Word: monro
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With national policies and Supreme Court decisions heralding an "age of desegregation," many American educators in 1967 were convinced that the days of the black college were numbered. Few of them really cared about Monro's interests in the set of problems and objectives which Miles embodied as a black college. The news of the day was that "John Monro from Harvard" had gone there...
...Monro never really saw it that way. He left Harvard to attack a fundamental national problem: "This country does a poor job for people who are disadvantaged at the start. The environment shapes them and they don't fulfill themselves. Why does a capable young man like George Jackson end up in prison? Society thwarted the whole operation for him." Last month in Birmingham, Monro said openly, "I was in a corner at Harvard. The school does pretty well with its scholarships, but it's a long way from where the main struggle is going on--it's going...
...this spirit of commitment to the black community that attracted Monro to Miles when he first visited the college in 1963. His visit coincided with the now-notorious Birmingham "riots"--when black demonstrators, calling peacefully for integration met with police dogs and fire hoses...
...riots had a lasting effect on Monro, and he still speaks of 1963 as a critical lesson for himself and for the Birmingham black community. "Everyone knows how brutal this society is. If you're in any kind of a minority, the name of the game is organization. The way to get there was obvious in 1962 and 1963. Martin Luther King mobilized Birmingham's blacks and they stopped this city the way that UAW stopped auto production. And they can do it again. That's how you get respect in this society...
Miles is becoming an institutional power base for Birmingham blacks, Monro says. "The black community has pitifully few formal arrangements to confront the strong, well-organized white society around it. The black college is far more than just a college, it represents a position of strength and concern...