Saying No to Lee Atwater

By Jacob V. Lamar

Just weeks after George Bush was elected President, his campaign manager and newly named Republican Chairman Lee Atwater launched an effort to lure black voters into the G.O.P. Calling for an end to blacks' "blind allegiance" to the Democrats, Atwater talked about providing minorities with leadership positions in the Republican National Committee. He even promoted his love of black music, strumming a guitar and warbling at Washington rhythm-and-blues clubs. At the same time, Atwater -- who cut his political teeth as a protege of South Carolina's once segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond -- downplayed his role in devising the crypto-racist Willie Horton ads that helped Bush win the White House. "That's in the past," he insisted.

Last week students at Howard University in Washington, perhaps the nation's most distinguished black college, let Atwater know that the past had not been forgotten. Outraged by his appointment in January to the Howard board of trustees, more than 200 students seized the school's main administration building in the most intense burst of campus unrest since the Viet Nam War. Hundreds of other students demonstrated outside, chanting slogans and demanding Atwater's resignation from the board. Four days after the rebellion began, with riot police threatening to storm the building, Atwater stepped down. In a Washington Post piece last week he complained that the students had distorted his record on civil rights and failed to recognize the good he could do. Wrote Atwater: "I had a lot to offer Howard."

Atwater's appointment to the board was a marriage of convenience. The R.N.C. chairman wanted better ties with the black community, and Howard President James Cheek was eager to curry favor with the new Administration: the university depends on the Federal Government for more than $178 million, nearly 60% of its annual budget. Despite rumors of dissension among the 31 other trustees, all but one approved Atwater's election.

Howard's students, however, were not so willing to go along. Atwater's appointment, declared an editorial in Hilltop, the campus newspaper, undermined "the principles this school was founded on." The controversy simmered until March 3 when, during a celebration of the school's 122nd anniversary, students stormed the stage shouting, "Just say no to Atwater!" and "How far will Howard go for a buck?" The siege at the administration building followed on Monday. By Tuesday, police were ready to invade with tear gas and battering rams when Mayor Marion Barry arrived on the scene and ordered the lawmen to back off.

Responding to scenes of the melee on the evening news and to calls from Barry and Jesse Jackson, Atwater reluctantly resigned. Most of the students' other demands were met, including amnesty for the demonstrators. One protest leader, April Silver, exulted that the students had made an "international statement to the world." Youthful hyperbole, perhaps, but the students had sent a clear message to Atwater and the G.O.P.: It will take more than just strumming the blues to realize their dream of a Republican "rainbow coalition."

With reporting by Alessandra Stanley/Washington