UNC students continue fighting legislative involvement in campus affairs

Student opposition to certain bills recently filed in the N.C. General Assembly has been strong and widespread in past weeks.

This unrest continues a decades-long tradition of fighting legislative involvement in UNC affairs — a tradition former Student Body President Bob Spearman participated in during the 1960s.

Spearman addressed a crowd of about 60 in Wilson Library Thursday for the annual Gladys Hall Coates University History Lecture.

He spoke for the 50th anniversary of the N.C. Speaker Ban, which was passed in 1963.

The law prohibited individuals with Communist affiliations and anarchist tendencies from speaking at state-supported institutions.

“It was a dumb, bad, unnecessary law,” Spearman said.

“I cannot remember a single student that thought there should be a speaker ban.”

He said the law was a response to the progressive ideas the legislature believed were being promoted at the University.

But Spearman said he spoke out strongly against these allegations, even testifying before the Britt Commission, which was charged with investigating the legislature’s claims.

“The idea that students would be snookered by Communists was absolutely laughable,” he said.

After Spearman, a Rhodes Scholar, left UNC for Oxford University, the fight against the ban was continued by UNC’s Students for a Democratic Society, which formed as a direct result of the legislation.

Jerry Carr, a sociology Ph.D. candidate at the time, was one of the leaders of the organization.

Carr, who attended Spearman’s speech, said Students for a Democratic Society reached out to students for support.

“We went out to the dorms, held discussions in the lobbies and held protests in McCorkle Place,” Carr said.

Carr said the organization invited Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker to speak in 1966. Both had ties to the Communist Party.

When they were denied the right to speak on campus, Aptheker stood on the stone wall that separates McCorkle Place from Franklin Street and spoke to a crowd of students.

Ultimately Aptheker was arrested, and the case was taken to a state court, and the Speaker Ban was overturned.

“The wall does belong to the students, because they fought the battle and they won the battle,” Spearman said.

John Blythe, special projects and outreach coordinator for University Libraries, said he was excited to have Spearman speak in light of the current political climate in the state.

“In these times of partisan politics, it’s important to remember the University is a place where open discussion of controversial issues can occur without anyone worrying about his job or being suppressed,” he said.

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