Agnes' decision is a response to her love for Brand. The drama of her fateful choice almost overshadows the most ominous note sounded in these closing scenes, for when Brand is delineating the life she can ex- pect with him, he says, "My claim is 'nought or all'" (p. 82). The ominousness of this inheres in its egoism; Brand usurps the role of God in placing demands on people's lives. One would be amiss to construe this is a consciously blasphemous act on Brand's part, but it does serve to enhance his developing role as an Old Testament-like prophet speaking in the absence of complete Christian revelation. By the close of the second act, then, important decisions have been made, accompanied by subtle, portentous revelations about Brand's character. Significantly, all of these things are verbalized in essentially Old Testament language. Ibsen is carefully and consistently signaling the sources of later, more spectacular, developments. The major dramatic events of the third act are the death of Brand's mother and the decision which Brand makes to remain in Norway, at the inevitable cost of his son's life. The religious language of this act, too, is almost exclusively Old Testament in nature, the dominant image being one which Brand, himself, ar- ticulates when he realizes that, as Abraham was required by God to offer Isaac as a sacrifice, so he might be required to offer Alf. The savage irony of Brand's association of himself with Abraham is, of course, that while God required Abraham to be willing to of- fer Isaac, He did not permit the actual deed. Brand appears unable to discern that his demands, resulting in actual death, ex- ceed those God made. Regardless, Brand's association of himself with the Old Testament patriarch-prophets is one of the major motifs of this act. At one time or another Brand identifies himself with Noah (p. 91), Adam (p. 91), or Moses (p. 92). In addition, he is characterized as a "stern judge" by one of the minor characters (p. 93). Consistent with such frequent identification with Old Testament figures, Brand's major religious concern in this act is his effort to exalt the precept of no compromise "to a law" (p. 88). The falsity of this goal is pointed out by the doctor although it remains unrecognized by Brand who says that Brand's mother will be judged, "not by the law, but by the grace of God" (p. 105). The doctor further insists, "you [Brand] still believe/ The 28 covenant of the law is binding yet,/ Both upon God and ordinary men" (p. 105). This formulation of Brand's problem is certainly consistent with the previous religious language in the play, and is the very heart of the problem which Brand must resolve. Brand is not proposing a program of reform beyond men's capabilities, but the terms in which he proposes it his demand for will and law, rather than faith are terms which indicate how his own per- sonality has been projected into his religious tenets. This charge by the doctor also clarifies his previous accusation, "Yes, vicar, in life's ledger, you can show/ Plenty of credit entries under 'will';/ But turn the page to 'love,' you'll find it blank" (p. 90). To ac- cept this as a blanket statement that Brand knows no love at all is to do violence to the play (cf. Gathorne-Hardy's Introduction, pp. 25-26); however, when rendered in spiritual terms, it is quite accurate. Brand does follow a covenant of law, and he refuses to rely on the covenant of grace based on love which supplan- ted it. Perhaps the most confusing aspect of this motif of the play lies in the fact that Brand bases his rejection of this New Testament love, not on theology he explicitly admires the strength of God's love in refusing to alleviate Jesus' suffering in Gethsemene but on the feeble manifestations of love in the life and religion of the people around him. Thus, there is a persistent element of the conscious "nay-sayer" in Brand. He attacks the Church for what it has done to the demanding love which God promulgated in the New Testament; ironically, in doing so he demonstrates time and again that he, too, does not really under- stand the nature of this love, for he allows his apprehension of it to dehumanize him, rather than to fulfill him. This confusion ex- plains Brand's deep-seated affinity for the Old Testament; he has yet to experience God as love, but he is irreversibly bound to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Just as the Old Testament prophets were bound and restricted by the extent of their revelation, so Brand is bound and restricted by his. This limitation is severely challenged by the suffering ex- perienced in the fourth act. The entire sphere of Brand's func- tioning in this act is an expansion of his Old Testament ap- prehension of God. Agnes delineates the hardness of his God (p. 120), and Brand, himself, declares his pre-Christian view of man when he says, "a man is made/ To carry out the duty of mankind./ His aim is to attain to Paradise" (p. 125). The notion that a man is able to attain Paradise contradicts the entire import of the New Testament message of salvation as the gracious gift of God. The gulf between Brand's position and even a nominally Christian one becomes more obvious a few lines later, when Brand exclaims to the Sheriff, "But surely black can never turn to white!" (p. 125) In traditional religious language this is a frequent metaphor for the effect of the Atonement, but it is literally incomprehensible to Brand. The terrible suffering which Brand inflicts on Agnes in the fourth act is another manifestation 29 of the limited nature of his apprehension of God. Since Brand is obviously not a sadist, it must be remembered that, because he loves her, her suffering causes him pain as well. But the rigors of his legalistic religion require him to persist in applying his "all or nothing" standard to her. The result of this process is that Agnes achieves a momentary sense of triumph, but that she must pay for it with her life. Ibsen here does not rely on mere allusion to the Old Testament, but he has Agnes quote to Brand the Old Testament admonition, "No one may look upon God's face and live" (p. 151). The mere fact that they consider this precept still operative within their lives as an inevitable corollary of certain actions effectively denies the complete theological meaning of the Incarnation. In the Old Testament economy, to see God was to die; in the New Testament era, God became man, and through His physical death and resurrection He obviated death for man. Thus, for Brand, the price of persistence continues to mount. His suffering, akin to Old Testament tribulations, cannot be ex- piatory, but can only prepare him for his experiencing of God as love. In this light, his use of the New Testament paradox, "Only what's lost for ever is retained," (p. 152) becomes a part of his quietly desperate attempt to rationalize the calamity of his life. The long last act of Brand is the most critical to a reading which concentrates on the use of religious language. The sub- stance of the act begins with Brand's confrontation with the Dean. In one sense, the Dean is the personification of the organized religion which Brand has been fighting. In another sense, however, the Dean is a representative of an order of belief totally foreign to Brand, in that the Dean is a distinctly if politically Christian figure. The weakness of the Dean's position, and the fact of Brand's total inability to grasp Christian doctrine, is reiterated when Brand questions, "Unless a man is dead, he can't be used?" (p. 173) The Dean's ostensible rejection of this notion curiously coincides with Brand's confused expan- sion of it: "He has to have all his life drained away,/ Only a stif- fened skeleton can suit/ The pale, anaemic sort of life you ask," (p. 173) for both of them fail to grasp the true meaning of Jesus' admonition. But, whereas this lack of understanding is a severe indictment of the Dean, the nominally Christian man, for Brand it merely serves to measure again the gap between him and the attainment of New Testament faith. Appropriately, then, Brand verbalizes his attack on the Dean (cf. p. 173) in a series of Old Testament allusions. The Dean's closing attack on Brand (cf. pp. 174-75) is one of the most crucial speeches in the play. He attacks the egoism and hard selfishness which, as has been shown, have been a central, driving force in Brand's program of reform. With the central ob- servation, "You must become as smooth as others are,/ And never stray along your private path," (p. 174) the Dean ostensibly presents Brand with the formula for ecclesiastical-political suc- cess, but Brand apprehends a much more telling truth in the 30 Dean's words. When the Dean leaves, the stage directions in- dicate that Brand stands "as if petrified by his thoughts": he then expresses his thoughts in the words, "All I have sacrificed upon the shrine/ Of what I blindly deemed the call of God!/ Now rings a blast from the dread trump of doom,/ To show me who the spirit was I served" (p. 175). He then determines still, charac- teristically, willfully "They shall not have my soul," (p. 175) but he closes his speech with a despairing and uncharac- teristically dependent "Oh, could I meet with one believing soul,/ To give me confidence to bring me calm!" (p. 176) Thus Brand undergoes a change which is really a reversal. Rather than the self-assured, self-centered, prophet-like figure of the first por- tions of the play, he is now a seeker, one who has the potential to discover true faith because he is open to it. The following scene with the reformed Einar serves two im- portant functions. In the first place, it confronts Brand with an embodiment of the heartless, dehumanized Christianity which could become the end of his new quest. Secondly, his rejection of this alternative reassures him in the strength of his individual in- tegrity. When he says, "That was the man I needed: now all ties/ Are severed, I will fly my flag myself," (p. 179) he is asserting once more his own strength, but he is asserting it with the dif- ference that he is now primarily concerned with the state of his own soul, and no longer obsessed with his scheme of attaining ex- ternal religious successes. This transformed understanding in Brand is concretized in the symbol of the new church. In one sense this edifice represents the ultimate material payment Brand makes to his own sense of inherited guilt, for he uses all of the money he has inherited from his mother to build it. Yet, he has ostensibly built it because the former church was too small and tradition-laden to allow the worshippers an appropriate sense of freedom in their worship. Only after the Dean's attack and the confrontation with Einar does Brand realize how he has used the new building for his own purposes; he is then able to regain a measure of his original sense of mission and to tell his parishioners, "I was too blind to see it was a case/ Of everything or nothing ... I tell you, men,/ The spirit of compromise is Satan's self (p. 184); he then urges upon them a vision which encompasses "soaring flights on high among the stars,/ And children playing around the Christmas tree,/ And David's royal dance before the ark" (p. 184). The very ver- balization of this vision underscores the groping, tentative nature of it. It is too all-encompassing to mean anything in particular. This does not inhibit its rhetorical effectiveness, however, for the crowd is passionately moved. The irony of the people's sentiment and a foreshadowing of the inevitable course their fervor will run occurs in the language of their ecstasy. As the people begin to follow Brand out of the valley, they dismiss the practical although spitefully motivated challenges of the Sheriff and the Dean by reminding them, "Manna was granted, from the dew of 31 heaven,/ To Israel in the wilderness!" (p. 186) Thus, precisely at the moment when Brand has begun to redefine the nature of his mission and to relinquish the assurance of consistently Old Testament imagery, the people who follow him misunderstand him profoundly enough to begin to see themselves and their mission in Old Testament terms. What ensues is inevitable. The disillusionment which the people suffer and their outraged attack on Brand are consequences of the deep misun- derstanding which has been anticipated in the clashing imagery of the speeches. Throughout the early parts of the second scene, the people fit consistently into their identity with the wandering Israelites by complaining, grumbling and objecting. Simultaneously, they also echo the words of the would-be followers of Jesus who hedged in their commitment to his "sell all thou hast" dictum. Brand's identity at this point has lost enough of its original character that he begins to assume the bifurcated role of part prophet, part Christ-like figure. His message is still not Christian, but it has modified. The emphasis on will is still present, but the "Nought or All" summons is no longer Brand's but God's. Brand's association with a Christ-like figure is further emphasized when the people who have looked to him in an- ticipation of a temporal triumph reject him "cheated tricked betrayed, betrayed!" (p. 189) when they realize the spiritual nature of the conquest he is proposing. Like the Jews of Palm Sunday, the villagers turn upon Brand when he formulates his campaign in terms of "God's call" and lost souls (p. 196) rather than social and political revolution. Only after Brand has been driven "bruised and bleeding" (p. 196) into the solitary heights of the mountains, does he undergo the conversion which is the previously unarticulated object of his quest. In his long soliloquy opening the last scene Brand men- tions for the first time, "One [who] once suffered death to save them all," (p. 197) and his soliloquy then veers off on a long con- sideration of the relationship between the ineffective, cowardly faith of his countrymen and their paralysis in contemporary inter- national events. With the questions, "And has that image of God, in which mankind/ Was fashioned, been forgotten or lost?/ Can our Creator's spirit know defeat?" (p. 201), Brand initiates the closing sequence of the play. Downs has noted 6 the visionary aspects of this closing sequence, but he has not developed the idea completely enough to explain the transformation Brand undergoes. It is true, as Downs points out, that the appearance of Agnes is visionary because she is a projection from Brand's subconscious. It is also true that Gerd is actually present because she was seen by the others following Brand in his ascent. What Downs overlooks is the brief use of the heavenly chorus to introduce the phantom of Agnes. It would appear, on first examination, that the chorus has an objec- tive reality because, unlike Agnes, there is nothing in Brand's subconscious which he could project in order to create it. 32 However, seen in the context, it becomes apparent that the voices respond to Brand's questions in a way which indicates that they are essentially projections of his conscience. Brand has reached a state of still-faithless isolation and despair, and his conscience, as well as his subconscious, works to deepen his mood. It is supremely ironic that these forces drive Brand to a state such as Einar, in his pompous, dehumanized, converted self, described as his own condition just before his conversion. The positive aspect of the irony in Brand's situation is that his conversion also begins to emerge from the despair. In the context of this conversion process, then, the vision of Agnes becomes a temptation, tempting Brand to persist in doting on his former self and its errors, rather than allowing him to pur- sue his quest. Brand, himself, realizes this when, after the phan- tom has assumed the form of a hawk and abandoned him, he says, "Now I see !/ That phantom was the Spirit of Com- promise!" (p. 206) As if to affirm the accuracy of this conclusion, Gerd enters the scene, claiming to have seen the hawk depart, and proposing that they hunt him together. The proposed hunt is delayed when Gerd looks closely at the wounded Brand. From the nature of his wounds, which resemble the stigmata, the demented girl suddenly concludes that Brand is Christ: "it is you who were the Crucified" (p. 207). Brand rejects this blasphemous idea by significantly quoting (the line is printed as a quotation in the play) Jesus' rebuke to Peter, "Get thee behind me" (p. 207). The inclusion of such a startling event so late in the play must be carefully understood. It is accurate if superficial to say that Gerd is presenting Brand with another temptation which he overcomes. But it is far more important to notice Brand's status at this point; it is also necessary to insist upon the distinction between Christ-likeness and a Christ- figure. Brand's wounds, as well as some of the preceding events, could indicate either identification, but the context of the play precludes the latter alternative, for, within a few lines, Brand, himself, prays to Jesus (p. 208). Thus, the necessary conclusion about Brand at this point of the play is that he is developing greater and more explicit Christ-likeness, e.g. he is drawing ever nearer to the moment of his conversion. His human nature as visualized by his physical self is being prepared for transfor- mation. When Gerd invites Brand to the Ice Church, his sense of despair at his totally isolated position manifests itself in his lines, "O that I were a thousand miles away!/ How desperately I long for light and sun,/ Kindliness, and the sabbath calm of peace . . ." (p. 208). This is immediately followed by his weeping, penitential prayer: O Jesus, I have called upon Thy name, But Thou has never clasped me to Thy breast: Thou has been near to me, yet hast glided past, 33 As slips a well-known word upon the tongue. Oh, let me now touch but the paltry hem Of thy redeeming mantle, Which is dipped In the true wine of penitence! (p. 208) When Gerd questions why he has never wept before, the tone as well as the substance of Brand's reply indicates that Brand has experienced a conversion. Ibsen's stage directions indicate that Brand replies, "in a clear, radiant voice, as if rejuvenated, " (p. 208) and Brand's words chronicle, in capsule form, the process of the entire play: Man treads the path of law through frosty days; But then comes summer, and the light from heaven. Till now, it was my duty to become The stony table on which God writes His laws; But from today the poetry of my life Shall run meandering in warm pleasant streams: Its icy crust is broken, I can weep, And I can kneel, and I can pray at last! (pp. 208-09) The final moments of the play concern the reappearance of the hawk, and the avalanche caused by Gerd's shooting of the bird. Previously, Brand had recognized the hawk as a temptation, the spirit of compromise, and he had called it a hawk, but when Gerd shoots the bird and it begins to fall, she says, "Why, he is white as white as any dove" (p. 209). The transformation of the hawk is a result of Brand's conversion. The dove is the traditional embodiment of the Holy Spirit; therefore, the hawk of compromising temptation is now recognized as really being the dove of God's spirit, which has alternately driven and led Brand to his conversion. The avalanche is, in a literal sense, an accident the result of a gun-shot vibrating the loose snow. Brand had previously anticipated a whole new life (see above), but he falls victim to the avalanche. It is most incompatible with the text to attempt to render the avalanche as a form of judgment on Brand, for even in the midst of it his new-found faith persists, and, in his final speech, he addresses God concerning the problem which, had he lived, would have most occupied his attempt to under- stand and to reconcile his new and old ways of life: "Answer me, God, here in the jaws of death./ Can the full measure of a human will/ Weigh not an atom in the scales of heaven/ Toward his soul's salvation?" (p. 209) The success of Brand's prayer the proof that it was heard is found in the ambiguous answer ringing out over the roar of the avalanche, "He is the God of Love." 7 The ambiguity of this statement does not lie, as many ap- pear to think, in whether it is a censuring of Brand or a vin- dication of him; the ambiguity lies in the fact that it is not a direct answer to a very direct question. Cast in the light of the career and experience of Brand, however, the implication of the 34 reply appears to be that, if a human will firmly persists in seeking God, God, in His love, will redirect that will even if it means virtually breaking it until it recognizes that, in order to properly serve Him, love must provide the basis for any exercise of will. This is what Brand has learned. Thus, in the last act, the shifts in religious language and imagery reflect the changes taking place within Brand. In the final act the nature of the religious language evolves from con- sistently Old Testament imagery to New Testament concern with repentence, prayer, and love. A reading of the play from the perspective of its use of religious language is not definitive; however, it appears to con- front the primary issues of the play in the terms in which they confront the title character. As such, the religious images reflect the changing nature of the main character, and chronicle his progress from an Old Testament prophet to a New Testament Christian. Simultaneously, the religious language allows fuller appreciation of the sheer human strength of the character as he persists in his quest. Combined, these elements perhaps clarify why Ibsen liked to think that Brand was himself "in [his] best moments." NOTES Almost everyone who writes on Brand, whether in a book or an article, men- tions the great effect of its success on Ibsen's career. For example: M. C. Brad- brook, in Ibsen the Norwegian (London: Chatto & Windus, 1948), says that Ibsen "attained security and success with Brand" (p. 7); Theodore Jorgensen, in Henrik Ibsen: A Study in Art and Personality (Northfield, Minn.: St. Olaf College Press, 1945), also acknowledges the importance of the play in Ibsen's career; Halvdan Koht, in his standard The Life of Ibsen (London: American Scandinavian Foun- dation, 1931), suggests that the moral impact of Brand in Norwegian culture was almost an historic turning point for the nation, as well as for Ibsen; and George Brandes, in Henrik Ibsen, A Critical Study (New York: Benjamin Blom, Inc., 1964), says "[Brand] was a book which left no reader cold." (p. 21). 2 Halvdan Koht, The Life of Ibsen (London: American Scandinavian Foun- dation, 1931), p. 260. 3 Henrik Ibsen, Brand, trans, by G. M. Gathorne-Hardy (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966). Specific references to play noted in text. 4 George Brandes, Henrik Ibsen, A Critical Study (New York: Benjamin Blom, Inc., 1964), p. 70. 5 Gathorne-Hardy, Introduction, p. 21. Although the influence of Kierkegaard on Ibsen's thought at the time of the composition of Brand is important, the present essay is not concerned with such extra-textual speculations. Rather, I believe the use in the play of language from one source the Bible demon- strates an important way of reading the play. Whether this reading in turn suggests anything about Ibsen's own philosophical or religious positions remains, of course, mere speculation. Indeed, to posit any Ibsenian positions based on evidence from the play strikes me as the type of deduction which argues that Nora (of A Doll's House) demonstrates Ibsen's defense of radical feminism. 6 Brian Downs, A Study of Six Plays by Ibsen (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1950), p. 33 ff. 7 Henrik Ibsen, Brand, trans, by Michael Meyer (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1960), p. 157. This translation was used at this point because it is a more literal rendering of the Norwegian. 35 THE INTENT AND IMPORTANCE OF BLACK STUDIES Randolph Fisher Black studies become increasingly popular, hence growingly important. So much so that Nick Aaron Ford, a charter member of the National Council of Teachers of English Commission on the Profession, feels that they lie "at the bottom of the greatest crisis that has confronted higher education in this century." Whether they are called black studies or black literature or Negro literature or Afro-American or African-American or Africana Studies and Research Center depends upon where the program is and whose program it is. And so long as it is a systematic and honest study of the Negro in American history and society, it finds a place in the academic program. Although there are many definitions of black studies and considerable disagreement among scholars as to their value, students across the country are demanding that their schools (white and black) establish black studies programs immediately. The schools are responding with attention-compelling haste. Harvard University, for example, has established a new Department of Afro-American Studies, which, broadly based, covers the life of black America in all its major facets. It is staffed by Ewart Guinier (chairman) and eight other Negroes. The of- ferings range from the history of black people in Africa and the Caribbean to courses on the role of the modern black community in organized labor and politics, an in-depth study of Boston's black community, and the philosophy and critiques of the black movement, as well as African art and Afro-American Poetry and thought. Sophomore tutorial students concentrating on the Afro- American experience will encompass the politics of black Africa and its role in the United Nations, economic differentials between groups in the United States, the black church, the urban ghettos, black literature, black liberation, and white liberalism. Harvard is offering seven Afro-American courses this fall semester; ten more courses are scheduled for the spring, with other courses of- fered in related fields such as black literature, urban politics, and the economics of discrimination. No attendance is taken but up to 150 students attend seminars. Brown University and Pembroke College inaugurated a Black Studies Program this year. Already 300 students, most of them white, are enrolled in two courses. More courses are plan- ned for next semester. New York University's new Institute of Afro-American Af- fairs is headed by Roscoe C. Brown, Jr. The program to be developed by the Institute will attempt to identify and analyze the contributions, problems, and aspirations of Americans of African descent. The Institute has an education program in- volving lectures, seminars, conferences, and courses in black studies offered in collaboration with various schools and colleges of the University. Presently the University offers more than 36 twenty individual courses in the area of black studies, ranging from black African government and politics to race and the news media. A research program, including various aspects of economics, history, literature, art, education, politics, and other areas of concern to Afro-Americans, is being considered. Black scholars provide the intellectual leadership in the investigation of areas of concern to black people, although white scholars are also involved. The State University of New York at Albany has a degree- granting Department of Afro-American Studies, which offers thir- teen black-oriented courses. The courses are open to all students at the University. A graduate level program of Afro-American Studies is expected to become operative as of the 1970-71 school year. Syracuse University has selected John Johnson to establish its academic program of Afro-American Studies. As to his aim Johnson said: "Afro-American Studies for me represent one of the most exciting ventures into education. For the students at Syracuse University, on the one hand, it will represent a chance to understand the experience of black people in America, and, on the other hand, it will provide a step forward for the education of black people themselves. One of our highest priorities will be research and scholarship." Dartmouth College has chosen an alumnus, Robert G. McGuire, III as coordinator of its first interdepartmental Black Studies Program. It is designed to help make the college curriculum meet relevant social and individual needs. The Program consists of core courses, seminars, and field trips in a wide range of subjects relating to the life and history of blacks in the United States. It is open to all Dartmouth upper-classmen. The Program is geared to eleven upper-level courses selected last year by a faculty committee from the Dartmouth catalog. The committee, working closely with the College's Afro-American Society, developed five new courses which are now being offered. Disagreement among scholars as to the intent and importance of black studies is underscored by McGuire: "The idea of black studies is being approved now by faculties, here as elsewhere, but the implications of the programs have not yet really been clarified ... If we can get a new world view by being more honest about our deficiencies and more receptive to different values, hopefully we will come up with more viable solutions to national and world problems." Brandeis University, whose Afro-American Department is chaired by Ronald Walters, has eighty-one students in ten black studies courses. Allegheny Community College (Pittsburgh) has only two courses in Black Studies and they are crowded. DePaul University offers twenty-four courses in Black Studies, which draw more and more students. Tougaloo College requires freshmen to take a social science seminar which includes some black studies. Moreover two hun- 37 dred of the seven hundred students enrolled in this predominan- tly black college also attend upper-level courses dealing with Afro-American literature and race relations. The University of California at Santa Barbara hurriedly set up a Black Studies Department last summer. The courses were not in the catalog, but on mimeographed sheets. Yet eighty-three students enrolled for Black Studies and the enrollment increases. Michigan State University offers a course called "Black Political Movements." It was designed for fifty students, but over two hun- dred have applied for admission. Lincoln University (Missouri) offers a minor in Afro-American Studies under the Department of History and Government. Howard University has established a Department of Afro-American Studies with a $146,000 Ford Foundation grant. Howard will offer a Doctor of Philosophy program in Afro-American Studies. What's happening? What's going on? Why this astounding and unceasing demand for information about black people? An- swers are many and varied. One is white students. Certainly the high enrollment of white students in black studies courses is to some extent explained by the higher number of white enrollment in schools generally. That means several things one of which is that Black Studies are designed not only to meet the needs of black students, but also to meet the needs of white students. "Although there is an increasing number of blacks at Syracuse," comments John Johnson, "the whites are still in the majority and will continue to be, so any program must be geared to the majority. Black refers to who is being studied, not who is studying or who is teaching the course." Another reason comes from Georgia Henderson of the University of Oklahoma: "A lot of this is a search (by whites) for more information about black culture. In their early years students didn't get an accurate portrayal of black people. Now they want to do something about it." Perhaps the basic reason is that more and more black students have en- tered white colleges and universities during recent years. Their strange and sometimes hostile environment has made par- ticularly urgent their need for authentic information as to where they came from, where they are going, why, and how to get there. And so, as to intent, black studies are attempting to clarify the black experience, to make a systematic and honest study of the Negro in American history and society. As to importance, black studies are a necessary unit of American studies. Firmly established in academic programs across the country, black studies apparently will be here on through the years. 38 SOME EFFECTS OF THE APPLICATION OF COMPUTER ASSISTED MASTERY LEARNING TECHNIQUES ON BLACK COLLEGE STUDENTS John W. Greene, Ph.D and Charles W. Moore, M.A. The use of the computer to complement existing instructional programs is now almost common-place among American colleges and universities (Lippert, 1971). Technical developments in com- puter assisted instruction (CAI) have demonstrated a great potential for large scale individualized instructional support for which the time-shared computer is uniquely suited (Lekan, 1971). However, progress in writing instructional programs under CAI systems has not kept pace with technical developments (DeCecco, 1968). In particular, research concerned with the in- struction of Black or other minority students is lacking, although research efforts have been directed toward programmed instruc- tion and mastery learning. Serious exploration of CAI and its ramifications as a tool of instruction for Black college students is virtually non-existent. Some first steps in this direction have been taken at Howard University (OCS, 1971, 1973). A review of CAI research activities at other universities across the country does not support a promise of strong CAI research activity involving Blacks outside of the Black campus (Lekan, 1971). Research on the two principal approaches to programmed in- struction and, in particular, on their relative validity has been conducted. Coulson and Silberman (1959) reported that when the performance of junior college students using the Holland-Skinner constructed response programmed instruction technique was com- pared with their performance using the Crowder multiple choice technique, no significant difference in post test scores was found. Evans, in 1960, during his experiment with symbolic logic (Fry, 1963), and Roe, also, in 1960, while teaching probability to engineering students with these two principal programmed in- struction types both found no significant difference in post test scores. In a fourth study, however, Fry in 1960, teaching Spanish words and phrases to high school students, found a significant difference in favor of students using a constructed response program over those using multiple choice items (Fry, 1963). But, when a multiple choice type of post test was used, the difference was not significant. Thus, it appears that the two types of programmed instruction do not significantly differ in effec- tiveness. During an investigation of a strategy for mastery learning, Bloom found that 90 percent of the students achieved mastery of given material when instruction was made appropraite to the 39 characteristics and needs of each student (Bloom, 1968a). This study utilized frequent detailed evaluations and diagnostic techniques as well as prescriptive feedback within its operating procedures. The study was supported by the earlier work of Carroll in 1963 on whose classic model strategy for mastery lear- ning Bloom's work was based (Bloom, 1968b). An overview of these investigations suggested the query: How might a computer assisted mastery learning strategy affect the performance of Black college students? More precisely, how might a mastery learning strategy within a given discipline and for the achievement of a specific instructional objective in a CAI environment affect the performance of Black college students? The purpose of this study, then, was to investigate the effects of the application of a mastery learning strategy in mathematics instruction within a CAI environment on Black college students. In particular, the experiment investigated the "time to mastery" differences among Black college students in proving a minor theorem in number theory which might result from the ap- plication of such an instrument. The null hypothesis was stated as follows: The "time to mastery" in proving a minor theorem by an experimental group using a mastery learning strategy within a CAI environment will not differ significantly from that of a control group exposed to traditional instruction. The study was conducted over a five day period both in a standard classroom and in a computer laboratory. The subjects were twenty Black sophomore and junior mathematics and engineering majors of both sexes currently enrolled in Howard University. The twenty students ranged in age from 18 to 22 years. The students were assigned numbers randomly as they arrived for the experiment. The median was computed for these numbers and the subjects with numbers greater than the median were designated control group; the remaining students were assigned to the experimental group. Thus, each group consisted of ten subjects. The investigator developed a computer assisted programmed instruction instrument based on a minor theorem in number theory which had been treated in an intrinsic program sequence by Norman Crowder (Fry, 1963b). Since research cited earlier in- dicated that neither of the two principal programmed instruction types was significantly superior to the other in effectiveness, this investigator arbitrarily chose the Crowder method to use in the study. The Crowder program was transformed into a conversational computer program written in the BASIC language and placed un- der the Howard University CALL/360 Timesharing System. Cer- tain modifications were made in the content and flow of the Crowder program during transformation although its basic in- tegrity was preserved. These modifications demanded by an adherence to mastery learning concepts, were introduced to 40 provide greater feedback to the student and additional ex- planation of "branched" material. Additional programming provisions measured each subject's cumulative elapsed time while using the program. Access to the instrument was provided through interactive typewriter-like terminals. The instrument was conversational, thus, allowing subjects to be provided with immediate reward and feedback. In one session both the control and experimental groups were given 20 minutes of instruction which covered approaches to mathematical proofs (Polya, 1957). Each group was given the statement of the theorem to be proved and an illustration of its application. The theorem and its proof are provided in the appen- dix. Subjects in the control group were provided with paper and pencil and told to prove the theorem. Subjects in the experimen- tal group were given 5 minutes of instruction in the use of the in- teractive terminals and told to prove the theorem at the terminal. Both groups were told to work through to completion of the proof. The results of the performance of each subject was evaluated and the cumulative elapsed time for each subject was recorded. The mean time to mastery for each group was computed and the difference between these means was tested for significance using the Student t ratio as outlined in Anderson and Bancroft (1952). All subjects completed the proof of the theorem. The mean times to mastery for each group are presented in Table 1. TABLE 1 T-Test for Mean Time to Mastery in Minutes of Experimental and Control Groups Means Computed Critical Value (.01) Control 39.3 Experimental 19.7 -3.1215 2.552 The time to mastery in the control group ranged from 18 to 85 minutes while the range in the experimental group was 13 to 27 minutes. The standard deviations were 19.2933 and 4.6916 for the control and experimental groups respectively. When the dif- ference between the two mean times to mastery was tested, it was found to be not significant at the .01 level (Anderson and Ban- croft, 1952b). Thus, the null hypothesis was not rejected. Although the null hypothesis was not rejected the nearly 2 to 1 difference in mean scores indicate that there is considerable merit to the use of a mastery learning strategy within a CAI en- vironment and this instrument as an aid to mathematical instruc- tion is a useful alternative to the use of the lecture method alone. In addition, these results demonstrated that this instrument is an effective instructional aid to Black college students. 