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Show BYU BANYAN YEARBOOK, 1971 ATHLETIC PROTESTS contest, and a clothing drive in conjunction A demonstration outside a with the NAACP. However, administrators University of Arizona–BYU denied permission for several other activities. football game in Tucson, “Originally we made an attempt to secure October 10, 1971. Negro speakers,” explained Bob Elliott, sophomore class vice president and Brotherhood Week chair, “but due to a recent decision of the Board of Trustees to limit the number of Negro speakers to two a year, our attempts were rendered impossible. A great number of further activities, including discussions of Church and university racial policies, were planned but had to be scratched at the last minute because Church and university officials preferred to stand on previous [official] statements.”80 As Brotherhood Week progressed, Judy Geissler, now assistant news editor for the Universe, penned an editorial commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. that encouraged students to “get out and DO something” to end racism.81 A week later, another student retorted that King was a “troublemaking Communist.”82 Geissler reported that reactions to her column— which included sixteen “anonymous phone calls” and “three anonymous letters”—“have amazed me, and even frightened me.” “Two of the anonymous callers insisted I was a card-carrying Communist, and a cell leader too, no doubt. One even threatened to burn a cross on my living room rug. . . . It is distressing,” she closed, “to see the two-facedness of those who profess to love their fellow men while refusing to support attempts to foster true brotherhood.”83 In response, some students accused King of hypocrisy; 80 “‘Brotherhood Week’ Begins,” Daily Universe, May 5, 1969; see also “Wilkinson Clarifies University Policies,” Daily Universe, May 12, 1969; J. LaVar Bateman, memorandum to Ernest L. Wilkinson, February 17, 1970, Wilkinson Papers; University Speakers Committee, Minutes, April 17, 1970, Perry Special Collections. 81 “In Memoriam: M. L. King,” Daily Universe, April 30, 1969, emphasis in original. 82 Letter, Daily Universe, May 6, 1969; see also Ezra Taft Benson, Civil Rights—Tool of Communist Deception (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1968), 3, 10; D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books/Smith Research Associates, 1997), 66–115. 83 “Racial Bigotry: An Open Letter,” Daily Universe, May 7, 1969. 217 |
