INTRODUCTION
The Black Revolution on Campus
“Black young people feel they can change society,†a minister in San Francisco observed in
1969. “Now that’s very important.†Black students want “revolutionary change in the basic
institutions in this country,†echoed a young politician. According to students in San Diego,
“Racism runs rampant in the educational system, while America, in a pseudohumanitarian
stance, proudly proclaims that it is the key to equal opportunity for all.†“This is the
hypocrisy,†they declared, that “our generation must now destroy.â€
1 This widespread feeling of
power and purpose among Black college students, combined with a sense of urgency and
context of crisis, produced an extraordinary chapter in the modern Black freedom struggle.
Black students organized protests on nearly two hundred college campuses across the United
States in 1968 and 1969, and continued to a lesser extent into the early 1970s. This dramatic
explosion of militant activism set in motion a period of conflict, crackdown, negotiation, and
reform that profoundly transformed college life. At stake was the very mission of higher
education. Who should be permitted entry into universities and colleges? What constituted
merit? Who should be the future leaders of the nation in this postsegregation era, and how
should this group be determined? What should be taught and who should teach it? Perhaps most
controversially, should students have a hand in faculty selection or governance? Moreover,
what would happen to public Black colleges in this era of integration? Would they close, as
happened to primary and secondary schools after Brown v. Board of Education?
With remarkable organization and skill, this generation of Black students challenged
fundamental tenets of university life. They insisted that public universities should reflect and
serve the people of their communities; that private universities should rethink the mission of
elite education; and that historically Black colleges should survive the era of integration and
shift their mission to community-based Black empowerment. Most crucially, Black students
demanded a role in the definition and production of scholarly knowledge. These students
constituted the first critical mass of African Americans to attend historically white universities.
Deeply inspired by the Autobiography of Malcolm X and the charismatic leadership of Stokely
Carmichael, yet shaken by the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., they were engaged in a
redefinition of the civil rights struggle at a time when cities were in flames, hundreds of
thousands of young Americans were at war in southeast Asia, and political assassination was
commonplace. These were “Malcolm’s children,†and they were inspired by the slain leader’s
denunciation of American hypocrisy and his call for Black control over Black institutions. In
essence, student leaders were turning the slogan “Black Power†into a grassroots social
movement. For many of the young people in this book, it was a revolutionary, hopeful time, a
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time they were determined to shape. Their energy and idealism inspired Latino, Asian
American, and progressive white students to launch and intensify their own campus crusades.
The Black Revolution on Campus shows how students moved to the forefront of the Black
freedom struggle and transformed American higher education, sometimes in unexpected ways.
2
There were two critical moments in the Black freedom struggle when students took the lead:
1960, with the lunch-counter sit-ins and creation of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC); and 1968, with the explosion of campus activism. Yet most studies of
campus protest in the late 1960s focus on the white New Left’s opposition to the war in
Vietnam. Black students, so prevalent in representations of the sit-ins, freedom rides, and voter
registration drives of the early 1960s, virtually disappear in histories of the late 1960s. While
the white student movement of the late 1960s has garnered much more attention, Black student
protest produced greater campus change. In contrast to conventional wisdom, the most
prevalent demand in the hundreds of campus protests in 1968–1969 was African American
inclusion, not opposition to the Vietnam War. The centrality of race to campus uprisings of the
late 1960s has been forgotten.
The students often faced harsh reprisals, including criminal prosecution and, particularly at
historically Black colleges, violent police invasions. While their confrontational tactics and
Black Power rhetoric alienated many, their achievements were impressive. Their efforts
pushed colleges to formalize and expand affirmative action policies and provide greater
financial aid, leading to a sharp jump in Black college enrollment in the 1970s. In essence,
these student activists forced a permanent change in American life, transforming
overwhelmingly white campuses into multiracial learning environments. The academic
community would never be the same. Reflecting the rights consciousness of the era, Black
student activists asserted a right to attend college, especially public ones. Moreover, student
protest stimulated demand for Black faculty and sparked the desegregation of college curricula
with the creation of hundreds of African American studies departments and programs.
