Any Press is Good Press?

First interracial basketball team, 1968.

As both potential and current black NC State students fought for access to academic spaces, equal educational opportunities, and social spaces like Hillsborough Street’s the Jolly Knave and equal housing, they also fought for less obvious and more metaphorical, but equally contested, spaces.

The student-run newspaper, The Technician, is a good example of a contested metaphorical space in which black students struggled for representation. Throughout the early 1960s, the Technician made very little mention of black students at all. When it did, it was most likely to discuss sports accomplishments. However, when NC State’s sports teams started integrating in the 1960s, the Technician remained silent; one season the photos contain white players and the next, black players. The newspaper made little to no mention of black groups, black faculty, or black initiatives. While the black presence on campus remained small and isolated, mentions of black members of the university community in The Technician were even fewer and farther between.[1]

When The Technician mentions black students before 1968, the articles are often brief, hidden on later pages, and strictly informative. In an issue from May 2, 1963, the newspaper dedicated less than 150 words to a blurb entitled “NCS Integrationists Planning Next Moves.”[2] The newspaper dryly informed the reader than 18 students and faculty met to discuss “picketing possibilities” and that representatives from Shaw University and Meredith College were in attendance. The newspaper concluded that the group decided to hold a “supper meeting” at a later date.[3]

Another article from 1966 about discriminatory housing practices made the front page but managed to avoid mentioning “black,” “Negro,” or “African-American” students. The article, entitled “Caldwell: Segregated Listings Out,” reprinted Chancellor Caldwell’s ruling against discrimination in housing assignments on account of “race, creed, nationality, or ethnic origin.” In its brief commentary on the statement, the article quotes another administrator, who mitigated the chancellor’s statement by saying, “We have neither the desire nor the authority to police off-campus housing…if students report incidents of discrimination, however…an investigation will be made.” In its short analysis of the statement, the article concludes that “women students are particularly concerned,” despite the fact that the chancellor’s statement made no mention of discrimination on account of gender.[4]

82nd Airborne marching on Hillsborough Street during demonstration following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. 

These sorts of article are indicative of a larger pattern in The Technician in the 1960s—when forced to allow black students space in the paper, the reporters consistently avoided any deep discussions of inequality within the institution or racial trouble on campus.

After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., however, The Technician seemed to pull its head out of the sand and began discussing issues relevant to black students. Almost overnight, white reporters and editors seem to embrace black issues and grant them space in their issues. The shock of the assassination changed college campuses across the nation. At NC State, much of this is likely due less to acceptance of black incursion into white space, but rather to the concurrent disillusionment of white youth with the American government, which allowed them to begin to sympathize with black activists. By 1968, white NC State students actively opposed the Vietnam War and were not afraid to let the administration, the press, and the government know it.[5]

As white students pressed for access to public spaces—where they felt they could make their opinions and passions known—black students were, in some cases, carried along in their wake. As white reporters blasted the government for Vietnam in The Technician, they also advocated for civil rights.

In what the newspaper admitted was a “controversial” decision, the editor chose to reprint Jerry Farber’s “The Student as Nigger.” The essay argued that the “Man” made no distinction between white students and “niggers.” [6] A later issue of The Technician, with a second reprint of the essay, claimed that NC State students requested 1,000 additional reprints after the release of the first edition. These reprints speak to the impact of the piece on the NC State student body. White students began to see black students as soldiers fighting the same battles as themselves. This piece, and others like it, marks a dramatic shift in The Technician’s coverage of black issues and black access to space in print.

As the 1960s come to an end and the 1970s begin, the newspaper mentions black students more and more, and its reporters and editors begin to more overtly sympathize with the Civil Rights and equal opportunity movements that were growing at the start of the decade.

[1] This analysis is based on an assessment of over 400 issues of The Technician, cross-referenced and searched for mentions of “black,” “Negro,” “African-American,” as well as the names of prominent black athletes, faculty, and community members.

[2] Unknown, “NCS Integrationists Plan Next Move,” The Technician, 2 May 1963, accessed 1 November 2014, http://d.lib.ncsu.edu/collections/catalog/technician-v47n77-1963-05-02.

[3] Unknown, “NCS Integrationists Plan Next Move,” The Technician, 2 May 1963, accessed 1 November 2014, http://d.lib.ncsu.edu/collections/catalog/technician-v47n77-1963-05-02.

[4] Pete Burkhimer, “Caldwell: Segregated Listings Out,” The Technician, 8 November 1966, accessed 1 November 2014, http://d.lib.ncsu.edu/collections/catalog/technician-v46an20-1966-11-08.

[5] Alice Elizabeth Reagan, North Carolina State University: A Narrative History (Ann Arbor, MI: Edwards Brothers, 1987), 194, 182.

[6] Unknown, “Farber’s ‘The Student as Nigger’,” The Technician, Summer Edition 1971, accessed 1 November 2014, http://d.lib.ncsu.edu/collections/catalog/technician-v51n85-1971-Summer-Edition.