Education: Good Try in Alabama

The 220-lb. sheriff with the nightstick mentality, the glacial rate of voter registration, the Negroes waiting in the rain—all these symbols of disgrace in Selma, Ala., have been in headlines and news pictures for five weeks. But Selma has its assets too, and one of them is Dr. James H. Owens, a peppery, knowledgeable Negro educator who is struggling valiantly to keep the area's only Negro college alive.

Owens, erect and brisk at 64, readily concedes that his Selma University is wildly misnamed. It is not a full college, much less a university, since only its three theology students study for four...