41 Several questions may be posed as a result of this study: How effective is the instrument with larger groups of students? How might this technique be utilized in other areas of the mathematics curriculum or within other academic disciplines? What are the implications of the application of this technique to Black students with known academic deficiencies? As a result of the substantial savings in instruction time, how might course scheduling and curriculum be affected? How cost-effective is this technique when measured against more traditional instructional techniques? Hopefully, the results of this study will encourage further serious exploration of the use of this and similar techniques in support of instructional objectives of college curricula. APPENDIX 1 Theorem: Let N be any odd integer such that N 1. Then, N2-1 is divisible by 8. Proof: Since N is odd, then set N =2M+1 where M is an integer. Hence, N2-1 =(2M+ 1) 2 -1 =4M 2 + 4M . But now, N 2 -l =4(M 2 + M) is clearly divisible by 4 and it remains to be shown that M 2 + M is divisible by 2. If M is odd, then M 2 is odd. Also, M 2 + M is even since the sum of odd integers is even. If M is even, then M 2 is even. Also, M 2 + M is even since the sum of even integers is even. Thus, M 2 + M is even and is divisible by 2. The theorem follows. APPENDIX 2 Time to Mastery (in Minutes) Control Experimental 23 16 18 24 42 13 22 18 50 27 38 20 85 14 45 18 30 23 40 24 42 REFERENCES Anderson, R. L. and T. A. Bancroft, Statistical Theory in Research, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1952 (a) p. 81; (b) p. 385. Bloom, Benjamin S., "Learning for Mastery", RELCV Topical Papers and Reprints, No. 1, (1968) (a) p. 10; (b) p. 2. Coulson, J. E. and H. F. Silberman, "Results of Initial Experiment and Automated Teaching," Santa Monica, California: System Development Corporation, July, 1959. "CAI - Systems and Projects", Automated Education Letter, No. 1, Detroit: Automated Education Center, 1966, pp. 3-13. DeCecco, John P., The Psychology of Learning and Instruction: Educational Psychology, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1968, p. 538. Fry, Edward B., Teaching Machines and Programmed Instruction, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1963, (a) pp. 103-104; (b) pp. 225-239. Lekan, Helen A., Index to Computer Assisted Instruction, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., New York, 1971. Roe, A., "Automated Teaching Methods Using Linear Programs", Department of Engineering Report, Los Angeles: University of California, 1960. Polya, G., How To Solve It, Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1957, pp. 33-36. "CAI Festival at Howard University", OCS PRINTOUT, Vol IV, No. 1, Washington, D. C: Howard University Office of Computer Services, 1971, p. 2. "Time Sharing System Scorecard A Survey of On-Line Multiple User Computer Systems", No. 2, Belmont, Mass.: Computer Research Corporation (CRC), 1965, pp. 1-4. Lippert, Henry T., "Computer Support of Instruction and Student Services in a College or University", Educational Technology, May 1971, pp. 40-43. "OCS Seeks Full CAI Program", OCS PRINTOUT, Vol. V, No. 1, Washington, D. C: Howard University Office of Computer Services, 1973, p. 2. 43 THE LEGAL QUEST BY THE AMERICAN NEGRO FOR EQUAL EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY By Prince A. Jackson, Jr., Ph.D. In the year 55 B.C., Marcus Tullius Cicero published his great work, De Oratore, which contained what he considered to be the basic principles necessary for an orator's education. One of these principles, which the writer considers to be most apropos to this paper is: Nescire autem quid antequam notus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. 1 (To be unaware of what occurred before you were born is to remain a boy always.) Never before in the history of Black Americans has the value of a knowledge of their past been so vital to their survival. Many Blacks are learning for the first time that their forefathers had developed advanced civilizations millennia ago in which Black was not only beautiful, but the only color. After more than 350 years of exposure to an extrinsic culture designed to obliterate the magnificent past, it is time for a close examination of certain aspects of the struggle of Black Americans since the year 1619. It is significant as well as disquieting to come to the realization that no liberty or privilege enjoyed by other Americans, natural or naturalized, came to Black Americans except through legal chan- nels. Even today in 1973, it is still necessary for Blacks to go to court for liberties other Americans take for granted. Thus, it is necessary that all Americans become aware of the role of the law in the survival of Black Americans in the past so they can chart a better future. This paper is concerned with the legal quest for equal educational opportunities by a suppressed American minority. The struggle for equal educational opportunity has been a life-long fight of the American Negro. Although gains have been many and tremendous, equal educational opportunity is yet to be accomplished and the great struggle for it continues. Blacks have not been alone in this quest. From the introduction of slavery into the colonies there have been whites who have made it their moral obligation to arouse the conscience of the nation concerning the many massive problems of the Negro. Another ally of the Negro in this struggle, perhaps the most powerful, has been the Federal government. Without the active role of the Federal government, it is inconceivable that the progress of the Negro in his quest for equal educational opportunity would have achieved its present status. 'Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Oratore, XXXIV (55 B.C.) Cicero's impact on Romans was legendary. The great Roman educator Marcus Fabius Quintilianus advised his students "ut quisque erit Ciceroni simillimus" (to study other authors only in so far as they resemble Cicero). 44 The quest for equal educational opportunity can be divided into four distinct periods. The first period extended from 1806 to 1896. It was during this period that the groundwork was laid for the enunication of the "separate but equal" doctrine, and during this period the first case involving the "separate but equal" doc- trine was argued in a court in Boston, Massachusetts. The Dred Scott case was also arbitrated during this period and the first civil rights bill enacted by the Congress was ruled uncon- stitutional. The second period was from 1896 to 1935. During this period the decisions involving Negroes and whites were adjudicated on the basis of the "separate but equal" doctrine. There were only a few cases involving education during this period, because Negro education was in its embryonic stages and Negroes were not prepared educationally to initiate test cases to challenge the doc- trine. The third period began in 1935 and ended in 1954. It was during this period that the decisions of the courts eroded the "separate but equal" doctrine by making it more difficult for the states maintaining dual school systems to prove that the facilities provided for Negroes were substantially equal to those provided for whites. This period was most active with test cases, because Negroes were prepared educationally to compete academically in the professional and graduate schools maintained for whites. The fourth period began May 17, 1954 with the demise of the "separate but equal" doctrine. In the more than eighteen years since the 1954 decision, the resistance to operating dual school systems has continued. While recognizing that there is no longer a legal basis for the separation of the races in public education, many of the affected states have continued their search and ef- forts to delay the effects of the decision as long as possible. Then too, these efforts have been enhanced by the growing number of Blacks who have become disenchanted with integration because of the many recent injustices suffered such as the loss of jobs by Black professionals and the systematic obliteration of Black achievement symbols from local school systems. This paper will deal briefly with the first two periods and in detail with the latter two. The conclusion will pose vexatious questions which have come to the fore during the late sixties and which must be answered in the seventies. The Establishment of the "Separate but Equal" Doctrine The logical place to begin an examination of the American Negro's quest for equality in all phases of American life is the year 1808. Prior to 1808, the Federal government made the begin- ning of what was to become a long series of interventions in the destiny of Blacks. This initial intervention was the prohibition of the importation of slaves. 2 The first part of the act made it illegal 2 U.S., Statutes at Large, II, 426. 45 to bring Blacks into the country for the purpose of selling or holding them as slaves. The Congress went one step further in the second section of the act and prohibited citizens from taking part in any activity that might tend to frustrate the intentions of the first section of the act. While this act signaled a change in attitude in the young country toward the issue of legal involuntary servitude, Blacks were still looked upon as being different from other human beings. This was demonstrated in the first case in which segregation in education was argued in Boston, Massachusetts. Sarah Roberts, a Negro child of Boston, Massachusetts, sought admission to a white school, 1,300 feet closer to her door step than the closest colored school. Her request was refused by the Boston School Committee. Charles Summer argued her case before the Massachusetts Supreme Court. The Court ruled that the increased distance to which the child was obliged to go was not unreasonable nor illegal. 3 This decision was the first enun- ciation of the "separate but equal" doctrine and predated the celebrated 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision by 48 years. The fight for equality reached its lowest point in 1854. Dred Scott, a slave, sued for his freedom after his master took him to the free territory of Minnesota and the free state of Illinois. 4 The case reached the United States Supreme Court and Mr. Justice Taney delivered the opinion of the Court which said in part: It is obvious that they were not ever in the minds of the framers of the constitution when they were conferring special rights and privileges upon the citizens of a state in every other part of the union. 2 The decision was momentous. Slavery now had legal sanc- tion. The wording of the decision clearly indicated that the Negro was a separate class and that the framers of the Constitution never had him in mind when they accorded rights and privileges to citizens of the various states. This meant that, whether eman- cipated or not, the Negro could not become a citizen by natural rights. This was the low point in the Negro's quest for eventual equality. 5 A little more than eight years after the Scott decision, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to be issued on January 1, 1863, to free the slaves. It proclaimed in part: Whereas on the 22nd day of September, A.D. 1862, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United 3 Roberts v. City of Boston, 59 Mass. 198 (1849). 4 Scott v. Sanford, 19 Howard 393 (1857). 5 Harvey Wish, Society and Thought in Early America (New York: McKay Publishing Company, 1950), p. 511. 46 States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit: 'That on the 1st day of January, A.D., 1863, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free . . . And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated states and parts of states are, and henceforward shall be free . . .' 6 Thus, after nearly 250 years in America, legal citizenship for Black Americans began January 1, 1863. The Thirty-eighth Congress recognized that the newly established citizens needed special assistance and created a bureau which became known as the "freedmen's bureau." 7 During the 244 years prior to the Emancipation Proclamation Black Americans had virtually no formal education. Many of the slave states had enacted laws which ex- pressly prohibited slaves from even acting in a learned manner. Some of these laws even prohibited slave owners from en- couraging intellectual development of their slaves. Typical of such laws was an act of 1831 in North Carolina which stated in part: That it shall not be lawful under any pretence for any free negro, slave or free person of color to preach or exhort in public, or in any manner to officiate as a preacher or teacher in any prayer meeting or other association; . . . and if any free negro or free person of color shall be thereof dully convicted on indictment before any court having jurisdiction thereof, he shall for each offense receive not exceeding thirty-nine lashes on his bare back; . . . and in case the owner of any slave shall consent or con- nive at the commission of such offence, he or she so of- fending shall be subject to indictment, and on conviction be fined in the discretion of the Court not exceeding one hundred dollars. 8 In 1875, Congress passed its first Civil Rights Act 9 which gave Black Americans the right "to the full and equal enjoyment 6 U.S., Statutes at Large, XII, 1268 - 1269. "Ibid., XIII, 507. 8 Laws of North Carolina, 1831-1832, Chapter IV. 9 U.S., Statutes at Large, XVIII, 335. 47 of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters and other places of public amusement." Many states refused to recognize the Civil Rights Act and the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1883 that Congress had exceeded its power and virtually eliminated the Act. Following this decision several states enacted constitutional amendments which effectively disfranchised the Negro. 10 The lower Federal and State courts generally sustained state segregation measures. In 1896, the question of legality of "separate but equal" ac- commodations was presented to the United States Supreme Court in the Plessy v. Ferguson case. The case was initiated in 1892 in Louisiana when Homer Plessy, a Negro, took a seat in a car designated for whites. He was ordered to leave and upon refusing, was taken from the train to jail. The issue presented to the Supreme Court was whether the Louisiana law requiring "separate but equal" accommodations denied equal protection of the laws. In upholding the Louisiana law, Mr. Justice Brown in delivering the majority opinion of the court declared in part: We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiffs argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority . . . The argument also assumes that social prejudices may be legislated, and that equal rights cannot be accured to the negro except by an enfor- ced commingling of the two races. We cannot accept this proposition . . . ... If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Con- stitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane. 11 The decision was not unanimous. Mr. Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented widely from the majority of the Court in eloquent language that was destined to be cited in later decisions. We shall look at his dissent later in the paper. The decision was a landmark. 12 It, in effect, legalized separation of the races. Its implications were far-reaching. In education, it gave the dual school system a legal foundation. In due time, it came to mean, "separate but unequal." The "separate but equal" doctrine was applied in some states to non-whites as well as Negroes. An important case arose in Mississippi involving the Chinese. l0 Paul Lewinson, Race, Class, and Party (New York: Oxford University Press, 1932), p. 260. " Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S., 537 (1896). 12 The United States Congress might have inadvertently prognosticated the decision in 1890 when it enacted the Second Merrill Act. 48 A Chinese girl, Martha Lum, a native-born American, was denied admittance to Mississippi's "white schools." She took ac- tion against the school authority which eventually reached the United States Supreme Court, Chief Justice Taft, in delivering the opinion of the Court said in part: Most of the cases cited arose, it is true, over the establishment of separate schools as between white pupils and black pupils; but we cannot think that the question is any different, or that any different result can be reached, assuming the cases above cited to be rightly decided, where the issue is as between white pupils and the pupils of the yellow race. The decision is within the discretion of the state in regulating its public schools, and does not conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment. 13 The decision strengthened the legality of separate schools. Thus at the dawn of the great depression and a pending period of great social change, the "separate but equal" doctrine reached its apex in strength. The application of the doctrine by the several states maintaining dual school systems based on race, projected a dim prospect for the eventual achievement of equal educational opportunity. The Deterioration of the "Separate but Equal" Doctrine At the end of the second decade of the Twentieth Century, the United States entered into a huge depression. Fortunes of men and families were wiped out overnight with the crash of the stock markets. In the early thirties, to be precise, 1932, the coun- try elected a new national administration that proposed the en- actment of many Federal programs to assist the poor and needy. The philosophy of the new administration placed great emphasis upon the responsibility of the Federal government to the in- dividual. Partly because of conditions created by the depression. Southern states accepted the national programs enacted by Congress and that in turn compelled them to give more attention to the "equality" part of the "separate but equal" doctrine. 14 Another important factor that was to play a major role later was the liberalizing of the Supreme Court by the Roosevelt ad- ministration. 15 In the year 1935, Donald Murray, a Negro graduate of Amherst College applied for admission to the law school of the l3 Gong Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78 (1927). l4 Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1944), p. 463. l5 Jeanette P. Nichols, Twentieth Century United States: A History (New York: Appleton-Century, 1943), p. 361. 49 University of Maryland. He was refused in accordance with Maryland's segregation statutes, although he was duly qualified. Murray went to the state court seeking relief on the premise that Maryland provided no legal training for Negroes and that the state could not satisfy the "separate but equal" doctrine by of- fering him a scholarship to a law school outside the state. The court granted him the writ ordering his admission to the law school of the University of Maryland. Officials of the University appealed the decision to the Maryland Court of Appeals. The higher court affirmed the lower court's decision. 16 The Court declared that the provisions made by the legislature of Maryland for Negroes, in effect, declared the law school of the University of Maryland "appropriated to the white students only." The Court said further that "compliance with the Constitution cannot be deferred at the will of the state" and "whatever system it (the state) adopts for legal education now must furnish equality of treatment now." This decision was very significant because it was a departure from prior decisions. It was the beginning of a closer look at the doctrine of "equality" by the courts in future litigation. As a result of the Murray decision, there was an increase in the number of cases in which Negroes sought equal educational opportunity in graduate and professional schools in the Southern states. 17 Then, too, the attitude of the country had been changing to a more sympathetic view of the Negro's fight for equal educational opportunity. Since the Murray case was settled in a state court, it was not binding on other states with segregation school laws. Thus, the next step in the climb to equal educational opportunity was to get a ruling from the United States Supreme Court. The wait was not long; a case arising in Missouri presented this opportunity. Lloyd L. Gaines graduated in 1935 from Lincoln University, the Negro land-grant institution of the State of Missouri. Lincoln University did not have a law school. Gaines applied for ad- mission to the University of Missouri law school and was refused. The refusal of Gaines by the University Registrar was based on the statutes of Missouri 18 which provided out-of-state aid for Blacks who wanted courses offered by the University of Missouri but not at Lincoln. Gaines felt that the scholarship aid did not satisfy the re- quirement of equal treatment. He sought a writ of mandamus from the state circuit court and was refused. The Missouri Supreme Court affirmed the lower court ruling and Gaines ap- pealed his case to the United States Supreme Court. The Court ,6 169 Md. 487. l7 Charles H. Houston, "Cracking Closed University Doors," in Fitzhugh L. Styles, Negroes and the Law (Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1937), p. 90. ^Revised Statutes, Missouri, 1929, II, 265-273. 50 reversed the rulings of the lower courts holding that the provision of opportunities beyond the jurisdiction of Missouri did not relieve the state of its obligation to furnish equal opportunities within the state. Chief Justice Hughes in delivering the opinion of the Court, said in part: We think that these matters are beside the point. The basic consideration is not as to what sort of oppor- tunities other states provide, or whether they are as good as those in Missouri, but as to what opportunities Missouri itself furnishes to white students and denies to Negroes solely upon the ground of color. 19 On the basis of this ruling, out-of-state scholarships for the purpose of satisfying the "separate but equal" doctrine, was in- validated. Many hailed the decision as very significant because of the Court's close look at substantial equality. The Court in this decision set a high standard for satisfying the doctrine of "equality." This decision had far-reaching effects on graduate and professional education for Negroes. It was clear from the Court's ruling that the legal foundation for out-of-state tuition assistance for Negroes, to prevent them from attending white graduate and professional schools within the affected states, was completely erroded. The decision implied three possible paths for Missouri and other similarly affected states to consider: (1) establish an "equal" graduate or professional school for Negroes within the individually affected states; (2) admit Negroes to the respective white graduate and professional schools; or (3) ter- minate graduate and professional education for both races. Almost immediately after the Gaines case, the fight for equal educational opportunity moved into another area of inequality, discrimination in the payment of salaries to Negro and white public school teachers. In 1940, Melvin O. Alston, a Negro public school teacher, sought an injunction to restrain the Norfolk, Virginia, Board of Education from making any distinction on the basis of race in determining the salaries of public school teachers in Norfolk. The case was dismissed in the United States District Court. The case was then carried to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals where the judgment of the lower court was reversed. In speaking for the Circuit Court, Judge Parker said: That an unconstitutional discrimination is set forth in these paragraphs hardly admits of argument. The allegation is that the state, in paying for public services of the same kind and character to men and women equally qualified according to standards which the state itself prescribes, arbitrarily pays less to Negroes than to white persons. This is as clear a discrimination on the ^Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938). 51 ground of race as could well be imagined and falls squarely within the inhibition of both the due process and the equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. 20 An appeal to the United States Supreme Court was filed but the Court refused to issue a writ of certiorari to review the case. 21 As a result of the Alston case several other cases for equalization of teachers' salaries were initiated and settled favorably for Negroes. In 1946, Ada Louis Sipuel applied for admission to the University of Oklahoma Law School, the only state-supported in- stitution for legal training in Oklahoma. She was refused ad- mission solely because she was a Negro. She petitioned the state courts for relief but was refused a writ of mandamus. Upon ap- peal to the United States Supreme Court, the state courts were reversed. 22 The case took two years in being finalized and the court or- der reached the Oklahoma authorities exactly two weeks before the second term of the law school was scheduled to open at Nor- man. The Regents established a law school, January 17, 1948, at Oklahoma City with a faculty of three white lawyers to teach Miss Sipuel in rooms at the state capitol. 23 Miss Sipuel refused to attend because the "school" lacked accreditation. 24 She peti- tioned the United States Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus to compel compliance with the Court's previous decision. The Court's decision denied the writ because the majority of the Justices felt that the Oklahoma trial court had not "departed ) from mandate." In what was to become a guideline in future court decisions, Mr. Justice Rutledge delivered blistering dissent which said in part: Obviously no separate law school could be established elsewhere overnight capable of giving petitioner a legal education equal to that afforded by the state's long- established and well-known state university law school. Nor could the necessary time be taken to create such facilities, while continuing to deny them to petitioner, without incurring the delay which would continue the discrimination our mandate required to and at once. 20 Alston v. School Board of the City of Norfolk, 112 P. 24 992 (C. C. A. 4th 1940). 2, Ibid., 311 U.S. 693 (1940). 22 Sipuel v. Oklahoma Board of Regents, 332 U.S. 631 (1948). -'Harry Ashmore, The Negro and the Schools (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954), pp. 33-34. 24 Walter A. White, A Man Called White (New York: The Viking Press, 1940). pp. 144-148. 52 Neither would the state comply with it by continuing to deny the required legal education to petitioner while af- fording it to any other student, as it could do by ex- cluding only students in the first-year class from the state university law school. Since the state courts' orders allow the state authorities at their election to pursue alternative courses some of which do not comply with our mandate, I think those or- ders inconsistent with it. Accordingly, I dissent from the Court's opinion and decision in this case. 25 In 1946, Herman Sweatt's application for admission to the University of Texas law school was not accepted. In petitioning for relief in the state court, he received a state court order holding that he was entitled to relief. However, the court granted the state six months in which to build a law school substantially equal to that of the University law school at Austin. The new in- stitution 26 was established on March 3, 1947. Sweatt continued to fight his case for admission to the law school in Austin and in 1944 the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear it. The Court rendered its decision in 1950. Chief Justice Vinson spoke for a unanimous court and said in part: What is more important, the University of Texas Law School possesses to a far greater degree those qualities which are incapable of objective measurements but which make for greatness in a law school. Such qualities . . . include reputation of the faculty, experience of the administration, position and influence of the alumni, standing in the community, traditions and prestige. It is difficult to believe that one who had a free choice bet- ween these law schools would consider the question close. The law school to which Texas is willing to admit petitioner excludes from its student body members of the racial groups which number 85% of the population of the State and include most of the lawyers, witnesses, jurors, judges and other officials with whom petitioner will inevitably be dealing when he becomes a member of the Texas Bar. With such a substantial and significant segment of society excluded, we cannot conclude that the education offered petitioner is substantially equal to that which he would receive if admitted to the University of Texas Law School. 27 ^Fisher v. Hurst, 333 U.S. 147 (1948), p. 52. NOTE: In the interval between her two cases, Miss Sipuel married and became Mrs. Fisher. 26 Texas Southern University at Houston, Texas. 21 'Sweatt v. Painter, 339 US. 629 (1950). 53 This decision was a landmark in the quest for equality in educational opportunites. It made it virtually impossible for any newly established institution to be judged substantially equal to an older established institution because of those intangible "qualities which are incapable of objective measurements but which make for greatness." Although the court did not rule on the constitutionality of segregation in public education, it was ob- vious that the net affect of the Sweatt v. Painter decision had outlawed segregation in state-supported graduate and professional education. The state of Texas petitioned the Court for a rehearing but the petition was denied on October 9, 1950. 28 In 1948, G. W. McLaurin applied for admission to the University of Oklahoma Graduate School. He was refused ad- mission because of the state segregation school laws. The United States District Court held that the state had to provide education for him as soon as it provided that education for others. 29 The Oklahoma legislature amended its laws to permit Negroes to at- tend institutions of higher learning in the state, provided such courses were unavailable in Negro schools. This instruction, however, was to be given on a segregated basis. As a result, McLaurin had to sit apart at a designated desk in an anteroom adjoining the classroom; to sit at a designated desk on the mez- zanine floor of the library, not to use the desks in the regular reading room; and to eat at a different time from the other students in the school cafeteria. 30 McLaurin filed a motion for relief which was denied by the District Court. He then appealed to the United States Supreme Court. The Court again spoke through Chief Justice Vinson and said in part: We conclude that the conditions under which this ap- pellant is required to resolve his education deprive him of his personal and present right to the equal protection of the laws. 31 This decision established the principle that once Negroes were admitted to a state institution, they had to be accorded the same treatment and facilities as those accorded white students. This principle was cited later on several occasions involving similar cases. 32 The trend of the Court in the Gaines, Sipuel, Sweatt, and McLaurin cases made the burden of the states in proving substantial equality under the "separate but equal" doc- trine all but impossible to carry. The stage was now set to 28 340 U.S. 846 (1950). i9 New York Times, September 30, 1948, p. 1. ^McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (1950). Ibid. 32 Thurgood Marshall, "An Evaluation of Recent Efforts to Achieve Racial In- tegration in Education through Resort to the Courts," The Journal of Negro Education (Summer, 1952), pp. 316-327. 54 challenge directly the "separate but equal" doctrine as it had been applied to education. The Fall of the "Separate but Equal" Doctrine By the fall of 1952 four cases had reached the United States Supreme Court on appeals from Negroes. These cases originated in Kansas, Virginia, South Carolina, and the District of Colum- bia. A fifth case had reached the Court on an appeal from the State of Delaware. The five cases were argued together before the Court in December, 1952. The attorneys for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People challenged segregated schools in such a fashion that the Court could not avoid re-examining the "separate but equal" doctrine as it ap- plied to education. 33 On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Warren delivered the unanimous opinion of the Court. He said in part: In approaching this problem, we cannot turn the clock back to 1868 when the Amendment was adopted, or even to 1896 when Plessy v. Ferguson was written. We must consider public education in the light of its full develop- ment and its present place in American life throughout the Nation. Only in this way can it be determined if segregation in public schools deprives these plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws. We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other 'tangible' factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational op- portunities? We believe that it does. We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. This disposition makes unnecessary any discussion whether such segregation also violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 34 "Ashmore, op. cit, pp. 95-108. Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483. 55 The Brown case was binding on the Kansas, South Carolina, and Virginia cases: The District of Columbia case (Boiling v. Sharpe) was argued on the basis of the Fifth Amendment since the Fourteenth Amendment applies only to states. In its decision in the Boiling v. Sharpe case, the Court unanimously declared in part: In view of our decision that the Constitution prohibits the states from maintaining racially segregated public schools, it would be unthinkable that the same Con- stitution would impose a lesser duty on the Federal Government. We hold that racial segregation in the public schools of the District of Columbia is a denial of the due process of law guaranteed by the Fifth Amend- ment to the Constitution. 35 With these rulings the United States Supreme Court ended over a century of litigation, beginning with Roberts v. Boston (1849) and ending with Boiling v. Sharpe (1954). The real meaning of the 1954 decisions was that segregation in public education no longer had legal foundation under our Constitution. The Court recognized that social conditions built up over the years could not be overturned on short notice. Thus the Court did not decree immediate compliance to give the affected school systems time to make adjustments. The May 17, 1954 decision of the United States Supreme Court did not specifically include public higher education but it was not long thereafter that the ruling was made applicable in this area. Some of the states which had resisted the integration of their facilities, now enunciated new policies for these facilities complying with the Court's decision. 36 However, it was not until 1956 that the Court itself applied the May 17, 1954 decision to public higher education. The case involved the University of North Carolina and three Negro youths. Upon presenting the necessary credentials required by the University of North Carolina for admission to the undergraduate division, the three Negroes were informed that the University ac- cepted only Negroes desiring graduate and professional programs not offered at one of the Negro state colleges. The applicants petitioned the Federal District Court for relief. The District Court ruled on January 6, 1956 that the "reasoning" of the May 17, 1954 Brown decision was binding on public higher education. The Court said further that the reasoning "applied with greater force to student of mature age in the concluding years of their formal ^Boiling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 (1954). 36 F. D. Moon, "Higher Education and Desegregation in Oklahoma," The Jour- nal of Negro Education (Summer, 1958), pp. 300-301. 56 education as they are about to engage in the serious business of adult life." 37 The University appealed the decision and on March 5, 1956, the United States Supreme Court affirmed the lower court's judgment. 38 This case in effect, removed all doubts concerning the scope of the May 17, 1954 decision. Although most of the affected states recognized that Brown v. Board of Education was the "law of the land," it became necessary for President Dwight D. Eisenhower to send Federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas in September, 1958 because the state was unwilling to guarantee Federal rights. 39 Similarly, it became necessary for President John F. Kennedy to send Federal troops to Mississippi and Alabama to carry out the orders of the Courts. 40 Recognizing that only equality of opportunity would heal the wounds brought about the three and one-half centuries of hypocrisy, President Kennedy told the Congress: Therefore, let it be clear, in our own hearts and minds, that it is not merely because of the Cold War, and not merely because of the economic waste of discrimination, that we are committed to achieving true equality of op- portunity. The basic reason is because it is right. 41 In proposing legislation to Congress in what was to become the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he said in part: We face, therefore, a moral crisis as a country and as a people. It cannot be met by repressive police action. It cannot be left to increased demonstrations in the streets. It cannot be quieted by token moves or talk. It is a time to act in the Congress, in your state and local legislative body, and above all, in all of our daily lives. It is not enough to pin the blame on others, to say this is a problem of one section of the country or another, or deplore the fact that we face. A great change is at hand, and our task, our obligation, is to make that revolution, that change, peaceful and constructive for all. 42 * 7 Race Relations Law Reporter, I (February, 1956), 115-118. Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina, et al v. Leroy Ben- jamin Fressler, Jr., et al, 350 U.S. 979 (1956). 39 Jack Greenberg, Race Relations and American Law (New York: Columbia University Press: 1959), pp. 70-71. 40 Harry Golden, Mr. Kennedy and the Negroes (New York: World Publishing Company, 1964), pp. 49-53. 41 Mr. Kennedy's Message to Congress, February 28, 1963. See Boston Globe, March 1, 1963. 42 Mr. Kennedy's radio and television address to the Nation on June 11, 1963. See Boston Globe, June 12, 1963. 57 Mr. Kennedy did not live to see his proposed legislation become law, because of an assassin's bullets on November 22, 1963. The new President, Lyndon B. Johnson, in his first address to a joint session of Congress urged: No memorial, oration, or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the Civil rights bill for which he fought so long. We have talked long enough in the coun- try about civil rights. We have talked for one hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter and to write in the books of law. John Kennedy's death commands what his life conveyed that America must move forward. 