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- <text id=89TT0780>
- <title>
- Mar. 20, 1989: Saying No To Lee Atwater
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Mar. 20, 1989 Solving The Mysteries Of Heredity
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 27
- Saying No to Lee Atwater
- </hdr><body>
- <p>Howard students derail the G.O.P. campaign for black support
- </p>
- <p> Just weeks after George Bush was elected President, his
- campaign manager and newly named Republican Chairman Lee
- Atwater launched an effort to lure black voters into the G.O.P.
- Calling for an end to blacks' "blind allegiance" to the
- Democrats, Atwater talked about providing minorities with
- leadership positions in the Republican National Committee. He
- even promoted his love of black music, strumming a guitar and
- warbling at Washington rhythm-and-blues clubs. At the same time,
- Atwater -- who cut his political teeth as a protege of South
- Carolina's once segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond --
- downplayed his role in devising the crypto-racist Willie Horton
- ads that helped Bush win the White House. "That's in the past,"
- he insisted.
- </p>
- <p> Last week students at Howard University in Washington,
- perhaps the nation's most distinguished black college, let
- Atwater know that the past had not been forgotten. Outraged by
- his appointment in January to the Howard board of trustees, more
- than 200 students seized the school's main administration
- building in the most intense burst of campus unrest since the
- Viet Nam War. Hundreds of other students demonstrated outside,
- chanting slogans and demanding Atwater's resignation from the
- board. Four days after the rebellion began, with riot police
- threatening to storm the building, Atwater stepped down. In a
- Washington Post piece last week he complained that the students
- had distorted his record on civil rights and failed to recognize
- the good he could do. Wrote Atwater: "I had a lot to offer
- Howard."
- </p>
- <p> Atwater's appointment to the board was a marriage of
- convenience. The R.N.C. chairman wanted better ties with the
- black community, and Howard President James Cheek was eager to
- curry favor with the new Administration: the university depends
- on the Federal Government for more than $178 million, nearly 60%
- of its annual budget. Despite rumors of dissension among the 31
- other trustees, all but one approved Atwater's election.
- </p>
- <p> Howard's students, however, were not so willing to go
- along. Atwater's appointment, declared an editorial in Hilltop,
- the campus newspaper, undermined "the principles this school was
- founded on." The controversy simmered until March 3 when, during
- a celebration of the school's 122nd anniversary, students
- stormed the stage shouting, "Just say no to Atwater!" and "How
- far will Howard go for a buck?" The siege at the administration
- building followed on Monday. By Tuesday, police were ready to
- invade with tear gas and battering rams when Mayor Marion Barry
- arrived on the scene and ordered the lawmen to back off.
- </p>
- <p> Responding to scenes of the melee on the evening news and
- to calls from Barry and Jesse Jackson, Atwater reluctantly
- resigned. Most of the students' other demands were met,
- including amnesty for the demonstrators. One protest leader,
- April Silver, exulted that the students had made an
- "international statement to the world." Youthful hyperbole,
- perhaps, but the students had sent a clear message to Atwater
- and the G.O.P.: It will take more than just strumming the blues
- to realize their dream of a Republican "rainbow coalition."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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