A. Council

     Write a story based on the following notes from a meeting of the Freeport City Council last night. Use all the facts here. The council decided:

1. To build a viaduct across railroad tracks at Lincoln Street, scene of three automobile-train accidents in the last seven months. To cost $300,000.
2. To dismiss George Q. Banks, welfare director. Successor not appointed. Banks criticized last month for "irregularities in finances of department," that the city manager found in an audit.
3. To add new inspector in department of sanitation. Appointed David Lowe. He has been assistant bacteriologist at Fairlawn Hospital.
4. To hold referendum at next election (May). Citizens to vote on $1,000,000 bond issue for replacement of sewers throughout downtown area. Present system in use since 1884. Leakage into ground water supply; system inadequate for load.

     Sewer construction is the first part of the 10-year City Core Regeneration Plan. Traffic rerouting next; then the downtown mall.

B. Boards

     During the past week, stringers from nearby towns have been calling in with stories about meetings of their boards of education. You have written briefly about some of these meetings. Your editor now wants you to round up all of these for use in a Sunday story. Here is the material:

     Selkirk: Board adopted $625,000 budget. Will hire three additional teachers, one speech therapist. Salaries up 2 percent. Turned down $175,000 request for bond issue to expand library. Property tax increased from $17 to $18/$100 in assessed valuation.
     Wrigley: Board adopted budget almost same as last year, $890,000. No salary increases, no new teachers. The property tax kept at $24/$100.
     Dease Lake: Board turned down request for $1 million bond issue. Bonds to be used for physical expansion of Dease Lake Junior High. Vote 5–0 after four-hour meeting at which members of Dease Lake Improvement Association asked for bond issue, but individuals said classes not overcrowded. Adopted $1,260,000 budget. Flat teacher-pay raise of $100. Tax rate continued at $28/$100.
     Keno Hill: Acrimonious debate at board meeting over request by Keno Teachers Association to add 12 teachers and to increase salaries across the board by 12 percent. Association said, "Schools overcrowded," "teachers' average salary of $25,000 disgraceful." Board voted 3-2 against request. Teachers say won't sign contracts to teach next year. Board adopted $2,350,000 budget. Minor increases in most categories; 3 percent teacher salary increase. Keno Hill Real Estate Association told board property taxes now "prohibitive." Mill levy of $26/$100 retained.
     Rockford: Ralph Robards, chairman of the Rockford Board of Education, said the board voted to "hold the line" in expenditures for the next school year. Robards said the board voted four to one to approve a school budget of $2,220,000.
     This is an increase of $275,000 over last year. Robards said a 6 percent salary increase was voted for teachers; four new elementary school teachers will be hired; and major repairs made in the Rockford High School gymnasium.
     "We managed to hold the line on our taxes, retaining the rate of $29/$100 because we anticipate new construction will enlarge the tax base," he said.
     In other actions, the board turned down a request from the Rockford Committee of Concerned Citizens for $75,000 to be put into the budget for a pilot program to bus sixth-grade students from low-income areas to the recently constructed Albert Parker elementary school on Duane Street. It hired Dr. Selwyn C. Mann as principal of the Parker School. Dr. Mann is a native of Albuquerque, Arizona, and recently was granted Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota.

C. Legacy

     The Black Student Group at St. Mary's College sponsored a discussion tonight, "The Legacy of Malcolm X." The speakers were Vincent Bivins, professor of political science at the college and faculty adviser to the BSG, and Judith Cramer, a member of the Freeport Human Rights Commission.
     About 50 students attended the discussion on the campus. Half were black, half white. N. Francis Simms, college president, attended and said after the discussion, "This is the kind of opening up we must engage in so that we can understand each other. Discussion, debate, questions and answers do much more than confrontation."
     Here are excerpts from Cramer's talk:

     The legacy of Malcolm X derives from his appeal based on a strong belief in black pride and black identity, and his penetrating critique of racial inequality in this country.
     In contrast to Martin Luther King, Malcolm X was the voice of the angry, dispossessed people of the northern ghettoes.
     That's a section of society that's growing rapidly right now. As long as their problems exist, Malcolm X will continue to be relevant.
     He was an inspirational figure who made a lot of us look in the mirror, so to speak, and be proud of who we were as black people and people of African descent.
     A lot of what Malcolm dreamed is coming to pass, in some small ways.
     We have to remember that Malcolm did not live to carry out the enormous changes he was in the process of making. He was murdered after he broke with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. In 1964, after a dozen years of talking of the evil of the "white devil," he was moving to what Michael Eric Dyson, professor of African-American studies at Brown University, describes as "a broader philosophy of human community. We may conclude with certainty that Malcolm X had rejected the whites-are-devils pronouncements that helped to focus his earlier life and brought him to the attention and vilification of a nation."
     But, as Professor Dyson says, "He simply did not live long enough to fulfill his promise. We are brought up short when trying to deal definitively with the universal humanitarianism of his latter days."

     Here are excerpts from Bivins' talk:

     It's a multifaceted struggle—it wasn't Malcolm X, it wasn't Martin Luther King. Human struggles are much more complicated than any particular person.
Malcolm functioned as a spokesman for a movement. He was an outspoken critic of America's racial situation.
     But we may be paying too much attention to one or two heroes while ignoring many others who were just as important.
     Clearly, Malcolm was an important figure. But I don't think he was the only person on the block. Emphasizing these one or two figures gives us a skewed view of history.
     We have to understand that Malcolm never registered anyone to vote. He never led a march against segregation. He never broke down any racial barriers himself.
     Given time, this could have changed. In the last year of Malcolm's life, he dropped the racist rhetoric of the Nation of Islam, thus earning him the enmity of people like Louis X, who is now Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam. And in 1966, Martin Luther King began to move toward emphasizing black pride and the need for black economic health. We might have had a convergence of these two great figures.
     Studies of Malcolm must continue to be made. We have to foresake the uncritical endorsements and attacks and examine the man and his work.

     Write 300 to 400 words about the discussion for tomorrow morning's newspaper, or write a long piece for tonight's local radio news.