43 On July 2, 1964, the President of the United States signed into law, Public Law 88-352, known as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Under Title IV, 44 the Commissioner of Education was to report to the President and the Congress within two years of the enactment of the Title IV concerning the lack of availability of equal educational opportunities for individuals by reason of race, color, religion, or national origin in public educational in- stitutions at all levels in the United States, its territories and possessions, and the District of Columbia. In 1965, a gigantic step was taken forward with the passage of the Higher Education Act of 1965. Title III of the act was aimed specifically at institutions of higher education with poten- tial for greatness but lacking the necessary resources to realize their potential. The wording of the title was in part: Sec. 301. (a) The purpose of this title is to assist in raising the academic quality of colleges which have the desire and potential to make a substantial contribution to the higher education resources of our Nation but which for financial and other reasons are struggling for survival and are isolated from the main currents of academic life, and to do so by enabling the Com- missioner to establish a national teaching fellow program and to encourage and assist in this establish- ment of cooperative arrangements under which these colleges may draw on the talent and experience of our finest colleges and universities, and on the educational resources of business and industry, in their effort to im- prove their academic quality. 45 4;! Mr. Johnson's address to a joint session of Congress, November 27, 1963. See Boston Globe, November 28, 1963. "U.S., Statutes at Large, LXXVIII, 246-247. U.S., Statutes at Large, LXXIX, 1219. 58 The title was designed to bring to Black Americans through the Black College, a new myriad of education opportunites. Most educators felt that it represented another big step in the legal quest for equal educational opportunity. Although desegration of schools has been achieved at least moderately in most states, it is still a step-by-step process which operates only by court fiat. During the past six years, the United States Supreme Court has had to eliminate several major ob- stacles designed to legally circumvent the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. In its Green v. County School Board 46 decision, the delaying tactic of "freedom of choice" was struck down by the Court. In its Alexander v. Holmes* 1 decision, the delaying tactic of "all deliberate speed" was eliminated by the Court. In its Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education v. Swann, et al., 4S the Court gave legal sanction to the use of busing and "bizarre" remedial measures if necessary to bring about desegregation. Conclusion In the thirty-eight years since the Murray decision of 1935, the decisions of the Courts have completely changed the scope of educational opportunities for Black Americans. Within this period almost all legal barriers prohibiting Negroes from en- joying the same educational opportunities afforded white students, were removed. In trying to circumvent various decisions of the Court, the affected states strengthened greatly, their Negro institutions of higher education. Where meager support of these institutions had been a fact of life, the decisions of the Court in- directly stimulated increased appropriations, improved facilities, expanded vertically and horizontally course offerings, and changed attitudes toward the institutions from that of indif- ference to that of great concern. The legal quest for equal educational opportunity continues in the 1970's which is complicated by the growing number of Black Americans who are exhibiting "second thoughts" about the merits of desegregation. Many Blacks have become discouraged and frustrated by the callousness shown by some Whites when the schools were desegregated in the mid-sixties. This feeling of despair has been reinforced by the deliberate phasing out of Black administrators, Black teachers, and Black institutions. This diabolic pattern has changed many Black advocates of in- tegration in the first decade following Brown v. Board of Education to supporters of the concept of the all-black school controlled by the black community. Such schools, they contend, ^Green v. County Board of Education, 391 U.S. 438 (1968). 47 Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, 396 U.S. 19 (1969). 4S The United States Law Week, pp. 4445-4446 (April 20, 1971). 59 will create the awareness necessary for the attainment of racial pride, racial identity, and dignity. 49 At the time of this writing, it appears that those who are in the forefront of the battle for equal educational opportunities for Blacks must come to grips with several questions which are fun- damental to progress in the 1970's. Among these are: 1. Is integration really a "no win" policy for Blacks? 2. Can integration be equated with disintegration of Blacks as a future force in American life? 3. Is integration really the road to full equality for Blacks in all walks of American life? 4. Are the fruits of integration worth the pains which must be endured to achieve it? 5. Is integrated education necessarily equal education? While there are abundant empirical data available to sup- port any position one chooses to take, the writer reminds the reader that Blacks have much bitter experience and knowledge of the meager and calamitous fruits of a separated society. It is not necessary for Blacks to walk that road again to find out where it ends. Adequate money for education has always been in the white community. When White students attend Black institutions, money, somehow, always follows. It is not difficult, then, to see a lot of truth in the popular supposition that "the money goes where the White students go." And there is no reason why Whites should not go to Black institutions just as Blacks go to White in- stitutions because integration must be a two-way boulevard. The writer also reminds the reader of the veracity of the Ciceronian principle expounded at the beginning of this paper ignorance of history will keep you a child always. While the debate continues, the writer urges each concerned American to ponder the eloquent dissent of Mr. Justice John Marshall Harlan in Plessy v. Ferguson when he said in part: But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surrounding or his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved. It is, therefore, to be regretted that this high 49 Jack Greenberg, "The Tortoise Can Beat The Hare," Saturday Review, February 17, 1968, p. 57. 60 tribunal, the final expositor of the fundamental law of the land, has reached the conclusion that it is competent for a State to regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race. In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott case. 50 In conclusion, if we keep the faith, we shall overcome. 50 Plessy v. Ferguson, op. cit, pp. 559-561. BIBLIOGRAPHY Books Ashmore, Harry S., The Negro and the Schools. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954. Golden, Harry, Mr. Kennedy and the Negroes. New York: The World Publishing Company, 1954. Greenberg, Jack, Race Relations and American Law. New York: Columbia University Press, 1959. Lewinson, PauL Race, Class, and Party. New York: Oxford University Press, 1932. Myrdal, Gunnar, An American Dilemma. New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1944. Nichols, Jeanette P. Twentieth Century United States: A History. New York: Ap- pleton-Century, 1943. Styles, Fitzhugh, Negroes and the Law. Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1937. White, Walter A., A Man Called White. New York: The Viking Press, 1948. Wish, Harvey, Society and Thought in Early America. New York: McKay Publishing Company, 1950. Articles and Periodicals Greenberg, Jack, "The Tortoise Can Beat the Hare," Saturday Review (February 17, 1968), 57. Marshall, Thurgood, "An Evaluation of Recent Efforts to Achieve Racial In- tegration in Education through Resort to the Courts," Journal of Negro Education, No. 21 (Summer, 1952), 316-327. Moon, F. D., "Higher Education and Desegreation in Oklahoma," Journal of Negro Education, No. 29 (Summer, 1958), 300-301. Legal Documents Race Relations Law Reporter. Vol. I, 1956. The United States Law Week. April 20, 1971. 61 United States Supreme Court Cases Alexander v. County Board of Education. 391 U.S. 438 (1968). Alston v. School Board of the City of Norfolk. 311 U.S. 693 (1940). Boiling v. Sharpe. 347 U.S. 497 (1954). Brown v. Board of Education. 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Fisher v. Hurst. 333 U.S. 147 (1948). Gerg hum v. Rice. 275 U.S. 78 (1927). Green v. County Board of Education. 391 U.S. 438 (1968). McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents. 339 U.S. 637 (1950). Missouri rel. Gaines v. Canada. 305 U.S. 337 (1938). Plessy v. Ferguson. 163 U.S. 537 (1896). Scott v. Sanford. 19 Howard 393 1857). Sipuel v. Oklahoma Board of Regents. 332 U.S. 631 (1948). Sweatt v. Painter. 339 U.S. 639 (1950). Lower Federal Court Case Alston v. School Board of the City of Norfolk. 112 F. 2d 992 (CCA. 4th 1940). Legal Documents Laws of North Carolina 1831-32. Revised Statutes, Missouri, 1929. Vol. II. The United States Law Week. (April 20, 1971) 4445-4446. U.S. Statutes at Large. Vols. 2, 12, 13, 18, 78, 79. State Court Case Roberts v. City of Boston. 59 Mass. 198 (1849). Newspapers Boston Globe. 1963. New York Times. 1948. Southern School News. (Nashville). 1956-64. 62 DURRENMATT'S HEROES Elizabeth Johns Friedrich Durrenmatt states in his essay Problems of the Theatre 1 that our age is non-tragic; he classifies his plays as comedies. Yet his most striking dramatic creation is the hero who breaks out of the comic world. Our age does not offer the possibility of traditional heroic action. Power has become ab- stract, so that no individual has the freedom to be responsible for his actions. Not only is man not free in traditional terms, he can- not find a traditional order in the universe: both of these are con- ditions which presuppose comedy. Yet what Durrenmatt writes reveals the possibility of a fleeting freedom and momentary unit within this comic universe. Although God exists, and is merciful, his universe is in- scrutable to man; thus the world in Durrenmatt's plays is chaotic. His characters stake their lives on order, either an order they think already exists in the universe or an order they invent in the faith that it will be confirmed. They assume they have the freedom to commit their lives to a direction that is meaningful. Most of Durrenmatt's characters never realize the illusory nature of the order on which they have depended; these characters are comic. But in each of five of Durrenmatt's comedies, one character, faced with the meaninglessness of a life purposefully lived, recognizes and accepts his absurdity. He has what Durren- matt calls a "frightening moment" in which he looks into this "abyss that opens suddenly" (Problems, p. 32). In accepting the hopelessness of his position, he exercises the only freedom he has and he confers on the chaotic world the only order that is real. For just as the heroic world of the Greeks presupposed a divinely sanctioned order, the heroic world of Durrenmatt presupposes a divinely pitied disorder; the Greek tragic hero probed what was possible in an orderly universe, and the Durren- matt hero finds what is possible in a chaotic universe; the Greek hero recognized his guilt, incurred by his own freedom; the Durrenmatt hero recognizes his absurdity in his inability to act freely. For Durrenmatt, the recognition, and this alone, makes man heroic. When he avoids this moment he leaves himself comic. Durrenmatt writes in Problems that "the world (hence the stage which represents this world) is for me something monstrous, a riddle of misfortunes which must be accepted but before which one must not capitulate ... I have neither the right nor the ability to be an outsider to this world" (p. 32). Because Durrenmatt's understanding of the nature of heroism is a criticism of the traditional Greek conception, his dramatic method is to parody materials implicitly based on this tradition. He complains (in Problems, p. 35) that literary scholars and historians have interpreted so completely the events of history and myth that a dramatist who uses this material traditionally has only closed structures to work in. Thus in 63 Durrenmatt's use of traditional materials the fall of Rome, the chaos of modern political revolution, the arrogance of Babylon, the ritual of scapegoat murder, and the dilemma of the modern scientist he inverts the usual conclusions. These are the con- clusions that man does have power, that some order can be brought from chaos, and that sacrifice is meaningful. In each of Durrenmatt's plays, the hero sees that these possibilities do not exist, but none of the plays is nihilistic. Durrenmatt's parody is affirmative: man does have dignity, man can achieve heroic stature. But dignity and heroism are attainable only when one has seen through the illusions of the traditional faiths. The heroism is that of accepted meaninglessness. In Romulus the Great (second version, 1957 ) 2 Durrenmatt places in juxtaposition several traditional conceptions of heroic behavior, advertising with his subtitle, "An Historical Comedy without Historical Basis," this parodic use he is making of the subject of the fall of Rome. Durrenmatt's hero, Romulus, is the last emporor of Rome. Until Act III we are convinced that Romulus cares nothing for Rome and that through his insipidity the Teutons will bring the Empire to its final collapse. However, he reveals himself in Act III as a moralist determined to bring his country to ruin in expiation to the world of her excesses. But when the Teuton chief, Odoaker, invades the city, instead of mur- dering Romulus and thereby fulfilling Romulus' moral sacrifice of himself and his country, he wants to capitulate to him to prevent what he fears will be barbarism in future Teutonic rule. Romulus' twenty years as Emperor are thus instantly vitiated. His agonized response is to accept the absurd end to which he has come: he will retire meekly to a country estate, Odoaker will rule the Empire, and barbarism worse than either can imagine will descend upon the world when Odoaker's nephew Theodoric assumes the throne. Durrenmatt's gradual revelation of Romulus' plans creates four types of heroic action, only the last of which is real. The first is that of the anti-hero. Romulus appears to be a fool until Act III. His primary concerns are for his body comforts and his chickens, whom he has named after previous Roman emperors; he eats throughout Act I, sleeps most of Act II, and delights in a hot bath at the beginning of Act III. Apparently complacent, mat- ter-of-fact, and sensual, he tells his chamberlain Achilles, "after such a depressing day nothing helps as much as a good bath. Such days are not for me. I am an untragic human being, Achilles" (p. 85). In Act III Romulus suddenly seems to present himself as having been all along not a fool, but a realist. Scoffing at his wife Julia, he rejects the possibility of heroic resistance to the Teutonic invasion because it would be fruitless: "Resistance at any price is the greatest nonsense there is ... If we defend our- 64 selves, our fall will be bloodier. That may look grandiose, but what is the sense? Why burn a world already lost?" (p. 87). Almost immediately, however, he reveals himself further as a man with a vision of moral judgment who has acted the fool in order to force this judgment on the world. Romulus responds to Julia's disgust with his passivity by telling her that he became Emperor out of "political insight" (she was the illegitimate but only heir of the Emperor Valentian, and Romulus the son of a patrician family; the marriage was the result of his calculation) and he defines his insight as the insight to do nothing: "To do nothing as Emperor was the only way in which my doing nothing could make sense. To do nothing as a private citizen is completely ineffectual" (p. 89). In this sudden unveiling of Romulus' scheme, Durrenmatt offers not only a surprise of characterization but an explicit challenge to the traditional value of purposeful action. Romulus reveals himself as a man after a goal of heroic propor- tions, the collapse of a system he judges corrupt; to achieve this traditional goal he has apparently nontraditionally refused to act. In fact, however, he has planned to take the most drastic ac- tion of all, as he next reveals: to kill himself and take his country with him. "The Teutons will kill me. I have always counted on that death. That is my secret. I sacrifice Rome through sacrificing myself (p. 94). This strong willfulness in putting the world under one's control, and justifying it through self-sacrifice, is the most extreme of the traditionally heroic roles. To Durrenmatt it is not heroic; it is arrogant. In judging a world and determining its course, Romulus has the ultimate responsibility to be right in his judgment. Durrenmatt objects to Romulus as "a human being who proceeds with the utmost firmness and lack of consideration for others, a man who does not shrink from demanding the same absoluteness of purpose from others. He is indeed a dangerous fellow, a man determined to die" (p. 119). But even this desperate attempt at heroic action fails. Romulus' arrogant condemnation and self-righteous sacrifice are denied him by Odoaker's refusal to kill him. Romulus sees the meaninglessness of his attempted heroism: "My whole life was aimed at the day when the Roman Empire would collapse. I took it upon myself to be Rome's judge, because I was ready to die. I asked of my country this enormous sacrifice because I, myself, was willing to be sacrificed. By rendering my country defenceless, I allowed its blood to flow because my own blood was ready to be spilled. And now I am to live; my sacrifice is not being accepted. Now I am to be the one who alone was saved . . . All I have done has become absurd" (p. 113). As Durrenmatt states Romulus' reversal: "If Romulus sits in judgment over the world in Act III, the world sits in judgment over him in Act IV" (p. 119). Romulus' real heroism lies in his reevaluation of human freedom after his reversal. He tells Odoaker: 65 My dear Odoaker, I wanted to make my destiny and you wanted to avoid yours . . . We thought we could drop the world from our hands, you, your Germania, and I, my Rome. Now we must busy ourselves with the pieces that are left. I wanted Rome's end because I feared its past; and you, you wanted the end of Germania because you shuddered at its future. Two spectres ruled us, for we have power neither over what was nor over what will be. Our only power is over the present. But we did not think of the present and now we founder on it . . . Reality has put our ideas right, (p. 115) In accepting the inevitable fate of every man to be limited by unexpected, unseen forces, Romulus becomes heroic. The heroic life is thus ultimately not one of action, plans, or integrity, but one of acceptance. Romulus' mistaken heroism, his earlier seizure of power, is contrasted to Odoaker's anti-heroism, his attempts to refuse power. Odoaker has spent his life fighting against his people's rage for a traditional hero, and at the moment of the Teutons' successful invasion of Rome his greatest fear is that his barbaric nephew will seize power because "he dreams of ruling the world and the people dream with him" (p. 111). The final horror for Odoaker will have arrived, he tells Romulus, when the Teutons "shall have become, once and for all, a people of heroes" (p. 112) a people who live by the expectation that the world is orderly and can be controlled. Odoaker's own attempts to control the future, like those of Romulus, have been made meaningless. But because he never expected to succeed, his position at the end of the play is that of a disappointed man, but not an absurd man. In ostensibly evaluating in this play the responsibility of a citizen to his country, Durrenmatt is actually commenting on the relationship between man and the universe and the consequent nature of heroism. Romulus tells his wife Julia: "I don't doubt the necessity of the state. I merely doubt the necessity of our state," one which has institutionalized murdering, plundering, taxing, and suppressing (p. 90). In response to his daughter Rea's question about loving one's country above all else, Romulus replies: "No, one should never love it as much as one loves other human beings ... a country turns killer more easily than any man" (p. 93). To Emilian, one of Romulus' most trusted soldiers, Romulus speaks of Rome's collective depravity and demands: "Do we still have the right to defend ourselves? Do we still have the right to be more than victims?" (p. 101). The response of man to the world is like that of the intelligent citizen to the state. He cannot overpower it, and he must refuse to be overpowered by it. Romulus tells Zeno, the deposed Emperor of Constantinople: "We are provincials for whom the world has grown too large. We can no longer comprehend it" (p. 66). 66 In Romulus man has no dependable power; he can find no order in the universe; and even his sacrifice is meaningless. But despite Romulus' early statement that "people whose number is up, like us, can only understand comedy" (p. 52), he becomes more than an actor in a comedy the very moment that he accepts his absurd end and tells Odoaker: "Once more and for the last time, let us play this comedy" (p. 115). From the very beginning of the play The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi (revised version, 1957) 3 , the world is obviously chaotic. The action occurs in a room with two windows, the scene out of one being northern European and the scene out of the other being Mediterranean. The character introducing the play suggests three alternate titles it could have had with equal justification. This speaker, Saint-Claude, one of the main charac- ters of the play, anticipates the action with the statement that the play "concerns the somewhat regrettable fate of three men, who, for various reasons, had taken it into their heads to change and save the world and who then had the appalling bad luck to run into a woman who could be neither changed nor saved" (p. 48). The men are Saint-Claude, a communist revolutionary, Florestan Mississippi, a public prosecutor, and Count Ubelohe, an aristocrat turned medical missionary; the woman is Anastasia, who loves and betrays each one of them. Saint-Claude warns in his introductory speech that "as the plot develops every project finally comes to nothing" (p. 48): the com- munist revolution fails and Saint-Claude is executed; the public prosecutor, in his zeal to exact Mosaic vengeance, is ousted by his government for political reasons and poisoned by Anastasia by accident; Ubelohe, who has fled the country in a sacrifice of his career to Anastasia's selfishness, is rejected by her; and Anastasia herself is poisoned by her husband, the public prosecutor, in his attempt to extort a death-bed confession of her honesty. She is dishonest to the death. The minister of justice, Diego, survives the revolution and the play, riding to power as the new prime minister when he restores order after Saint-Claude's revolution fails. And Ubelohe, crushed by the meaninglessness which Anastasia's rejection of him confers on his life, survives. Diego is comic. Only Ubelohe recognizes his absurdity. In this play, not just one but several attempted heroic actions fail. In an epic speech to the audience, Ubelohe states that Durrenmatt "was concerned to investigate what happens when certain ideas collide with people who really take them seriously and strive with audacity and vigour, with insane fervour and an insatiable greed for perfection, to put them into effect" (p. 78). As the play has begun with Saint-Claude's revelation that all comes to naught, here in the midst of the play Durrenmatt is reinforcing the meaninglessness of the frantic dedication of the doomed characters: "The curious author sought an answer to the question of whether the spirit in any shape or form is capable of changing a world that merely exists and is not informed by any 67 idea ... he wished to ascertain whether or not the material universe is susceptible of improvement" (p. 78). Mr. Mississippi, the public prosecutor, bent on obtaining a record number of death penalties in court, has staked his life on his insistence that a moral law pervades the universe. This law, which he believes that he alone represents, is the Mosaic law of absolute retribution. The salvation of mankind, he claims, is "a question of reversing the course of world history, which has lost the Law and gained a freedom devoid of all moral responsibility" (p. 60). On discovering that his first wife had taken Anastasia's husband as a lover, he poisoned her in fulfillment of the Mosaic death penalty for adultery; he then ascertained that Anastasia had poisoned her husband in what she claimed was a fit of jealous passion over his mistress (Madame Mississippi). Mr. Mississippi demands that they marry each other as the punish- ment which the Law demands of them both for their actions. But he makes a clear distinction between his and Anastasia's murder of their mates: "No, Madam. I am not a murderer. Between your deed and mine there is an infinite difference. What you did in response to a dreadful impulse, I did in obedience to a moral judgment. You slaughtered your husband; I executed my wife" (p. 60). Yet he is assailed with doubts about his faith in this Law of retribution, as he reveals in his poisoning of Anastasia. When she swears (falsely) that she has been faithful to him, he sees confir- med his dedication to the ennobling quality of punishment: "Then the Law is not senseless? Then it is not senseless that I have killed? Not senseless these everlasting wars and revolutions that add up to one single trumpet-blast of death? Then man does change when he is punished? Then there is sense in the Last Judgment?" (p. 116). The terrible irony of his comfort is felt by the audience when he justifies this murder to Saint-Claude, one of his wife's lovers: "To me she was the world. My marriage was a terrible experiment. I fought for the world and won" (p. 117). As the order which Mr. Mississippi posits in the universe is illusory, so his death is ridiculous. He drinks the poison which Anastasia has prepared for Saint-Claude. As a revolutionary, Saint-Claude has dedicated his life to an order also, but his is an order instituted by man, and not by God. As a communist he is dedicated to the salvation of man's body; as a moralist Mr. Mississippi was dedicated to the salvation of man's soul. Saint-Claude argues that the public prosecutor's course is futile. To Mr. Mississippi's "There is no justice without God!", Saint-Claude replies, "There is only justice without God. Nothing can help man but man . . . Man cannot keep God's law, he has to create his own law" (p. 75). But Saint-Claude is defeated. Justice of neither kind can prevail in the world because there is no order; attempted heroic action postulated on a non- existent world order is meaningless. 68 One of the play's survivors, Diego, fittingly the minister of justice, has no illusions about order or justice. The only constant in this universe is society, he claims, and the individual can prevail if he recognizes this mindless power: "As though a revolution directed against an individual were to be feared. You sacrifice the individual, and the bitch known as society remains untouched. That's a well tried rule the beast called society is indestructible, if we put our money on the beast we shall stay on top for ever" (p. 94). Morality is relative, determined by prac- ticality: "Everything in the world can be changed, my dear Florestan, except man" (p. 68). And because this is so, Diego will not be in power long. His is the illusion that because he recognizes the mindlessness of the universe, he is exempt from its consequences. Anastasia, who on convenient impulses gives herself to and then betrays each of the main characters, is a paradigm of Durrenmatt's world: a resisting but formless mass. Saint-Claude tells us she "could be neither changed nor saved" (p. 48), and Ubelohe describes her as "not modelled upon heaven or hell, but only upon the world" (p. 79). Diego understands her: "You are an animal, but I love animals. You have no plan, you live only in the moment . . . For you what is will always be stronger than what was, and what will be will always triumph over the present" (p. 83). This is a description of the world as Romulus came to per- ceive it. Only Ubelohe, because he has lost everything and recognizes it, has Durrenmatt's fleeting moment of freedom and thus breaks out of the comic world. As a wealthy physician, he was Anastasia's lover when she was married to her first husband. She asked him for poison to relieve her sick Pekinese from his misery and promptly used it to murder her husband. Ironically, the public prosecutor obtained poison from the Count under a similar guise and "executed" his wife with it. With the conviction that the poison would be traced to him, his reputation ruined, and he him- self prosecuted, Ubelohe fled the country to become a missionary in the miserable jungles of Borneo. Five years later, during the action of the play, he returns with his health broken by the tropics to see Anastasia for one last time. He expects to find her in prison. The futility of his flight, of his lost health, of his lost fortune, and of his love which he has borne all these years for Anastasia hits him when he finds her, unprosecuted, the wife of the public prosecutor, himself guilty and unprosecuted. However, he risks losing himself again when he allows himself to be convin- ced by Anastasia that she had no choice but to marry Mississippi and that she still loves Ubelohe above all else. Ubelohe tells the audience before he enters Anastasia's living room on his return from Borneo: "Thus he [Durrenmatt] created me, Count Bodo von Ubelohe-Zabernsee, the only one whom he loved with all his passion, because I alone in this play take upon myself the adventure of love, that sublime enterprise which, 69 whether he survives or perishes in it, endows man with his greatest dignity" (p. 79). After waiting with Anastasia for Mississippi's return from the streets so that they might confess their love to him, Ubelohe berates Mississippi when he refuses to believe that Anastasia has betrayed him, citing as evidence for his faith the ennobling effect the punishment of the marriage has had on her. Man is loved by grace, not for his works, insists Ubelohe: "You fool . . . How can you love a woman for her works? Do you not know that the works of man lie? How petty is your love, how blind your Law; / do not love your wife as a just woman, I love her as an unhappy one" (p. 100). Anastasia's response to Ubelohe's love, like that of the world to man's plans, is to deny to Mississippi that she loves Ubelohe. Thus Ubelohe's every course has made him ridiculous. "Everything I set my hand to is ridiculous. In my youth I read books about the great Christians. I wanted to become like them. I fought against poverty, I went to the heathen, I became ten times sicker than the saints, but whatever I did and however terrible the things that happened to me, everything became ridiculous. Even my love for you the only thing left to me has become absurd" (p. 91). He leaves Anastasia, after she has denied her love for him, with a clear vision of his absurdity in a world without order. His meaning now resides not in the meaningfulness of his works, which have been made ridiculous, but in the grace, the moment of freedom, he finds in recognizing his absurdity. This is his tragic moment; he freely accepts the existence of the abyss: Thus I have been flung upon a world that is now beyond salvation, and nailed upon the cross of my absurdity, I hang upon this beam that mocks me, exposed unprotected to the gaze of God, a last Christ. (p. 105) In Durrenmatt's world the price of love is that of heroism: the lover/hero becomes absurd. The man who makes demands on the world pursues a meaningless course, as do Saint-Claude and Mississippi, because all demands are resisted by chaos. Even Diego will eventually come to naught, for governments topple. However, the man who gives to the world, whether his gift is his love or his meaning, acts heroically. He does not demand from the world a non-existent external order but gives to the world his inner order achieved, however fleetingly, in the relinquishing of himself. That his gift will usually be rejected makes him absurd, but the paradox of experience is that choosing absurdity in the formlessness of the world is acting with the only vision of order that is not illusory. 70 A dance of cosmic futility is evoked at the end of this play. The dead characters rise to speak of their continual return to earth to pursue aggressive, angry, lonely, and hungry lives. Ever comic, they never realize their futility: "Again and again we return, as we have always returned ... In every new shapes, year- ning for every more distant paradises" (p. 119). Only Ubelohe, seen jousting at a windmill, is aware of the absurdity of his position. He shouts at the windmill: Look at Don Quixote de la Mancha, who knighted a drunken innkeeper, who loves a pig-girl in Toboso Many times battered and beaten, many times jeered at, who yet defies you. Forward then! As you lift us up with your whirling hand, horse and rider, both of them wretched, as you hurl us into the swimming silver of the glassy sky I gallop on my sorry jade away over your greatness into the flaming abyss of the infinite An eternal comedy Let His glory blaze forth, fed by our helpless futility (p. 120) Heroic man appears again and again: first hopeful, then vanquished, and finally absurd. His faith, itself absurd, is that "in this finite Creation God's mercy is really infinite" (p. 79). In the play An Angel Comes to Babylon (1957), 4 Durrenmatt uses fantasy to make dramatically explicit his conviction that meaningfulness comes only to the man who gives up everything, as have Romulus and Ubelohe. In this play God sends His Grace, the lovely young Kurrubi, to be a gift to the lowliest of mankind. An Angel unfamiliar with the earth escorts Kurrubi with instruc- tions to give her to Akki, the last beggar in Babylon. But he is th- warted. