The Color Line-Up

That most delicate of problems, racial equality, was raised this spring in Cambridge by the presence of a member of the Negro race on a team which annually takes a spring trip carrying it as far south as Maryland. The boy has justly earned a place on the team and despite a feeling on the part of some members of the squad that he should not be taken, he is going on the trip.

At another northern college, N. Y. U., the same question came up this year, and was settled by the head of the University with the arbitrary method of forbidding any colored athlete from competing in a contest with a southern team. A football player was not taken on a trip across the Mason and Dixon line. A basketball player was not allowed to play in Madison Square Garden against a team of Southerners. Finally, despite protests from the entire student body and a sympathy strike staged by half his teammates, the Negro co-captain of the track team was ruled out from taking a trip to a major meet in Washington, D. C., last week. The surface result of the Chancellor's action, besides its effect on the Negroes concerned, was the expulsion of seven students who distributed a petition of opposition. The dangers of such a policy, however, run far deeper than this.

If the southern schools wish to meet the northern universities in athletics they should accept the standards of the north. It is not for us to accept their racial discrimination. The quiet decision of the H.A.A. to let no questions of race prejudice affect the makeup of a Harvard team is a fair and liberal stand on the problem.