In the style of social movement history, the first five chapters tell the dramatic story of the
Black student movement at selected campuses across the country. Every region in the country
was part of this story, so every region has a chapter, including the South, with its historically
Black colleges. The last three chapters explore the outcomes of the Black student movement,
focusing in particular on the early formation of Black studies in traditional academic settings,
as well as its influence on community-based initiatives. The Black Revolution on Campus
combines activist history and intellectual history in order to show the critical linkage between
the student movement and changes in university culture in the United States. It is imperative to
understand the two in tandem. I chart the rise of an academic discipline that has widely
influenced intellectual production in the United States even though, in the eyes of some of its
founders, Black studies has failed to realize its radical potential. For many students and
scholars, Black studies signified the inclusion of the histories and cultures of Africandescended people, taught from the perspective of Black scholars, in the curriculum of higher
education. But for many others, Black studies meant more than the creation of a new academic
discipline. It “began with the utopian vision of a constant stream of young black people from
the colleges and the universities helping ghetto dwellers to achieve Black Power and to
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transform their neighborhoods.â€
3
The thousands of African American students in the United States who engaged in sit-ins,
demonstrations, picket lines, and campus strikes in the late 1960s were not the first Black
students on these campuses. Small numbers of African Americans had been attending majority
white colleges and universities since the nineteenth century. Many of the Black students who
began to enter predominantly white northern universities in the early 1960s were athletes, but
this early group also included middle-class children of college-educated parents. A jump in
Black enrollments came in 1967 and 1968, when new federal policy and the mounting effects
of the civil rights movement modestly increased the numbers of Black undergraduates. These
students tended to be from working-class, migrant families and were often the first in their
families to attend college. They, in turn, engaged in direct action protest to demand greater
numbers of Black students. From 1970 to 1974, college enrollments for African Americans
shot up 56 percent, compared to a 15 percent increase for whites.
4
In many respects, the
broader desegregation of institutions of higher education in the American North and West was
won by the children of southern migrants and constitutes another legacy of the twentieth
century’s massive internal migration.
The Black student movement was part of the Black Power movement, whose rhetoric,
political analysis, and tactics broke from the civil rights movement, but whose goals of Black
representation and inclusion were shared with civil rights activists. Black Power emphasized
the creation of Black-controlled institutions and racial solidarity and entailed a vigorous
emphasis on culture—both in celebrating African American culture and in seeing it as a
catalyst for political action and the forging of a new Black consciousness. Black Power
advocates saw themselves as unmasking U.S. institutions—including liberal ones like
universities—and exposing the whiteness disguised as universalism. They were seeking to
change the terms of desegregation: it must not be color-blind, but pluralist. Their call for selfdetermination was not antithetical to the quest for full inclusion and equal rights, but a strategy
for achieving it in a nation deeply shaped by a history of white supremacy. Crucially, Black
Power encouraged African Americans to see themselves as African descendants, as part of a
global majority rather than an American minority. This international consciousness intensified
in the 1970s, giving rise to new Pan-African and Third World identities, initiatives, and
solidarities.
5
No single individual or organization directed the activist energies of Black college students
in this era, but several leaders and groups played important roles. Founded by Huey Newton
and Bobby Seale in 1966, the Black Panther Party initially focused on combating police
brutality, but within a few years it was calling for revolution and an end to the war in Vietnam,
as well as advocating free health clinics, Black studies in high school and college, and other
programs to meet local needs. To a greater extent than has been appreciated, students admired,
followed, and sometimes joined the Black Panther Party.