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has outlawed begging in his plan to rule the perfect state; only Akki has resisted his edict. Nebuchadnezzar, in disguise as a beggar from Ninevah in order to convince Akki to change his mind, unwittingly confuses the Angel and Kurrubi is given to him instead of to Akki. But Nebuchadnezzar does not want God's Grace if he has to be poor to receive it, and, exasperatingly, Kurrubi will stay with Nebuchadnezzar only if he is poor. She wants nothing to do with him as a King. Indeed no one in the play wants Kurrubi, 71 beautiful as she is, because of her demand that she be received in poverty. Only Akki, the beggar who knows the futility of wealth and power, wants God's Grace. Together they flee the ugly clamour of the insulted Babylonians, Kurrubi still loving Nebuchadnezzar in his disguise as a beggar, and Akki loving the earth for its faults and its promises. The characters in this play who are comic King Nebuchad- nezzar, his prime minister, and his theologian are those who do not realize the illusory nature of the systems of order they have imposed on the universe. Like the political leaders of Romulus and Mississippi, they interpret the universe in terms of orders which do not exist: material abundance, which is transitory; per- sonal power, which is ephemeral; and non-empirical syllogisms, which bear no confirmed relation to experience. The reality is that man is a metaphorical beggar in this world, controlling nothing and knowing nothing. His only dignity comes from the mercy that God feels for him in his helplessness. Man cannot therefore make his own dignity, nor can he propel himself to heroic action. Dignity and heroism come to him only in the moment in which he recognizes and accepts his helplessness. Nebuchadnezzar, incredulous at being given God's Grace as a beggar, has difficulty comprehending this paradox. In response to his rather delicate suggestion that Kurrubi might better have been given to a King, the Angel tells him: "Kings do not interest Heaven. On the contrary, the poorer a man is, the more pleasing he is in the sight of Heaven" (p. 225). And further, "Learn, once and for all, that ruling the world is Heaven's business and begging is mankind's" (p. 226). As King, Nebuchadnezzar is pursuing single-mindedly his dream of political order, ignoring the implications of his and Nimrod's perpetual cyclical replacement of each other, one always King, the other footstool, one libertarian and the other socialist. His work is to improve mankind, and he believes that he can achieve political perfection: "Perfection, by definition, con- tains nothing superfluous. Yet a beggar is superfluous" (p. 208), because a beggar supports no system but lives only for each moment. When he realizes that God's gift of Grace has been bestowed purposely on him as a beggar rather than as a King, Nebuchad- nezzar is outraged. It is as a King that man wants God's sanction. "When will Heaven ever learn to give each man what he needs?" (p. 228). To dramatize that a beggar is unworthy of God's atten- tion, Nebuchadnezzar throws Kurrubi to the floor. But Kurrubi loves Nebuchadnezzar anyway; however, as a figure for the only meaning which God grants man, she will not come to him when he is King but only when he is a beggar. In refusing to marry him as King, she condemns his illusory security: "You are make-believe: the beggar I seek is the reality . . . Your power is weakness . . . your riches are poverty. Your love for me is 72 self-love. You neither live nor are you dead. You exist, but you have no existence" (p. 279). Man's reality is his absurdity. But his reality is also that God loves and pities him in his absurdity. For Kurrubi, rejected by Nebuchadnezzar, flees Babylon asking: "How could I live on this earth without the love I have for my beloved?" (p. 233). Nebuchadnezzar realizes at the end of the play that as he has rejected God's Grace for the sake of his power, everyone else (ex- cept Akki) has also rejected Kurrubi for the sake of something: "The Minister betrayed her for reasons of state, the priest for the sake of his theology, all of you for the sake of your property" (p. 285). Unable to see, however, that his power is illusory, he vows to use it to curse God in return for God's insult to man. He will en- slave his people and build the Tower. His last vision reveals what his power will come to: his idiot son and only heir balances across the stage on a tightrope. Akki the beggar, however, has no illusions. He lives in the humility of each moment, witty, discerning, capable, but eschewing the temptation to depend on anything. Highly suc- cessful as a beggar, he avoids the dangers of becoming wealthy by throwing most of his proceeds into the Euphrates. Throwing away, he explains to Kurrubi, "is the only way of maintaining a really high standard in beggary. Prodigality is essential" (p. 232). Akki has existed since the beginning of time. He claims to have been Lilith's lover and has the sarcophagus that carried him through the Flood. He offhandedly tells the disguised Nebuchad- nezzar that he has been King seven times. In a rhetorical dialogue with the poets who are thronging his living quarters (un- der a bridge over the Euphrates), Akki relates the story of his life: he was a merchant's son until the financial collapse of the world (the poets summarize, "Nothing was saved from the wreck" p. 237); the adopted son of a prophet until the perishing of the religion ("Nothing was saved from the wreck"); and the protege of a general until the subjugation of the dynasty ("Nothing was saved from the wreck"). Akki's conclusion is that man should be like sand, for sand doesn't show footprints. Only beggars are saved from the wrecks (p. 238) of systems and institutions. Beggars alone do not commit themselves to systems which collapse, they do not impose an illusory order on the universe: "Secret teachers, we are, educators of the people. We go in rags as a tribute to man's wretchedness, and we obey no law, that freedom may be held in honor. We eat as greedily as wolves and drink like drunkards to expose the appalling hunger and tor- turing thirst which poverty brings with it; and we fill the arches of the bridges under which we sleep with the treasures of long- forgotten empires, to show that everything ends up with the beggar in the course of time" (p. 223). Although there are no systems which are permanent in the world, Akki recognizes that there are situations which throughout 73 time mark the boundaries of man's existence. He agrees with the Hangman that "the hidden framework of the world is bureaucracy, beggary, and hanging" (p. 252). Always will there be a Prime Minister or a King, imposing a short-lived civil order, always a beggar, having nothing and depending on nothing, and always the hangman, ending man's life unexpectedly. The beggar is the only one without the illusion of power. Because Akki depends on nothing, he alone is receptive to God's Grace, Kurrubi. He cherishes and cares for her when she stays with him, but he freely relinquishes her when the people demand that she become King Nebuchadnezzar's queen: "I have no right to you. You came to me, a fragment of Heaven, in a chance bargain, and clung to me, like a thread of God's Grace, uncomplaining and cheerful, until another puff of wind has come to carry you away again" (p. 248). But when Kurrubi is rejected by King Nebuchadnezzar in favor of his power, she returns to the humble Akki and they flee Babylon together. Akki is a fantastical creature who has always seen the world for what it is. Although he thus does not have the tragic moment that Romulus and Ubelohe have in facing their human absurdity, he is Durrenmatt's hero not only because he recognizes the absur- dity of power and wealth, but because, like Ubelohe, he gives him- self to the world in love. He hurries from collapsing Babylon with the words: I love an earth which still exists; an earth of beggars, lonely in its happiness, and lonely in its dangers, colour- ful and wild, wonderful in all its possibilities; an earth which I conquer again and again, maddened by its beauty, entranced by its face, ever oppressed and never defeated . . . what faces us? ... at the last, a land that forgets the past; a land rising in the silver light of a new dawning, full of new persecutions, but full, too, of new promises, and full of the songs of a new morning. The world of the play The Visit (1956) 5 is a chaos that en- courages meanness of action, a chaos more oppressive than that of the other plays. The play concerns the small central European town of Gullen, which is in the grip of a deep economic depression despite prosperity everywhere else. Into the town comes Madame Claire Zachanassian, a sixty-three-year old millionairess who has grown up in the town, with an offer to the Gulleners of a million dollars. Her condition is that she receive "justice": that the citizens murder their leading citizen, 111, because he inflicted an injustice on Claire forty-five years earlier. He had made her pregnant and then, perjuring himself and two witnesses, denied his paternity in a court of law. Claire as a result had spent several years in a brothel until she was found by the oil millionaire Zachanassian. The shocked Gulleners, although ab- 74 ject in their poverty, refuse Claire's offer with professions of deeply held humanistic principles. But the temptations of material comforts are too strong for the Gulleners, and they slowly lose their principles. As they move toward a readiness to kill 111, he moves toward an acknowledgment of his earlier guilt. He finally is able to see the absurdity of his penalty and to relinquish himself to it. At his death, he is heroic, but the Gulleners, rejoicing in their new prosperity, remain unaware and comic. In this play Durrenmatt presents several types of reactions to the chaotic world which are attempts to impose order on it or to accommodate to it with the least possible difficulty. Claire lives a life of single-minded dedication to revenge for an evil perpetrated on her which she cannot forget. The Gulleners, although they claim a dedication to moral and humanistic principles, adapt themselves to the possibility of material improvement of their lot by ignoring the spiritual implications of their adaptation. And 111, at first stupidly self-satisfied with his past, rises to a meaningful death when he is able to face his guilt and the absurdity of that guilt affecting him after forty-five years. In her preoccupation with one event out of the chaos that each man lives in, Claire has become like a stone idol (p. 88). Her outrage at the injustice done her is out of proportion to the length of time she has lived since the event and certainly to the comfor- table circumstances in which she has since existed. She tells 111 in their first interview after her return to Gullen that she has "grown into hell itself (p. 29); in their last talk she admits "my love could not die. Neither could it live. It grew into an evil thing, like me, like the pallid mushrooms in this wood, and the blind, twisted features of the roots, all overgrown by my golden millions" (p. 88). Her response to evil has been ro reflect it back on the world: "with financial resources like mine you can afford a new world order. The world turned me into a whore. I shall turn the world into a brothel" (p. 67). She imposes her order everywhere possible, even on every detail of the lives of her nine husbands. She is like "an avenging Greek goddess . . . spinning destiny's webs herself (p. 26), observes the town Schoolmaster, but Durrenmatt, in his afterword, emphasizes her humanness: "The old lady is a wicked creature, and for precisely that reason mustn't be played wicked, she has to be rendered as human as possible, not with anger but with sorrow and humour" (p. 108). Her response to the universe, although lamentable, is fixed and unseeing and therefore comic. Although the Gulleners slide slowly away from their professed moral values, Durrenmatt is not cynical about their reaction to the promise of material improvement. He writes in the play's notes that The Visit "is told by someone who feels himself at no great remove from the people involved, and who is not so sure he would have acted differently" (p. 105). Throughout Act II, when the Gulleners begin buying small luxuries on credit, they do 75 not seem to sense that their buying is taking them in any inexorable direction; they are sure, as we learn in the Doctor and Schoolmaster's appeal to Claire in Act III, that other arrangements may be made for the financial recovery of Gullen. The threat is too outrageous to be real, argues the policeman (p. 48), and another citizen convinces himself that Claire meant her demand for Ill's death only as a "figure of speech for unspeakable suffering" (p. 68). Even Ill's family, in their slow retreat from him, have Durrenmatt's sympathy: prosperity, such a relief after their long deprivation, inhibits their vision; they cannot believe that something horrible would really be the price for these com- forts which so many men enjoy as a matter of course. Limited in their vision and comic in this limitation, the Gulleners are nonetheless pitiable, and Durrenmatt's sympathy parallels that of the God who in An Angel Comes to Babylon has mercy on man in his absurdity. The Schoolmaster has the educated vision of the Humanist tradition, but he too participates in the slow capitulation of the Gulleners. He describes Claire as "that damned old woman, that brazen arch-whore changing husbands while we watch, and making a collection of our souls" (p. 76). Nonetheless he feels his own horrified participation in the movement of the Gulleners toward Claire's "justice": "They will kill you. I've known it from the beginning, and you've known it too for a long time, even if no one else in Gullen wants to admit it. The temptation is too great and our poverty is too wretched. But I know something else. I shall take part in it. I can feel myself slowly becoming a mur- derer. My faith in humanity is powerless to stop it" (p. 77). In a perversion of the tradition he has espoused and taught for more than twenty years, the Schoolmaster presides over the assembly of the Gulleners when they gather before the unsuspecting press to vote to accept Claire's "gift." With sophistic rhetoric he molds the Gulleners into a group committed to a high purpose, which is interpreted by the press as being a glorious passion for justice, but which is known by the Schoolmaster and the Gulleners as being an inglorious passion for material comfort. The Priest similarly retreats into the rhetoric of his position when 111 turns to him for help. He avoids evaluating the Gulleners' responsibility to 111 by advising 111 to examine only his own guilt. "You should fear not people, but God; not death in the body, but in the soul" (p. 56). Ill discovers that the priest has joined the Gulleners in their march toward prosperity on credit: he has bought new bells for the church. Seeing Ill's recognition of his capitulation, the Priest is agonized: "Flee! We are all weak, believers and unbelievers. Flee! The Gullen bells are tolling, tolling for treachery. Flee! Lead us not into temptation with your presence" (p. 58). Thus the Priest and the Schoolmaster have the moment of insight which distinguishes the Durrenmatt hero; but for these men the moment is simply a recognition of the disparity 76 between what they say and what they do. They do not become heroic, for they do not relinquish themselves or their action. Ill, however, comes to realize that he will relinquish himself. Like everyone else in the play, he has been the victim of a chaotic world that encourages malignity. He and the Gulleners have lived poverty-stricken lives because of Claire's rage for vengeance (she had, after marrying Zachanassian, bought all the businesses in Gullen so that she could close them and send the town into depression); Claire herself has lived a life in petrified response to the cruelty inflicted on her when she was seventeen. But these people are not only the victims of cruelty, they perpetrate. Ill abandoned Claire, she inflicted suffering on an entire community, and the townspeople come to murder 111. The meaninglessness of this cycle of malignity is caught by Claire in her declaration to the Doctor and the Schoolmaster: "Your hopes [that Gullen would come out of its depression] were lunacy, your perseverance pointless, and your self-sacrifice foolish; your lives have been a useless waste" (p. 66). Ill begins his escape from this uselessness when he admits his culpability. His first reactions are to toss off carelessly his youth- ful irresponsibility to Claire: "Oh, it's an old story. I was young, thoughtless" (p. 37). "I'm an old sinner . . . who isn't. It was a mean trick I played on her when I was a kid" (p. 43). Then he ex- cuses himself because as an ultimate result of his abandonment of her Claire became a millionairess. Eventually, 111 sees that he is guilty. He tells the Schoolmaster, "I'm not fighting any more . . . I've realized I haven't the least right on my side" (p. 76). "I made Claire what she is, and I made myself what I am, a failing shopkeeper with a bad name. What shall I do, Schoolmaster? Play innocent? It's all my own work, the Eunuchs, the Butler, the coffin, the million. I can't help myself, and I can't help any of you, any more" (p. 76). But his admission of guilt does not exonerate the Gulleners for their guilt in murdering him. He will not commit suicide to ease their task. He tells the Mayor: "You must judge me, now. I shall accept your judgment, whatever it may be. For me, it will be justice; what it will be for you, I do not know. God grant you find your judgment justified. You may kill me, I will not complain and I will not protest, nor will I defend myself. But I cannot spare you the task of the trial" (p. 81). In Ill's progress toward heroism, he has faced his earlier guilt honestly. But his final acceptance involves his recognition that the penalty exacted of him is absurd. He alone has been picked out of the malignity of the chaos to suffer the ultimate penalty; what he deserves is justice, but everyone else deserves justice also. In the inconsistency of events he relinquishes himself. His 77 heroism is tempered only by his demand that his fellows face their absurdity as he has faced his. With the play The Physicists (1962) 6 Durrenmatt has moved away from considerations of the comic limitations of political power, wealth, and morality to an examination of the comic and horrible limitations of rationality. The play involves three scientists who reside in Fraulein Doktor Mathilde von Zahnd's villa-insane asylum. The scientists appear at first to be quite mad. Of the two fairly recent arrivals, one claims to imagine himself as Sir Isaac Newton and the other as Albert Einstein; the third physicist, Mobius, who has been in the asylum for fifteen years, claims that he sees visions of King Solomon. In apparent lunacy each scientist has strangled his nurse. Sudden and strict security measures ordered by the police inspector to prevent any more stranglings force "Newton" and "Einstein" to reveal to Mobius and to each other that they are physicists acting as in- telligence agents for their respective governments and are in the asylum to abduct Mobius. Mobius is considered by both of them to be the greatest physicist of all time; each of their governments wants access to his knowledge. Mobius confesses that he, too, is not mad; he has feigned insanity for fifteen years in the realization that the consequence of his knowledge is the risk of the existence of humanity. He convinces Newton and Einstein that his position is the only moral one that a physicist can take: because a physicist cannot control the use of his knowledge, he must withhold the knowledge if it represents a threat to humanity. The three physicists agree to remain in the asylum to protect humanity, meaningfully sacrificing not only their own lives but the lives of the nurses they had murdered when the women had begun to suspect their secret. Fraulein Doktor in- terrupts their self-congratulation. She reveals that, under the or- ders of King Solomon, she had photocopied Mobius' brain during the entire time of his stay. With this knowledge she has seized control of the world. All three physicists are her prisoners now; their murders of their nurses, which she aggravated, certify their derangement to the world so that they are completely powerless to expose her. Their plans and sacrifice are made absurd. In resignation they reassume their pretended identities. Mobius, as King Solomon, laments: "My wisdom destroyed the fear of God, and when I no longer feared God my wisdom destroyed my wealth. Now the cities over which I ruled are dead, the Kingdom that was given unto my keeping is deserted . . . the radioactive earth" (p. 94). The Physicists is ostensibly a statement about scientific knowledge. The basic assumption of the points of view represen- ted by Einstein and Newton is that knowledge cannot be held privately. A man's intellectual discoveries are the property of humankind, argues Newton when he tries to persuade Mobius to 78 leave the madhouse: "With all respect to your personal feelings, you are a genius and therefore common property. You mapped out new directions in physics. But you haven't a monopoly of knowledge. It is your duty to open the doors for us, the non- geniuses" (p. 74). The genius can give his knowledge to mankind with either of two points of view. The first is that the scientist is not responsible for the uses and consequences of his discoveries. Newton boasts: It's nothing more nor less than a question of the freedom of scientific knowledge. It doesn't matter who guarantees that freedom. I give my services to any system, providing that system leaves me alone. I know there's a lot of talk nowadays about physicists' moral responsibilities. We suddenly find ourselves confronted with our own fears and we have a fit of morality. This is nonsense. We have far-reaching, pioneering work to do and that's all that should concern us. Whether or not humanity has the wit to follow the new trails we are blazing is its own lookout, not ours. (p. 76) The second point of view is that the scientist is responsible for the consequences of his knowledge; therefore he must main- tain enough power to control these consequences. This point of view is advocated by Einstein: "Admittedly we have pioneer work to do. I believe that too. But all the same we cannot escape our responsibilities. We are providing humanity with colossal sources of power. That gives us the right to impose conditions. If we are physicists, then we must become power politicians. We must decide in whose favor we shall apply our knowledge" (p. 76). Mobius elicits from both of them the confession that neither justification works in reality because of the nature of the govern- ments which control mankind. In the first alternative, govern- ments use an individual's scientific knowledge for destruction: they advance their military defense systems; and in the second alternative, political parties have an autonomy which leaves the would-be physicist-politician ultimately powerless. Mobius' argument against Einstein and Newton is that knowledge, when it risks the destruction of humanity, is of necessity a private concern. For the sake of mankind, the physicist must refuse to explore such knowledge. That it is inevitably dangerous is verified not only by Newton and Ein- stein's reported experiences but by Fraulein Doktor's seizure and perversion of Mobius' discoveries to establish herself as dictator of the world. But Durrenmatt's play is more profound than an in- vestigation of the uses of knowledge. He is revealing the cost of rationality. Unless the discoveries of rationality are used with a concern for mankind, they may destroy mankind. Man is saved by 79 rationality, but he may be destroyed by it too. The ultimate irony of The Physicists is that in our inscrutable universe the rationality with which we make ourselves meaningful is the same rationality with which we may make ourselves meaningless. Because it is used by undependable man, rationality is itself irrationally, or absurdly, undependable. As a statement about the possibilities for heroic action in this world, The Physicists is bleaker than the earlier plays. In this play the consequences of the impossibility of traditional heroic action are ultimate: the destruction of humanity. And yet Durren- matt's analysis is still that the hero is the man who recognizes and accepts his absurdity. However, in this play the hero sees that the absurdity involves consequences horrible to the world. He cannot privately pay the penalty, and thus he cannot be respon- sible even for his own rationality. As in the earlier plays, Durrenmatt presents several perspec- tives on heroism. Scientists dedicated to the progress of knowledge regardless of its consequences, Einstein and Newton sacrifice several years of their lives in their intelligence missions in the madhouse. Their resulting permanent incarceration by Fraulein Doktor causes them suffering, but it is not unexpected, nor does it lead to their recognition of their lives as absurd. They remain comic. The nurse Monika, in offering herself to Mobius as his wife, wants to sacrifice herself: "For five years I've been looking after sick people out of love for my fellow-beings. I never flinched; everyone could count on me: I sacrificed myself. But now I want to sacrifice myself for one person alone, to exist for one person alone, and not for everybody all the time. I want to exist for the man I love. For you ... I have no one else in the world! I am as much alone as you" (p. 52). But her offered heroism is illusory, as through it she is hoping to gain an identity rather than resigning herself to losing one. Finally, Fraulein Doktor, who works singlemindedly in the comic, insane conviction that King Solomon wants her to achieve world power, cannot see her absurdity. She recognizes her triumph as grotesque ("It all adds up, and the answer comes out in favor, not of the world, but of an old hunchbacked spinster" p. 92), but not as illusory. She cannot see her absurdity in being the last of a strange family line, the presiding psychiatrist over an institution full of her insane relatives, and the manipulator of a world cartel when the world could blow up. In contrast, Mobius has come to terms with the irrationality of the universe fifteen years before the opening of the play. In careful use of his limited power, he has carried out a sacrifice of himself believing that he will thus preserve human life. Fraulein Doktor's revelation that his disguise was penetrated and his knowledge stolen from him strips his sacrifice of its meaning. However, Mobius seems to have seen the possibility of this absurd end much earlier in his life. He has chosen King Solomon 80 as his "informer." I Kings 3:9 tells the story that Solomon, on becoming king as an inexperienced young man, asked God not for wealth or power but for understanding: "Give thy servant therefore an understanding mind to govern thy people, that I may discern between good and evil; for who is able to govern this thy great people?" Solomon was given wisdom "beyond measure, and largeness of mind like the sand on the seashore" (I Kings 4:29), and in addition, because he had not asked for them, wealth and power. In his old age Solomon departed from God's ways, and in retribution God stripped Solomon's son Rehoboam of power and wealth when he became king. Mobius uses King Solomon as a metaphor for the insight he has into the irrationality of the universe. The "wisdom and un- derstanding beyond measure" which are Solomon's in the traditional sense are Mobius' in a contemporary sense: Mobius has the largeness of vision to see that rationality is illusory. Mobius tells Monika: "But I have always remained faithful to King Solomon. He thrust himself into my life, suddenly, unbid- den, he abused me, he destroyed my life, but I have never betrayed him" (p. 53). At that time we assume he is speaking as an insane man of the penalties of a vision we consider to be imaginary. In retrospect we can see that, perfectly sane, Mobius is insisting on the irrevocable quality of man's moment of realization that the universe is incomprehensible and that man is absurd. After Fraulein Doktor's announcement, Mobius sees himself as a representative of mankind, an old King Solomon who has lost his kingdom. In the absurdity that man must bear guilt for his intellect, Mobius is responsible for the loss of the kingdom. But Newton, Eistein, and Fraulein Doktor are guilty also. Only Mobius sees what has happened and mourns the loss. He has broken out of the comic world; his tragedy, and that of Romulus, Ubelohe, and 111, is that he can go no further because there is no other world. Durrenmatt's heroes, although they are shaped by the heaviness of disappointment, meaninglessness, and absurdity, are not ponderous. Durrenmatt's plays reverberate with comedy from beginning to end: stock comic situations, frivolous banter, scenery flying up and down, and epic speeches contribute to the lightness of atmosphere with which he captures the profound sadness that is at the center of life. Art, Durrenmatt writes, appears where least expected. "Literature must become so light that it will weigh nothing against the scale of today's literary criticism; only in this way will it regain its true worth" (p. 39, Problems). Similarly, the Durrenmatt hero is so transparent, having relinquished every illusion in his recognition of the absurdity of the world, that he "weighs nothing" against the standards of society. Only in his 81 lightness that of the resigned Romulus, the spurned Ubelohe, the eternal Akki, the sacrificed 111, and the defeated Mobius can man break through the intractable, comic world for the one moment of vision that grants him heroic dignity. Elizabeth Johns Assistant Professor English Savannah State College Savannah, Georgia 31404 Candidate for the Ph.D. in General Studies Institute of the Liberal Arts, Emory University FOOTNOTES ^riedrich Durrenmatt, The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi and Problems of the Theatre (New York: Grove Press, 1958). All pages cited from this essay are from this edition. 2 , Four Plays (New York: Grove Press, 1965). 3 , The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi, above edition. All pages cited from this play are from this edition. 4 , Four Plays, above edition. All pages cited from the play An Angel Comes to Babylon are from this edition. 5 , The Visit (New York: Grove Press, 1962). All pages cited from this play are from this edition. 6 , The Physicists (New York: Grove Press, 1964). All pages cited from this play are from this edition. 82 INCOME PROFILE OF SAVANNAH RESIDENTS: A COMPARISON OF THE STATUS OF BLACK AND NON-BLACK FAMILIES Max Theo Johns I. Introduction. The decennial United States Census of Population contains massive volumes of statistics on social and economic aspects of American life. It is a fact, however, that these data are usually not made publicly accessible to the degree of yielding more than a small fraction of their potential information. There have not in the past been sufficiently energetic attempts to transform sterile numerical census data into the kind of social and economic infor- mation that is needed to inform the non-expert citizen about his society and community. Recent censuses have provided particularly interesting statistical series which, when analyzed and interpreted satisfac- torily, provide very relevant information about American society from a variety of viewpoints. It is possible today to extract from the census much information on the social and economic con- ditions of the local community. There are, for instance, detailed treatments of economic and social data 1 given for each of the nation's 240 or so standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSA's). These statistical treatments are in the form of census tract 2 breakdowns. Analyses and interpretations such as those presented below are made possible by the availability of such detailed "grassroots" materials as these. The term SMSA denotes a geographical unit composed of a city and its contigious environs, the total population of the unit being at least 50,000. Census economists, in developing the con- cept of SMSA, sought to create a geographic unit which possessed economic integrity and which, therefore, could be considered to be an economic system in its own right. The goal of this endeavor was to frame, for census focus, geographic units which have greater economic integrity than the state, which is too inclusive, and the corporate city, which usually excludes a substantial por- tion of its actual economic system. The county is the basic building block of the SMSA, each one being composed of one or more counties. There are six SMSA's located wholly or partially in the state of Georgia. These SMSA's and the counties which 1. The term "census" normally denotes total count of the population. However, most of the socio-economic data gathered by presentday U. S. censuses are from samples of 20 percent of the population. One out of every five subjects contacted gives answers to a large set of social and economic questions in addition to the demographic questions which are answered by all subjects. Error in the socio-economic data resulting from the use of samples rather than total count is small due to abundantly large samples. 2. The data which are analyzed and interpreted here come from the volume entitled Census Tracts, Savannah, Georgia Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (PHC(1)-193), Census of Population and Housing, 1970, U. S. Bureau of the Census. 83 comprise them are: Savannah: Chatham 3 ; Augusta: Richmond and Aiken (S. C); Chattanooga: Walker, Catoosa, and Hamilton (Tenn.); Atlanta: Cobb, Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, and Clayton; Columbus: Muscogee, Chattahoochee, and Russell (Ala.); Albany: Dougherty. The census tract was created in an effort to establish a homogeneous microgeographic observation unit within the city or SMSA. In order to develop the actual census tracts for a city the Census Bureau works with local experts to draw up the geographic boundaries of the tracts. They attempt to establish statistical units which correspond to neighborhoods whose residents tend to have similiarity with respect to such economic elements as race, education, and income. Within the Savannah SMSA there are fifty-four populated tracts. It is the Savannah census tract which forms the observation unit for this study. Information extracted from the census can provide answers to many questions of importance to the community. The impor- tant questions which this paper attempts to answer have to do with variation in the economic well-being of families in the Savannah area. The following pages show that wide variations in family income exist throughout the city as one examines and in- terprets the census statistics from neighborhood to neighborhood. Family income ranges from $1,956 per year in the poorest neigh- borhood to $12,186 per year in the most affluent. There is also demonstrated to be extreme variation between families along racial lines. Average annual income for Black families, at $4,723, is less than half as high as average yearly income for non-Black families, $9,772. More interesting than such single-value com- parisons as these are the probability income distributions given in Table 3. These show, in terms of mathematical probability, the propensity, in neighborhood after neighborhood, for Black families to fall into the lower income classes and the inclination of non-Black families to receive incomes in higher income categories. II. Income Profile. The economic well-being of a community is best measured by median family income. Family (as opposed to individual) income is the most meaningful income magnitude since most economic activity is carried out for the ultimate purpose of supporting family households. Further, most goods and services are pur- chased and consumed on a household-family basis. The median as a measure of central tendency (average) for community income is preferrable to its alternative, the arithmetic mean, since the median provides a measure which is more solidly grounded to the typical family income in the community. Median family income is 3. The Bureau of the Census has recently decided to add two counties to the Savannah SMSA: Effingham and Bryan Counties. 84 the level of income above which half of the families earn and below which half the families earn. This measure of average family income tends to be an accurate indication of the economic well-being of families in a community since its value is deter- mined jointly by the size of incomes and by the distribution of families along the income scale. The arithmetic mean, on the other hand, is calculated by summing up all family incomes and dividing by the number of families in the community. Given the number of families, then, the arithmetic mean is determined solely by income size. Relative to our present need this variable can be given an unrealistically large or small value by the oc- currence of a few very high or a few very low incomes. In either case the mean would be a measure of central tendency which is distorted by the extreme values and thus is not representative of typical family income. To obtain a preliminary focus on the spread of family in- comes between census tracts within the Savannah SMSA, look at Table 1. This table arrays the area's census tracts relative to median family income and provides the total population for each Table 1. Array by Median Family Income, Census Tracts of Savannah SMSA Census Tract Median Family Population Number Income 2 $1,956 557 7 2,297 883 1 2,534 1,051 5 2,608 2,776 12 2,744 1,001 17 2,890 1,953 10 3,541 2,115 13 4,000 1,701 8 4,290 915 20 4,356 3,784 6 4,393 7,428 18 4,453 1,918 19 4,574 2,025 23 4,638 3,916 11 4,884 4,085 44 5,237 1,491 32 5,450 2,096 24 5,887 2,991 15 5,907 1,295 21 5,996 3,520 45 6,143 4,033 106.02 6,552 2,680 25 6,725 1,173 28 6,760 3,816 27 6,967 3,404 85 33 26 9 37 43 36.01 102 105 3 35.01 108 107 22 109 38 106.01 101 36.02 35.02 34 110 42.02 39 29 111 30 41 40 42.01 Source: Census Tracts, Savannah SMSA (PHC(1)-193). census tract as well as its identification number 4 . Viewing the distribution of Savannah census tracts as an array, from the lowest median family income to the highest, one is able to see clearly that there is considerable dispersion of family incomes prevailing between the tracts. The range of the distribution is $10,230, the difference between the bottom census tract (median family income of $1,956) and the top (median family income of $12,186). The median level of these median incomes falls equally on two census tracts since, with an even number of tracts, 54, there is not a single one lying on the median point. The median tracts are number 26, with a median family income of $7,112, and number 9, with a median family income of $7,433. Both of these 7,069 4,980 7,112 2,139 7,433 1,006 7,744 2,284 7,929 4,236 4,600 8,088 1,216 8,284 4,278 8,523 1,512 8,589 3,475 8,699 7,908 8,727 5,135 8,935 4,732 9,221 1,672 9,265 2,243 9,329 5,619 9,354 3,194 9,407 5,352 10,205 4,764 10,374 6,282 10,650 5,106 10,701 4,539 10,988 4,439 11,097 3,554 11,389 6,618 11,527 2,524 11,646 2,050 11,843 7,830 12,186 11,760 4. The Savannah SMSA Census Tract volume (PHC(1)-193) provides a map of the area which identifies by this number the boundaries of each census tract within the area. 86 tracts lie within the city proper and have, for Savannah, a moderate degree of residential integration. Census tract number 26, with Black people making up almost one-fifth of its population, is bounded on the north by 34th Street, on the west by Habersham Street, Victory Drive on the south, and on the east by Atlantic Avenue. Tract number 9 has seven percent of its population composed of Negro people. Lying in the inner city, it faces Liberty Street on the north, Bull Street on the west, Gaston Street on the south, and Price Street on the east. Our present purpose, however, is not to study overall family income as such. Quite interesting socio-economic information can be gained from the data if they are reworked somewhat. There are separate listings in the census tract volume for each tract which contains more than 400 Negroes. The data reported in these listings follow closely the tabular forms found in the total population listings. One can use these Negro series to separate out data pertaining only to non-Blacks. By doing this one creates data series for the comparison of socio-economic variables bet- ween Black and non-Black families for the 32 census tracts in which there is a significantly large Negro population. The 22 cen- sus tracts in which the Black population numbers less than 400 are considered to be all non-Black. There are two census tracts in which all the residents are Negro. Comparisons of socio-economic variables between Black and non-Black families are much more pertinent than the comparison of Black variables to those of the total population. Only the latter, a relatively weak type of com- parison, can be accomplished with the census data in its published form. Table 2 is used to demonstrate the steps which were taken to rework the basic census material so as to provide the data for some of the analysis presented later in the report. Black v. non- Black comparative income data were needed. Census tract num- ber 5 has a total of 591 families, 405 of which are Black. Since the tract contains more than 400 Black people there are separate Negro data series which parallel the total population series. The Negro listings, however, take a troublesome departure from the total population listings in the deletion of specific income classes above the level of $10,000 family income per year. 5 Specific 5. Throughout this paper the present tense is used with respect to values of the socio-economic variables studied. It must be remembered, however, that the data are from the census taken in 1970 and are, therefore, at least three years old. The income data are actually 4 years old, being based on earnings for the preceding year, 1969. One could effect an acceptable adjustment for 1973 in the in- come data by incrementing each by some twenty percent, in accordance with in- creases in the consumers' price index which have occurred since 1969. Such mechanical adjustments as this will generally suffice at the present, a point in time relatively close to the time of the census. However, the reliability of estimates obtained this way diminishes rapidly over the passage of years. This is one good reason why Congres should be encouraged to fund a program for 5-year censuses which has been proposed by the Bureau of the Census. 87 classes are supplanted by the open end class "$10,000 or more" which, for this census tract, contains 14 Black families are appor- tioned among the high income classes according to the propor- tions obtaining in the total listing. This procedure brings about an equality of proportions between Black and non-Black families Table 2. Census Tract Number 5, Income Distribution Among Families Income Total Black Non-Black Class Families Families Families in Income in Income in Income Class Class Class* Less than $1,000 66 53 13 $1,000 to $1,999 131 83 48 $2,000 to $2,999 162 112 50 $3,000 to $3,999 63 41 22 $4,000 to $4,999 50 45 5 $5,000 to $5,999 28 19 9 $6,000 to $6,999 17 17 $7,000 to $7,999 13 13 $8,000 to $8,999 14 8 6 $9,000 to $9,999 $10,000 to $11,999 11 (3) 8 $12,000 to $14,999 22 (7) 15 $15,000 to $24,999 6 (2) 4 $25,000 to $49,999 (0) $50,000 or more 8 (2) 6 Total 591 405 186 Median Family Income $2,608 $2,594 $2,640* *data obtained by manipulation of census series. Source: Census Tracts, Savannah SMSA (PHC(1)-193). within the high income classes. This is doubtless at odds with reality, giving an upward bias to the income distribution of Black families. However, let it be noted that the upward bias does not affect the estimated median income (see below) since its position is determined by location of incomes along the scale and not by the sizes of incomes in the extreme regions of the scale. Most cer- tainly, moreover, the slight distortion resulting from this appor- tioning constitutes a smaller loss than the gain for the analysis resulting from the retention of specific income classes in the above $10,000 range. The rightmost column of Table 2 shows the number of non-Black families that remain in each income class after the subtraction of the Black families. 