Racial Remark by ‘Happy’ Chandler Stirs Up Students

University of Kentucky students upset over a racial slur by former baseball commissioner A.B. (Happy) Chandler called Wednesday for an apology or his resignation from the board of trustees.

Chandler, a two-time Kentucky governor and U.S. senator who was commissioner in 1947 when Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier, made the remark Tuesday during a committee’s discussion of the university’s 1985 decision to dispose of its investments in South Africa.

“You know Zimbabwe’s all nigger now; there aren’t any whites,” Chandler said during a meeting of the investments committee. About one-third of the 20 board members were present.

“They’re trying to make a mountain out of a molehill,” Chandler, 89, said Wednesday, adding that he doesn’t plan to apologize unless asked to do so by university President David Roselle or Gov. Wallace Wilkinson.

About 40 students representing 6 organizations marched to the administration building to meet with Roselle. One carried a placard saying, “Hopefully Happy is Sad,” and others shouted, “We wanna know!” the reason for Chandler’s remark.

Roselle told the students that the university “completely and totally repudiates what it is Governor Chandler says. Completely. We do not support his statement. It’s completely contrary . . . to what we want to have be the belief of the University of Kentucky.”

In a telephone interview from his Versailles, Ky., home, Chandler said: “I don’t think I should be censured for this. I don’t think I deserve any harsh treatment.”

Chandler said that while growing up in Henderson County, “there were 400 whites and 400 blacks. We called them niggers and they didn’t mind. We loved each other. We never had any trouble.”

Wilkinson, who appointed Chandler to a voting position on the university’s governing board earlier this year, said that Chandler should apologize.

“It was a bad statement and it was a statement that should never be made,” Wilkinson said, “and I’m going to recommend to him that he apologize and explain it.”