Black college students need to 'make some noise'
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By DeWayne Wickham
This is the day John Lewis has been waiting for. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments today in the University of Michigan's affirmative action case, the outcome of which could be a major strategic and psychological defeat for civil rights activists. But Lewis, a Georgia Democratic congressman now in his ninth two-year term, thinks that what happens outside the high court today ultimately may have a greater impact on this nation than the decision it soon will render in the Michigan case.
Thousands of college students -- many of them from historically black higher-education institutions -- are expected to clog the streets outside the Supreme Court. They will rally in support of Michigan's use of race as one of many factors to determine who is admitted to its undergraduate program and law school. ''This reminds me of another period in our history, when black students took part in the sit-ins and freedom rides,'' Lewis said during a telephone interview. He ought to know. Back in the early 1960s, Lewis headed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
The group's members, who came largely from the campuses of black colleges, were the storm troopers in the fight against the South's Jim Crow practices. They held sit-ins at restaurants that refused to serve blacks, rode buses throughout the South to challenge segregated services in interstate transportation and marched in support of the right of African-Americans to register and vote.
Missing in action But since the major civil rights victories were won more than three decades ago, the activism of black college students has declined even as their ranks have grown. The attack on Michigan's affirmative action programs -- which, if successful, could deplete the ranks of African-American college students -- has transformed many of these formerly apathetic black students into a new generation of black activists. ''I think this case has produced a new degree of militancy among black students,'' Lewis said.
''I think they've come to realize their obligation to make some noise.'' I hope he's right. The civil rights movement changed this nation for the better. It ended a century of legal discrimination and opened up employment and housing opportunities to millions of blacks. It spawned a phenomenal growth in black elected officials and made African-Americans a power in national elections. And it forced the United States to publicly consider -- if not always address -- the lingering problems of racial bigotry.
But as the ranks of civil rights leaders have been thinned by the passage of time, the black student activism of the 1960s that was spurred by Lewis, Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown and Julian Bond has waned. In recent years, the largest gathering of black students could be found not at a civil rights rally, but at events such as Freaknik, a raucous spring bash that drew tens of thousands of black college students to Atlanta in the late 1990s. Wanted: Activists If, as expected, black students turn out in large numbers today to demonstrate in support of affirmative action, their new activism will come at a time of great need.
The Jim Crow era that gave rise to the 1960s civil rights movement has been replaced by Jim Crow Jr. -- a time when most assaults on the interests of blacks are less direct, but no less mean-spirited. The challenge to affirmative action in higher education is but one of the attacks being waged by people who are uncomfortable with the way gains made by blacks are affecting them and their sense of entitlement.
They are also trying to use congressional redistricting plans to whittle away at black political power, faith-based initiatives to buy the acquiescence of black preachers, and school vouchers to deflect attention away from what really needs to be done to improve the nation's troubled public education system.
''There comes a time when you've just got to get in the fight, even if you don't know the outcome,'' Lewis said. ''I think these students have a sense of righteous indignation about what is happening to black people in this country.'' If he's right, history may be about to repeat itself.
DeWayne Wickham writes weekly for USA TODAY.
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