88 The median non-Black family income for the census tract is estimated according to a conventional interpolation procedure which uses the following formula: Median = L + N/2 ~ S (C) where m N m m = lower limit of income class in which median is found, N = total number of families, S = sum of families in income classes prior to median class, C = size of median income class, and m = number of families in median income class. When the values of these variables for census tract number 5 are plugged into the equation the following results are obtained: Median non-Black Family Income = $2,000 + 93 - 61 ($1,000) 50 = $2,640. Median family incomes for both Black and non-Black families living in each census tract are presented in Table 3. One is able to appreciate the sharp income differences between these groups by comparing their median family incomes for each census tract. But of greater interest than this single-value comparison of economic wellbeing is the more comprehensive picture of the income Table 3. Probability of Family Having Income of a Given Level, Black (B) versus Non-Black (NB), for Residents of Savannah SMSA Census Tracts Census Tract Number Income Level: B NB B NB B NB Below $3,000 61 78 100 17 3,000-6,000 36 22 21 6,000-9,000 3 15 9,000-12,000 100 22 12,000-15,000 6 Above 15,000 19 Med. Family Income $2,477 $9,500 $2,000 $500 $8,523 Total Families 212 5 148 4 283 % Black 97.7 97.4 89 Census Tract Number 5 6 Income Level: B NB B NB B NB Below $3,000 61 60 35 85 75 3,000-6,000 26 19 29 15 19 6,000-9,000 9 3 21 6 9,000-12,000 1 4 9 12,000-15,000 2 8 4 Above 15,000 1 6 2 Med. Family Income $2,608 $2,640 $4,393 $2,222 $2,297 Total Families 405 186 1721 20 180 % Black 68.5 98.9 100.0 Census Tract Number 8 9 10 Income Level: B NB B NB B NB Below $3,000 19 23 39 3,000-6,000 51 21 47 6,000-9,000 9 17 8 100 9,000-12,000 2 15 3 12,000-15,000 3 12 1 Above 15,000 16 12 2 Med. Family Income $4,290 $7,433 $3,472 $6,500 Total Families 258 193 522 17 % Black 96.9 Census Tract Number 11 12 13 Income Level: B NB B NB B NB Below $3,000 37 19 56 39 32 3,000-6,000 27 26 35 16 6,000-9,000 21 14 20 14 9,000-12,000 10 45 2 4 11 12,000-15,000 3 19 1 13 Above 15,000 2 17 2 1 14 Med. Family Income $4,665 $10,692 $2,744 $3,739 $6,222 Total Families 717 58 191 299 63 % Black 92.5 100.0 82.6 90 Census Tract Number 15 17 18 Income Level: B NB B NB B NB Below $3,000 31 10 54 60 32 3,000-6,000 26 35 31 40 40 6,000-9,000 33 26 8 21 9,000-12,000 5 15 6 5 100 12,000-15,000 1 7 1 1 Above 15,000 4 7 1 Med. Family Income $4,850 $6,667 $2,895 $2,889 $4,387 $9,500 Total Families 119 154 428 15 415 7 % Black 43.6 96.6 98.3 Census Tract Number 19 20 21 Income Level: B NB B NB B NB Below $3,000 37 37 32 11 8 3,000-6,000 20 28 36 43 37 6,000-9,000 27 28 18 22 25 9,000-12,000 8 1 10 25 11 15 12,000-15,000 5 3 1 25 6 7 Above 15,000 3 3 3 50 7 8 Med. Family Income $4,417 $5,167 $4,338 $15,000 $5,734 $6,66 Total Families 330 105 845 4 495 364 % Black 75.9 99.5 57.6 Census Tract Number Income Level: Below $3,000 3,000-6,000 6,000-9,000 9,000-12,000 12,000-15,000 Above 15,000 Med. Family Income Total Families % Black B 25 NB 20 21 30 7 7 15 B 21 22 34 5 7 12 26 NB 12 16 26 13 8 16 B 16 42 14 12 12 8 27 NB 25 23 14 13 9 $6,725 $6,538 $7,267 $5,843 $7,165 318 88 485 139 830 15.4 14.3 91 Census Tract Number 28 29 30 Income Level: B NB B NB B NB Below $3,000 23 16 11 6 3,000-6,000 23 26 16 10 6,000-9,000 23 28 12 16 9,000-12,000 15 16 16 21 12,000-15,000 8 7 15 20 Above 15,000 8 7 30 27 Med. Family Income $6,615 $7,029 $11,097 $11,527 Total Families 639 337 1063 731 % Black 65.5 Census Tract Number 32 33 34 Income Level: B NB B NB B NB Below $3,000 29 8 13 31 3 3,000-6,000 32 49 27 34 18 13 6,000-9,000 18 21 29 16 21 9,000-12,000 18 22 18 22 11 22 12,000-15,000 2 4 9 22 7 12 Above 15,000 1 3 4 22 17 29 Med. Family Income $5,128 $6,091 $7,054 $11,500 $6,250 $10,61 Total Families 326 158 1143 9 164 1646 % Black 67.4 99.2 9.1 Census Tract Number 35.01 35.02 36.01 Income Level: B NB B NB B NB Below $3,000 7 6 8 10 3,000-6,000 23 10 19 18 6,000-9,000 23 23 30 32 9,000-12,000 24 24 26 25 12,000-15,000 14 18 11 10 Above 15,000 9 19 6 5 Med. Family Income $8,589 $10,205 $7,775 $8,000 Total Families 960 1214 121 1044 % Black 10.4 92 Census Tract Number 36.02 37 38 Income Level: B NB B NB B NB Below $3,000 6 8 7 3,000-6,000 16 25 17 6,000-9,000 23 26 22 9,000-12,000 30 26 26 12,000-15,000 14 9 16 Above 15,000 11 6 12 Med. Family Income $9,407 $7,744 $9,625 Total Families 1423 672 611 % Black Census Tract Number 39 40 41 Income Level: B NB B NB B NB Below $3,000 4 4 3 3,000-6,000 7 8 13 6,000-9,000 24 18 16 9,000-12,000 23 21 21 12,000-15,000 18 13 24 Above 15,000 24 36 23 Med. Family Income $10,988 $11,843 $11,646 Total Families 1112 2126 532 % Black Census Tract Number 42.01 42.02 43 Income Level: B NB B NB B NB Below $3,000 3 4 4 3,000-6,000 6 12 18 6,000-9,000 14 22 38 9,000-12,000 25 23 19 12,000-15,000 24 19 10 Above 15,000 28 20 11 Med. Family Income $12,186 $10,701 $7,92 Total Families 3101 1218 505 % Black 93 Census Tract Number 44 45 101 Income Level: B NB B NB B NB Below $3,000 24 23 21 5 9 3,000-6,000 41 32 26 17 13 11 6,000-9,000 20 46 21 45 24 28 9,000-12,000 10 22 16 6 27 23 12,000-15,000 5 9 7 16 15 Above 15,000 5 4 15 14 Med. Family Income $4,989 $8,000 $6,032 $6,575 $9,667 $9,205 Total Families 323 28 803 99 168 492 % Black 92.0 89.0 25.5 Census Tract Number 102 105 106.01 Income Level: B NB B NB B NB Below $3,000 17 9 34 5 3,000-6,000 19 16 34 15 6,000-9,000 24 35 10 21 9,000-12,000 28 24 10 26 12,000-15,000 8 11 7 20 Above 15,000 4 5 5 13 Med. Family Income $8,088 $8,284 $4,460 $10,036 Total Families 298 1216 261 1252 % Black 17.3 Census Tract Number 106.02 107 108 Income Level: B NB B NB B NB Below $3,000 32 8 27 5 34 7 3,000-6,000 36 19 48 17 36 12 6,000-9,000 27 28 13 28 26 31 9,000-12,000 3 32 5 27 2 24 12,000-15,000 2 9 4 14 1 13 Above 15,000 4 3 9 1 13 Med. Family Income $4,326 $8,403 $4,586 $9,042 $3,981 $9,012 Total Families 279 383 96 1186 163 1836 % Black 42.2 7.5 8.2 94 Census Tract Number 109 110 111 Income Level: B NB B NB B NB Below $3,000 13 28 9 4 3,000-6,000 16 34 10 12 6,000-9,000 19 14 17 15 9,000-12,000 21 9 20 23 12,000-15,000 13 4 11 15 Above 15,000 18 11 33 31 Med. Family Income $9,221 $4,722 $11,088 $11,389 Total Families 435 107 1237 1834 % Black 8.0 situation of Black and non-Black residents of Savannah census tracts which is provided by the probabilities of Table 3. The probabilities section of Table 3 is constructed as follows. The number lying to the right of a given income class indicates the probability of a family, Black (B) and non-Black (NB), living in the designated census tract, earning an income within that in- come class. For example, consider census tract number 13. Black families living in that neighborhood have a median income of $3,739. But one can understand more thoroughly the economic situation of Black families in that census tract by examining the income probability distribution. Observe, first, that the probability of a family's earnings lying in the lowest income class is 39; that is, a black family residing in census tract 13 has 39 chances out of 100 of earning income less than $3,000. The family's probability of earning from $3,000 to $6,000 is 35. Fur- ther, the probability of its earnings being below $9,000 per year is the sum of the probabilities of all income classes below the $9,000 to $12,000 class, or 94. To look at this probability from the other end of the income scale, the Black family residing in this census tract has only six chances out of one hundred of earning income greater than $9,000 per year. Note that non-Black families living in the same census tract have a probability of 38 of earning an in- come of at least $9,000. Consider some cases that are important with regard to their statistical positions. Look at the census tract in which Negro family income is the lowest. This is tract number 2, located in the northwestern corner of the inner city. It is bordered on the north by the Savannah River, on the west by Fahm Street, on the south by Hull Street, and it faces West Broad Street on the east. Residing in this census tract are 148 Black families whose median income is $2,000. The probability of a Black family ear- ning income less than $3,000 is 78. The probability is 100 (cer- tainty) that the Black family in this neighborhood receives less than $6,000. It is interesting to note that the probability is certain 95 non- Black families living in this census tract to have an income of less than $3,000. The four non-Black families living in this census tract have a median income of $500. No family can survive on in- come this small. Therefore, these families are supported from economic sources which are outside the census Bureau's categories of income. A possible source is help from relatives. There are doubtless such anomolous cases present in all census distributions. But they are usually not of sufficient importance to affect materially the estimate of group average as they do here. The median position in the Savannah distribution of median family incomes for Negroes is shared by two census tracts, num- bers 107 and 11. The first of these tracts lies to the northeast of the city and encloses the town of Port Wentworth. The 96 Black families residing in this tract have a median income of $4,586. The most probable income class for these families is between $3,000 and $6,000, there being 48 chances out of 100 for the family to have income of that magnitude. The probability of ear- ning in the respectable class of $6,000 to $9,000 is 13 and there is even a probability of 12 of the Black family receiving above $9,000. However, the chances of a Black family living in Port Wentworth receiving a poverty income of less than $3,000 is 27 out of 100. The above income probabilities should be compared to the expectations of the 1186 non-Black families residing in this cen- sus tract. The most likely income class for a non-Black family in Port Wentworth is $6,000 to $9,000, the chances for that class being 28 out of 100. But there are only slightly less chances for family earnings to be between $9,000 and $12,000, the probability for that class being 27. There is a probability of 23 for the non- Black family to earn in excess of $12,000 per year and only a five percent probability for its earning less than $3,000. Census Tract number 11, in which is found the other median income level for Black families, is located in the northeastern sec- tion of the city in the old Brownsville area. It lies on both sides of Wheaton Street between the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad and Jones Canal, being bounded on the south by Herndon Lane and Bolton Street and on the north by the city line. The median family income for Negroes in this section is $4,665. The probability of any of the 717 Black families that live there receiving income of $3,000 or less is 37. The chances out of 100 of a Black family earning in the income class $3,000 to $6,000 are 27 and they are 21 for reaching the level $6,000 to $9,000. Beyond this income level are found few Black families, the probability being 10 for receiving a yearly income between $9,000 and $12,000, and only 5 percent for earning in excess of $12,000. The 58 non-Black families living in census tract number 11 have a median income of $10,692, with the probability being 81 that earnings will exceed $9,000 per year. A family in this group has 17 chances out of one hundred of receiving more than 96 $15,000. Yet there is a rather large probability, 17, for the non- Black family to receive a poverty income of $3,000 or less. Perhaps the most interesting census tract of all in the Savan- nah area income profile for Negro families is number 101, which has the highest median income for Black families. This tract is in two parts. The northern part lies directly east of the city between the city line and the Savannah River, being composed mainly of unhabited meadowlands and marshes. The southern part of num- ber 101 corresponds to the town of Thunderbolt. There are 168 Black families in this census tract, a community which is con- tigious to Savannah State College. With a median income of $9,667, the Black families living in this tract are the most affluent families in the whole Savannah Negro community. The chances are 15 out of 100 of a family earning income greater than $15,000. The probability of earning in excess of $12,000 is 31 percent and it is 58 percent for earning more than $9,000. Further, the chances are only 5 out of 100 of the Black family receiving $3,000 or less per year. The high incomes earned by Negro families in the Thunder- bolt community are unquestionably due to the influence of Savannah State College. Many people with professional training who are associated with the College live in this community. And professional levels of education command relatively high in- comes. III. Summary and Conclusion. On preceding pages the reader has been invited to compare incomes and income class probabilities as they differ between Black and non-Black families in census tracts selected from Table 3. You are now asked to look at some comparisons for the whole Savannah metropolitan area. Table 4 has been constructed from census summary statistics for the entire Savannah SMSA. The non-Black entries were obtained by the method used for Table 2, page 8. Savannah median income for Black families is $4,723 and for non-Blacks, $9,772. The ratio of the former to the latter is .483. Another basis for comparison of Black with non-Black family incomes is provided by the probabilities of Table 3. Look, for instance, at the following summary probabilities for the lowest and highest income classes: Black Families Non-Black - Families Median Probability of Lowest Income Class 31.5 8.5 Median Probability of Highest Income Class 3.0 11.5 97 The probability of falling in the lowest income class is more than 3 times as great for the Black family in Savannah as it is for the non-Black family. The probability of earning income in the highest income class is less than 1/3 for Black families as it is for non-Black families. For the Black family, the probability of falling in the lowest income category is more than ten times as great as the probability of falling in the highest income class. For the non-Black family the probability of earning in the highest in- come class is greater by 3 points than is its probability of falling in the lowest income class. Many points of comparison such as these can be devised from the data provided in Table 3. The reader can improve his under- staing of relative levels of economic wellbeing by working out some of his own. Table 4. Summary Income Statistics for Savannah SMSA Income Total Black Non-Black Class Less than $1,000 $1,000 to $1,999 $2,000 to $2,999 $3,000 to $3,999 $4,000 to $4,999 $5,000 to $5,999 $6,000 to $6,999 $7,000 to $7,999 $8,000 to $8,999 $9,000 to $9,999 $10,000 to $11,999 $12,000 to $14,999 $15,000 to $24,999 $25,000 to $49,999 $50,000 or more Total Median Family Income Families Families Families in Income in Income in Income Class Class Class 1,579 1,098 481 2,592 1,662 930 2,774 1,638 1,136 2,975 1,584 1,391 2,773 1,413 1,360 3,225 1,398 1,827 3,364 1,158 2,206 3,411 897 2,514 3,229 655 2,574 3,321 651 2,670 5,489 (575) 4,914 5,456 (570) 4,886 5,400 (564) 4,836 1,101 (115) 986 280 (29) 251 46,969 14,007 32,962 $8,245 $4,723 $9,772 Source: Census Tracts, Savannah SMSA (PHC(1)-193). Whether one compares distributions of income probabilities or computes the ratio of Black median income to non-Black median income, one finds evidence of great differences between Black and non-Black levels of economic wellbeing. The focus of this paper is on these differences themselves and not on why the differences exist. A few comments on the latter question, however, may be in order. The income of a family is composed of earnings received from the sale of its resources. These earnings depend largely on the price which prevails in the market for these resources. Since 98 the resource base of most families consists of some form of labor, the determination of income is largely made by the price which an employer is willing to pay for the specific human services which the family's breadwinner(s) offers for sale. This price is it- self the result of the current market conditions, economic factors which are specific to the individual transaction, and various non- economic elements. To disentangle and measure market forces and the other economic factors (not to mention the non-economic elements) is an awesome obstacle to the task of assessing the con- tribution made by each to the determination of a particular resource price and such assessment is by no means attempted in these short comments. Current market conditions consist of broad demand and sup- ply forces. These would be quite important in a period of depression, when demand is low in general, or in a boom period, when demand is higher than normal. More important than general market conditions in the question of income differences between households are specific at- tributes governing the monetary value to the employer of the labor services which the household offers for sale. The person who is more productive will be more valuable to the employer and, other things the same, will receive a price for this labor which is proportionally higher. (The "other things" caveat is very important and will be covered shortly.) For instance, if a worker has a special gift for a certain type of work his productivity will generally be greater than average. Or, perhaps, even with no special aptitude, a worker may produce and earn more than his peers because of exceptionally high motivation. Good or bad health often influence productivity on the job. A person's economic productivity, however, depends more than anything else on the amount of training and educational preparation which he brings to the job. The most important single determinant of a per- son's value to an employer and, consequently, his earnings, seems to be the level of education attained by the person. 5 While the above economic considerations are powerful in their influence on earnings, by no means do they provide the total determination of family income. There are many non-economic factors which create income differences. A person might be ignorant of the fact that there are, in the same area, higher paying job opportunities that are open to workers of his category. Another example would be the case in which there are unique non-economic attributes of a particular situation which are of sufficient importance to an individual to compensate for a significant earnings deficit. It is not difficult to imagine ad- 5. A similar relationship seems to hold for communities. A companion research project to the present one is going to explore the functional relationship between median family income for a census tract and the median number of years of school completed by adult residents of the tract. 99 ditional non-economic elements such as these and there are many of them to be found in any labor market contributing to differen- ces in family incomes within the community. One non-economic factor, however, is more important than all the rest: racial discrimination. All other things the same, the person who is Black receives a lower pay for his work than the person who is non-Black. It is hoped that the comparisons and interpretations made here will not be accepted by the reader as final statements on in- come differences in the community. Perhaps the most valuable use which the reader might make of this paper is for him to use its analyses only as interpretative guidelines for the statistical in- formation which has been presented. Table 3 affords much material out of which the reader can construct his own inter- pretations and comparisons. By doing this he can acquire new un- derstanding of the varying levels of economic wellbeing at which are found the forty-seven thousand families of the Savannah area. 100 THE EVOLVING BLACK CHURCH Otis S. Johnson In a hostile "white man's world", the black man has been allowed an opportunity for self-expression and status in one in- stitution his church. With his structured social life in the church, the Afro-American slave could give expression to his deepest feelings and release his pent-up emotions, and at the same time, the freedmen before Emancipation found status in the church which shielded them from the contempt and discriminations of the white world. After Emancipation when the hopes and expectations of acceptance and freedom in the white man's world were shattered by exclusion of blacks, except on the basis of inferiority, he found his church, a world which the white man did not invade, but only regarded with amusement. The black church could enjoy its freedom as long as it was not a threat to the white man's dominance of social and economic relations. The black church, with its other-worldly outlook, taught the Afro-American to cope with his inferior status and pray for the release from deprivation and suffering in the next world. The social and economic upgrading of the Afro-American and the direct action policies of some religious leaders suggest that the traditional theology of other worldliness and accom- modation is becoming a less dominant feature and a "black theology of liberation" is being recognized. Christianizing Slaves From his earliest arrival in America, the Afro-American was stripped of his social heritage and his traditional social organization as the result of the manner in which he was en- slaved and became the labor force in the plantation economy. All family ties and bonds of kinship were severed and African historical traditions were suppressed by whites. 1 In the Eighteenth Century a systematic attempt was made by the Church of England to Christianize Afro -Americans beginning with the formation of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. This society was clearly directed toward conversion of slaves, especially children, and was conducted under very carefully controlled conditions acceptable to white slave owners. Baptist and Methodist missionaries carried a Christian message to the Afro-American which was designed first and foremost to generate belief in a gospel of hope and future bliss, not to hold out the promise of an immediate end to earthly troubles. 2 A study of the religious instruction in the colony of Georgia will give some insight into the methods of instruction and the dif- ficulties encountered. Less than three months after the legal permission of slaves in Georgia in 1749, the Associates of Dr. Bray allotted a small fund for instruction of slaves on plantations and created the position of 101 catechist. The fund yielded twenty-five pounds a year. An ap- plication was made to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel for an equal amount but the Society only voted to allocate fifteen pounds to this purpose. This came to a yearly salary of forty pounds. In 1750, Joseph Ottolenghe petitioned for the position as catechist. He was a convert from Judiasm and, being born in Italy, had a knowledge of silk-culture. The Trustees ap- pointed Ottolenghe to the position, it is believed, because of his aforementioned knowledge. 3 James Habersham wrote, "... I hope He may be of Service in the Instruction of the poor benighted Negroes in the Principles of Christianity, which has often engaged my thoughts." 4 Ottolenghe instructed the slaves for more than eight years. During that time a house was built (1758). He wrote: I Have built a Large Room with a large Chimney for the use of these poor souls, the Latter extremely necessary for them who are of a chill constitution, ill fed and worse clothed, that many are not fit to be seen by modest Eye; and while in Summer we're ready to faint with Heat, they solace themselves round a large fire. 5 Some masters were opposed to baptism in the belief that it freed a slave even though competent authority had decided that lawfully this was not the case. Ottolenghe held the position that: Were I a Minister I would not baptize any as yet, because I have reason to believe that tho ready to repeat every Thing as they are instructed yet have very little Notion or Idea of what they thus repeat, and conse- quently a Parot might as well be baptize'd as any of them. 6 The hardest task was overcoming the difference in language, capacity, and racial temperament. Ottolenghe wrote: . . . our Negroes are so ignorant of ye English Language, and none can be found to talk in their own, yt it is a great while before you can get them to understand what ye Meanings of Words is & yt without such knowledge Instruction's would prove Vain & ye Ends propsd abor- tive, for how can a Proposition be believed, without first being understood? & how can it be understood if ye Per- son to whom it is offerd has no Idea even of ye Sound of those Words which expresses ye Proposition? 7 As illustrated in Ottolenghe's description the Established Church, with emphasis upon a knowledge of the catechism for baptism and religious ritual requiring decorum, did not make much progress with the slaves. However, the slaves were drawn into a union with their fellow man and through the Christian religion a new basis for social cohesion was established. In ad- dition, participation in the same religious services as their master's drew the slaves out of their isolation in the white man's world, even though the slaves were seated together in a 102 special section of the church. 8 Among the earliest practices of the segregation of the Afro-American are those concerned with wor- ship. An extreme case is that of an ingenious congregation which erected a partition several feet high to separate slaves from their masters. 9 The slaves' reaction to their fate was one of submission. They wished only to find a meaning for their existence in the confusion and bewilderment of the white man's world. The Bible was the means by which the slave acquired a new theology. Selected parts were taught to them, such as the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Comman- dments, and Biblical stories told in simple language. 10 E. Franklin Frazier explains that the slaves were: . . . taught that the God with whom they became acquainted in the Bible was the ruler of the universe and superior to all other gods. They were taught that the God of the Bible punished and rewarded black men as well as white men. Black men were expected to accept their lot in this world and if they were obedient and honest and truthful they would be rewarded in the world after death. 11 Thus, the Afro-American slave adapted the white man's Christian theology to his psychological and social needs. This adaptation can be seen in the sacred folk songs or black spirituals which were religious in sentiment and other-worldly in outlook. Various themes appear repeatedly in these spirituals, such as the idea of heaven and a judgment day and preoccupation with death as an escape from the woes of this world, loneliness of the slave and the comfort gained by "walking and talking" with God, and the fellowship experienced by slaves with their fellow men. 12 Ac- cording to Joseph R. Washington, these spirituals represent the spirit of the "invisible institution" and lie outside of fervor related situations of struggle which ended in 1865. There were songs of great belief, maybe hope, but they were not songs of faith nor songs of a "growing body of critical theology." 13 The Free Black Church At the same time that the "invisible institution" of the slave came into existence, Afro-Americans who were free before the Civil War left the white Methodist and Baptist church organizations in which they had a subordinate status and set up their own churches. The first is believed to have been founded in Savannah, Georgia by Andrew Bryan; it was the First Bryan Baptist Church. 14 Richard Allen, a freedman and a convert to Methodism, and Absalom Jones organized an independent black church organization, the Free African Society, when they were removed from St. George Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia for mistaking the section of the gallery designated for blacks. Because of their differences in opinion on church organization, Allen and Jones went their separate ways. Jones organized the African Protestant Episcopal Church of St. 103 Thomas, while Allen organized the Bethel Church, which became the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816 at a conference in Philadelphia. 15 Succession from Methodist Churches spread to many cities, and church organizations were being formed rapidly. Peter Williams, Sr. joined with other Afro-Americans in organizing the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Other denominational churches appeared; independent Baptist churches were being established in southern and northern cities; Protestant Episcopal, Presbyterian and Congregational churches formed on a small scale. 16 After Emancipation, the "invisible institution" of the slave church was absorbed by the institutional churches which the Afro-Americans who were free before the Civil War had established. The fused church organizations became the major form of stratified social life among the Afro-Americans. The black church became an agency of social control by condemning sexual promiscuity and emphasizing institutional family life. Through economic cooperation churches were erected or bought and mutual assistance societies were established by pooling funds. Benevolent societies were established to provide assistance in time of sickness or death and in 1898 there were nine in Atlanta alone. 17 Preachers during Reconstruction became political leaders, but their careers in politics were brief because of the reestablish- ment of white supremacy in the South. Consequently, the black church became an "arena for political activities." Ambitious in- dividuals could achieve status and the masses could vote and engage in electing their officers, at least in the church. 18 The Effects of Urbanization Beginning with World War I, the urbanization of Afro- Americans brought about a transformation of the church and the black outlook. Social organization was destroyed just as it had been with the Civil War and Emancipation. The Afro-American through these experiences acquired a new conception of his people and of himself. He was able to obtain slightly better jobs in positions of semi-trust and authority, he could vote, and his child was able to attend better schools. The result was a new system of social stratification where three classes emerged. This caused the church to adapt to the general outlook and religious requirements of the different classes. 19 In a study by Drake and Cayton of stratification in black churches in a Chicago community, it was found that class for class, the black church was not much different from the white church. Five percent (5% ) of the sample was upper class. The churches attended were mainly Episcopal, Congregational, and Presbyterian, all services being intellectually oriented. The lower class comprised over one-half (65% ) and had less than one-third (1/3) male membership. It was estimated that approximately one- 104 third (1/3) of the church-oriented people in the lower class belonged to large lower class churches, one-third (1/3) to churches dominated by upper class persons, and one-third (1/3) to "store front churches." Thirty percent of the sample was middle class. It was found that the large Baptist or Methodist church was typical and that it was usually a "Mixed-type" church which incor- porated both lower class behavior (shouting and verbal "amens") and middle class behavior (restrained service and a sermon with ethical content). Cults, which are primarily a reaction to the frustrations of urban life, were shown to attract a relatively small part of the black population with ten percent of all churches in the community in Chicago being of this type. 20 Urbanization of the black population has been responsible, in part, for the increasing integration of Afro-Americans into the mainstream of American life. With this increased integration, the social organization of the black communities has changed; con- sequently, the church has been affected by integration in several ways. First, the church is less a refuge as the Afro-American has been forced into competition with whites in most areas of social life. 21 Second, one saw the emergence of gospel singers whose songs expressed the deep religious feelings of the black masses. One of the famous Ward sisters stated that gospel singing is popular because ". . . it fills a vacuum in peoples' lives. For people who work hard and make little money, it offers a promise that things will be better in the life to come." 22 According to Frazier, they represent the attempt of the Afro-American to utilize his religious heritage in order to come to terms with changes in his own institutions as well as the problems of the world. 23 Third, and the most advanced element in the process of in- tegration was the emergence of a new middle class. This group, while they rejected their African heritage, were rejected by the white middle class and therefore occupied an ambiguous position in society. Their reaction has been to abandon religion, shift from church to church, involve themselves in "spiritual" and "psychic" phenomena, or shift from Baptist and Methodist to Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Catholic. 24 Finally, as stated previously, the traditional theology of other-worldliness is becoming a less dominant feature of black religion. More importantly, as black churchmen are becoming more aware of the needs of the black man, they are introducing a "black theology of liberation". At present, black theology is ad- mittedly in its incipient stages; it is not yet a well defined system of thought by any means. The Gospel and Liberation James Cone, one of the youngest and most prominent black theologians, holds the conviction that "the gospel is liberation." According to his former professor, William Hordern, Cone's 105 theology has made a vital contribution by forcing one to recognize that theology cannot be Christian unless it is identified with the liberation of the oppressed. 25 Cone makes vague use of the terms "black and white," but he insists that this ambiguity is indispen- sable. . . . theological language must be paradoxical because of the necessity of affirming two dimensions of reality which appear to be contradictory. For example, my ex- perience of being black-skinned means that I cannot de- emphasize the literal significance of blackness . . . And because blacks were dehumanized by white-skinned people who created a cultural style based on black op- pression, the literal importance of whiteness has historical referents. 26 However, Mr. Cone explains that through his experience of blackness, he has also encountered the symbolic significance of black existence and how it is related to God's revelation in Jesus. He states the position that the universal has no meaning indepen- dent of the particular. In other words, the starting point for all talk about God and man in a society where color is the defining point of humiliation must be where blackness refers to black- skinned people who have been oppressed, and whiteness refers to the people responsible for that oppression. After a serious realization of the gospel and historical experience is reached, then the symbolic significance of black and white may be ap- proached. Cone stresses the point that there can be no universal understanding of blackness without the particular experience of blacks, for by being black one understands the ambiguity of the black experience. 27 In regard to black people as the oppressed, Cone says that he chose blackness because of his experience and what it means in white America. The focus on blackness does not mean that only blacks suffer as victims in a racist society, but that blackness is an ontological symbol and a visible reality which best describes what oppression means in America. 28 Aware of the danger of compressing the gospel into one theme, which Cone has been accused of with reference to his statement, "His (God's) revelation is only for the oppressed of the land", Cone feels that he must risk this danger if he is to remain faithful to his understanding of the Bible and the struggle of the oppressed for liberation. Moreover, he states that every theologian must take his own central theme of the Biblical message and relate it to his historical situation. Hence, it will always be necessary to interpret the meaning of the gospel in light of changing situations. This new "data" as Cone calls it, enhances the significance of old meanings. 29 Cone states his position by saying that: Black liberation is the new datum. Theology must now ask, what is the essence of the gospel in view of the op- 106 pressed and humiliated, the weak and downtrodden? I contend that it is the good news of liberation . . . God's stand against oppression is His affirmation that all men have a common humanity in freedom. This means that I cannot be free until all men are free. 30 The New Black Theology Reverend Albert B. Cleage, at the opening talk at a con- ference on "Black Church Black Theology" at Georgetown University in 1969 said that black theology is . . . reflection on the black revolution that has been un- der way since the 1954 Supreme Court decision on school desegregation. It is now necessary for the black man to throw off the slave Christianity that is the source of black powerlessness. The preacher who talks of a future heavenly bliss is preaching an escapist psychology and drawing black men one by one away from a confronting of their sordid lot. Rather, let the brothers and sisters come together and through baptism break their iden- tification with the source of evil, whiteness, in order to form a black nation that will take salvation into its own hands. 31 Several other theologians expressed their views on black theology at the Georgetown conference. Among these was James DeOtis Roberts of the Howard University School of Religion. He observed that theology done by white "haves" doesn't touch the experience of black "have nots". He feels that the work of the black theologian is difficult due to the fact that he must use a method that is not only sensitive to the black ex- perience, but conversant with the traditional framework of theology. Joseph R. Washington of Albion College feels that black religion will always be more action and community cen- tered than worship and doctrine centered. "Soul" is the key to black religion. "There is no way to soul, soul is the way. The black theologian must develop a theology of freedom and revolution that is positive and intelligent," says Washington. 32 Preston N. Williams of Boston University School of Theology, felt that the black theologian must try to transform black life with theology. "While white Protestants and Catholics are laying the plans for unity, the black theologian must lay plans for the disunity necessary to be the bearer of authentic Christian values." 33 Rosemary Ruether of Howard University poses the question, What would be a theology that could be called black and still be a legitimate form of the gospel? She attempts to answer by saying that a black theology draws upon the specific context and historical experience of the Afro-American to reveal the universal of "biblical anthropology", that is, sin as alienation and redemp- tion as restored community through grace. She continues by 107 stating that a black theology would show the many ways that people oppress each other because the black man understands, perhaps better than any man, the infinite duplicities of the op- pressor-oppressed relationship. Ruether cites other theological themes that come out of the black experience. One such them is power, not in the sense of oppressive power, but divine power. "Power is man restored to his integrity and creativity so that his actions directly and effectively express his soul. Power is par- ticipation in the making of one's destiny." 