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New Wallace Invitation Expected at Yale Today

By Efrem Sigel

The Wallace Affair continued to simmer at Yale University yesterday.

Sources in New Haven reported last night that student groups are "almost certain" to issue a new invitation today for the Alabama governor to speak at the university. An initial invitation by the Yale Political Union was withdrawn last Thursday after kingman Brewster, Jr., provost and acting president, warned that Wallace's presence might provoke violence.

Both the Yale Law School Forum and the Yale Civil Liberties Association, an ad hoc committee formed this week by Law School students and faculty, were said to be on the verge of issuing invitations to Wallace. The governor's press secretary told the Yale Daily News yesterday that Wallace would look with favor on a new invitation. There has been no indication of how the university would react to a second invitation.

Brewster claimed last week that Wallace's presence would antagonize the Negro community in New Haven and could spur violence. He asked the Political Union to cancel its invitation as a matter of "practical politics."

In a letter to the Daily News, officers of the Union said they agreed to withdraw the invitation after being convinced that the governor's presence constituted a "threat" to law and order. But members said privately that they had bowed under strong pressure from the university.

According to one report, officials implied that they would refuse permission to use a university hall for the speech if the Union did not cancel its invitation.

In their telegram to the governor, officials of the Political Union said they had decided to cancel theinvitation because "in has been made clear to us that your presence here would severely impair the relationship between Yale and the New Haven Negro community."

Last Friday, an editorial in the Daily News expressed "shock" at the university's attempt to "stifle" Gov. Wallace.

Some Negro leaders in New Haven yesterday added their voices to the criticism of Yale's action expressed earlier by students and faculty. A Daily News story said opinion in the Negro community was split. But it quoted the chairman of the New Haven Committee for Jobs and Freedom as saying he favored inviting Wallace, on the grounds the Negroes could not protest the denial of freedom in Alabama and sanction its abridgement in New Haven.

In pressing for the cancellation of the initial invitation, Brewster apparently acted independently of New Haven Mayor Richard C. Lee, Lee sent Wallace a telegram last Thursday telling the governor he was "officially unwelcome" in New Haven.

Wallace originally planned to come to Yale Nov. 4 as one stop in a speaking tour of the North. He has a tentative engagement to speak at Fordham University Nov. 5, and is scheduled to speak at the University of Pennsylvania the next day.

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