MLK Party Causes Uproar on Texas Campus

AP - My Way News ^ | January 25, 2007 | Jeff Carlton

[Arec Barrwin]

MLK Party Causes Uproar on Texas Campus Email this Story

Jan 25, 5:47 AM (ET)

By JEFF CARLTON

DALLAS (AP) - Authorities at Tarleton State University said they plan to investigate a Martin Luther King Jr. Day party that mocked black stereotypes by featuring fried chicken, malt liquor and faux gang apparel.

"I feel like there is no excuse for this type of ignorance," said Donald Ray Elder, president of the Stephenville school's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Photographs posted on social networking Web site Facebook.com showed partygoers wearing Afro wigs and fake gold and silver teeth. One photo showed students "mocking how African-Americans do step shows," Elder said. In another picture, a student is dressed as Aunt Jemima and carries a gun.

"That upsets me," Elder said. "That's someone who knows nothing about Dr. King, because Dr. King was totally about nonviolence."

Wanda Mercer, the school's vice president of student life, said an investigation was planned into the Jan. 15 party.

More than 400 students attended a university-sponsored forum Wednesday night that Elder described as "a shaky baby step" in bridging a divide between black and white students on the campus, which had about 400 black students out of 7,800 overall last semester.

Elder said he sensed a racial divide at the forum, with black students sitting on one side of the room and whites on the other.

"It was civil, but it also escalated into a shouting match," he said in a telephone interview afterward.

Some of the students shown in the photos apologized, Elder said.

University President Dennis P. McCabe said the photographs were reprehensible.

"I am personally insulted by these photographs and am disappointed that Tarleton students have demonstrated such insensitivity," he said.

Stephenville is about 60 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

[highnoon]

[sweetiepiezer]

You are right on..........
Have a friend who lived in LA and when King came to town he phoned ahead for my friend's white girlfriend to meet him.
Always.

[Joe Boucher]

Right you are Dad.
Too seldom do you see truely achieving blacks held up as role models today unless they are negative role models

[meyer]

Of course they were the racists sic'd dogs on 'em, had riot police beat 'em and turned fire hoses on them. Very violent indeed.

You seem to be missing a few parts of the equation there.

[SoCal Pubbie]

I'm afraid you may be disappointed, if you live till 2027, when the FBI files are scheduled to be released. According to wikipedia:

"FBI surveillance of King, some of it since made public, attempted to demonstrate that he also engaged in numerous extramarital affairs. ...However, much of what was recorded was, as quoted by his attorney, speech-writer and close friend Clarence B. Jones, "midnight" talk or just two close friends joking around about women. It isn't clear if King actually engaged in extramarital affairs or not."

Charges of extramarital affairs have been brought by both Ralph Abernathy and David Garrow in books published after King's death. There will be nothing new in any such revelations.

Furthermore, any surveillance tapes made by FBI wires, possibly done illegally, certainly made against a man who had committed no crime, will be looked on with greater disfavor than any personal peccadillo King may have committed. As will the FBI's attempt to influence politics and blackmail King. Possibly the Kennedy family will suffer, if anyone bothers to point out that the whole affair was ordered by RFK.

Certainly, MLK has been deified beyond his actual accomplishments, but it's not the first time that's happened. As a white person I see no reason why he should be smeared nor attacked. He tried to do good in this world, as I see it, and we'd be better off now with fewer Jesse Jackson's and Al Sharptons and many more like MLK.

[misterrob]

What about hoes?

[DocH]

I'm sorry if I hurt your tender feelings in any way, or offended your non-color status in our EVIL society.

Could I perhaps offer you 40 acres and a mule to make it all better? :()

[stm]

Photos of the party here

[50sDad]

Too seldom do you see truely achieving blacks held up as role models today unless they are negative role models.

The blacks that achieve outside of sports seem to be too Republican-esq to be lauded.

[50sDad]

Could I perhaps offer you 40 acres and a mule to make it all better? :()

Please, I'm of Irish ancestry! (I'll take a gallon of paching and a dozen potatos!)

[Rb ver. 2.0]

Those photos are horribly benign. The only way to satisfy those who are so easily offended over their race is to make MLK a holiday for black folks only.

[HOTTIEBOY]

If Martin Luther King was such a great guy, why is his criminal record sealed by the FBI for fifty years? This information comes from an hour long documentary that was on the History Channel. Another fact that the FBI uncovered is that MLK had a sexual preference for white women. I think it's interesting that the feminists as a group are willing to let these little facts slide.

History Channel documentary?
The very next day they had another "documentary" that uncovered "secret FBI files" and "evidence" that supported a US government involvement in 9/11.
I didn't believe that conspiracy either.

[stm]

Many blacks are right up there with mooslimes on the perpetual rage scale

[org.whodat]

Much to do about nothing, pictures are on "smoking gun" if you want to see them.

[stm]

The National Geographic Channel had a special last night on the conspiracy theory whacko's that still maintain the Apollo moon landings were faked.

If I wasn't so busy getting pissed off at these tinfoil hat idiots I would have been laughing my ass off. Not surprisingly, all the people profiled lived in low income housing or trailer parks.

[TexasRepublic]

We shouldn't be poking fun at Saint Comrade King.

[stm]

OMG that is toooo funny. And they wonder where the dumbass stereotype comes from.

[janetjanet998]

Big freaking deal..looking at the pictures looks like a few kids had a PRIVATE party off campus....

It's nobody's business why they did it or what they did there as long as it was legal

[HOTTIEBOY]

Ha, what percentage of those have been abducted by aliens or have spotted dead Elvis?

[Joe Boucher]

I love hearing how blacks are going to vote for Republicans as they are tired of being taken for granted by the dems.
Hear it every election cycle and nothing nada. Still get what 8 percent of blacks voting for something other then dems?