The Night Malcolm X Spoke at the Oxford Union

59.2% of the landladies interviewed would almost certainly refuse an application by a "coloured" student. -Survey on Oxford University lodgings, November 1964

Within a week after Rose's article appeared, and just days before Malcolm X's visit, JACARI took the lead in expressing "the urgency of the problems on [our own] doorstep. " On November 25, JACARI released a sensational report about the color bar as it applied to Oxford student housing. The university had a clear policy of equal rights, regardless of race, and Oxford college rooms were open to all. Many second-year undergraduates and most graduates had to find lodgings in the town, and they did so by consulting the approved list of landladies compiled by the university's Delegacy of Lodgings. JACARI contacted the delegacy for the landladies' names and addresses. During the start of term, they visited 189 homes. Louis Nthenda, newly arrived from Malawi, was one of the volunteers who would ask to rent a room, be denied, and then be followed by a white student who would ask the same question. The headline results of the survey shattered the university's image: nearly two-thirds of the landladies on the approved list expressed racial prejudice, and more than half would not accept a nonwhite student as a lodger.129