NEGRO AS K. U. DEBATER.
Boycott Placed on Baker Debate by
Kansas Students.
As a result of the selection of a negro for the Kansas university debating team, which meets Baker today, only a score of students will accompany the team to Baldwin tomorrow. Woodie Jacobs, a fullblood negro from Rosedale, entered the competitive preliminary debates two months ago, and on account of his experience easily won a place on the team. The other men on the team -- Sanders Vigg, from Alva, O. T., and Clyde Commons, from Fort Scott -- made no protest, and after a few vain attempts to have the preliminaries tried over by some of the members of the debating council who opposed the negro, Jacobs was assured a place on the team. Nothing was heard of the matter until this week, when the debating council tried to arrange an excursion to Baldwin. In former years, 500 or 600 students attended the debates and chartered special trains, but this year only sixteen Kansas University students bought tickets.
The novelty of having a negro on the team is increased all the more by the fact that the question for the debate is the repeal of the fifteenth amendment, involving the taking away of the right of suffrage from the negro. Jacobs, for Kansas university, defends the negro side of the question.