6 For its part, faced with the
escalating deindustrialization of Oakland, the Black Panther Party wanted to recruit from the
“lumpenproletariat,†a Marxist term describing a social stratum outside the formal economy:
hustlers, gang members, and ex-convicts. Nevertheless, the party was surprisingly successful in
appealing to high school and college students, and as a result, Panther chapters in Oakland,
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New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago included student leaders. As Black students sought to
build new institutions on college campuses, they were deeply inspired by the Panthers’ success
in creating and running their own programs. Indeed, a nationwide independent Black schooling
movement would arise in the 1970s from this ethos of countercultural self-reliance. SNCC was
a second critically important source of influence on Black students nationwide. By the late
1960s, many veteran SNCC organizers had shifted their attention away from the rural south
toward college campuses. The most famous SNCC leader who inspired and shaped the
nationwide Black student movement was the former Howard University student Stokely
Carmichael, who by 1968 had become a seasoned organizer and charismatic orator,
crisscrossing the country urging Black college students to fight for greater recognition and
power.
7 But most important, leadership in the Black student movement was indigenous and
local: students formed their own campus organizations and led their own struggles, even as
they traveled to other campuses and learned from each other.
A major victory for the students, the achievement of African American studies quickly
became its own site of struggle with a new group of protagonists, mainly professors who held
competing views of how to build Black studies. The seemingly arcane question of whether
Black studies should take the form of a program, college, department, or center became deeply
enmeshed in the political struggle for self-determination and the academic struggle for stature
and legitimacy. Even after commitments to create Black studies had been won, another round of
conflict often ensued over precisely what form it would take and who would be calling the
shots. Similarly, an intellectual battle over the character of Black studies developed at the
same time. Pressure to show a rationale for Black studies led many scholars to argue for the
advantages of and need for a “Black perspective†in teaching and research. While some
observers feared lockstep thinking in such an approach, the defense of a Black perspective in
academe relatively quickly gave way to a critical search for various ways to understand the
multivalent Black experience. Three factors shaped the turbulent emergence of Black studies as
a site for innovative and influential scholarship: ideological disputes over what should serve
as the intellectual basis for Black studies, which had the effect of establishing multiple streams
of intellectual thought within the field; the desire of some scholars to pursue relatively
conventional academic careers, which led them into an ambivalent, even contentious
relationship with Black studies; and the influence within Black studies of Marxist and feminist
critiques of cultural nationalist approaches to the study of the Black experience. Indeed, in
contrast to what many might expect, Afrocentricism, with its focus on reclaiming precolonial
African achievements, cultures, and value systems, was not the predominant philosophical
approach as African American studies entered higher education in the United States.
The first chapter examines the experiences and political outlooks of Black college students
in the mid- to late 1960s, with an eye toward capturing their fast-growing impatience with
“token integration†and their attraction to a new politics of racial pride and assertion. The
students’ Black nationalism was controversial, in both Black and white communities. In
addition to setting up the shift in Black student consciousness that helped pave the way for new
forms of student protest, I identify the beginnings of the Black student movement at historically
Black colleges and universities. Student activists met with lethal violence in Orangeburg,
South Carolina, and experienced a major police assault on the campus of Texas Southern
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University in Houston, but they won an important victory at Howard University. By highlighting
the activism at historically Black colleges in the opening chapter, I unsettle the usual geography
of vanguard student radicalism, which emphasizes the New Left at Berkeley, Ann Arbor, and
Columbia. In contrast to their conservative image, Black colleges were important incubators of
leadership in the Black student movement throughout the entire decade of the 1960s.
Chapters 2 through 5 narrate student struggles in different regions of the country in the late
1960s and into the early 1970s. The chapters are roughly chronological, but it is crucial to
understand that campus upheavals (especially in 1968 and 1969) were happening at virtually
the same time across the nation. Chapter 2 provides a close analysis of what is widely
understood to be the launching pad of the Black studies movement. Vowing to shut the campus
down until their demands were met, the Black Student Union at San Francisco State College
launched a five-month strike that convulsed the Bay Area, drew national media attention, and
put Governor Ronald Reagan, the striking students, the faculty, college president S.I.
Hayakawa, and Black community leaders on a collision course. Deeply influenced by the
Panthers, the students adopted militant tactics. The state’s conservative leadership, however,
was ready for a confrontation, and liberal San Francisco became, ironically, the setting for
aggressive police tactics—officers made nearly eight hundred arrests and more or less
occupied the campus for months. Remarkably, no historian has written about this enormously
significant story.
