Returning from a trip to the Antarctic, exploration ship, unusually calm water around Cape Horn. The captain decided that we could make a landing at Cape Horn and explore the beaches there. My imagination intrigued me with the sights of Magellan and his crew as they went around the tip of South America in 1511, the first Europeans to do so. Magellan was 31 years of age when he went that along the Tierra del Fuego, west coast of South America, he could see campfires of the inhabitants. Others have described the Indian campfires in the Mohawks of North America.
There is so much to know, and no one can know it all but, it is important to remember that there were highly civilized cultures and people in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans and Africans, people with survival techniques, educated by and to the land. One writer described how an Indian brave, knowing nothing of clothing and saddles was so adept at riding a horse, that at full speed, the brave was very accurate with bow and arrows.
With the arrival of western civilization, new systems of morality, spirituality, and physical methods were introduced. At strategic waterways, (rivers, harbors) cities grew with their institutions. Christian churches built colleges, hospitals, introduced science into agriculture and industry.
Universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale, built mostly for professional disciplines,(ministry, law, medicine) were the centers of intelligentsia. Ministers and physicians were the best informed and leaders in the communities. A majority of the 56 signers of the Constitution were theology graduates. Probably, about this time, “the good 'ole boy system started.” It became a matter of who you know, not what you know, a matter of ancestral property holdings. This writer had never encountered the “American caste system” until he matriculated at the state university. I had thought that the tax-supported state university and college systems were built to educate ALL deserving students in the state, just as the public education system was suppose to educate ALL of the state's children.
It did not take me long to discover that there are lines drawn even in a democratic republic. I knew there were private, parochial schools, preparatory schools, military schools, as well as religious-supported colleges and universities. But, because of the significance of the oldest state tax-supported university, the politics involved by elitists, (fraternities) nouveau riche, successful from their education there, loyalties there filtering by the colander of discrimination, eliminated the poor, the dis-enfranchised and certainly those with dark skin. In fact, when I was a student at UNC-Chapel Hill there were no black students-faculty members, few women-faculty members, and certainly those from the substandard public school system, were very unwelcome, even if they had been fortunate enough to have been accepted. The university system has greatly expanded in my lifetime, other than the three predominant campuses, UNC-CH, NCS, UNC-WC. Teacher's colleges have become universities. Even collleges in remote areas have become state universities.
One of my father's friends, state senator, would invite me to the Capitol, (the legislature met in the Capitol) all older white men, not one black, one woman, one Indian, or disabled, etc., just a system of dividing up the spoils, calling hogs to the trough, democrats, and it went on for 140 years, lying, cheating, stealing, enabled by the baptists and others, who just turned a blind eye.
One of my friends, and I did have a few, the son of a judge. I found that the university had special assistants whose jobs were to stay in contact with the sons of judges, legislators, large alumni contributors, power brokers of the state, to make sure the “student of promise” was having no problems academically or financially. The great football star, Charlie Justice, was in my class. He told of how one professor repented for giving him a low grade.
I knew some of the greatest men of my life, Dr. Frank Porter Graham, president, Chancellor House, Deans and Professors who were “Bell Towers of integrity.” In education, even higher education, as in religion, politics, commerce, civic clubs, country clubs, golf clubs, you learned to play the games. The tragedy of America, one goes up the ladder of success using the well-worn rungs of “political correctness” , cutting across corners instead of running the track, pushing and shoving out of the way those children of God (chosen, loved, and designed by God) who do not meet YOUR expectations. We think success and celebrity are the same thing, just to find that our ladder was placed on the wrong building.
Political appointees, governors, those with the money and prestige to get there, determine university fees. Having tried to get poor students into the university, I can tell you, without fear of contradiction, that the filter has not been changed. North Carolina residents, qualified students, in spite of skin color, background, poverty of home, should be admitted and coaxed through the university system by every means possible. There are private, denominational, elitist schools of higher learning, for those who want prestige. The yo yo of ambiguity, proffered by democrats for 140 years, should be over... lying, cheating, stealing from the hard-working, tax-paying, mostly God-fearing citizens of the state. We no longer believe you, politicians, when you tell us that you are interested in education for everyone.
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