NAACP Probes MLK Party At Clemson

Clemson University and the NAACP said Tuesday they are investigating an off-campus party held during the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend that some considered offensive because white students drank malt liquor and at least one partygoer wore blackface.

Pictures from the party were posted online, and Clemson officials learned of the Jan. 14 party this past weekend. The school is probing whether students were harassed or whether there was underage drinking.

Earlier this month, Tarleton State University officials in Stephenville, Texas, investigated a similar party that featured fried chicken and fake gang apparel, and at the University of Connecticut School of Law, students who attended an off-campus "Bullets and Bubbly" party held fake machine guns and 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor.

Clemson President James Barker wrote in a letter to students and faculty that he was "appalled, angered and disappointed" by the party, which "appeared to mock and disparage African Americans."

"Many people have been offended and deeply hurt," he said.

The party organizers issued an unsigned letter of apology:

"We invited all races and types of peoples and never meant any racial harm," according to the letter, which was provided to The Associated Press by Gail DiSabatino, vice president for student affairs.

"We want everyone to know how sorry we are, and that we are willing to do anything to make things right," the letter said.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was looking into the party and at least three similar events at other colleges around the country, said state chapter president Lonnie Randolph.

Clemson has roughly 1,100 black students out of more than 17,000 undergraduates, the university's Web site says.

Randolph said the Clemson party wasn't "just harmless fun."

"We once lynched African-Americans as good fun and humor," Randolph said. "We also execute them at a real high rate for fun and humor. We also don't educate them or pay them like we pay others in the community and that's fun and humorous to a lot of people."

DiSabatino said members of Alpha Phi Alpha, a black fraternity, attended the large party but left.

Bobby Clark, faculty sponsor for the fraternity, didn't want to speak about the incident Tuesday and a message left for the fraternity's president was not immediately returned.

"The thing that made this worst is that they tried to say it's for Martin Luther King," said Jamison Simmons, a former president of the Omega Psi Phi undergraduate chapter. "On any other day, it still would have been bad but to use King Day as the purpose behind it — that's terrible."

Randolph said he was concerned about "our future leaders of South Carolina."

"These aren't a bunch of hicks in the backwoods somewhere," Randolph said.