Every democratic institution is founded on one fundamental principle. That of the majority of the people involved to direct their policy with just consideration for, but not with disproportionate interference from the minority. Now this principle of the rule of the majority is responsible for many of the inherent defects of democracy. One of these defects is the dependence of good government on the education and intelligence of the majority. That is why we have schools.
But education-that is higher Negro education, has for the most part failed to take into its program a consideration of this social aspect and responsibility of education. The school authorities, as well as the great mass of people, feel that college is a place where a few young men and women come into contact with some theories, hypotheses, and techniques, for no well considered purpose-not as a place where intelligent planning for citizenship is to be undertaken. Consequently there has been no great pressure brought to bear on the colleges to make school life realistic. With a few exceptions, students have no voice in their own government, small cliques of officials direct and manage the school, ruthlessly repressing all free expression of thought and creative efforts on the part of other teachers and students.
The students of Virginia State College began this year to feel that conditions were unbearable. Hampton, Howard, Fisk, Lincoln, and other schools have all had major disturbances this year and in previous years. Virginia State College has never had a strike. The other schools had learned their lessons and changed their policies accordingly. Virginia State College had come to feel officially that the students there were spiritless and weak and had made no major change in its philosophy since the World War era, that is, so far as social responsibility and planning for citizenship is involved.
The strike at Virginia State was caused by a situation expressed in a list of twenty grievances drawn up by the student body. A platform of twelve demands was presented co-incidentally.
The strike was conducted orderly and violence was in each case begun by the administration. The administration becoming alarmed at the situation which it had carelessly precipitated, began a newspaper campaign to impress the public that the social aspect of the dissatisfaction was uppermost in the minds of the students. They seem to have succeeded in Charlottesville. Here a large group of people have performed the typically Negroid act of forming opinions without investigating. One man said, "Negroes have a capacity amounting to genius, for misunderstanding events." In Richmond, and other more enlightened sections of Virginia, the issues are more clearly arranged in the public mind.
The platform and grievances as well as the procedures are too long and involved to be presented. We must, however, say that to form opinions without first being in possession of the facts, is a crime against intelligence and a confirmation of the insistent impression that Charlottesville people are not capable of thinking intelligently.