8
The third chapter showcases two diverse institutions in the Chicago area where Black
student organizing produced sweeping campus reforms and laid the basis for a broader
modernization of the university and for Black empowerment in the city of Chicago. In the early
morning hours of May 4, 1968, one month after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.,
about one hundred Black students at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, took over
the campus building housing the bursar’s office. Occurring a few days after New York City
police had arrested seven hundred students in a violent confrontation to end a protest at
Columbia University, the Northwestern protest was engulfed from the start by the fear of a
police raid. It was ultimately hailed as a success, both for its peaceful resolution and a
settlement granting several of the students’ demands. In many respects, Northwestern typified
Black experiences at elite, private historically white universities. There was an emerging
liberalism, and many openings for change, side by side with the legacy of a racially
exclusionary cultural and institutional history. But in Evanston, as elsewhere, the students
forcefully and creatively asserted themselves and offered solutions that would transform many
aspects of campus life in the 1970s. They invited the famed historian Lerone Bennett and
legendary Caribbean scholar and activist C.L.R. James to Northwestern, but it took several
years to establish a Black studies program, a lag between activism and meaningful curricular
reform that was common at elite universities.
A major location of the Black student–Black studies movements was urban public colleges
and universities, both two- and four-year institutions. Located on the predominantly Black west
side of Chicago, Crane Junior College had a largely white faculty, curriculum, and
administrators. Black student activists at Crane began by organizing the Negro History Club,
but their struggle grew rapidly, aiming to change the mission and character of the whole
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campus. They succeeded in changing the college’s name to Malcolm X and gaining an African
American as college president—the first in the city—but they were unsuccessful in their
particular candidate, an African American woman. The movement at Malcolm X College
involved the Black Panther Party and a group of activists who would go on to play key roles in
political, labor, and civil rights struggles in Chicago. In the students’ successful effort to
redefine the mission of a community college, Malcolm X typifies struggles in Oakland, New
York City, Detroit, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other large American cities.
Chapter 4 looks at Black student activism at City College and Brooklyn College, elite fouryear institutions in New York City. On the eve of the movement, these two colleges—taxpayer
financed in the city with the largest Black population in the United States—were
overwhelmingly white: Brooklyn College at 96 percent white in 1968, and City at 91 percent.
A two-week occupation of City College in Harlem precipitated a political crisis in the city and
ushered in a major shift in public policy, but strikingly it has garnered little attention from
historians. Similarly, the struggle at Brooklyn College has been virtually forgotten, even though
it was crucial in reshaping the admissions policy, the university’s relationship to communities
of color, and the curriculum. The radical transformation of admissions requirements at the
entire City University of New York produced the biggest structural shift in opportunity during
the long civil-rights era. This generation of students remade public higher education in New
York City, although at Brooklyn College they fell victim to police infiltration and trumped-up
criminal charges. In addition to the Black Panther Party, Black student unions were targets of
the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program, known as COINTELPRO.
Chapter 5 makes clear that the Black student–Black studies movements did not happen only
on white campuses. The quest for self-determination inspired Black students to fight to
strengthen and preserve historically Black colleges. Many students at historically Black
colleges and universities had participated in the southern civil rights movement, but after 1967
they increasingly turned their activist energies to the campuses, demanding Black studies
departments, student inclusion in governance, more resources, and the end of compulsory
ROTC and in loco parentis. They sought to end the white control associated with the funding,
mission, and governance of private Black colleges; and in the public sector their quest was
nothing less than the preservation of Black colleges. In this era of integration, “saving Black
colleges†was a largely unheralded but critically important struggle. By the early 1970s, unrest
was rocking Black colleges throughout the South. Students at Black colleges were more likely
to encounter violence and campus invasion from law enforcement during their protests than
were Black students at other schools. I explore conflicts that led to police occupations and
sometimes arrests and shootings—such as those at Southern University in Baton Rouge—which
have been more or less excluded from scholarship on the era and from public memorializing of
deaths associated with the civil rights movement. At Southern University in November 1972,
law enforcement officers fired at fleeing students, killing two young men. In the long term the
violence at historically Black colleges and universities led to a quelling of student activism.
