Abstract:
The North Carolina General Assembly passed the Speaker Ban Law in 1963. The legislation was an attempt to prevent communists from appearing on state-owned college and university property. A court decision struck the law down in 1968. A recent documentary film called Beyond the Wall, and a book, Communists on Campus: Race, Politics and the Public University in Sixties North Carolina, discusses the Speaker Ban controversy. Longley discusses the two and the genesis of the law. The role of Leo Jenkins, president of then East Carolina College (now ECU), in suggesting a law compromise which was acceptable to the legislature, is left out of both.