Samantha Booke: Resolved: Negroes
should be -- should be admitted --... Resolved: Negroes should be admitted
to state universities. My -- My partner and I will prove that blocking a
negro's admission to a state university is not only wrong, it is absurd.
The negro people are not just a color in the American fabric. They are
the thread that holds it all together. Consider the legal and -- and
historical record: May 13th, 1865, Sergeant Crocker, a negro, is the
last soldier to die in the civil war. 1918, the first U.S. soldiers
decorated for bravery in France are negroes Henry Johnson and Needham
Roberts. 1920, The New York Times announces that the "n" in
"Negro" would hereafter be capitalized.
Oklahoma City College Debater #1:
Force upon the South what they are not ready for would result in nothing
but but more racial hatred. Dr.
W. E. B. Dubois, he's perhaps the most
eminent negro scholar in America. He comments, "It's a silly waste of
money, time, and temper, to try and propel a powerful majority to do
what they are determined not to do.
Henry Rowe: My opponent so
conveniently chose to ignore the fact that W. E. B. Dubois is the first
negro to receive a Ph.D. from a white college -- called Harvard.
Oklahoma City College Debater #1:
Dr. Dubois, he adds, "It is impossible" -- impossible! -- "for a negro to
receive a proper education at a white college.
Henry Rowe: The most eminent
negro scholar
in America is the product of an Ivy League education. You see, Dubois
knows all too well the white man's resistance to change; but that's no
reason to keep a black man out of any college. If someone didn't force
upon the South something it wasn't ready for, I'd still be in chains, and
Miss Booke here would be running from her own master.
Oklahoma City College Debater #2: I do
admit it. It is true: Far too many whites are afflicted with the disease
of racial hatred. And because of racism, it would be impossible for a
negro to be happy at a Southern white college today. And if someone is
unhappy, it is impossible to see how they could receive a proper
education. Yes, a time will come when negroes and whites will walk on
the same campus, and we will share the same classrooms; but, sadly, that
day is not today.
Samantha Booke: As long as schools are
segregated, negroes will receive an education that is both separate and
unequal. By Oklahoma's own reckoning, the state is currently spending five times
more for the education of a white child than it is spending to educate a
colored child. That means better text books for that [white] child than
for that [negro] child. Oh, I say that's a shame. But my opponent says
today is not the day for whites and coloreds to go to the same college,
to share the same campus, to walk in the same classroom. Well, would you
kindly tell me when is that day going to come? Is it going to come
tomorrow? Is it going to come next week? In a hundred years? Never?! No,
the time for justice, the time for freedom, and the time for equality,
is always -- is always -- right now!
Henrietta Bell, Member 1930 Wiley College
Debate Team