Society of United Liberal Students (SOULS)

Society of United Liberal Students (SOULS)

Following passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, many African-Americans sought empowerment more aggressively than ever. In 1966, Stokely Carmichael, head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) expressed their ambitions of with the rallying cry, “black power.” The same year, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party as a means of checking police violence against black communities. The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in April 1968 intensified calls for more robust strategies as the Black Power movement spread. At ECU, the movement emerged between 1967-1969 as a coterie of African-American students protested offensive if not racist practices on campus. A new student organization, the Society of United Liberal Students (SOULS), was founded in early 1968 as a vehicle for making voices heard and effecting real change. Over the next two decades, it served as a powerful catalyst for positive change.

In 1967, the SGA established a Racial Grievance Committee to eliminate discriminatory practices on campus. When “Dixie,” the Confederate flag, and charges of prejudice emerged as grievances, controversy flared. One student leader (and later SOULS president), Charles Davis, was quickly vilified as a “trouble maker.” Soon, a new group, SOULS, drafted a constitution and elected officers, including Davis, president, and Johnny Williams, vice president, seeking recognition from the SGA as an official student organization. SOULS purpose, Davis explained, was “to promote better overall conditions and relationships within the city of Greenville for all people, with special emphasis on the Negro.” It also sought to facilitate “participation of the Negro student into more campus affairs and greater communication between the Negro student and white student on East Carolina’s campus.” Among other things, SOULS reiterated its opposition to “Dixie” as a “psychologically damaging” song that “prevented the effective functioning of the Negro.”

Although channels were opened, change was hardly immediate. Some even felt that things had worsened. Allegedly, certain faculty belittled African-American students with racial slurs. In social situations on campus, African-American students encountered ostracism, exclusion, and thinly veiled expressions of hostility. Then in the spring of 1968, the Homecoming planning committee announced that the fall theme would be life on the Mississippi. A sports writer for the East Carolinian regularly included a Confederate flag and cannon as banner iconography for his column. Such “Old South” throwbacks aggravated tensions, especially in the wake of Dr. King’s assassination in Memphis that spring.

Discussions continued in the fall of 1968, but campus racial issues were often back-burnered as ECU’s drive to establish a medical school and election year politics dominated. However, things climaxed in the spring of 1969. Rumblings began when some black students raised clinched fists during a basketball game, prompting controversy about respect for the American flag. The first Black History Week was celebrated in February, giving unprecedented presence on campus and in print to a number of black voices. Yet as the first anniversary of Dr. King’s death approached, SOULS members, impatient with the glacial pace of change, drafted ten demands subsequently presented to ECU president, Dr. Leo W. Jenkins. The demands received front page coverage in the East Carolinian. When responses were not forthcoming, a SOULS meeting on campus morphed into a march to the president’s residence on Fifth Street to meet Dr. Jenkins, impromptu, that very evening, at his front steps. Although tense, the confrontation concluded peacefully. To address the demands publicly, Jenkins called a special convocation in Ficklen Stadium. There, Jenkins affirmed his support for the students, but emphasized that the proper channels of authority be followed and civil discourse maintained. Simultaneously, the SGA staged a student referendum on “Dixie.” The vote favored banning school-sponsored performances of “Dixie” from all future campus activities. With the latter, SOULS, the SGA, and Dr. Jenkins had achieved a victory for due process and reason in navigating peaceful campus change.

In the following years, a number of university-sponsored events, performances, and lectures occurred. Courses related to African-American culture became part of the curriculum. In 1970-1971, SOULS, led by David Best, president, organized a voter registration campaign, a tutoring program, participation in Homecoming, a Black “sing-In,” and a Black History Week program. In addition to regular weekly meetings, SOULS members attended conferences on Black Unity and Black Liberation. In 1971-1972, SOULS sponsored ECU’s first annual “Black Week” including an African fashion show, a SOULS dinner with soul food, a talent show, a dance, and campus speakers. The year also saw the first Miss Black ECU Homecoming Queen, Linda McLamb. Ruth Thomas was selected Miss SOULS. Bake sales’ profits funded a breakfast for underprivileged community kids at Christmas.

In 1973-1974, SOULS partnered with the Office of Minority Affairs, the SGA, and the Student Union in sponsoring a Black Arts Festival including “rap sessions,” lectures, workshops, a film festival, and a sing-in. By 1974, several black professors had joined the faculty, black studies courses were added to the curriculum, and black fraternities, Alpha Phi Alpha and Omega Psi Phi, were active on campus. In 1975, a black newspaper, the Ebony Herald, was founded. The same year, Jeri Barnes became the first African-American coed voted ECU Homecoming Queen.

A Black Cultural Center was opened in 1975, initially in the old Y-Hut. The following year, SOULS proposed that the Afro-American Cultural Center be named after the late Ledonia Wright, a SOULS advisor who passed away in the summer of 1976. Although slow to respond, the ECU Board of Trustees eventually approved the proposal. Today the center is known as the Ledonia Wright Cultural Center. As the Wright Cultural Center emerged as ground zero for all minority populations on campus, SOULS role diminished. Though no longer active on campus, SOULS was a powerful and dynamic agent for change that helped ECU to navigate the often tense transition from a still largely segregated Jim Crow campus in the late 1960s to greater diversity and inclusiveness two decades later.

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Citation Information

Title:Society of United Liberal Students (SOULS)

Author: John A. Tucker, PhD

Date of Publication: 7/18/2019

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