Look Outward to Look In

Cyrus King, the longest tenured GNC member, was a staunch supporter of the Civil Rights Movement and the Peace Movement. In honor of his contributions to the GNC and the greater library system, NCSU's D.H. Hill Library intitiated an endowment, "The Cyrus King Endowment for Peace Studies."

A 1970 HEW charge dramatically shifted the Good Neighbor Council's mission. 

By 1970, the Good Neighbor Council realized its greatest liability: they could not be an asset to the black student body if they were not first concerned with North Carolina's  black community. The GNC sought out ways to overcome barriers between NC State's history of exclusion and its diversifyng image. The GNC reasoned that they must first look outward to truly affect change on campus.

One of the first recommendations the GNC championed was a NC State black ambassador program. The GNC recognized it was impossible to address the lack of black student enrollment in just a manner of years; even a slight boost in enrollment would do little to change the negative perceptions of NC State in the black community.[1] The only way to directly confront negative institutional stereotypes was to let NC State black co-eds speak candidly with neighborhood high school students about NC State's advantages and disadvantages for black youth.

In turn, the GNC adamantly championed the hiring of a black student advisor. In 1970, NC State had one black employee in the student advising center, yet their job description was not specifically designed for black students. Chancellor Caldwell wrote to GNC Secretary Cyrus King and explained the situation: "At present, the Division of Student Affairs employs a full-time member of the Union program staff who is black and who has devoted a good bit of his time to advising black students. He has worked with the black orientation program and with the 'Ghetto' program."[2] The Good Neighbor Council did not accept Chancellor Caldwell's statement. Instead, the GNC reasoned that the experience of the black students at NC State was significantly different from the white student; therefore, black students needed a committed staff member and specific resources to aid them throughout their college careers.

However, by the early 1970s, a federal Affirmative Action Committee became involved in the problems of minority representation at the staff and faculty level of NC State.[3] As a result, the Council became more radical and further advocated a decisive black presence on campus. The GNC turned its attention to two subjects: the recruitment of black graduate students and an extensive faculty exchange program. The introduction of black graduate students in under-represented fields, Chairman Charles Murphy reasoned, was the only realistic way to counter the lack of diverse PhD candidates.[4] In the mean time, the GNC advocated a faculty exchange program with nearby historically black college faculty. Faculty exchange programs and mini-seminars would greatly expand the NC State curriculum and generate relationships with academic institutions as far as Fayetteville State University.[5] The GNC realized the only way to change the exclusive NC State environment was to create partnerships in the black community. The Good Neighbor Council looked outward to change within.