Winehole23
12-05-2015, 11:50 AM
Efforts in 1960 to desegregate movie theatres along the Drag started with a bang.
Fifty-five years ago last week, while a few dozen UT students gathered at the Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Association – known as the Y – to discuss how to foment racial integration among campus-area businesses, a nasty explosion jolted the room, spraying shards of stained glass and lead through blasted-in windows. Jim McCulloch, who attended that meeting, recalls, "There was a lot of excitement. I thought at first someone had thrown a large firecracker at the window, then someone who had gone outside said a bomb had gone off outside the building."
Police apprehended the perpetrators – white, anti-integrationist undergrads William McKnight and John Winborn, who built and detonated the bomb – and jailed them for three weeks. After initial suspension from UT, a student/faculty discipline committee in February 1961 unanimously opted to readmit them.
UT's dean of student life, Arno Nowotny, declared in The Texas Observer that the bombers "seemed to have learned a pretty good lesson," placing them on academic probation until the following June. Before the term's end, police would arrest McKnight for murdering a fellow student.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/screens/2015-12-04/the-desegregation-of-austinas-movie-theatres/
Fifty-five years ago last week, while a few dozen UT students gathered at the Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Association – known as the Y – to discuss how to foment racial integration among campus-area businesses, a nasty explosion jolted the room, spraying shards of stained glass and lead through blasted-in windows. Jim McCulloch, who attended that meeting, recalls, "There was a lot of excitement. I thought at first someone had thrown a large firecracker at the window, then someone who had gone outside said a bomb had gone off outside the building."
Police apprehended the perpetrators – white, anti-integrationist undergrads William McKnight and John Winborn, who built and detonated the bomb – and jailed them for three weeks. After initial suspension from UT, a student/faculty discipline committee in February 1961 unanimously opted to readmit them.
UT's dean of student life, Arno Nowotny, declared in The Texas Observer that the bombers "seemed to have learned a pretty good lesson," placing them on academic probation until the following June. Before the term's end, police would arrest McKnight for murdering a fellow student.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/screens/2015-12-04/the-desegregation-of-austinas-movie-theatres/