34 According to Ruether, black theology is also an affirmation of the goodness of creation. She uses the phrase "Black is Beautiful" to illustrate a restatement of the Biblical doctrine of man. When God looked at His creation, everything was beautiful. There was no exclusive standard of beauty; rather, it was left up to the individual to ascertain the beauty of the whole. Ruether adds that the cry "Black is Beautiful" is also a cry for redemp- tion, for the restoration of one's natural integrity against the debasement into which one has fallen. A black theology is one of revolution, she says. It brings judgment upon a white system based on false principles and demands its overthrow; then the recreation of a new world based on brotherhood. She goes further in stating that the gospel is one of revolution because it calls for the radical conversion of man in society and history and points to man's collective sins. She concludes by saying: The hope for salvation is ultimately the hope for the coming of the kingdom of God; the hope for a new man in a new world, where the oppressive structures of the present system have been revolutionized and a new era of peace, goodness and truth has dawned. This vision has always been central to black hopes, black preaching, and black music. 35 An attempt was made by the National Committee of Black churchmen at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia in 1969, to hammer out a common position on black theology. The co-chairman of the committee, Preston N. Williams, commented on several aspects of the committee's statement. First, he explained that black theology exists because the Christian church has not spoken forth-rightly and relevantly to the black experience. It seeks to help black people and all victims of injustice to understand their experience with God and with each other. 36 William defines black theology as another of the many forms theology has taken and that it has all the faults and virtues of any other form. Black theology asserts that God's word for the black man and every man is freedom and liberation, says Williams, and the gospel, which is Freedom requires all black men to affirm their dignity as persons and all whites to surrender their presumption of superiority and end their abuses of power. 108 Added to the meaning of black theology is the idea that the black churchman must stand with the black community and when ten- sion arises between the community and faith, he must make the tension creative, seeking to repair all damage done by racial in- justice. Williams explains that the churchmen exhibit concern above all for spiritual power. The words of Eldrige Cleaver sym- bolized for the committee: . . . the black man's determination not to remain passive while white Americans seek to enslave him. Committed to our Christian faith, confident of our own worth and dignity, we shall fight until our rights are secured and assured. Self-determination shall be ours. Christ has made us free, and by the power of God and our strong right arm we shall possess that freedom. Thus in stan- ding firm for our freedom we shall be participants in the task of reconciling the world unto God. 37 Through slavery and the periods following Reconstruction, the black church was the one institution owned and controlled by the black community. Black automony was pioneered by the black church when it broke from white Christianity and formed churches and denominations. The black church became the center of the social and political life, but like the black community itself, the church has been ambivalent in its heritage and the per- petuator of black powerlessness. The black church has too often over-valued the dominant white culture and undervalued its own. With the advent of black technology, an attempt is being made to shape a religion of blackness in which the black person can recover his own soul from its oppression in this world. 109 FOOTNOTES 'E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Church in America (New York: Schocken Books, 1963), p. 82. 2 Roscoe C. Brown, Jr. and Harry A. Ploski, (eds.) The Negro Almanac (New York: Bellwether Publishing Company, Inc., 1967), p. 794. 3 James B. Lawrence, "Education of the Negro in the Colony of Georgia," Georgia Historical Quarterly, XIV, 1930, pp. 41-3. 4 Ibid p. 44. 5 Ibid., p. 45. 6 Ibid., p. 46. 7 Ibid., p. 47. 8 Frazier, p. 9. 9 Joseph R. Washington, Jr., The Negro Church in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 205. "Frazier, p. 10. "Ibid., p. 11. l2 Ibid., pp. 12-15. l3 Washington, p. 206. l4 Frazier, p. 24. l5 Brown and Ploski (ed.), The Negro Almanac, p. 795. ,6 Frazier, p. 28. 17 Ibid., pp. 32-36. l8 Ibid., p. 43. i9 Ibid., pp. 49-51. 20 W. Seward Salisbury, Religion in American Culture (Illinois: The Dorsey Press, 1964), pp. 464-65. 21 Frazier, p. 71. 22 Ibid., p. 74. 23 Ibid., p. 75. 24 Ibid., p. 75. 25 James Cone and William Hordern, "Dialogue on Black Theology." Christian Century, L XXVII (September 15, 1971), p. 1085. 26 Ibid., p. 1080. 27 Ibid. 2S Ibid. 29 Ibid., p. 1085. Ibid. 31 John C. Haughey, "Black Theology", America, CXX, (May 17, 1969), p. 583. 32 Ibid. Ibid. 34 Rosemary Ruether, "Black Theology and the Black Church", America, CXX (June 14, 1969), p. 686. 35 Ibid., p. 687. 36 Preston N. Williams, "The Atlanta Document An Interpretation", Christian Century. LXXXVI, (October 15, 1969), p. 1311. 37 Ibid., p. 1312. 110 MEASUREMENT OF THE SOLUBILITY AND SOLUBILITY PRODUCT OF ZINC CHROMATE BY THE RADIOTRACER METHOD* Levone Kornegay and M. P. Menon Savannah State College, Savannah, Georgia Saturated solution of a slightly soluble salt contains very low concentration of the dissolved solute which may be difficult to determine by most of the conventional methods. If the dissolved substance is radioactive its concentration can, however, be measured with good precision using raditracer techniques. The method has the advantage over the frequently used conductivity method, because it measures the total amount of the tagged element in solution regardless of whether the dissolved substance exists as ions or undissociated molecules (1). The sensitivity of the radiotracer method and the ease with which the radioactivity of the solution samples is measured make this analytical technique a valuable tool to determine the solubility of slightly soluble substances. Radiotracer methods have been employed, in the past, to measure the solubility of slightly soluble compounds such as PbS, PbCr0 4 , AgBr etc., with much success (2, 3). Physical data on the solubility and solubility product of the sparingly soluble zinc chromate are not available in literature (4). In this work the solubilities of zinc chromate at various tem- peratures have been determined using 243d 65 Zn + 2 tracer. The solubility data have also been used to measure the standard en- thalpy change (AH) for the solution process of this salt. EXPERIMENTAL Reagents and Apparatus: Approximately 0.1 M reagent grade zinc sulfate solution, 0.1 M potassium chromate solution, zinc-65 tracer solution containing about 1 mC of activity and dil. hydrochloric acid solution were used. The apparatus consists of a thermostat keeping constant temperature and a gamma-ray spec- trometer. a) Measurement of the Specific Activity of the Labeled Zinc Chromate: About twenty milliliters of the zinc sulfate solution was mixed thoroughly with an aliquot of 65 Zn tracer solution (about 0.075 mC) and treated with an excess of potassium chromate solution at a pH of about 7. The mixture was heated in a water bath, centrifuged and washed several times until the excess of chromate is completely removed. The residue was then washed with 95% ethanol and dried. A portion of the dried solid, Zn*Cr0 4 , (~15 mg) was weighed in a counting tube as accurately as possible, dissolved in 5 ml of dil. HC1 and counted in a Nal(Tl) *This paper was presented at the Southeast ACS student Affiliate Regional con- ference held at Georgia Institute of Technology, April 5-7, 1973 111 well type gamma-ray spectrometer. The gamma-ray activity resulting from the annihilation gamma-rays and 1.12 Mev gamma-rays of the positron emitting 65 Zn above a cut off energy of about 0.3 Mev was measured. This was used to determine the specific activity of the standard solid sample (Zn*CrO ). b) Procedure for the Determination of the Solubility: The rest of the labeled solid sample was mixed with deionized water taken in a large tube which was kept in the ther- mostat. With continuous stirring the solution was made saturated with Zn*CrO at the desired temperature. At each temperature the solution was kept in contact with the solid for about 15 minutes to ensure that equilibrium was reached. Five milliliters of the supernatent solution was withdrawn and transferred to a counting tube with a pipette, the nozzle of which was covered with glass wool to prevent the entrance of any solid particles into the pipette. This process was repeated at other temperatures. The gamma-ray activity of each aliquot of the saturated solution was measured under identical conditions. The background of the gamma-ray counter was also determined. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The solubility of zinc chromate at any given temperature was calculated from the measured activity of 5 ml of the saturated solution and the specific activity of the solid sample using the relation: C sat (M/l) = R sample < c P m > X 1000 X W .... (1) R standard < c P m ) 5 M where ^standard * s tne ac tivity of W g of the solid sample and M the molecular weight of ZnCr0 4 . The values for Rsample and the solubility of ZnCr0 4 at different temperatures are listed in Table L. The temperature dependence of the solubility of ZnCr0 4 may be represented by Van't Hoffs equation: AH 1 log C S at. : 2 303R* ~T + constant (2) where AH is the standard enthalpy change for the solution process. Figure 1 shows a plot of log Csat. versus 1/T the slope of which equals AH/2.303R. The standard enthalpy change for the solution of ZnCr0 4 calculated from the slope is 2.250 kcal/mole. The solubility product of ZnCr0 4 may be expressed by the relation: Ksp - ( a Zn++M a Cr0 4 -_) * C2 ZnCr0 4 .O )2 ...(3) 112 where a and 3 zt represent the activity and the mean activity coefficient of the ions, respectively and C the concentration of zinc chromate in the saturated solution. The mean activity coefficient for the ions in water solution at 25 C may be evaluated from the following equation: - log ) = 0.509 Z + Z_ JV2fLC { Z\ (4) where Z + and Z _ are the charges carried by cation and anion, respectively, of the electrolyte under study and Cj and Zj are the respective concentration and charge of any ion present in the solution. The numerical constant, 0.509, is not, however, the same at different temperatures. The following expression for the numerical constant, N' cons ^ , can, nevertheless, be derived from Debye-Huckel's limiting law (5): N , . 0.509X3.71X10 6 ,,, const. ( T') 3 / 2 where ' is the dialectric constant of water at temperature T' on Kelvin scale. Values of ', N' co t , 9 . and Ksp at different temperatures (T') are given in Table II. It is obvious from this table that, in spite of a decrease in the mean activity coefficient, the solubility product of ZnCr0 4 also increases with temperature as does the solubility. REFERENCES 1. Paneth, F., "Radioelements as Indicators", McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1928 2. Hevesy G. and Paneth, F., Z. anog. Chem. 82, 322 (1913) 3. Ruka, R. and Willard, J., J. Phys & Colloid Chem. 5, 351 (1949) 4. "Handbook of Chemistry and Physics", Chemical Rubber Company, 48th edition, CRC, Cleveland, Ohio, 1967-68, page B-240 5. Hamill, W. H., Williams, Jr. R. R. and MacKay C, "Principles of Physical Chemistry" Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966, N. J., page 262 113 Table I Solubility of ZnCrCh at Various Temperatures Obtained from Activity Measurements Specific Activity of the Standard (solid sample) = 9.5xl0 9 cpm/M Samples Temperature *Net activity in Solubility (C) 5 ml sample (cpm) (xlO 4 M/l) 1 27.5 5478 317 1.15 0.07 2 36.0 5320 633 1.12 0.13 3 45.5 5164 969 1.09 0.20 4 55.0 4365 429 0.92 0.09 5 63.0 4450 292 0.93 0.06 6 72.0 4102 109 0.86 0.02 * Aver age of two values Table II Solubility Product of ZnCr0 4 as a Function of Temperature Temp.(K) V ^ const. a K sp 300.5 76.86 0.550 0.895 1.06xl0- 8 309.0 74.09 0.555 0.891 0.994xl0- 8 318.5 70.76 0.558 0.898 0.962xl0- 8 328.0 67.90 0.565 0.905 0.696xl0- 8 336.0 65.46 0.568 0.904 0.713xl0- 8 345.0 62.82 0.590 0.905 0.607x10-8 ^Taken from the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, CRC 114 3.1 3.2 1 x lO^deg.)- 1 Fig. 1 Plot of log C sa t as a function of 1/T 115 QUINTILIAN'S MODERNITY: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE NATURE OF EDUCATIONAL THEORY Joseph M. McCarthy, Ph.D. Assistant Professor History and Philosophy of Education Suffolk University 41 Temple St. Boston, Mass. Unless they are keenly interested in the dynamics of Latin rhetoric, modern readers who attempt the twelve books of Quin- tilian's Institutio Oratorio, will find them only slightly heavier than their own eyelids. Our age is not concerned, as was Quin- tilian, with the formation of good orators. Indeed, Quintilian's educational theorizing was retrograde even in his own time, as the changing structures of the Roman Empire were even then making the profession of orator obsolescent. 1 Yet any reader who is faithful to the first two books of In- stitutio Oratoria, which are devoted to the content, method, and organization of education, will find himself agreeably surprised to discover some comments that are thoroughly germane to our own educational situation. They are worth exploring not only for their own sake, but for the implications they bear for the nature of educational theorizing. At the root of his educational theory, Quintilian seems to have a sound, empirically based conception of child development. The very first section of his book sees him observing that It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate. And we are by nature most tenacious of childish impressions, just as the flavor first absorbed by vessels when new persists and the color imparted by dyes to the primitive whiteness of wool is indelible. 2 This is not far off the mark as judged by current notions, for we hold today that even before the child starts school, he is an astute obser- ver, noting the behavior and interests of his parents. Many of these interests he will begin to internalize as his own. 3 The notion, of course, is part of the accepted wisdom of mankind, so that it is not miraculous that Quintilian felt this way, although it is significant. This capacity for learning, Quintilian states, is universal: There is absolutely no foundation for the complaint that but few men have the power to take in the knowledge that is imparted to them, and that the majority are so slow of understanding that education is a waste of time and labor. On the contrary you will find that most are 116 quick to reason and ready to learn. Reasoning comes as naturally to man as flying to birds, speed to horses, and ferocity to beasts of prey; our minds are endowed by nature with such activity and sagacity that the soul is believed to proceed from heaven. 4 Clearly, this statement sets Quintilian far in advance of his own time, implicitly anticipating as it does the rise of popular education which was still nearly two milennia in the future. Con- temporary educators could assent easily to this proposition, and concede that, so far from refuting Qunitilian's contention, modern educational research is indicating that some types of stimulation may hasten this desire to learn. 5 When Quintilian uses the phrase, "ready to learn," he is not, of course, speaking of the "readiness" which has become for us a canonized term. Yet he does subscribe to the concept: Vessels with narrow mouths will not receive liquids if too much be poured into them at a time, but are easily filled if the liquid is admitted in a gentle stream, or, it may be, drop by drop; similarly you must consider how much a child's mind is capable of receiving; the things which are beyond their grasp will not enter their minds, which have not opened out sufficiently to take them in. 6 Only his style betrays the age of the comment, for the content is quite modern. Indeed, we find the same statement in a more familiar style in a recent text: The importance of the readiness of the individual as an ideal in all instruction can scarcely be overstressed. The student who lacks readiness for new learning cannot hope to progress satisfactorily until his deficiencies are identified and overcome or until a way is found to reach him on his level. When a student is fully ready for a task, on the other hand, his progress should be smooth and easy. If all teachers would make a deliberate effort to use the concept of readiness in the organization of their instruction there would be fewer difficult courses. 7 And when Quintilian adverts specifically to reading, he presents an uncanny precis of a controversy that has agitated education for the past forty years: Some hold that boys should not be taught to read till they are seven years old, that being the earliest age at which they can derive profit from instruction and endure the strain of learning . . . Those however who hold that a child's mind should not be allowed to lie fallow for a moment are wiser. 8 117 In the Thirties, teachers in at least one American school district took pains to identify each child's attainment of a mental age of 6.5 years so as to avoid doing children the violence of teaching them reading before that time. 9 In 1960, one researcher pointed to "a mountain of evidence" that normal children could not be taught to read before reaching the mental age of 6.5 years. 10 On the other side of the argument, Bruner has asserted that any sub- ject can be taught with some integrity to any child in any stage of development, 11 and others have challenged the adequacy of the 6.5 mental age as a criterion. 12 If Quintilian walked among us today, he might have to familiarize himself with the concept of mental age, but he would otherwise be right at home in the debate. Whatever the validity of specific applications of the doctrine of readiness, Quintilian and modern educators seem agreed on its general validity, and on that of the related notion of individual differences. Of course, Quintilian was not original even in his own day in declaring that "it is generally and not unreasonably re- garded as the sign of a good teacher that he should be able to dif- ferentiate between abilities of his respective pupils and to know their natural bent. The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body," 13 but he was enunciating a durable doctrine. 14 Elaborating the concept, he writes: Just as an expert gymnast, when he enters a gymnasium full of boys, ... is able to decide for what class of athletic contest they should be trained, even so, ... a teacher . . . will so adapt his instructions to individual needs that each pupil will be pushed forward in the sphere for which his talents seem specially to design him. 15 It is interesting to discover a contemporary researcher insisting on this implication of a "new conception of learning:" To be effective ... a learning program for each child must take fully into account what he knows how to do already, and what he doesn't know how to do already. One must find out what prerequisites he has already mastered not in a general sense, but in a very precise sense for each learner. 16 Diagnostic tests would probably delight Quintilian. In his notions of motivation, Quintilian strikes another modern note. When he holds that a student in a classroom situation "will derive equal profit from hearing the indolence of a comrade rebuked or his industry commended," 17 one is reminded that within the past two decades research has indicated that children can be reinforced even by hearing others praised. 18 Again, Quintilian says of the student that 118 his studies must be made an amusement: he must be questioned and praised and taught to rejoice when he has done well; sometimes, too, when he refuses instruc- tion, it should be given to some other to excite his envy; at times also he must be engaged in competition and should be allowed to believe himself successful more of- ten than not, while he should be encouraged to do his best by such rewards as may appeal to his tender years. 19 Contemporary research bears him out not only on the need for reinforcement, 20 but on the possibility of the use of competition in reinforcement 2 l One may well ask why, in presenting a theory of education that was largely retrograde and unresponsive to the societal changes occurring in the Roman Empire, Quintilian should have hit upon insights so relevant to our own day. To state that it would be remarkable had he not done so is begging the question. To assert that human nature is a constant and that the obser- vations of a gifted teacher thus cannot but possess some validity is more satisfactory. A complete answer to the question, however, necessitates an examination of the modalities of educational theorizing. In our own day, the categories "directive" or "liberal" (or some derivative tertium quid) are often applied to educational theory. 22 Again, one may find educational theory distinguished into speculative, normative, and critical. 23 I would propose as valuable an outline of the functions of educational theory which is generally similar to the latter, specifying them as descriptive, projective, and prescriptive. Descriptive educational theory is analytic and evaluative in nature. It assesses the educational practice of the contemporary milieu and attempts to purify and systematize it. Its chief aim is to codify the best elements of existing educational practice and provide a theoretical framework for them. Projective educational theory focusses rather upon iden- tifying the alternative future courses of social trends and, having opted for the most desirable of them, seeks to design an educa- tional system to bring that most desirable alternative into being and stabilize it in being. Prescriptive educational theory prescinds from that which actually exists and even from what may probably exist. Its con- cern is with what ought to exist, and it attempts to delineate how education ought to function. It would be futile to assert that educational theory takes any one of these pure forms in a given theorist's writings. In practice, these may be distinguished only with great difficulty. Xenophon's Cyropaedia offers a perfect example. On the face of it, Chapter Two of Book One describes the educational prac- tices of the Persians as Xenophon viewed them during the famed expedition of Cyrus the Younger. Yet to many authorities it 119 seems probable that he was really describing the Spartan educational system. 24 In any case, his work was descriptive in- sofar as it reproduced the essential features of an extant system, projective (and perhaps remotely prescriptive) inasmuch as it ad- vocated adoption of that system and its social goals by Athens. In our own day, much theorizing of this type passes for comparative education. In any case, educational theory often serves a descrip- tive function, even when it is not intended to do so. Rousseau's Emile and the educational animadversions of many Utopias offer the purest examples of the prescriptive func- tion of educational theory. Here, the authors consciously prescind from past and present actuality 25 and even the probabilities of future actuality in delineating the ideal conduct of education. In most authors, however, what is touted as prescriptive is most of- ten projective. The innate difficulty of projective educational theory has been the absence of a methodologically rigorous science for studying the future. As a result, projective educational theory has been reliant upon haphazard extrapolation of trends, and has thus tended to fall between the stools of description and prescrip- tion, albeit a bit nearer the former. Thus John of Salisbury, Juan Luis Vives, and Quintilian may well be faulted for lack of bold- ness in their theorizing. Indeed, the most generally valid assessment of educational theory may well be that it accom- plishes description in the name of prescription and, for that reason, fosters the acceptance of retrograde notions. This is especially true in Quintilian's case. A further reason for this syndrome is the presumed constancy of the phoenomena under investigation. After all, Quintilian could scarcely have hit upon insights of such enduring relevance if human nature and basic human operations were not the same through the passage of centuries. It is this constancy which makes the observations of gifted teachers universally valid despite the generally provisional bases of the social sciences and correspon- ding alterations in research methodology. The problem is that, while such constancy is evident on the level of human psychology and individual operation, there is less constancy in the modalities of societal behavior, and education is, after all, a societal rather than an individual function. This latter suggests that educational theory ought to pay more attention to methodology, particularly to distinguishing methodology according to the differing goals of educational theory. Descriptive educational theory, where it exists, or attempts to exist, in a pure state, must rely on such analytic methodology as is provided by history and the social sciences. None of these is, or can be, value free; but then, descriptive educational theory by its very definition cannot be value free, as it examines its data under the rubric of evaluation for validity and efficacy. That we alter data in perceiving, that our techniques of investigation interfere 120 with our data is, fortunately, implicit in its definition. Prescriptive educational theory comes closest to what we term "philosophy." In its study of the "oughtness" of education, therefore, it may best make use of methods of philosophic in- vestigation, e.g. Concept analysis, dialectic, theory formation, etc. 26 Those branches of philosophy most oriented to practical societal applications, ethics and politics, will offer the most satisfactory models. It is with projective educational theory that the greatest methodological difficulty is encountered, inasmuch as the methodology for the study of the future is still quite primitive. Only in recent years have centers and institutes for the study of the future been established, 27 and halting steps been made toward the elaboration of a sound methodology for predicting social trends. 28 With the further elaboration of such methodology and its adaption by educational theorists, perhaps projective educational philosophy will be able to rise above its former state, and a general transformation in the nature and use of education theory be seen. The implications of Quintilian's Institutio Oratorio, are thus clear: if it is by no means surprising that a gifted teacher could make timelessly accurate observations on the basis of what is constant in human behavior, it is no less surprising that, because of a confusion of goals and lack of sound methodological means, such a gifted teacher should have constructed a conceptual framework for educational practice thoroughly unsuited to the needs of future generations. Every educational theorist faces the same difficulty: in at- tempting to be at once historian, sociologist, philosophy, seer (yes, and stylist too!), he will inevitably produce a bit of gold and a deal of dross. Only careful and systematic attention to goals and methods can alter the balance so obviously weighted against him. To read Quintilian, then, as to read virtually any educational philosopher of times past, is not solely an exercise in antiquarianism, not solely a fishing expedition for useful ideas, but also an occasion for the examination of one's intellectual sup- positions and methods and, perhaps, one's intellectual rigorousness and integrity. 121 NOTES >Cf. G. Kennedy, "An Estimate of Quintilian," American Journal of Philology, XLII (1962), 130-146; E. J. Power, The Evolution of Educational Doctrine: Major Theorists of the Western World (N.Y., 1969), 368, 377, 393; William Boyd, The History of Western Education (8th ed., N.Y., 19660, 73. 2 H.E. Butler, trans., The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian (N.Y., 1920), I, i, 5. 3 Jo Ann Stiles, "Child Development," Encyclopedia of Educational Research (4th ed., N.Y., 1969), 120. 4 Quintilian, Inst. Ora., I, i, 1. 5 Cf. Y. Sayegh and W. Dennis, "The Effects of Supplementary Experiences Upon the Behavioral Development of Infants in Institutions," Child Development, XXXVI (1965), 89-90. 6 Quintilian, Inst. Ora., I, ii, 28. 7 Robert C. Craig, The Psychology of Learning in the Classroom (N.Y., 1966), 7; CF also Frederick T. Tyler, "Readiness," Encyclopedia of Educational Reserach (4th ed., N.Y., 1969), 1062-1068. 8 Quintilian, Inst. Ora., I, i, 15-16. 9 Carleton Washburne, "Ripeness," Progressive Education, XIII (1936), 125- 130. ,0 Helen Heffernan, "Significance of Kindergarten Education," Childhood Education, XXXVI (1960), 313-319. "Jerome S. Bruner, The Process of Education (Cambridge, Mass., 1960). 12 Marian Monroe and Bernice Rogers, Foundations for Reading: Informal Pre-Reading Procedures (N.Y., 1964); Robert L. Hillecch, "Pre-Reading Skills in Kindergarten: A Second Report," Elementary School Journal, LXV (1965), 312- 317; Marjorie Hunt Sutton, "Readiness for Reading at the Kindergarten Level," Reading Teacher, XVII (1964), 234-239. 13 Quintilian, Inst. Ora., II, vii, 1. CF. also Plato's Republic, Book II. 14 Leona E. Tyler, "Individual Difference," Encyclopedia of Educational Research (4th ed., N.Y., 1969), 639-644. 15 Quintilian, Inst. Ora., II, viii, 3-5. 16 Robert M. Gagne, "Some New Views of Learning and Instruction," Phi Delta Kappan, LI, 9 (May 1970), 471. 17 Quintilian, Inst. Ora., I, ii, 21. 18 D. Auble and E. V. Mech., "Quantitative Studies of Verbal Reinforcement in Classroom Situations. I: Differential Reinforcement Related to the Frequency of Error and Correct Responses," Journal of Psychology, XXXV (1953, 307-312.) 19 Quintilian, Inst. Ora., I, i, 20. 20 Cf. G. N. Cantor and C. C. Spikes, "Effects of Non-reinforced Trials on Discrimination Learning in Preschool Children," Journal of Experimental Pst- chology, XLVII (1954), 256-258; H. W. Stevenson, et al., "Discrimination Learning in Children as a Function of Motive-incentive Conditions," Psychological Reports, V (1959), 95-98. 21 B. F. Skinner, "The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching," Harvard Educational Review, XXIV (Spring 1954), 86-97. 22 Everett John Kircher, "Philosophy of Education Directive Doctrine or Liberal Discipline?," Educational Theory, V, 4 (Oct. 1955), 220-229; Power, 372ff. 23 John S. Brubacher, Modern Philosophies of Education (4th ed., NY., 1969), 313-318. 24 Edouard Delebecque, Essai sur la vie de Xenophon (Paris 1957), 384; Jean Luccioni, Les idees politiques et sociales de Xenophon (Paris 1948), 213. 25 Jean Guehenno, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, II: 1758-1778 (NY., 19660, 15ff. 26 Cf. Thomas Green, "A Typology of the Teaching Concept," Studies in Philosophy and Education, III (1964), 284-319; E. S. Maccia and G. S. Maccia, Development of Educational Theory Derived from Three Educational Theory Models (Columbus, O., 1966). "Daniel Bell in Burnham Putnam Beckwith, The Next 500 Years: Scientific Predictions of Major Social Trends (NY. 1967), viii. 28 Beckwith, The Next 500 Years, 9-12. 122 THE U. S. BANK AND THE TARIFF: A JACKSONIAN DILEMMA Dr. John E. Simpson A dramatic reformulation of America's old political order in the second decade of the nineteenth century brought to power a new species of ruler Andrew Jackson of Tennessee. The colorful, crude, pseudo aristocratic war hero personified many of the nascent republic's virtues, aspirations, and shortcomings. Jackson truly symbolized his age. 1 At the same time his ascendancy with the presidential election of 1828 heralded a unique new political era. Not only did Old Hickory revive and marshal into his column important segments of Thomas Jefferson's old coalition, but he also fathered a a heretofore entirely unknown set of power brokers. For the first time political leadership became the pur- view of non-elitist elements, and government service opened its door to the commoner. Now administrative efficiency, bureaucratic regulations, and rationality crept in to reorder Washington officialdom. Offices once designed for patrician dilet- tantes were now molded for ordinary men of ability. The passing of this old government ethic drastically differentiated Jacksonian Democracy from aristocratic Jeffersonian Republicanism. America's first modern political party was born. 2 Cunning, adroit Senator Martin Van Buren of New York gave birth to Jackson's potent coalition. And a diverse coalition it was. Van Buren had skillfully played upon the fears and am- bitions of all geographic sections to catapult Jackson into power. 3 One of these, the South, held a preeminent position. All of the slave states with the exceptions of Maryland and Delaware went for Jackson in 1828 their price: Van Buren and his presidential protege had promised to get the tariff lowered and to institute a benign Indian policy (from the perspective of certain land-hungry white Southerners), and agreed to block federally- financed inter- nal improvements. In part Jackson would keep these campaign pledges, as the Maysville Veto and Georgia's removal of the Indians revealed. But tariff revision disappointed some. The Tariff of 1832, replacing the highly protectionist "Tariff of Abominations" (1828) did not lower the schedules sufficiently to satisfy Dixie ex- tremists. Some, including John C. Calhoun, broke with Jackson. As if to compound the problem, the President's veto of the United States Bank re-charter in 1832 alienated many Southerners.In- fluential politicos like John M. Berrien, Hugh Lawson White, and John Tyler turned against "King Andrew." 4 Crisis confronted the Democratic coalition. If it failed to muster its forces in the South, Jackson stood to lose his bid for reelection in 1832. In Savannah one of the south Atlantic coast's most effective newspapers took up the cudgel for Old Hickory. "The opponents of General Jackson stigmatize his veto message as a 'tissue of sophistries,' a 'flimsy production, the appeal of ignorance 123 to ignorance,' (we of the commune vulgus) who are in favor of General Jackson, 'touch our caps' to the New York American for the compliment) 'a shameful state paper, an imbecile production' and etc., etc., and yet they devote columns of their presses to its refutation," the editor of the Savannah Daily Georgian wrote. "If this message [his veto address] will hurt General Jackson in demonstrating his hostility to the U.S. Bank, surely he is entitled to more courtesy than he has received, as nothing but sincerity of heart could have influenced him in such a case." 5 Later the paper pounced on a northern religious periodical for taking issue with Jackson's bank veto: "We regard this as an attempt to enlist religious feeling on the side of party politics. The Philadelphian is a paper established to promote religion, to teach the way of salvation to mankind." 6 Unfortunately, these fulminations tended to fall flat. A metropolitan commercial center like Savannah har- bored many moneyed individuals who approved of the United States Bank's sound, conservative policies. To them Jackson's ap- peal to folk prejudices harked of rank demagoguery. Another issue must be found. At first the tariff seemed to provide an alternative. The Tariff of 1832, substantially lowering the rates to the level of 1824, was designed to provide some protection to northern in- dustrialists while meeting major anti-protectionist demands of Southerners. The paucity of manufacturing in the cotton states almost guaranteed a favorable response. But events decreed otherwise. Jackson's tariff bill failed to mollify free-traders. Only Henry Clay and his adherents in the South proto- Whigs heartily approved, while insisting on somewhat higher duties. Extremist Democrats cried treason. These followers of Calhoun wanted a tariff for revenue only. Staunch Savannah Jacksonians echoed the Daily Georgian's sentiments: "Whatever may be the opinion of Henry Clay in general, no one can deny him to be a most consummate intriguer. He has contrived with admirable skill to identify himself with the manufacturing nabobs of the North and they cling to him with all the devotion and energy which the most powerful of human passions, self interest, can inspire. Upon him and his fortune hang the fate of their illegal game. They know that should he succeed the door of future compromise on the tariff would be shut and they flatter themselves that they would then have the whole South lying at their mercy and existing only by their tolerance. But let them beware lest they should be served like Franklin's lit- tle boy with the apples, and lest in grasping at more, that which is in their already full hands may slip from them." 7 Georgia's confused reaction to the Tariff of 1832, while failing to give much encouragement to Whig presidential can- didate Clay, evoked considerable concern in Jackson's camp. The state had gone overwhelmingly for the Tennessean in 1828 and appeared safe for 1832 until Congress, largely under the President's guidance, enacted the tariff bill in July 1832. 124 During the first three decades of the nineteenth century Georgia possessed no true political parties. Instead the state had long witnessed a bitter internecine struggle between two amor- phous and ideologically almost indistinct factions which had identified previously with Jefferson's Republican party and had since generally swung into Jackson's column. Both factions were highly personal in nature, each adhering to an ambitious, charismatic individual who had no philosophic ax to grind. One element gathered around George M. Troup, sometime U. S. Re- presentative, Senator, and Governor. Its most prominent par- tisans tended to be planters and affluent merchants from Virginia and Maryland. Some had voted Federalist in the early days all conceived themselves to be socially superior to the masses. A disproportionate number lived in and around Savannah. The other political sect idolized General John Clark, an enigmatic frontiersman who eventually migrated farther south to Florida. Clark supporters represented humbler backwoods folk. Most had filtered into Georgia from the Carolina piedmont via Augusta. 8 State leaders of both factions traditionally met to caucus and revel each August at the Athens commencement of Franklin College (University of Georgia). In the late summer of 1832 a deadly miasma permeated the political atmosphere. Jackson had just signed the new tariff measure. Many Troupers, led by William H. Crawford, John M. Berrien, and Augustin M. Clayton at the graduation exercises, called upon Georgia to break with the President over the tariff. But Senator John Forsyth and a vocal rump of other Troup men hurried to Jackson's defense. Clarkites tended to do likewise; they believed the roughhewn Chief Executive, one of their own, could do no wrong. These events on the eve of the presidential election boded ill for Georgia Jacksonians. Old Hickory's actions had to be explained to the satisfaction of disgruntled citizens. Again Savannah's leading Troupers entered the foray. The Daily Georgian took a moderate position. Somewhat inconsisten- tly it lauded anti-tariff sentiment while declaring that South Carolina's plan to pronounce the federal law null and void smacked of insanity. "Nullification" was not the answer. Many southern congressmen had voted for the tariff including For- syth because it was "the best of a bad bargain." Others had done so in "a sincere desire to save the Union," the editor stated. 