Posted By  richards on March 23, 2014    
				
				    UNIVERSITY PARK  Late on a Monday afternoon in May 1968, half    of Penn State University's black student population marched    from College Avenue and up the campus mall to Old Main.    Numbering about 100, most were members of an activist group    called the Frederick E. Douglass Association. They planned to    present 12 demands to Charles Lewis, Penn State's vice    president for student affairs.  
    The previous month, a sniper had shot and killed Martin Luther    King Jr. on a Tennessee hotel balcony. Protests were erupting    on campuses throughout the country.  
    That was a time for expressing pain and just a time to express    your deepest feelings and general vulnerability about the whole    country and state and city, says Frederick Phillips, a 1968    graduate who founded the Douglass Association.  
    The students were dissatisfied with the treatment of the black    community at Penn State. They wanted course offerings with    black literature and an African culture study program. They    wanted more black students, more black athletes and more black    professors, and they wanted black coaches.  
    Less than 1 percent of the student body was black, and the    school had a handful of black faculty. As for black coaches,    Penn State didn't have any.  
    Today, James Franklin, hired in January, is Penn State's first    black head football coach. Mr. Franklin isn't necessarily more    than a football coach, but this story is about more than    football.  
    Penn State today is trying to be a diverse university  and is    as diverse as it has ever been concerning race, ethnicity and    religion  in an area defined by homogeneity (a 90 percent    white population in Centre County). Though its black student    population, 4.1 percent at University Park, is lower than the    University of Pittsburgh (5.3 percent) and Temple (14.7    percent), the graduation rate for black students has improved    from around 40 percent 30 years ago to 67 percent now. Its    percentage of minority and black faculty is in the middle of    the pack nationally for a state university.  
    Into these contradictions, the hiring of Mr. Franklin is    another benchmark of progress. Penn State is the flagship    institution for the commonwealth, and the football coach is the    school's most visible leader.  
    Football here has the power to unite. It has the power to make    people riot. It has the power to make people donate, cry and    rejoice. As Penn State's vice provost for educational equity    Terrell Jones says, Penn State football games are church.  
    Mr. Jones says the highest-growing number of minority students    he sees at Penn State are those of mixed race. Mr. Franklin's    late mother was white, from Britain, and his late father was    black. He was a first-generation college student and he needed    financial aid from football and a Pell Grant to attend East    Stroudsburg University.  
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Franklin's hiring a benchmark for Penn State
				
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