Cecil A. Partee Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

that the University of Illinois law school, particularly, had had an
inordinately small number of black students. In the current year of 1971
the University of Illinois had opened up and had a substantial number of
black students. My .recollection is it was somewhere around twenty. And a
dean of the school came and asked me to put the bill in because they were
seeking something like a hundred thousand dollars to be used for tutorial
purposes. Many of the youngsters who were in the program were having
difficulty keeping up with their class because they had, many of them, had
what might be described as inadequate preparation for law school, although
they were college graduates. The dean felt that they needed extra help and
extra work and that they had to be tutored in some subjects. The money was
for that purpose. My recollection is that the bill failed.
Q: Yes, sir. Do you know why it failed? Was there . , .
A: Yes, I think it failed for one particular reason. During my discussion
with the dean, he pointed out to me that these youngsters, mast of them,
were not working and that they did not have time to hold a job and keep up
with their class and have the tutorial sessions. During the questioping of
him, that question came out, that these men were not working and many of
the senators wha are like myself, self-made people, just found it very
distasteful that we would be subsidizing students who weren't working. You
know, people would say things like, ''Well, I worked every day that I went
to school. I worked and I won't see state money used to send somebody to
school who isn't working," and that kind of thing. I myself worked my way
through but I didn't have the same attitude. But many of them did. I
would think that would be really the principal reason why that bill failed,
because of the self-made people who objected to supporting people in school
who did not work.
Q: Was there any attempt after that to set up this fellowship?
A: No, that's the only time we tried it, I think, because I just thought
it was dead, that it wasn't possible to do it.
Q: Yes. (pause) Senator Fred Smith in 1971, and you plus five other
people, proposed a negro history week, a resolution establishing negro
history week. Do you recall that resolution? And was this the second
year of that, that was one of the questions I had. It said to establish
again negro history week.
A: I don't remember the resolution; I do remember the concept. It was
established along there, I know.
Q: What was Mr. Smith like?
A: Well, he had been in the House a number of years and he had been in the
Senate a number of years when I got to the Senate. A very articulate
gentleman who understood very well the legislative process and who was for
a long period of time the only black member of the Senate during the period