Remembering the fight

This week the nation celebrated a day to honor the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. His work with civil rights occurred during one of the most socially unrestful times in the United States. IU Physics Professor Bennet B. Brabson advocates a continuing commitment to King's dreams of racial equality by reflecting on his life before the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and the way things were then and now on IU's Bloomington campus.\nIt was a turbulent year for the United States. Amid a failed war in Vietnam, President Lyndon Johnson said he wouldn't run again. Riots, largely to do with race, swept the country in Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles. James Earl Ray assassinated Civil Rights champion Martin Luther King, Jr. And we lost another Kennedy. It was 1968.\nThe year was just as turbulent for IU. In that year, noted IU physicist Bennet B. Brabson says the university was under "great stress." Brabson saw racial strife sweep the campus during the first few years of his 30-plus tenure here.\nBrabson saw the April 1968 protest of black students when they rallied at the house of then IU President Elvis J. Stahr Jr., calling for a black studies program. In May of the same year, he saw about 50 black students occupy the Little 500 track for 38 hours to protest the charters of greek organizations that had racial stipulations.\nBrabson saw the Homecoming Queen contest cancelled for the first time in 39 years. And he saw 14 black football players boycott the team because of the coaching staff's practices they thought were discriminatory.\nIn 1969 Brabson stood on a platform with other faculty members in Dunn Meadow to speak with students protesting a lack of diversity and the war in Vietnam.\n"The sudden movement of students against authority at all levels was something of a surprise," said Virginia Hudelson Rogers in an IU Alumni Magazine interview; Rogers was the acting Dean of Students in 1969. "I don't know how many of us were on our toes at that point, because it was so totally new," she said.\nIt was her hope that "(the administration) wouldn't do anything stupid," Rogers said.\nWith two incidents at IU during 1970, her hope was intensified. Then President Richard Nixon said the military activities in Vietnam would expand into previously neutral Cambodia. IU students circled Bryan Hall and demanded that administrators hear them out. Police were there. But the question was this: Would the day turn out something similar to the May 4, 1970, incident at Kent State, where the Ohio National Guard fired on student protesters killing some and wounding others?\n"(Members of the administration) were struggling to keep their balance," Brabson said. "They were overwhelmed."\nThe administration seemed to be even more overwhelmed in 1970. Rogers said there was concern about the interference of protests with Founders Day and Commencement. \n"There were times when we called (the National Guard) to the edge of the city," Rogers said. "But we managed not to use them. That would have been my last choice."\nRemembering the early Civil Rights Movement, Brabson sat in his office in Swain Hall decorated with stainless steel office furniture and a couple of Persian rugs. His involvement with diversity goes back to early graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There, he says, he began to emerge from his sheltered knowledge of the movement. \nBrabson's commitment to honoring diversity may seem a bit of a surprise. He lived in a staunch Republican household whose patriarch was nicknamed "Mr. Republican." \n"My father came from the South. He was a racist," Brabson said. "He felt strong about this issue and did not ever tolerate anything in our family that corresponded to civil rights." \nBrabson seemed to be following his father's path even at MIT. He considered John F. Kennedy "an aberration" and voted for Republican candidate Barry Goldwater during his bid for the presidency. But his sentiments began to change when he started to participate in open discussions with his fellow academics in his third year at MIT. Eventually his mindset changed completely. \n"In my own view, I have the sense that diversity is valuable in the university setting," Brabson said.\nAnd he says that view is so strong that he'll do everything in the Physics Department to try to encourage that spirit of diversity in undergraduate and graduate programs.\n"Having diversity is enormously effective in the learning process. You have people around you who are coming from different parts of the world and have different characteristics. They are going to expand your thinking," he said. "That's worth something to me."\nIn the more than 30 years since Ben Brabson joined the faculty, he says the University has taken a number of steps to bolster diversity.\nThe Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies as well as the Latino Studies Program have been created to represent IU's willingness to recognize diversity.\nBrabson recognizes the GROUPS program which gives extracurricular help to first-generation college students, those with limited financial resources and students with disabilities from all racial and economic backgrounds. The program, Brabson said, gives students a step up for a better chance at succeeding at IU. He also notes IU's involvement in a program in South Africa during the years of apartheid to increase black enrollment in universities there.\nAlthough the overall impression is that of improvement, the numbers may not indicate the same. The Office of Academic Support and Diversity states African American enrollment in the Fall 2002 semester composed only 3.8 percent of the IU student body. And the overall percentage of minority students in that same period was just under 10 percent.\n"Literally since my first day here I have said we need to do more. Are we doing some good things, yes, but we need to do more," Bloomington Chancellor Sharon Brehm said.\nBut even with the advances Brabson says have occurred, African Americans are more challenged at IU than any other ethnic group. While Brabson speculates that the post-Sept. 11 focus in the United States is more likely to create a prejudice against Muslims, he says that is a temporary focus. \n"I would rather be a Muslim than an African American. Even given the tensions," Brabson said.\nAfter the White House is occupied by a different tenant, Brabson speculates that African Americans will be wondering whether they are really equal to Caucasians.\n"And that's sad. Because they are," he said.