Viking 1965

npa If six members of Portland's minis- cule National Party of America came to Portland State seeking publicity, they succeeded. In the process they destroyed any myths about academic freedom's rational sway over human emotions. The crowd of some 250 students and faculty which gathered in the Park Blocks around the NPA's youthful president, Edmund Crump, was un- easy from the start. tr'or nearly an hour the Portland Staters jeered at Crump's rantings about Portland newspapers and Judaism, watched all the while by the Sears and Roebuck- uniformed right wingers and Portland police. Then the heckling crowd soured. The mob flattened two tires of the NPA's wheezy old pickup truck, stole the ignition keys, ripped down a Confed- erate flag flying from the truck, and pulverized inflammatory signs on the side of the pickup. The explosion came when history pro- fesor John Stevens, who had been al- lowed to stand in the pickup's bed, suddenly ripped off the flag. As the anti-Semites rode off to head- quarters in protective custody, their antiquated truck-also in protective custody-was trundled along behind a police wrecker, leaving the crowd to contemplate what it had done. Y *j' :i }I -*h B " ftl l: i6