Nation: A Lot Has Happened

There was another kind of news last week about the Negro in America:

·The Bank of America promoted E. Frederic Morrow, 57, to vice president of its New York-based international subsidiary, specializing in foreign loans and business development. A former administrative assistant to President Eisenhower, Morrow has been with the bank three years, following executive service with the African-American Institute, a privately endowed educational-cultural agency. Seven years ago, when Morrow left the White House, one of the better positions offered him was as a used-car salesman at $50 a week with only Negroes for customers. "I was very frankly told," he recalls, "that business just wasn't ready for me."

·Major Robert H. Lawrence Jr., a 31-year-old Air Force research pilot who holds a Ph.D. in chemistry, was named last week to fill one of two seats in a manned orbiting laboratory. He will be the nation's first Negro astronaut. Lawrence hawked newspapers on the street as a boy, worked his way through Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., and became an Air Force jet instructor and weapons-research scientist. ·The prestigious University of Chicago appointed Dr. John Hope Franklin, 52, chairman of its history department. Author-Educator Franklin holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Harvard, has taught at Cornell, Cambridge, Wisconsin and California, and co-authored a controversial eighth-grade textbook, Land of the Free, which gives generous recognition to the role of Negroes and other minorities in U.S. history; 400,000 copies will be used in California schools next term. As he prepares for his new responsibilities, Franklin is busy updating his book, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of American Negroes. "The last revision was in 1956," he says. "A lot has happened in ten years."