Carolina Alumni Review - July/August 2007

munism are, at present, the greatest single threat to these liberties;

“That the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with, this menace; and

“That American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: does it serve the just interests of the United States?”

The Sharon Statement and the YAF were the polar opposites of the SDS and their ilk and were the seed corn of the conservative revolution led by Ronald Reagan. It was, indeed, a defining time in Chapel Hill and at other universities, and although the radicals had the spotlight, a new breed was arising that saw things differently. To quote Wikipedia: “The two manifestos would frame the ideological struggles on the American college campuses throughout the 1960s” ... and beyond.

Fred H. Gregory ’ 62

Greensboro

Seeds of Change:
Another View

In the story by Peter Filene on the ’60s

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and ’70s protests (May/June Review), the author asks what were students doing when the Greensboro sit-ins occurred in 1960. While, in hindsight, it may seem a less than adequate response, the seeds of change were germinating in Chapel Hill in 1959-61, when I was a student there. Prior to the founding of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the National Student Association (NSA) was active in Chapel Hill and elsewhere. Under the auspices of the Y and NSA, I attended my first interracial meetings with NSA field staff and my first interracial Model United Nations at Duke University. Other groups,

such as the Collegiate Council for the United Nations, helped activate an interest in civil rights and international affairs. We heard Martin Luther King Jr. call for racial equality in America and Allard Lowenstein ’ 49 for ending apartheid in South Africa.

When the movie Porgy and Bess was shown in Chapel Hill in 1961 and the theater would agree only to a separate showing for African-Americans, many students and faculty set up picket lines in front of the theater; many more joined the protest by boycotting the movie theater. I had conversations with friends about why I was doing this. After leaving the University, I participated in the civil rights movement to challenge the norms in the legally segregated South and the de facto segregated North. I know that others in the Class of 1961 and earlier classes were also advocates for racial equality, ending the Vietnam War and promoting equal rights for women. Forty-six years later, many of us are still working on issues related to justice and peace.