Education: Jefferson's Heirs

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"Negroes [eventually] should attend . . . our classes, participate in [our] functions, join the same clubs, be our roommates . . . and marry among us. . . . The most important work [lies] in educating ourselves away from the idea of white-supremacy nonsense."

This suggestion, in a Lincoln Day editorial in the undergraduate weekly Flat Hat of Virginia's old (1693) William and Mary College at Williamsburg, led swiftly last week to: 1) the firing of Flat Hat's Editor in Chief, 22-year-old Marilyn Kaemmerle of Jackson, Mich., who wrote the editorial; 2) an administration edict that the paper's remaining editors must choose between faculty censorship and suspension; 3) a spirited mass meeting of W. & M.'s 1,000-odd students protesting infringement of the "sacred principles of freedom of the press" bequeathed by Alumnus Thomas Jefferson.

At first the students declared staunchly for liberty or death. But after suggestions of possible race riots and loss of state funds by the college, they backed down, agreed that Flat Hat's editors will henceforth consult the faculty on "matters of a doubtful nature."