9 Still the Georgia nullification movement burgeoned. Jackson's tariff policy hurt him with extremist, state rights- oriented Troupers, and his veto of the bank bill irked some moderate to conservative Troup supporters. Forsyth and the Daily Georgian were trapped in the middle. As a result of this split the state's political complexion shifted. While most radicals were as yet unwilling to totally renounce Jackson and support Clay for President, they seemed ready to sit out the election. Eventually the factious Troup followers chose two slates of presidential electors. One which included William B. Bulloch of 125 Savannah was committed to Jackson and Van Buren for Vice- President (Jackson's handpicked successor). The extremists raised their own slate which was halfheartedly pledged to Jackson and P. P. Barbour for Vice-President. As polling time drew nearer Jackson and Van Buren chieftans changed their tac- tics and redoubled efforts to win the extremists over. "If Clay and [John] Sergeant are elected we know they will take sides with the missionaries. We believe the Cherokee country will not be settled without the flow of blood," announced the Daily Georgian. Savannah's Troup organ had reached the lowest common denominator of public appeal. The banking issue sparked little interest along the coast; the tariff problem was em- barrassing. Only the Indian question remained. Few Troupers disagreed with the need to remove the Cherokees from their an- cestral north Georgia lands. Jackson would look the other way while the state did as she pleased with the redman. 10 On election day the wisdom of this pragmatic strategy became apparent. In Chatham County the Jackson-Van Buren ticket received 264 votes to a paltry six for the extremist Troup slate. Partisans of the latter element had either "gone fishing" or had switched sides. 11 The trend held throughout the state. Nullification Troupers lacked the muscle to alter the outcome. Jackson and Van Buren swept Georgia and the country. But unlike voters elsewhere, Georgians had not (with the exception of Clarkites) concentrated on the standard national issues of banking and the tariff. Instead Indian removal, a purely local question, predominated. White Georgians, regardless of political persuasion, would soon redeem Jackson's pledge through a for- cible expulsion of the Cherokees from the state. FOOTNOTES '. J. W. Ward, Andrew Jackson, Symbol for an Age (New York, 1955). 2. Lynn L. Marshall, "The Strange Stillbirth of the Whig Party," American Historical Review, LXXII (January, 1967), 445-468. 3. Richard H. Brown, "The Missouri Crisis, Slavery, and the Politics of Jacksonianism," South Atlantic Quarterly, LXV (1966), 55-72. 4. Glyndon G. Van Deusen, The Jacksonian Era, 1828-1848 (New York, 1959), pp. 70-91. 5. Savannah Daily Georgian, July 28, 1832. 6. Ibid.; August 4, 1832, ibid. 7. July 24, 1832, ibid. 8. E. Merton Coulter, A History of Georgia (Chapel Hill, 1833), pp. 225-230. 9. Savannah Daily Georgian, July 31, 1832. 10. November 7, 1832, ibid. 11. Ibid. Within a few years the Troup and Clark parties disappeared. Most Troup men went into the newly-formed State Rights party which stressed, naturally, state sovereignty. Most Clarkites then organized the opposing Union party committed to Jacksonian politics. By 1840 these purely local organizations had merged with the national political structure. State Righters generally drifted into the Whig camp while the majority of Union men went into the Democratic party. 126 LARGE ANGLE OSCILLATIONS OF A SIMPLE PENDULUM A COMPUTER ORIENTED EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH By V. Anantha Narayanan Professor of Physics P. O. Box 20473 Savannah State College Savannah, Georgia 31404 And Winfred Verreen* and Randolph Powell* INTRODUCTION It is well known that as long as the arc over which a simple pendulum swings is very small the time of vibration T is given by T = 2ar.(l/g)l/2 (i) where 1 is length of the pendulum and g is the acceleration due to gravity. It is customary in the undergraduate experimental physics manuals to caution the students doing this experiment to limit the angle of swing to be within a few degrees. If the angle through which the pendulum swings is greater than a few degrees, the period observed will be appreciably greater than the period for small amplitude vibrations. A correction needs to be applied for this effect. This is due to the assumption of small amplitude, based on which only formula (1) holds good, as a first ap- proximation. The theory of the vibrations of a simple pendulum with large amplitudes shows that T=2ar(l/g)l/2 .[1 + l/4Sin 2 ( 0/2) + 9/64Sin 4 ( 6/2) + 225/2304Sin6( e 2) + ...]-(2) Where 6 half the angular amplitude i.e. the angle from the vertical to either extreme end of vibration. The derivation of this formula is dealt with in advanced Mechanics, or Properties of Matter textbooks or advanced Practical Physics Manuals. 1 COMPUTER ANALYSIS In order to determine the feasibility of doing an experiment to verify the formula (2), we made a computer analysis of the problem. The program is given in Appendix 1. The program is general enough so that calculations could be made for any length, any swing angle and any value of the acceleration due to gravity and for any number of vibrations counted. A trial run of the program developed is given in Appendix II. It is seen with just 30 vibrations counted the time difference between the swing with practically zero angle and the swing with 40 degrees as half the maximum swing is nearly 2.06 seconds. This is very easily measurable at our laboratory where times correct to 1/10 of a second can be easily measured with an ordinary stopwatch. *Students enrolled in Physics 499 research course during the spring quarter, 1973. 127 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS We set up a pendulum of length 120.8 .1 cms. The half angle of the swing which started at 60 at the beginning of the ex- periment, gradually reduced to about 40 after 30 vibrations. The experiments were repeated 6 times and the period was found on the average to be 2.308 second. When the swing was practically zero (less than 3) the experiment gave an average value of the period as 2.206 seconds. Thus the time difference (AT) between these two cases for 30 vibrations is about 3.06 seconds. We plugged in these values in our computer program with the most probable value of g = 979.503 cm/s 2 and got for 6 50 (average of 40 and 60) AT**3.29 seconds. Also when 6 = 4, AT = 0.002 seconds. The angles measured experimentally will be correct to only 2, lengths by .1 cm and assumed g value can be off by .1 cm/s 2 . The computer estimates for these deviations in these quantities run in the extreme to .22 - .34 seconds (for 6 = 402, and = /60 2), about 0.002 seconds each for possible uncertainties in length and g values. The g value was assumed from a knowledge of the latitude and the known variation of the g value with latitude. 2 Also the time measured by stopwatch will be accurate only to .1 second. In view of these factors the agreement between the observed and predicted values (3.06 against 3.29 seconds) is to be con- sidered very good. CONCLUSIONS There is a good agreement with experimental and predicted time differences for zero angle and large angle oscillations of the simple pendulum. A computer program has been developed by one of us (V.A.N.) which greatly facilitates any general calculation based on this problem making a wide variety of variations in ex- perimental conditions. The results and computer runs presented here will give the students greater appreciation of the reasoning behind restricting the angle of swing to within a few degrees in the conventional simple pendulum experiments. REFERENCES 1. A Textbook of Practical Physics - W. Watson-Longmans Green and Co. 2. Handbook of Physics and Chemistry - Chemical Rubber Book Co. 128 APPENDIX I Computer Program 1000 Print "Mechanics: Program 5000" 1001 Print "Effect of Swing Ang. on Per." 1002 Print "Author: Dr. V. Anantha Narayanan 1003 Print 1005 Print "Program Investigates the Effect of Swing Angle" 1006 Print "On the Period of Vibration of a Pendulum" 1009 Print 1101 Print 1110 Print "For Further Details Contact: Dr. V. Anantha Narayanan" 1111 Print "P.O. Box No. 20473, Savannah State College, Savannah" 1116 Print "Ga, 31404. Tel No. 912-354-5717 Ext 318" 1117 Print "Office Room No. 212 New Sci. Bldg., Savannah State Coll." 1118 Print "Home Phone No. 912 234 6389" 1119 Print 1131 Print 1150 Print "Date March 29, 1973" 1170 Print "After? Give A Value for L(=The LengthO, G(=The Ace Due" 1171 Print "To Gra), M(=The Lower Val of Ang), N(=The Upper Value" 1172 Print "Of the Ang), and S(=The step in which the ang increases)" 1173 Print "And R(=The number of full vibrations to be counted)" 1174 Input L, G, M, N, S, R 1175 Print 1180 Print "Len of Pend = ";L 1181 Print "Ace Due to Gra = ";G 1182 Print "Low Ang Val = ";M 1183 Print "Hig Ang Val = ";N 1184 Print "No of vibs counted = ";R 1190 Print "T=Time of vib for F deg swing" 1191 Print "Ti=Time for zero deg swing" 1192 Print "T3=T-Ti" 1193 Print "T4=No of vibs counted x T3" 1198 Rem T4 is time dif for R vibns and T3 is time dif for I vib 1199 Print 1200 Print "Ang"; Tab(12); "T"; Tab(24); "Ti"; Tab(36); "T3"; Tab(48); "T4' 1800 Let P=3. 1415926536 2270 For F=M to N Step S 2280 Let F2 = F*.5 2290 Let F3 = F2*0.017453292519943 3000 Let S3=Sin(F3) 4000 Let S4 = (1/4)*S3**2 4010 Let S5 = (9/64)*S3**4 4020 Let S6 = (225/2304)*S3**6 4040 Let T=(2*P)*(L/G)**.5*(1 + S4 + S5 + S6) 4060 Let Ti = 2*P*(L/G)**.5 4070 Let T3=T-Ti 4071 Let T4=R*T3 5000 Print F;Tab(12); T; Tab(24); Ti; Tab(36); T3; Tab(48); T4 6000 Next F 6001 Goto 1170 7000 Stop 7005 Gosub 1170 8000 Return 9999 End 129 APPENDIX II Sample Run of a Program Mechanics: Program 5000 Effect of Swing Ang. on Per. Author: Dr. V. Anantha Narayanan Program investigates the effect of swing angle on the period of vibration of a pen- dulum For further details contact: Dr. V. Anantha Narayanan P. O. Box No. 20473, Savannah State College, Savannah Ga., 31404. Tel. No. 912354-5717 Ext. 318 Office Room No. 212 New Sci. Bldg., Savannah State Coll. Home Phone No. 912234-6389 Date March 29, 1973 After? Give a value for L(=The Length), G(=The Ace Due To Gra), M(=The Lower Val of Ang), N(=The Upper Value of the Ang), and S(=The Step in which the Ang Increases) And R(=The Number of full vibrations to be counted) ? 120, 988, 0, 100, 10, 30 Len of Pend =120 Ace Due to Gra = 988 Low Ang Val = Hig Ang Val = 100 No of Vibs Counted = 30 T = Time of Vib for F Deg Swing Ti = Time for Zero Deg Swing T3 = T-Ti T4 = No of Vibs Counted x T3 Ang T 2.18974 10 2.19391 20 2.20653 30 2.22785 40 2.25833 50 2.29855 60 2,34918 70 2.41078 80 2.48358 90 2.56717 100 2.66024 Ti T3 T4 2.18974 2.18974 4.17624E-3 .125287 2.18974 .016793 .50379 2.18974 3.81172E-2 1.14352 2.18974 6.85936E-2 2.05781 2.18974 .108817 3,2645 2.18974 .159446 4.78337 2.18974 .221044 6.63131 2.18974 .293838 8.81515 2.18974 .37743 11.3229 2.18974 .470501 14.115 130 REFRACTION IN A PRISM - A COMPUTER SIMULATED EXPERIMENT TO CALCULATE THE ANGLES OF DEVIATION AND TO PLOT THE I-D CURVE By V. Anantha Narayanan Professor of Physics P. 0. Box 20473 Savannah State College Savannah, Georgia 31404 INTRODUCTION The refraction in a prism is one of the most commonly done experiments in the general physics laboratory sessions. However, it is a time consuming experiment, especially, if sufficient data have to be collected to plot a curve of the angle of incidence against the angle of deviation. The purpose of this note is to describe a computer program that has been developed by the author. It is in Basic language and employs the time sharing com- puting facilities available at SSC campus, for its execution. Savannah State College has remote terminals connected to the CDC 6400 computer at the University of Georgia in Athens. A table of data is extracted from the program and the data is used to plot the graph between angles of incidence and angles of deviation. The program is versatile enough so that, for one familiar with programming, with slight modifications wide variety of experiments by altering refractive indices, Prism angle etc. could be simulated. FORMULAS In Figure I is given the path of the light ray through the prism. The various symbols for angles used in Figure I, and in the computer program are explained in Table I. It is well known that the following relations hold good for refraction in a Prism. U= refractive index = Sin I = Sin(I3). . . .(1) Sin(Rl) Sin Q A = (Rl) + Q (2) and I + (13) = A + D (3) COMPUTER ANALYSIS In Appendix I is given a partial computer program. The sub- routine that plots 13 vs D is not included due to space limitation. In appendix II is given a trial run of the program. In appendix III is given a computer plot of 13 vs D. In the author's general physics 202 classes, this program was used to (i) simulate the refraction in a prism experiement and/or use the program to check the experimental results and (ii) to provide individual numerical problems for students to be solved in written tests. Both these approaches were very well received and appreciated by the students. Also (iii) the student's perception of the idea of 131 minimum deviation is greatly aided both by the tabular data and by the I-D curve. SUMMARY A computer simulated experiment dealing with refraction in a Prism has been developed and class tested successfully at Savannah State College in my physics classes. FIGURE I REFRACTION IN A PRISM 132 TABLE I A = Prism angle in degree Al = Prism angle in radians I = Angle of incidence on Face 1 in degrees II = Angle of incidence on Face 1 in radians Rl = Angle of refraction on Face 1 in degrees R = Angle of refraction on Face 1 in radians Q = Angle of refraction on Face 2 in degrees R2 = Angle of refraction on Face 2 in radians 13 = Angle of incidence on Face 2 in degrees 12 = Angle of incidence on Face 2 in radians D = Angle of deviation in degrees Dl = Angle of deviation in radians APPENDIX I A partial listing of the Computer Program (The I-D plot subroutine is excluded due to space limitation) 10 Print "Optics: Program 8000" 20 Print "Ang of Dev for Var Ang of Inc and a Plot of 30 Print "I VS D" 40 Print "Author: Dr. V. Anantha Narayanan" 50 Print 60 Print 80 Print "For further details contact: Dr. V. Anantha Narayanan" 90 Print "P. O. Box No. 20473, Savannah State College, Savannah" 100 Print "Ga, 31404. Tel. No. 912-354-5717 Ext. 318" 110 Print "Office Room No. 212 New Sci. Bldg., Savannah State Coll." 120 Print "Home Phone No. 912-234-6389" 150 Print "After? Give a value for U = (The Refractive Index of 160 Print "The Material of the Prism)" 400 Print "This Program Calculates the Angle of Deviation" 410 Print "In a Prism as a Function of Angle of Incidence" 478 Print 479 Print 480 Print "This Program Was Written by Dr. V. Anantha Narayanan" 500 Print "On April 10, 1972" 520 Print 560 Print 600 Rem for Simplicity an Equilateral Prism Is Used 700 Input U 750 Print "Ref Ind of the Prism =": U 801 Print "Inc 1 Deg"; Tab(12); "Ref 1 Deg"; Tab(32); "Inc 2 Deg"; Tab(48); 802 Print "Ref 2 Deg"; Tab(60); "Dev Ang Deg" 810 Rem I is the Angle of incidence on Face 1 in Degrees 811 For I = 25 to 89 Step 4 850 Let II = .01745329251994*1 880 Rem II is I converted to radians 900 Let P=Sin(Il) 950 Let Q = P/U 990 Rem Q is Sin(P) Where R is refraction angle on face one 1000 Rem in radians 1020 Let R = Atn(Q/SQR(l-Q**2)) 1050 Let Rl = 57.295779513082*R 1090 Rem Rl is R converted in degrees 1100 Let A = 60 1200 Rem A is the prism angle in degrees 1240 Let AI = A*.01745329251994 1300 Rem Al is prism angle converted in radians 1400 Let R2 = Al-R 133 1500 Rem R2 is the angle of refraction on face two in radians 1600 Let Q = 57.295779513082*R2 1700 Rem Q is the angle of refraction on face two in degrees 1800 Let S2 = U*Sin(R-) 1900 Let 12 = Atn(S2/Sqr(l-S2**2)) 2000 Rem R2 is the angle of refraction on face two in radians 2100 Let S2 = U*Sin (R 2 ) 2200 Let S2= Sin (12) 2300 Let 12 = Atn(S2/Sqr(l-S2**2)) 2400 Rem S2 is Sin(I2) 2500 Rem S2 is Sin(I2) 2600 Let 12 = Atn(S2/Sqr(l-S2**2)) 2800 Let 13 = 12*57.295779513082 2801 Let Dl = I1 + I2-A1 2802 Let D = Dl*57.295779513082. 3100 Rem D is ang of deviation in degs and Dl is in radians 3200 Print I; Tab(12); Rl; Tab(32); 13; Tab(48); Q; Tab(60); D 3400 Print 3600 Next I 3700 Stop 3800 Return 5000 R em **********Plot Subroutine APPENDIX II Sample run of the Tabular Data Optics: Program 8000 Ang of dev for var ang of inc and a plot of I vs D Author: Dr. V. Anantha Narayanan For further details contact: Dr. V. Anantha Narayanan, P. O. Box No. 20473, Savannah State College, Savannah, Ga., 31404. Tel. No. 912354-5717 Ext. 318, Office Room No. 212, New Sci. Bldg., Savannah State Coll., Home Phone No. 912234-6389. After? Give a Value for U = (The refractive index of the material of the Prism) This program calculates the angle of deviation in a prism as a function of angle of incidence This program was written by Dr. V. Anantha Narayanan on April 10, 1972 ? 1.4563 Ref Ind of the Prism = 1.4563 Inc 1 Deg Ref 1 Deg Inc 2 Deg Ref 2 Deg Dev ang Deg 25 16.8699 84.629 43.1301 49.629 29 19.4452 71.2357 40.5548 40.2357 33 21.9618 63.8123 38.0382 36.8123 37 24.4091 57.947 35.5909 34.947 41 26.7756 52.9334 33.2244 33.9334 45 29.0485 48.5032 30.9515 33.5032 49 31.2141 44.5285 28.7859 33.5285 53 33.2573 40.9433 26.7427 33.9433 57 35.1621 37.7142 24.8379 34.7142 61 36.9112 34.8269 23.0888 35.8269 65 38.4869 32.2792 21.5131 37.2792 69 39.8711 30.0768 20.1289 39.0768 73 41.0462 28.2301 18.9538 41.2301 77 41.9955 26.752 18.0045 43.752 81 42.7045 25.6554 17.2955 46.6554 85 43.1616 24.9515 16.8384 49.9515 89 43.359 24.6483 16.641 53.6483 134 APPENDIX HI COMPUTER PLOT OF I VS D Horizontal Range 33.5032 (.402902) 53.6483 Vertical Range 89 (1.28) 25 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 + ___, H \----i 1 H 1 1 1- [-/ 100 - ^ D( = Angle of Deviation) * 98 96 - s ' 94 92 90 - S 86 84 82 80 78 76 74 72 70 68 66 - 64 - 62 - 60 - 58 - 56 - 54 - 52 - 50 - h 48 - / 46 - / 44 - * 42 - ' 40 - I 38 - * 36 - 34 - ' oc - * 30 - ^ 28 .- 26 - \ 24 - \ 22 - > 20 - 18 - 16 - > / 2, / / / 12 - \ 10 - 8 - * 6 - ^ 4 - >^^ - i _| 1 ^ 1 1 h 1 1 J P". 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 135 BLACK POLITICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHIES: PANACEA FOR A RACE Hanes Walton, Jr. Isaiah Mclver After every social, economic, and political revolution, after every insurrection, after every uprising, after every riot, after every social movement, after every significant demonstration, af- ter every significant expression of mass indignation by in- dividuals within a society, especially American society, there is an outpouring of tracts, treaties, books, pamphlets, articles, series of speeches, talks, etc., of the behind-the-scene happening by par- ticipants, leaders, in-the-know followers and the theoretician of the new passed social or political happening. The books and tracts give the non-participant, the casual observer, the historian, the Johnny come lately and sometimes the little in the know par- ticipant a "true" and supposedly "accurate" picture of the real decision makers, the real errors, the real problem and the real victories. These after-the-facts-treatises tell us all that the on-the-spot newspapermen missed, the on-the-spot television men failed to record and the facts which even the most trained and skilled analyst failed to see. In a word, the first-hand accounts are cherished in America, for in our society, like most others, the hero who lives to tell his story is much revered and looked up to. Hence, the author of the first-hand accounts is not only the hero of a pageantry which has passed but it is possible to pick up from these people who seemed to have been in the vanguard of our society i.e., way ahead of their time some insights of the future. In the final analysis, they all tell us in the dwindling pages of their story what we might expect in the future. In short, the insiders are expected to give us solutions for our problems a panacea to cure all. Like the slave narratives they: 1. Describe the sufferings, struggles, and ascendency of one person whose experiences are representative of many others in a similar predicament. 2. They generally begin at a point where the person is suffering from oppression; there is an effort to escape; there may be conversion; and finally there is attainment of a promised land in either the secular or spiritual sense. 3. Have plots of struggles that may be on a slave plan- tation, in a jail, in a segregated society, or consist of a series of adventures anywhere in the world. 4. May be stories or narratives of courageous persons who are devoted, unselfish, courageous, revered, and 136 utilize their vision and perseverance to lift themselves to positions of leadership and power. 5. Inspire others, are treatises on virtue, are odysseys, serve as moral guides, point the way to success, is the self-portrait of one totally committed to the achievement of an objective, and tend to parallel tales of paradise lost and paradise regained. 6. Are records of one's experiences which are designed to attack evil institutions, evil practices, and evil ideologies. 7. Are generally evolutionary in nature, filled with drama, filled with the miraculous, are thrilling, are ex- citing, and almost always depict someone emerging from some humble position. 1 So it is in every epoch making period in history the first hand accounts that are in many cases also autobiographic in that they give us the background information of our hero and what made him be ahead of his time and the masses. Politicians, diplomats, military leaders, Indian chiefs, secretaries of significant public figures, wives of great men, etc., all take to the pen to correct or exact images for the muse of history. And while much exaggeration and mythmaking goes into these accounts, something of value might be plummed from the prescribed panacea the correct road for the future. The slave narratives and Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery served as landmarks for the future personal memoirs to be written by Black Americans. Even though many considered Washington's memoirs to be a fantastic example of social Darwinism in operation and as an example of a slave boy who had suffered every humiliation possible before achieving world fame, actually, Washington's autobiography is a slave narrative in the classic tradition. 2 From the slave narratives came the spirit, the vitality, the vision, the fatalism, and the optimism expressed in autobiographies written by Black Americans. From John Saffin to Angela Davis, consciously or unconsciously, contemporary writers of autobiographies reveal in their writings a profound in- debtedness to the slave narratives. The genre began with John Saffin's Adam Negro Tryall in 1703 and has continued in Angela Davis' If They Come in the Morning. 2 After and even during the Black social revolution of the fif- ties and sixties the accounts of Black leaders began to appear for Arne Bontemps, Great Slave Narratives (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), pp. vii, viii, xv, xviii. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., p. xi. John F. Bayliss (ed.), Black Slave Narratives (New York: Collier- Macmillan, 1970), p. 9. 137 public consumption. Martin Luther King wrote Stride Toward Freedom in 1957 which offered non-violence civil disobedience as a tool for solving the problem facing Black Americans. 4 However, King went on to put his theory in practice and became a major force in the revolution of the sixties. But in 1966, he was challenged and a new theory, approach and theoreticians were born in the wake of Black Power. A leading Black Power advocate, H. Rap Brown, wrote Die Nigger Die (New York: Dial Press, 1969) as a political autobiography in which he sought to show Blacks the way to freedom. His panacea for the race was violent and total revolution. He writes, "Racism stems from an attitude and it can't be destroyed under the capitalist system. You can't fight at- titudes . . . Black people have always dealt with attitudes and at- titudes always boil down to an individual thing . . . [But] Because most of the laws in this country are but an attitude, not justice, not equality, revolution is necessary, (p. 124). He also writes, "America is the ultimate denial of the theory of man's continuous evolution. This country represents everything that humans have suffered from, their very affliction . . . For Black people it is not a question of leaving or separating . . . We know better than anyone that the manic that is American must be destroyed." (p. 135) Rap concludes his panacea for the race on the notes that "politics in this country is meaningless to Black people" and that Black Americans "hold the key to liberation around the world," for they are "in the belly of the monster (America) which controls the world." If Rap decries politics as a tool of liberation and exhalts violent revolution, Black Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm in Unbought and Unbossed (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1970) sees exactly opposite to the way that Rap argues it. Her panacea for Black freedom and liberation is politics ala the Black politician. She states, "By affirming and fighting for the values that are life sustaining, black politicians can become the vanguard of the forces that will save this country, if it is to be saved." (p. 149) To Black militants, she queries, "What is the sense of shooting, burning, killing? What will it buy? All they have to do is press a button in Washington and every black neighborhood will be surrounded with troops and bayonets. What are you going to do against the massive forces of the government?" (p. 144) Then she tells Black militants that one must fight within the system. "There is no other place to fight . . . There's no other way for us to survive because we really don't have anything." (p. 144) The goal for Black people then is to change the system. "Shake it 4 For weakness in this solution see H. Walton, Jr., The Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Corp., 1971). 138 up, make it change in order for it to survive. It's not necessary to dump it, only to make it work." (p. 132) However, before she closes, Congresswoman Chisholm indicates that "Education . . . will not be enough, even a college education." (p. 140) If Chisholm promoted Black politics and politicians and berated education as a panacea for the race, Benjamin E. Mays in his book, Born to Rebel (New York: Charles Scribners, 1971), was of the opposite opinion. Mays argued that educational ex- cellence and offensive non-violence would be "the best ways by which to improve Negro-white relations" in the future, (p. 320) As Mays perceives it, during seventy years and earlier, "no program has ever been proposed that has produced a solution to this problem which has dominated the thinking of black people and white people over three centures." (p. 300) Yet as does his book, he wrote what he thought would be the answer, the solution, the panacea to man's inhumanity to man. He writes "At Morehouse College I had tried to develop an academic com- munity that was supra culture, supra race, supra religion, and supra nation. I tried to build this kind of college because I believed then, as I do now, that unless we succeed in building this same kind of world mankind's existence on earth is indeed precarious." (p. 310) In short, a supra man, devoid of the prejudices and discrimination that abound in the masses. A man so learned and aloof that he overcomes all the ideologies that plague ordinary mortals. Mays gave politics or political activism no major position or role in his construct for the future. His panacea was almost devoid of politics and political activism. However, Charles Evers in Evers (New York: World Publishing Company, 1971) elevated coalition politics and political activism as the panacea for the race. He writes in the last page of his autobiography "We've proven here in Mississippi what does work: brotherhood, patience, courage, firmness of purpose, organization, the ballot box, intelligence." (p. 195) He also states, "We must have the con- tinuation of the Voting Rights Act [beyond 1975]. If you (whites) defeat that, then you're (whites) really going to have trouble in this country because we will not have any hope. Our hope is through voting ... If you take that away from us, we're through." (p. 138.) Before concluding, Evers counsels the militants that the extremist groups will never have political success. And political success is what counts. The Panthers will have no more success than the Klan did. For Evers, like Chisholm, violent revolution and education did not play much of a role in their future con- structs. And for Rap and Mays, politics didn't play much of a role in their future. Each leader put forth hs own panacea. Cleaver's Soul on Ice (New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1968) is a collection of essays. Like Brown, Cleaver discovered himself somewhat late in life. His autobiography represents an intellectual, psychological and political struggle. He is by no means a "proper Negro." He is a creator of myths and promises, 139 but is not a Nihilist like many of his contemporaries who share his revolutionary zeal more so than his sense of history. He does tear the system apart, but does suggest some ideas on how it should be restructured. His dilemmas are as intense and as in- soluble as those which confronted his contemporaries and his odyssey is both spiritual and intellectual. He wrote his autobiography in Folsom State Prison in California and ex- presses in it Christian grief and disappointment, Christian resignation, Christian messianic toughness, and Christian hope. Malcolm X was one of his heroes and his death required of Cleaver the same need to frantically reorient himself as when a prison guard surreptitiously ripped his Esquire paper bride from its pedestal, tore her into small bits, dropped the pieces into the commode, and suggested that he get a black female as a pin-up. After the pin-up incident and release from prison, Cleaver saw the error of his ways, began cursing white Americans, and sought revenge against white society by consciously, deliberately, willfully, and methodically sexually defining white women. Until he was placed in prison a second time, Cleaver said he delighted 5 in defying and trampling upon white man's law. And just as the Esquire pin-up served as his surrogate sex queen, the rape of white women was considered both delightful and insurrectionary. It appears that Cleaver did not rid himself of the white apotheosis until his second stay in prison. In Soul on Ice, he appears to be more of a humanist than racist. He is concerned with injustice and appeared somewhat op- timistic. He placed himself between disenchanted youths, em- phathized with their existential condition, and stood between two antagonists when he wrote: There is in American today a generation of white youth that is truly worthy of a black man's respect ... if young whites can change, then there is hope for America. 6 Cleaver accommodated, was promoted from solitary confinement for Muslim agitation, and was placed in a cell in Folsom's honor unit and began writing and reading so as to retain his sanity. He saw blacks as comprising a colony within America and suggest that: If the American Negro is to eliminate white Colonialism, he must organize. The twenty-three million blacks in the United States as a Trojan horse, capable of accom- plishing mighty deeds if they cooperated in one great organization, Malcolm X had proved to be a giant and his call for the establishment of the Organization of Afro-American Unity was surely the way to the future, but unfortunately he was butchered before he could awaken the movement. A way must be found to mold all 5 George R. Metcalf, Black Profiles (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1970), pp. 369-400. 6 Ibid. 140 the disparate Negro groups from the narrow plea for civil rights to the universal demand for human rights. The need for one organization that will give one voice to the black man's common interest is felt in every bone and fiber of black America. 7 Cleaver's first published article, "Notes of a Native Son," implies that Baldwin was at one time Cleaver's literary hero, but also maintains in the article that Baldwin's sycophantic love for whites was the unpardonable of unpardonables and this illicit love affair deprived Baldwin of his masculinity. Cleaver experi- enced several transformations. One came in December, 1966 when he was paroled out of Soledad Prison and became senior editor of Ramparts. Another noticeable change is evidenced when he came in contact with the Panthers in February, 1967. At the Malcolm X memorial celebration Cleaver states that he inquired of the assembled group what would be the nature of the discussion and Hucy P. Newton answered: It doesn't matter what section we speak under, we're going to talk about political power growing out of the barrel of a gun. 8 Cleaver states that this statement caused his eyes to widen with pride and realized that he was confronting for the first time the elite and revolutionary Black Panthers. Following Cleaver's release from Soledad Prison, his life becomes a series of struggles and dilemmas. He saw a literary career an unfulfilling and felt obligated to mix writing with his full-time revolutionary struggle for black liberation. Cleaver felt that: Every black writer must combine writing with active partianship in the black cause to be worthy of respect. One must join the mass movement to gain sustenance from the struggle of the dispossessed in order to qualify. 9 In one sense Cleaver speaks of the desirability of revolutionary courage but at the same time feared that total involvement with the Panthers would lead to his parole being rescinded. Yet, he felt an obligation to provide counsel to the Panthers since Newton was in jail and there were no others who could speak or write ef- fectively. By 1968 fate made him titular leader of the Panther party. Nevertheless, Cleaver spent most of the time supporting Panther causes and took the position that: The only remedy is to change the system is to replace the social order with something more equitable where none are property and whites do not own everything. Cleaver saw his struggle as revolutionary, yet he was torn be- tween personal security and total devotion to Panther ideals. He 7 Ibid. Hbid. *Ibid. 141 was action oriented, saw Martin Luther King, Jr. as too rhetorical. Cleaver held that whites did not understand King's philosophy of nonviolence and it was alien to his nature. Still, Cleaver maintained a tremendous amount of respect for King. Both were humanists, hoped to restructure America, and both were political and social moralizers. A certain complicyt links the works written by Mays, King, Brown, Baldwin, and Cleaver with those of Angela Davis and George Jackson. They share the same necessity of finding in themselves and leading others to discover routes around ob- stacles, and the path to salvation. There is an element of ignominy in all of these literary creations in that they start in search of self amidst repression. And despite an absence of means, employ courage, audacity, perserverance, and daring to discover common visions and ideals. The Soledad brotherhood is a new phenomenon in American society. It is promoting a tremendous intellectual ferment among the young blacks in America's prisions. Accompanying this is an outburst of literary creativity, an intense desire for self-education, black history study groups, passionate debate, and the demand for specified classes is often the source of recent bitter struggles in prisons. The following autobiographical sketches of Angela Davis and George Jackson are only two examples of what blacks are doing behind prison walls. George Jackson's Soledad Brothers: The Prison Letters of George Jackson (New York: Bantam Books, 1970) and Angwa Davis' If They Come in the Morning (New York: The Third Press, 1970) suggest that the American judicial and prison systems are instruments of unbridled repression. They also maintain that society and its institutions are impervious to meaningful reform and must be transformed in the revolutionary sense. Both autobiographies suggest: 1. That blacks must struggle by any and all means necessary to achieve liberation from the oppression of the white American state. 2. That the white judiciary and legal structure has never been a source of justice or equitable treatment for the black, the bronw, the poor or for any of their militant ad- vocates. 3. American has a long history of exalted appeals to justice. Man has an inherent right to resist but no agreement on how to relate in practice to unjust im- moral laws and opressive racial order from which they emanate. In the opening essay of her autobiography Angela Davis writes: The offense of the political prisoner is his political bold- ness, his persistent challenging legally or extra-legally 142 of fundamental social wrongs fostered and reinforced by the state. He has opposed unjust laws and ex- ploitative racist social conditions in general, with the ultimate aim of transforming these laws and this society into an order harmonious with the material and spiritual needs and interests of the vast majority of its members, (p. 24). Both Davis and Jackson are being taught and have been taught by bitter experience that there are glaring incongruities between the ideals of democracy and its practices. The right to defense ad- vocated by Davis and others is not just military defense of the person but personal legal defense as well. They appear not to realize that their imprisonment is based on the legal and the political and the two are inseparable. They do, however, see at- torneys appointment by the state as part of a conspiracy to hide and conceal evidence that will show that the state and all American institutions are practicing slavery, under the color of law without legal power, but they refuse to realize that the judicial system is obligated to at least go through their time honored rituals. A black political prisoner has to be rather naive to believe that the court will appoint an attorney to win a case or to expose inherent judicial inequities. Both Davis and Jackson represent a tremendous amount of formal and experiential knowledge but fail to comprehend America's myths. Not only does Angela Davis see herself as a political prisoner, but her knowledge of history is evident when she writes: Nat Turner and John Brown can be viewed as examples of the political prisoner who actually committed an act which is defined by the state as criminal. They killed and were consequently tried for murder. But did they commit murder? This raises the question of whether American revolutionaries had murdered the British in their struggle for liberation . . . The very institutions which condemned Nat Turner and reduced his struggle to a simple criminal case of murder, owed their existence to the decision, made a half century earlier, to take up arms against the British oppressor, (p. 23-24.) Just as Davis sees the judicial system as self-perpetuating and bourgeois, George Jackson in a letter to his mother and friends from Soledad Prison expressed the belief that these middle class institutions are not serving middle class ends in stating: The shift to the revolutionary anti-establishment position that Huey Newton, Elridge Cleaver and Bobby Seal projected as a solution to the problems of America's black colonies has taken firm on these brother's minds. They are now showing great interey in the thoughts of Mao Tse-tung, Nkrumah, Lenin, Marx and the achievements of men like Che Guevana and Undo No. (p. 30.) 