“Good People Still In The Majority”

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31727, 10 July 1968, Page 3

“Good People Still In The Majority”

Waiting six and a half hours in the queue that filed past Senator Robert Kennedy’s coffin convinced a Christchurch girl, Miss Ellen Armitage, that “good people are still in the majority.” Some people waited eight hours on what was an exceptionally hot New York night but the crowd was orderly. Miss Armitage, who finally filed past the coffin at 5 o’clock in the morning, said there were families with small children, Puerto Ricans, Negroes, and high school students, who waited in the queue throughout the night "Spending all that time in that huge line convinced me that violent people are a minority,” said Miss Armitage. Miss Armitage joined the queue 10 blocks from the Cathedral and she spent her six and a half hours slowly walking there.

Miss Armitage was also in the United States during the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, and in New York for the student riots at the University of Columbia. “Riots affect the lives of everyday people if they live

in the area or if they have to travel through it. They also take extra precautions as a matter of course. Some people are disturbed that the conditions that breed riots are allowed to continue,” she said. But most people who watched the riots on television remained fairly detached from them. Television rioting affected them in the same way as any other violence on the television screen. Miss Armitage spent 22 months in New York attending the Union Theological Seminary on a National Council of Churches scholarship, studying sacred music. She emerged with an S.M.M.. a Sacred Music Master’s degree, and she is probably the only person in New Zealand to held this qualification. Miss Armitage also conducted a children's choir at the Riverside Church in New York. Members of her choir came from around the Harlem district. The choir wa* part of a youth programme.