In the White Eye

Eric Moore, the first black Student Senate President, poses in front of the belltower with Chancellor Caldwell and other student leaders, 1969. 

Even though public forums like The Technician began allowing more space to black reporters, subjects, and issues, racism remained embedded in The Technician for the remainder of the 1960s and 1970s. Two particular cases illustrate the struggles black members of the NC State community still had to face when seeking fair and equal space in print.

In 1969, roughly one year after the assassination of Martin Luther King and one year after The Technician began taking more notice of black concerns, a black student named Eric Moore was prompted by his classmates to run for President of the Student Senate. While Moore was already serving as a member of the Senate, and had been busily advocating for his fellow black students, the President of the Senate is roughly the equivalent of Student Body Vice President; Moore would surely face opposition in his campaign. He ran anyway.[1]

Where it gets interesting, though, is how Moore chose to approach The Technician. Although, a white student may wanted publicity for his campaign, Moore quietly asked The Technician’s editors, with whom he was on good terms with because of his position with the campus radio station, to not run his picture in the newspaper. Moore knew that it was likely that white students would either not vote for him, or get involved just to vote against him, if they saw his picture.

A few weeks after he approached the newspaper, Moore was quietly elected President of the Student Senate, becoming the first black student to hold the office.[2] In an interview many years later, Moore recalls that a friend told him of a conversation he overheard between two white students. One of the students exclaimed, “You mean, I voted for…”[3]

While we might think today that Moore could have counteracted racism by insisting on equal space and coverage in The Technician, in fact, Moore chose to revoke his right to space in the newspaper to do exactly that. He took control of the way in which the largely white-run Technician represented him as a black student because he wanted a shot at a position that would allow him even more bargaining power and more space at the negotiating table. Moore went on to work closely with Chancellor Caldwell to lobby for required courses in African-American studies, pushed for greater black involvement on campus, and supported a campus-wide rally against the war in Vietnam.[4] His tenure as President of the Senate advanced black students’ rights to space on campus.

Mary Evelyn Porterfield, the first black NC State homecoming queen, poses with her escort, Michael Brown, in early 1971.

The very next year, another black student encountered opposition and racism to her right to be in a traditionally white space. Mary Evelyn Porterfield was voted NC State’s first black homecoming queen in 1970. After she was crowned, however, Porterfield faced quite a bit of backlash from the white student body, not the least of which was published in the “Lettertorials” section of The Technician. While not all the letters to the newspaper about Porterfield were negative, a number of them were quite vicious.

One letter-writer stood up for the new homecoming queen after reading a lettertorial from the previous week that had claimed the election was “a studied insult to the lovely white girls competing and to the white public” and that Porterfield’s crowning meant NC State was falling into “decadence and degeneracy.”[5] The author who wrote in to defend Porterfield scathingly said, “I have seldom come into contact with any of the ‘queers, hippies, dopeheads, weirdoes [sic], radicals, and just plain white trash’ that [last week’s writer] feels are ‘infesting the campus both as students and faculty.’” The writer concludes with these powerful words: “To be discourteous to the 1970-1971 Homecoming Queen, to be offensive to the State University student body, and to be bitter about higher education all because one’s racial pride was ‘insulted’ at a homecoming game’s halftime ceremony, moves from the realm of tragic to that of the absurd.”[6]

While Eric Moore’s story is germane to a study of black space at NC State because he willingly gave up space in order to achieve a better opportunity to enact change, Mary Evelyn Porterfield’s story is a lesson in the kinds of backlash black students endured from white members of the NC State community when they attempted to gain rights to certain kinds of traditionally white spaces. Additionally, Porterfield’s story demonstrates that while The Technician was a space to be gained in and of itself, it was also a platform for free speech for proponents on both sides of the fight for racial equality.

[1] “Student Leaders: Lessons is Racial Politics at NC State,” Red and White For Life, accessed Nov 4, 2014. http://www.alumniblog.ncsu.edu/2013/09/11/student-leaders-lessons-in-racial-politics-at-nc-state/; Historical State, “African Americans, Timeline,” accessed October 25, 2014. http://historicalstate.lib.ncsu.edu/timelines/african-americans#d1960.

[2] “Student Leaders: Lessons is Racial Politics at NC State,” Red and White For Life, accessed Nov 4, 2014. http://www.alumniblog.ncsu.edu/2013/09/11/student-leaders-lessons-in-racial-politics-at-nc-state/; Historical State, “African Americans, Timeline,” accessed October 25, 2014. http://historicalstate.lib.ncsu.edu/timelines/african-americans#d1960.

[3] Eric N. Moore, “Campaigning for Student Senate President, accessed November 4, 2014, http://d.lib.ncsu.edu/student-leaders/videos/campaigning-for-student-senate-president-moore.

[4] “Student Leaders: Lessons is Racial Politics at NC State,” Red and White For Life, accessed Nov 4, 2014. http://www.alumniblog.ncsu.edu/2013/09/11/student-leaders-lessons-in-racial-politics-at-nc-state/.

[5] Lettertorials, The Technician, 8 January 1971, accessed 4 November 2014, http://d.lib.ncsu.edu/collections/catalog/technician-v51n43-1971-01-08.

[6] Lettertorials, The Technician, 11 January 1971, accessed 4 November 2014, http://d.lib.ncsu.edu/collections/catalog/technician-v51n44-1971-01-11