143 Jackson stated further: These prisons have always borne a certain resemblance to Dachau and Buchenwald, places for the bad niggers, Mexicans and poor whites . . . with the time and incen- tive that these brothers have to read, study, and think, you will find no class or category more aware, more em- bittered, desperate, or dedicated to the ultimate remedy revolution, (p. 31.) Jackson maintains that the prison camps bring out the very best in brothers, destroy them entirely, or produce more than their share of Bunchy Carters and Elridge Cleavers. Like Elridge Cleaver, George Jackson implies that his father or middle class blacks are somewhat unenlightened in regard to the ills of American society. Jackson maintained that his father and other bourgeois blacks could not deal with political reality as en- visioned by George Jackson because: Their minds can't deal with it. I would use every device, every historical and current example, I could reach to explain to him that there were no good pigs. But the task was too big. I was fighting his mind first, and his fear of admitting the existence of an identifiable enemy element that was oppressing us because that would either com- mit him to attack that enemy or force him to admit his cowardice. I was also fighting the establishment's public relations and public relations and propaganda machine. The prisons all use the clean, straight faces, or the old, harmless-looking pigs to work in areas where they must come in contact with free people . . . these pigs are never allowed to use their tusks, (p. 33-34). Jackson saw his father as one of those persons who accepted the mythical lie and felt that peace had to be preserved at any price. Freedom must have been a remote concept to Jackson, but nevertheless he continued to speak of and lead his rhetorical crusade for physical, spiritual, and psychological freedom of blacks. The following excerpt from one of his many letters from prison to relatives and friends expresses his determination and messianic conviction that his cause was just, proper and that the struggle would continue even after death: "Hurl me into the next existence, the descent into hell won't turn me. I'll crawl back to dog his trail forever. They won't defeat my revenge, never, never. I'm part of a righteous people who anger slowly, but rage undamned. We'll gather at his door in such a number that the rum- bling of our feet will make the earth tremble." Both Davis and Jackson maintain in their writings that overt racism exists unchecked in American society. Jackson pointed out examples of racism in the prison system and Davis maintains that the judicial process is also racist. In one essay in Angela's 144 autobiography it is stated that Angela wanted to represent herself but the courts will not permit this. In her essay Margaret Bur- nharn asserts: A court's dexision to recognize or refuse an accused's demand to represent himself is a highly political one, made to advance the interest of a decaying but yet self- perpetuating bourgeois judicial system, (p. 211) Like John Brown and Nat Turner, both Davis and the deceased George Jackson were and are political prisoners. They were and are being charged and penalized for the practical exten- sion of their profound commitment. Howard Moore, chief counsel for Davis, writes in his essay: As incredible as the charges against Angela are, they must be met at both the legal and political levels. It is not enought to meet them on just one level. That would be only a partial defense. The objective of the prosecution is not just to lynch Angela but to lynch her as a symbol of resistance . . .(p. 199) Angela Davis emphatized with the Soledad brothers, supported their struggle for liberation, and now, like them, she is attempting to shape a new order from behind prison walls. Like Jackson and others who penned autobiographies, she is attempting to expose the evils of American society. To a very large extent, she is being penalized for her tireless defense of the Soledad brothers and other political prisoners, her efforts to expose American racism, and is also suffering the wrath of America's rulers for being a black female intellectual and a Communist who refused to remain quiet in the comfortable cocoon in which she found her- self as a teacher. Jackson's crusade ended in an untimely death on August 21, 1971 at San Quentin Prison. There is no doubt that both Davis and Jackson believe strongly in their cause. Unlike Cleaver and Brown, they refuse to be broken. Even in death, Jackson con- tinues to inspire fellow inmates and those enslaved outside prison walls. According to Huey P. Newton: George Jackson is a living legend throughout the prison system. Every inmate that I've talked to, every convict who has been around the California prisons for any length of time, knows about George and has high regard for him. Even some of the white "racist" inmaktes have respect for him because they view him as a man who is totally straight. They know he is going to do exactly what he says he is going to do. They know George is a "for-real" man. George has rejected even the possibility of getting out of prison because he refuses to violate his own integrity or the integrity of his fellow inmates. He refuses to compromise in any way to gain personal privilege. He has stood up and let himself be counted regardless of personal cost. George is a true revolutionary. 145 George Jackson appears to represent an ideological contradic- tion. In letters to his friends he wrote "calamity has hardened my mind, and turned it to steel. Yet he ended many of his letters "with love George." The following excerpt from one of his let- ters suggests his ambivalent nature: "If I leave here alive, I'll leave nothing behind. They'll never count me among the broken men, but I can't say that I'm normal either. I've been hundry too long, I've gotten angry too often. I've been lied to and insulted too many times. They've pushed me over the line from which there can be no retreat. I know that they will not be satisfied until they've pushed me out of this existence altogether. I've been the victim of so many racist attacks that I could never relax again ... I can still smile now, after ten years of blocking knife thrusts, and the pick handles of facless sadistic pigs, of anticipating and reac- ting for ten years, seven of them in solitary. I can still smile sometimes, but by the time this thing is over I may not be a nice person. And I just lit my seventy-seventh cigarette of this twenty-one -hour day. I'm going to lay down for two or three hours, perhaps I'll sleep . . . From Dachau, with love, George" Some, however, might argue that this excerpt does not in- dicate that Jackson was torn by ambivalent emotions, was together in all respects, and that his love was unbounded revolutionary love for his brothers and sisters engaged in his struggle. Since the central question which confronted every Black man is what he can do to enlarge his freedom, to create in himself a sense of his inherent worth and to develop economic and political security is omnipresent, the need for panaceas will be om- nipresent. But the reader of Black autobiographies whether he read the aforementioned contemporary autobiographies or whether he ventures back in time to the day of Douglass, Delany, Washington, DuBois or Garvey, he will find nearly a different panacea for each man or woman he reads. The autobiographies will extol the virtues of each solution, while the other books will invariably extol the weakness of vices of that particular ap- proach. Mays advanced education because he is an educator, Rap ad- vances revolution because he is of a revolutionary stance, Chisholm exhalts the role of the Black politicians because she has been actively immersed in the art of politics and Evers sees coalition politics as the road to salvation because of his activism and succes in politics. Although each person disagreed on the correct panacea, three of them Mays, Chisholm and Evers see a truly in- tegrated society with a pluralistic cultural base in other words, a cultural pluralism as the society for the future. On the other 146 hand, Rap, unlike these three, does not see the possibilities of society changing and therefore envisions a totally new society and world order. While he does not describe his new Atlantis, one can tell from his statement that it will be devoid of white power and maybe white people. In sum, the autobiographies give one a glimpse of two possible futures. One is a reformed American where justice will prevail, the other point is that tomorrow there will be no America, but a destroyed one. Which one is true it is difficult to say. But one thing is for sure, Black Americans and white American can expect more power and more projections from those who struggle to solve the Black-white problem in America. 147 THE POLITICAL THEORY OF THE BLACK MUSLIMS Hanes Walton, Jr. Isaiah Mclver Every social group or mass movement sooner or later develops its own social, political, or economic philosophy. If the group fails to do so collectively, it is done by one individual or several individuals within the group or movement. The develop- ment of this ideology or philosophy is essential because it outlines not only to the adherents and possible converts, the goals, pur- pose, objectives and aims of the group, but it also sells the group to the public while giving the group its essential distinctive characteristic features. In sum, a group or movement or organization gains in part its uniqueness from its basic philosophical underpinning be it of a religious, cultural, economic or political nature. Throughout history groups like Epicureans, the Stoics, the Roman lawyers, the Christian Fathers, the Physiocrats, the Utilitarians, the Socialists, the Anarchists, the Levellers, the Diggers, the Owenites, 1 etc., developed various philosophical un- derpinnings to distinguish themselves in the clash between ideas and to leave their mark on time and human endeavors. Many of these theories had some unique ideas about govern- ment and the best political organization for the ideal society. While some of the philosophical insights that these groups provided into the nature of government and its role in man's quest for freedom were useless or Utopian, some were beneficial and in use today and even some others are still controversial and debated. Political scientists who analyzed those groups which have developed philosophic constructs about the political nature of society have generally paid little or no attention to the political ideas or thoughts of minority groups within American society. 2 But despite this omission or commission, Black speculation from a philosophical perspective has taken place about politics in America and have come up with some universal if not different views of government and the ideal political society. 3 Since political theory develops out of a crisis situation, then Black leaders have considered from time to time Black-white relations in America to be crisis-like and have sought to develop political solutions for the problem. 'For a discussion of some of these ideas see Gerald Runkle, A History of Western Political Theory (New York: The Ronald Press, 1968) and George Sabine, A History of Political Theory (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963). 2 See H. Walton, Jr., "Black Political Thought: The Problem of Charac- terization," Journal of Black Studies (Third Quarter, 1971). 3 See Hanes Walton, Jr., The Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Corp., 19710, Chapter 3. 148 One such Black group which has created a distinctive political thought is the Black Muslims. 4 Their chief theorists has been Elijah Muhammad, while at one time their main spokesman and promoter was Malcolm X. Although the Black Muslims have been written about and discussed and described over and over again, their political philosophy has not been clearly delineated and analyzed in the light of western political theory for its similarities and differences, as well as for its contribution to the streams of western political thought. 5 Therefore, in this paper an attempt will be made to describe, analyze and compare the political philosophy of the Black Muslims with other similar political theories in the history of western political theory. To discern and delineate the political ideas of the Black Muslims a methodological tool was devised to highlight the chief aspects that make up a political philosophy. Since all political philosophies or theories offer some metaphysical principles, some concept of human nature, some technique for bringing about the desired order and some discussion of the new society, we ha analyzed the literature of the organization from this standpoint. Of Influences and Influential One of the greatest forces which led to the emergence of the Black Muslim religious sect was the socio-political environment in America during the thirties. Blacks during the thirties were in the midst of the depression and Marcus Garvey, with his dream of Back-to-Africa had failed. In fact, no other mass leader had emerged to offer Blacks a way out. Black Americans were suffering under the impact of Jim Crowism. Discrimination, prejudice and segregation were a way of life in America. Racism was well entrenched in the political, economic, social and cultural fabric of society. And its ramifications for Black Americans were many. For instance, police brutality stalked the inhabitants of Soulsville day and night. Housing was not available in the urban areas. Hence, ghet- tos were well under way 6 and the misery which exists within them heavily burder the Black inhabitants who had fled from the South in search of a better day and place. They had gone to the 4 For a full fledge discussion of the Black Muslims see C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961) and C. Eric Lincoln, Black Nationalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 196 ) and Louis Lomax, When the Word is Given (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1963) and Bernard Cushmeer, This is the One Messenger Elijah Muhammad (Chicago: Truth Publications, 1971). 5 Any quick look or glance at contemporary textbooks on American Political thought one will find it devoid of the political ideas of Blacks in general and the Muslims in particular. 6 See Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto (New York: Harper and Row, 1968). Allan Spear, Black Chicago (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 19670. Robert Weaver, The Ghetto (New York: Harper & Row, 1948). 149 promise land only to find the problem even more difficult than had been realized. 7 In a society where misery was increased for a people without them being able to do anything about it, there was also the lack of a Black organization to meaningfully assist the masses who shared the burnt of suffering. Although the NAACP had been for- med, its legalistic approach to the problem left too much to be desired. Moreover, it left too many people out and it was far too feeble to do the massive job required of it. 8 Other Black "orgs" were in even less of a position to do much about the Black man's problem in the thirties. To add to the misery of Blacks was the mis-fired dream of Marcus Garvey. 9 Garvey's vision had promised so much and had captured so much enthusiasm among Blacks that a new hope was prevalent in Soulsville. The Reverend Doctor Benjamin Mays writes, "Garvey had the qualities of leadership to stir the Black masses. He had charisma, he was eloquent, he was black. No other black leader, in my time, had attracted the masses as did Garvey. He did for Negroes what no other leader before him had done and what no black leader would do again, until the 1960's: he made them proud of their heritage, proud of being Black." 10 Some Black observers estimated Garvey's following at one million, others at three and still others at six million. Yet Garvey, with his universal Negro Improvement Association that boasts over nine hundred branches throughout the world, had fizzled by 1925. The hope that Garvey's movement generated soon faded and a void, a gap, was left in Soulsville. Before Garvey arrived there were riots during the Red Sum- mer of 1919, which would not be revived again until the sixties. Lynching was on the increase and the Ku Klux Klan was becoming a national power. In the South the boll weevil had struck and the economic collapse of King Cotton 11 had caused much suffering and misery. There was not much in the North to generate hope as President Woodrow Wilson segregated the federal bureaucracy. 12 Thus, Garvey brought hope, a means of escape, but his eclipse caused the old possibilities of misery to once again raise their head. 7 See E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938) and his The Negro Family in America (New York: Mac- millan, 1957). 8 See Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944), pp. 831-36. Another critique of the organizational weakness of the NAACP can be found in Warren D. St. James, The National Association For the Advan- cement of Colored People (New York: Exposition Press, 1958). Ibid. '"Benjamin E. Mays, Born to Rebel (New York: Charles Scribners, 1971), p. 303. "Eli Ginzberg, The Troublesome Presence (Glencoe: Free Press, 1964). n Ibid., p. 318. 150 But now with Garvey gone and the Depression of 1928 setting even worse, the inhabitants of Soulsville added one more problem to their burden laden lives economic dissolution. With jobs evaporation, money became scarce and the necessities of life food, clothing, and shelter in Soulsville became a luxury. Professor Raymond Wolters states "During the years of the Great Depression Negroes were the most disadvantaged major group in American Society; it is commonplace but nevertheless accurate to say that they were the first fired and the last hired." 13 While the temporary welfare relief of the New Deal helped, the New Deal itself did not appreciatively elevate the problem of the Black masses. Consequently, Black Americans in the midst of the Depression, suffering economically, socially and politically without hope and in fear of worst yet to come and without a major organization to sustain them, flaundered about looking for, in the words of Professor Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy, any place but here. 14 In fact, the situation had reached such a low ebb that W.E.B. DuBois began to counsel Blacks to make the best out of segregation by setting up self-help cooperatives. Dean Kelly Miller of Howard urged Blacks in the cities to return to the farm and make peace with the white farmer. It was in this era of little hope and significant human misery that the escapist Black religion was born. Father Divine began his famous Peace movement that acquired millions of Black followers. If Father Divine's movement was Norther based, in the South Sweet Daddy Grace emerged. In the midwest came such religious priests as Noble Drew Ali and W. D. Fard (the father of the Black Muslim movement). The religious priest of each sect offered salvation and a promise of a better way of life in the world hereafter. They told the burdened Black pilgrims that they had the key to heaven and could admit anyone for a price. These "mortal gods", to use Spinoza's term, soon found themselves with a tremendous following and inducted thousands into their heavenly host. When each one of those mortal "gods" departed (died) to prepare a home for their heavenly host, their movements went on the wane, except one W. D. Fard. 15 Fard, who began his teaching of Allah in Detroit, captured much attention as well as a trusted and devoted lieutenant, Elijah Poole from Sandersville, Georgia, who is now known as Elijah Muhammad. Therefore, when Fard disappeared Elijah continued Fard's work. 13 Raymond Wolters, Negroes and the Great Depression (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1970), p. ix. 14 Arna Bontemps & Jack Conroy, Any Place But Here (New York: Hill and Wang, 1966). 15 Myrdal, op. cit, pp. 831-36. 151 There is one more major difference between Fard and the other "mortal gods." This difference stems from the fact that Father Divine, Daddy Grace and Noble Drew Ali saw themselves as God incarnates, while Fard as does Elijah perceived themselves to be only messengers of a God Allah. In other words, they were disciples of a God far removed from this world. And much of the message they delivered for their God Allah had some political implication. The Metaphysical Bases The political philosophy of the Black Muslims emerges direc- tly from their metaphysical presupposition which undergirds their moral and religious principles. And it is these principles that gives them their driving motif and ultimate distinctive charac- teristics. As the Muslims see it Allah is God. The source of all that is good, merciful, and beneficence. Allah is the creator of the Universe and its admirable features. He is synonymous with good. Allah is the "God of Truth and Righteouness." 16 Elijah writes: "He who has found in Our Father, the God of love, light, life, freedom, justice, and equality. He has found his own, though his own does not know him. They (the so-called Negroes) are following and loving a foster father (the devil) who has no love for them nor their real father but seeks to persecute and kill them daily." 17 Not only is Allah good, compassionate, merciful and concer- ned with his chosen people, he is "the best knower." "By Allah's power and wisdom . . . you shall know the Truth even against your own will." 18 Allah, in a word, is all wise and knowing. "He will," stresses Elijah, "make himself known to the world that he is God and besides him there is no God and that I am His messenger, that Islam is a religion backed of the power of Allah . . ." 19 Allah is the wisest and the one who knows all and can do all. Therefore, those who have strayed from him will be redeemed. There is no "Christian religion or church to withstand Allah. Jesus was a Muslim, not a Christian." 20 Thus, no one "can successfully oppose Allah in his day and time of rule?" Hence, since Allah is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent, the creater of the chosen people, "the lost members of the original Asiatic Black nation for four hundred years should submit to his will and fear not, for he will deliver salvation unto them." However, in the messenger's teaching, the only way to submit oneself completely to Allah one must follow the true religion of ,6 Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Black Man in America (Chicago: Muhammad Mosque of Islam No. 2, 1965), p. 3. i7 Ibid., p. 4. , iS Ibid., p. 21. i9 Ibid., p. 22. 20 Ibid. 152 Allah. 21 This true religion is also the only religion as well as the only way to success. "Islam means salvation to each and everyone who believes in it. To the American so-called Negroes, it is the master key which opens wide every door locked against them. The door of universal friendship with the creator and his creatures swings wide open to you. And the doors of freedom, justice, and equality. All the believers of Islam are the brothers of the others." 22 Allah (God) is the author of Islam. In this view Elijah writes, "we just cannot imagine God being the author of any other religion but one of peace. Since peace is the very nature of Allah (God) and peace He seeks for his people and peace is the nature of the righteous, most surely Islam is the religion of peace. It is the religion offered to the people to bring about a peace of mind and contentment after the destroyers of peace with falsehood have been destroyed." 23 "The prophets of Islam include," insists Elijah, "Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Job, David, Solomon, and Jonah. The people of Islam are the black people and their numbers are made up of the brown, yellow and red people called races. The Book of Islam is the Holy Qur-an Sharrieff and the scriptures that were brought by the above mentioned prophets were of Islam." 24 Islam, as the messenger defines it, is righteousness and it was the religion of entire submission to the will of Allah (God). Therefore, since Islam is the only true religion of God, all other religion directly or indirectly will come to recognize the supremacy of Islam, the religion created by Allah. Hence, to ac- cept Islam is to accept God. To sum up the metaphysical principles of the Black Muslim political philosophy, one must conclude by saying that Allah is God and Islam is the religion of God and should be only followed by the chosen people of Allah, the black man. The Psychological Bases The nature of human nature in the Black Muslim's political philosophy stems from their metaphysical outlook. Allah, like the Jewish God, Yahweh, has a chosen people. "The original man, Allah has declared, is none other than the Black man. The Black man is the first and last, maker and owner of the universe. From him came all brown, yellow, red and white people. By using a special method of birth control law, the Black man was able to produce the white race." 25 Elijah argues that history teaches that "the earth was populated by the Black nation ever since it was created, but the 2l Ibid., p. 30. 22 Ibid., p. 71. 23 Ibid., p. 68. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., p. 53. 153 history of the white race does not take us beyond 6,000 years." 26 Thus, according to Elijah, the Black man was the only man created by Allah (God). The white man was not created by God, but by an evil Black scientist, Yakub, and given the right to rule over Blacks for 6,000 years. Logically then, Black people are by nature divine, good, kind, righteous, and God's only creation. The white man, on the other hand, is by nature evil, sinister, bad, cruel, unjust and limited in their destiny. They are the savages, beasts, serpents, and devils of the world. Elijah writes, "Black people are by nature the righteous. They have love and mercy in their hearts . . . When they are fully in the knowledge of self, they will do righteousness and live in peace among themselves." 27 Elijah continues, "Black people have a heart of Gold, love and mercy. Such a heart, nature did not give to the white race." 28 Allah (God) then is on the side of the Black men and Blacks are the chosen people. Although the whites since they are in power tried to propagate the notion that they are the chosen people, they never can be because God did not create them in the Muslim's view. "The white race is not," cautions Elijah, "and never will be, the chosen people of Allah (God). They are the chosen people of their father Yakub, the devil." 29 The psychological bases of the Black Muslim political philosophy then is the divine human nature of Black people. The Black Muslims see the Black man as the embodiment of all that is good and divine. This is his original nature as opposed to that of the white man (the devil) who is bad, evil and sinister. Blacks, in sum, are God's (Allah's) chosen people. The Tactics and Techniques for the Millennium What then are the tactics and techniques for restoring the divine people back in control of the earth and destroying the evil ones? Elijah gives two, both being connected to each other. The first tool is for the Black man to learn of himself and his God and religion. "It is the knowledge of the self that the so-called Negroes lack which keeps them from enjoying freedom, justice, and equality." 30 Continuing, Elijah writes that it is Allah's will and purpose that the Black man shall know themselves. Therefore, He came Himself to teach us the knowledge of Self . . . Allah has decided to place us on top with a thorough knowledge of self and his guidance." 31 Ibid. 2 Ubid., p. 108. 28 Ibid., p. 122. Ibid., p. 134. 30 1 bid., p. 31. Ibid. 154 It is written by Elijah that: We (Blacks) are the mighty, the wise, the best, but we do not know it. Being without knowledge, we disgrace our- selves, subjecting ourselves to suffering and shame. We could not get the knowledge of self until the coming of Allah. To know thyself is to know all men, as from us come all and to us all will return. 32 In knowing themselves, Blacks will learn to love themselves and their kind. "One of the gravest handicaps among the so- called Negroes is that there is no love for self, nor love for his or her kind. This not having love for self is the root cause of hate (dislike), disunity, disagreement, quarrelling, betraying, stool pigeons, and fighting and killing one another. Hence, the messenger teaches that "love of self comes first." Once Blacks began to love themselves, then they can love their kind i.e., other Blacks as brothers. Thus, as Blacks learn and under- stand love of themselves and their kind, they will be more suscep- tible to the Divine Guidance of Allah. Moreover, since the purpose and goal of Allah "is the salvation and freedom of the so-called Negroes from the devil's power, all Blacks have to do is prepare and await his coming. The messenger states that Allah (God) "with his infinite wisdom, knowledge and understanding is going to put the original black man in his original place as he was at first, the God and ruler of the universe." 33 Blacks need only await Allah's (God's) arrival. However, before Allah arrives to redeem his own and restore them to their rightful place on earth, those Blacks who have heard the message from Elijah, those who have gained knowledge of themselves, those who have accepted Islam must make every effort possible to separate themselves from the devil. The second tactic then is separation. The Muslim urged separation so that the tricks and power of the devil will be unable to further deceive the so-called Negroes. Separation will permit the good and divinity in Blacks to flourish and come to fruitation. A nation can be created and Blacks can learn that the art of self government is the rightful manner. In addition, separation will enable Allah to see and know immediately those who have heard and accepted the message. The words of the messenger is instructive: ... we believe our contributions to this land and the suf- fering forced upon us by white America justifies our demand for complete separation in a state or territory of our own. 34 I am not begging for states. It is immaterial to me. If the white government of America does not want to give us Ibid., p. 32. 33 Ibid., p. 107. Ibid., p. 1610. 155 anything, just let us go. We will make a way. Our God will make a way for us. 35 Therefore, the Muslims have taken two approaches to the question of land and separation. They seek as much as possible to earn enough money to buy such tracts for a state or a group of states. And in the meantime they try to have as little contact with whites as possible. To do this, the Muslims have set out on a program of economic, social and political self-sufficiency. 36 Then on the final day when the Battle of Armageddan com- mences, ("Armageddan is the final war of Judgement and separation of the righteous from the wicked") the devil and his forces shall be destroyed. The white man's time was up in 1917, but he has been given 70 years of grace, making the day of Allah to be in the year 1987. The signs, says the messenger, will be given in the sun, moon, stars, sea and roars of the waves. "There will not be one city left that will not be leveled to the ground." Once evil is destroyed and good elevated to its rightful place, the society of the Hereafter shall emerge. The Society of the Hereafter Like all political philosophy, the Muslims posit a new political society or state. While Martin Luther King, Jr., called his new society the beloved community and Sir Thomas More, New Atlantis, and Plato, the Republic, the Muslims have dubbed theirs the Hereafter. Elijah writes "The life in the hereafter is only a con- tinuation of the present life. You will be flesh and blood. You won't see spooks coming up out of the graves to meet God." "No already physically dead person will be in the hereafter; that is a slavery belief." Moreover, Elijah insists that many Blacks believe the "hereafter is a life of spirits up somewhere in the sky," but as Allah has taught him, it is here on the earth and people won't change to any spirit being." 37 As for the nature of the hereafter itself, the messenger writes that it is a state of existence where "the righteous will make unlimited progress; peace, job and happiness will have no end. War will be forgotten; disagreement will have no place ... It will be the heaven of the righteous forever! No sickness, no hospitals, no insane asylums, no gambling, no cursing, or swearing will be seen or heard." Grief, sorrow, misery, woe, all will evaporate. Politically, the state will be in the hand of completely divine people. God himself will be among them. This society will be completely good and divine. Laws nor any governmental struc- ture is needed for the best would be inhabiting the earth. In the Hereafter the state, all governmental institutions would truly Ibid. Ibid., p. 234. See also any copy of the Muslim Newspaper, Muhammad Speaks for discussion of this self-sufficiency. 37 Ibid., p. 303-304. 156 wither away or evaporate. The best and divine would need no other overseer except God Allah who would be one of the inhabitants of the new society. Hence, any guidance needed by the inhabitants could be gotten directly by the individual. The concept of the state in the Black Muslim political thought then is twofold. During the period of separation, before the coming of Armageddan, it would resemble a theocracy. A divinely appointed messenger would oversee and rule the lost found Black nation. In his own words, he states "I am the first man since the death of Yakub commissioned by God directly. I say no more than what Jesus said. He said that he came from God. I say that I am missioned by God." 38 In this interim state, the word of the messenger would be law and he who disobeys Elijah would be disobeying Allah and his desires, and therefore would be dealt with directly by Allah on the day of Judgement. In the final state, in the hereafter God would divinely rule himself with everyone in his kingdom approaching the status of Angels as defined by modern Christianity. Thus, two kinds of states a theocracy and a divine monarchy are posited by the Muslim's theory. Black Muslim Political Thought and Western Political Tradition: Some Reflections The Muslim metaphysical concept is not much different from the one which appears in the political thought of the Old Testament. 39 The notion of a vengeful, jealous, and wrathful god is present. In the Old Testament it was Yahweh, for the Muslims is Allah. The Jews saw themselves as the chosen people and both groups are awiting the return or coming of their Gods to right all the wrongs and evils visited upon them. For the Jews, the enemies were the outsiders the unchosen infidel of other nations. For the Black Muslims it is whites the unchosen, the evil created people. There is also a good deal of similarity between the metaphysical outlook of the Black Muslims and Christianity. Christianity has one god that is jealous and is coming again. The enemy in Christianity is the unrepented, the sinner. Those will be the ones destroyed on Judgement Day. The parallels are there. All are aimed at evil, sin and injustice, they have just different sources for the same. In regard to the concept of human nature, there are some similar parallels. While the Muslims see human nature of the Black man as being divine and good, that of the whites is con- sidered to be evil, bad and beastlike. And the only reason that 3S Ibid., p. 171. Ibid. 157 Black human nature is not prevalent is because it is controlled and duped by whites who are temporarily in power. In western political thought Hobbes saw the nature of human nature as being based, rbil, british, and sinister. Locke and the others had envisioned human nature to be good, cooperative, kind and considerate. Martin Luther King, Jr. saw human nature as being dualistic. Man, in his view, had the capacity for both good and evil. But a nonviolent approach to an evil man would rekindle the divine spark in him and bring out the goodness in his nature. 40 The major difference in the Muslim's concept of human nature is that it is limited to only one special kind of man the Black man who is also, in their view, the original man. The Black Muslim concept of inevitability has a Marxist ring to it. When the Muslim indicated that Allah would return and solve the problems facing Blacks, this was something that would happen without man. The coming war of Armageddan and the restoration of the Black man to all his power and glory are inevitable in the Muslim philosophy. They happen with or without human interference. Like the Communist Revolution and Millennium which Marx saw and predicted would take place with or without man because history moved in a dialectic fashion, the Muslims are so certain that they have set the exact year in which the event will occur. Here again, the major difference and break with other western political theories is that they predict the inevitable has an exact time. It is to occur in the year 1987. And finally on the concept of the state, the Black Muslims are not without parallel in western political tradition. The divine right of King's theories are well known. And the divine origin of the Black people simply replaces one particular group with another particular group. Instead of one person and his family being divine, the Muslims see all Blacks as divine. However, Blacks have to be reawakened to their divinity and until they know themselves the messenger is the most divine among the chosen people. And this is why in the state which will exist during the interim period before Allah arrives Elijah is the major law giver and ruler of the lost found nation. He is the only one most aware of his divinity plus he has been divinely commissioned by Allah as his representative or vicar on earth. Like the kings who use the divine right theory to bolster their power, Elijah is too divinely appointed. Moreover, the theocratic nature of the first Muslim state is similar to John Calvin's state in Geneva. Calvin's role was indeed similar to that of the messenger. Both are to lead man to God. 40 Walton, The Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., op. cit., pp. 55- 58. 158 The final concept of the state in the Black Muslim thought is extremely similar to the perfect society of secular writers like Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Polity and Marx's Communism. On the other hand, the Muslim's Hereafter resembles also the ec- clesiastical construction of heaven in that God and the chosen few will reside happily ever after on earth not in the sky. Once again the major difference here is that the ultimate per- fect society in Muslim thought will only have Blacks in it. Sum- marizing then, one can say that there is much similarity between the political ideas of the Black Muslims and some of the philosophical constructs found in the history of western political thought. The main and chief difference seems to be that Muslim thought exhalts Blacks over all other groups or races. It is Blacks who are divine, good, and the original man who is destined to control the world with Allah. Concluding then, one must indicate that the Black Muslim political thought is in reality a political theology in the sense that their moral vlaues and actions are based on divine revelation and belief in Allah. 41 In addition, Black Muslim political theology is par- ticularistic in that it only concerns and focuses upon Black people, where they are and where they are going. However, many political ideas in western thought were particularistic. Finally, it has to be said that the Muslim political ideas are fragmentary and lacking in systematic order. Their political doctrine lacks logical coherence and is not at all times completely convincing. But this too has its parallel in western political thought. In the final analysis, one could conclude from our evaluation that the political thought of the Black Muslims is really a political theology which exhalts Blacks as being divine and God's chosen people who are destined to run the world in justice, equality and freedom. "'Walton, op. cit, pp. 114-117. 159 i<