Item Information
Title
Pauli Murray's proposal to mediate the dispute between the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare and the State of North Carolina: University of North Carolina System
Creator
Murray, Pauli
Source
Office of Chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Nelson Ferebee Taylor Records, University Archives (#40023)
Date
April 1, 1978
Contributor
Murray, Pauli
Type
Text
Text
Pauli Murray
April 1, 1978
PROPOSAL TO MEDIATE THE DISPUTE BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION AND WELFARE AND THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA: UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA SYSTEM
The undersigned respectfully suggests that a panel of distinguised [sic] and experienced citizens of national stature be constituted as a Board of Mediation to settle the dispute between the University of North Carolina system and H.E.W. My reasons are as follows:
1. I am a product of the North Carolina racially segregated school system at the elementary and secondary school level (graduate of Hillside High School, Durham, North Carolina, Class of 1926) and am intimately aware of the cost to the individual of segregated education in a country the ethos of which is equal opportunity for all. Whatever academic and professional achievements I have realized have been due in large part, not to exceptional ability but exceptional effort to overcome a shaky educational foundation rooted in the deprived Negro schools of the State of North Carolina.
2. Although the State of North Carolina has made considerable progress in upgrading educational institutions attended by minorities since my youth, at the level of higher education it has become the victim of its own missed opportunities. My name may be recalled as the center of the controversy in 1938—39 over the admission of Negroes to the graduate and professional schools of the University of North Carolina. In rejecting my application, the State made the grievous mistake of attempting to avoid desegregation at the graduate level by building a weak structure of graduate schools for Negroes at Black educational institutions at the very time when all segregated publicly-supported education was under an accelerating attack. The State of North Carolina is now confronted with the complex problems of its own making, and it cannot shift its responsibility for this situation to other factors or take refuge in the shibboleths of "federal intervention" and the stake of the "merit system."
3. Having said this, however, I must confess that I have a personal and ancestral interest in seeing to it that the integrity and honor of the University of North Carolina system be preserved while simultaneously reversing a systematic deprivation of Negro citizens, Native Americans and women over at least two centuries. My combined Black and White ancestry has been deeply involved in public education at every level in North Carolina for seven generations, and I find myself emotionally involved on both sides of the current controversy. This dialectical process calls for a synthesis.
April 1, 1978
PROPOSAL TO MEDIATE THE DISPUTE BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION AND WELFARE AND THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA: UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA SYSTEM
The undersigned respectfully suggests that a panel of distinguised [sic] and experienced citizens of national stature be constituted as a Board of Mediation to settle the dispute between the University of North Carolina system and H.E.W. My reasons are as follows:
1. I am a product of the North Carolina racially segregated school system at the elementary and secondary school level (graduate of Hillside High School, Durham, North Carolina, Class of 1926) and am intimately aware of the cost to the individual of segregated education in a country the ethos of which is equal opportunity for all. Whatever academic and professional achievements I have realized have been due in large part, not to exceptional ability but exceptional effort to overcome a shaky educational foundation rooted in the deprived Negro schools of the State of North Carolina.
2. Although the State of North Carolina has made considerable progress in upgrading educational institutions attended by minorities since my youth, at the level of higher education it has become the victim of its own missed opportunities. My name may be recalled as the center of the controversy in 1938—39 over the admission of Negroes to the graduate and professional schools of the University of North Carolina. In rejecting my application, the State made the grievous mistake of attempting to avoid desegregation at the graduate level by building a weak structure of graduate schools for Negroes at Black educational institutions at the very time when all segregated publicly-supported education was under an accelerating attack. The State of North Carolina is now confronted with the complex problems of its own making, and it cannot shift its responsibility for this situation to other factors or take refuge in the shibboleths of "federal intervention" and the stake of the "merit system."
3. Having said this, however, I must confess that I have a personal and ancestral interest in seeing to it that the integrity and honor of the University of North Carolina system be preserved while simultaneously reversing a systematic deprivation of Negro citizens, Native Americans and women over at least two centuries. My combined Black and White ancestry has been deeply involved in public education at every level in North Carolina for seven generations, and I find myself emotionally involved on both sides of the current controversy. This dialectical process calls for a synthesis.