Together with assassinations and COINTELPRO, this wave of campus violence contributed to a
decline in such open and adversarial Black resistance.
Chapter 6 moves away from the focus on student activism to an examination of the political
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controversies swirling around the early Black studies movement. The establishment of
hundreds of Black studies programs in colleges and universities across the country was a
major achievement of the Black student movement, but their birth was marked by contention. I
explore various struggles and debates that interrogate the meaning of Black studies; a point of
contention arose around the idea that Black studies advocated a “Black perspective,†and some
expressed concern that this would give rise to an excessively political, narrowly nationalist,
anti-intellectual thrust. In contrast, as I argue, most articulations of a Black perspective strove
to be international, critical, and expansive.
The battle around the shape of the new Black studies unit at Harvard illustrates how
political anxieties could derail an academic unit. A student proposal for a department
prevailed over an administration and faculty proposal for a program, leading to years of
struggle over the form of Afro-American studies at Harvard, but the department ultimately
survived. I conclude with a brief look at a pivotal Ford Foundation conference in Aspen,
Colorado, in which this debate over the shape of Black studies came to a head and reinforced a
shift in Ford’s funding strategy toward promoting diversity in American higher education. In
this era of Black self-determination, funding from white philanthropic sources became
extremely controversial. Black nationalists sometimes rejected it but, more typically, sought to
gain greater control over its use.
Chapter 7 explores how a sizeable segment of scholars and activists in the early Black
studies movement imagined Black studies as having a broader social impact, beyond academic
life. They viewed the widespread dissemination of Black history written and taught by Black
people as a means of instilling pride among African Americans and of furthering the process of
Black liberation. I examine several nonacademic initiatives that were deeply related to the
Black student–Black studies movements, including a remarkable series of televised Black
history lectures, Black Heritage: A History of Afro-Americans. Even with its controversial
late-night/early-morning screen times, it brought prominent Black scholars like John Henrik
Clarke, Vincent Harding, Robert Browne, and St. Clair Drake into American living rooms. The
Institute of the Black World, a group of radical scholar-activists in Atlanta, succeeded to some
degree in modeling a movement-inspired public intellectualism; but shorn of regular funds, it
struggled to fully implement its ambitious vision. The Nairobi Schools in East Palo Alto,
California, an example of an independent Black institution, were the locus of an impressive
grassroots project that offered instruction from preschool through junior college. Reflecting the
influence of the Black Panthers as well as a utopian Pan-Africanism, independent Black
institutions saw themselves as building new value systems in Black communities and
countering the destructive, profit-seeking ethos of racist America. Relatedly, the Student
Organization for Black Unity, formed by radical students from various campus struggles, set up
a base in North Carolina and, ultimately, adopted the view that Black people in diaspora
should acquire skills useful for building strong postcolonial nations in Africa. Each of these
examples illustrates the diverse legacies of Black Power–era student activism, beyond the
campus and beyond the creation of African American studies and affirmative action.
In the final chapter, I analyze debates and tensions in the definition of the discipline of
African American studies. Should it create and emphasize a single methodology, or does its
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strength lie in the use of multiple methodologies? Similarly, should the Black studies movement
aim for standardized curricula across the nation, or is innovation and difference a hallmark of
academic inquiry in the United States? I conclude with attention to scholarly innovations that
have helped advance African American studies, focusing on the effort to encompass the
African diaspora in Black studies and the rise of Black women’s studies. The Black student
and early Black studies movements were part of a broader constellation of social, cultural, and
political developments that eventually gave rise to Black feminism. Whether known as
Africana womanism or Black women’s studies, systematic attention to gender and women
would significantly shape scholarship and pedagogy in African American studies. But this
development would have been hard to predict in 1968, and took years of struggle against
patriarchal attitudes and a male-dominated opportunity structure.
