Education: Give It Back

Since the Thanksgiving banquet, students and teachers at Georgia’s tiny Piedmont College (enrollment: 300) had been wondering what President James E. Walter was up to. That day, he invited Major General George Van Horn Moseley, 76-year-old trumpeter for Aryan supremacy, to speak in the college dining hall. Later, reports got around that Piedmont was getting $500 checks from the educational foundation of which Moseley is head. The money behind the foundation comes from Moseley’s old friend, Judge George W. Armstrong of Texas,

Judge Armstrong had tried to give his money away before. Two years ago, Mississippi’s Jefferson Military College turned him down because he wanted the college to exclude students of “African and Asiatic origin” (TIME, Nov. 7, 1949). For Piedmont, there were no such strings, and President Walter saw nothing wrong with accepting $500 a month to help him balance his budget.

Students and facultymen did see something wrong. For weeks they grumbled about it, and one instructor named Hoyt Bowen went so far as to denounce Moseley in chapel. Last week after Bowen was fired for “insubordination,” the revolt broke out in earnest. At separate mass meetings, majorities of the faculty and student body rallied behind Bowen’, passed resolutions of advice to the college administration about the Moseley-Armstrong money: give it back.