In the 1970s, in particular, Black women scholars often found themselves in Black studies
units indifferent or hostile to feminist perspectives. But Black feminist scholarship,
particularly the concept of intersectionality, would come to exert considerable influence in the
discipline and in the humanities and social sciences more generally.
In contrast to conventional wisdom, which posits that Black studies was born as a United
States–centered, nation-bound enterprise that, only in more recent years, has discovered the
concepts of globalism and diaspora, I argue that the early Black studies movement was
internationalist and always deeply skeptical of the mythology of American exceptionalism.
Many Black studies programs and departments struggled from the beginning—with varying
degrees of success—to encompass Africa and the diaspora in their curricula, nomenclature,
personnel, and programming. Not a new departure, the rise of African diaspora studies reflects
a deeply rooted tradition and aspiration.
Finally, why label a few years of campus unrest a “revolution� Students neither aimed for
nor achieved a revolution in the traditional sense of seizing state power or precipitating a
transformation of social relations. Moreover, with their demands they sought inclusion and
were motivated by a desire to improve the collegiate experience. As one scholar-activist noted
about open admissions: “This was certainly a militant demand though not revolutionary, since
at its core it simply called for a widening of American democracy, not the institution of a
totally new educational or social order.†But, he acknowledged, “by widening educational
democracy, Black studies could pave the way for the introduction of new and revolutionary
ideas into the curriculum, and this was correctly perceived as a threat by conservative
administrators and faculty.â€
9 The title of this book hopes to capture the sweeping nature of
many of their demands. Indeed, at San Francisco State College, students demanded that all
Black applicants be admitted. Moreover, the audacity of the children of sharecroppers and
factory workers in asserting a right to shape these institutions was in a sense revolutionary. The
Black Revolution illuminates the sense of possibility and expectation among a large cohort of
ambitious, dedicated, politically attuned African American students in the late 1960s—a
significant demographic who were attending college in unprecedented numbers. Revolution
reflects the students’ sense of their own agency, their sense of their ability to affect the course
of history, and the sense among many students that 1968 was indeed a revolutionary moment—
even if this turned out to be false. Finally, the title conveys the sense of rapid, traumatic
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upheaval across society, especially in cities, which had been shaken by violent unrest since
1964. Even the usually celebrity-focused, middle-class Ebony magazine titled a special 1969
issue “The Black Revolution.â€
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Black young people feel they can change society, a minister in San
Francisco observed in 1969. Now thats very important. Black students want revolutionary change in the basic institutions in this country, echoed a young politician. According to students in San Diego,
Racism runs rampant in the educational system, while America, in a
pseudohumanitarian stance, proudly proclaims that it is the key to equal
opportunity for all. This is the hypocrisy, they declared, that our
generation must now destroy.1 This widespread feeling of power and
purpose among Black college students, combined with a sense of urgency and context of crisis, produced an extraordinary chapter in the
modern Black freedom struggle. Black students or ga nized protests on
nearly two hundred college campuses across the United States in 1968
and 1969, and continued to a lesser extent into the early 1970s. This
dramatic explosion of militant activism set in motion a period of confl ict, crackdown, negotiation, and reform that profoundly transformed
college life. At stake was the very mission of higher education. Who
should be permitted entry into universities and colleges? What constituted merit? Who should be the future leaders of the nation in this
postsegregation era, and how should this group be determined? What
should be taught and who should teach it? Perhaps most controversially, should students have a hand in faculty selection or governance?
Moreover, what would happen to public Black colleges in this era of
Introduction
The Black Revolution on Campus
2 | Introduction
integration? Would they close, as happened to primary and secondary
schools after Brown v. Board of Education?
With remarkable or ga ni za tion and skill, this generation of Black
students challenged fundamental tenets of university life. They insisted
that public universities should refl ect and serve the people of their communities; that private universities should rethink the mission of elite
education; and that historically Black colleges should survive the era of
integration and shift their mission to community- based Black empowerment. Most crucially, Black students demanded a role in the defi nition
and production of scholarly knowledge. These students constituted the
fi rst critical mass of African Americans to attend historically white
universities. Deeply inspired by the Autobiography of Malcolm X and
the charismatic leadership of Stokely Carmichael, yet shaken by the
murder of Martin Luther King Jr., they were engaged in a redefi nition
of the civil rights struggle at a time when cities were in fl ames, hundreds of thousands of young Americans were at war in southeast Asia,
and po liti cal assassination was commonplace. These were Malcolms
children, and they were inspired by the slain leaders denunciation of
American hypocrisy and his call for Black control over Black institutions. In essence, student leaders were turning the slogan Black Power
into a grassroots social movement. For many of the young people in
this book, it was a revolutionary, hopeful time, a time they were determined to shape. Their energy and idealism inspired Latino, Asian
American, and progressive white students to launch and intensify their
own campus crusades. The Black Revolution on Campus shows how
students moved to the forefront of the Black freedom struggle and
transformed American higher education, sometimes in unexpected
ways.2
There were two critical moments in the Black freedom struggle when
students took the lead: 1960, with the lunch- counter sit- ins and creation of the Student Non- Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC);
and 1968, with the explosion of campus activism. Yet most studies of
campus protest in the late 1960s focus on the white New Lefts opposition to the war in Vietnam. Black students, so prevalent in repre sen tations of the sit- ins, freedom rides, and voter registration drives of the
early 1960s, virtually disappear in histories of the late 1960s. While the
white student movement of the late 1960s has garnered much more
attention, Black student protest produced greater campus change. In
contrast to conventional wisdom, the most prevalent demand in the
hundreds of campus protests in 1968 1969 was African American in-
Introduction | 3
clusion, not opposition to the Vietnam War. The centrality of race to
campus uprisings of the late 1960s has been forgotten.
The students often faced harsh reprisals, including criminal prosecution and, particularly at historically Black colleges, violent police invasions. While their confrontational tactics and Black Power rhetoric
alienated many, their achievements were impressive. Their efforts pushed
colleges to formalize and expand affi rmative action policies and provide
greater fi nancial aid, leading to a sharp jump in Black college enrollment
in the 1970s. In essence, these student activists forced a permanent
change in American life, transforming overwhelmingly white campuses
into multiracial learning environments. The academic community would
never be the same. Refl ecting the rights consciousness of the era, Black
student activists asserted a right to attend college, especially public ones.
Moreover, student protest stimulated demand for Black faculty and
sparked the desegregation of college curricula with the creation of hundreds of African American studies departments and programs.
In the style of social movement history, the fi rst fi ve chapters tell the
dramatic story of the Black student movement at selected campuses
across the country. Every region in the country was part of this story, so
every region has a chapter, including the South, with its historically
Black colleges. The last three chapters explore the outcomes of the
Black student movement, focusing in par tic u lar on the early formation
of Black studies in traditional academic settings, as well as its infl uence
on community- based initiatives. The Black Revolution on Campus combines activist history and intellectual history in order to show the critical linkage between the student movement and changes in university
culture in the United States. It is imperative to understand the two in
tandem. I chart the rise of an academic discipline that has widely infl uenced intellectual production in the United States even though, in the
eyes of some of its found ers, Black studies has failed to realize its radical potential. For many students and scholars, Black studies signifi ed
the inclusion of the histories and cultures of African- descended people,
taught from the perspective of Black scholars, in the curriculum of higher
education. But for many others, Black studies meant more than the creation of a new academic discipline. It began with the utopian vision of
a constant stream of young black people from the colleges and the universities helping ghetto dwellers to achieve Black Power and to transform their neighborhoods.3
The thousands of African American students in the United States
who engaged in sit- ins, demonstrations, picket lines, and campus strikes
4 | Introduction
in the late 1960s were not the fi rst Black students on these campuses.
Small numbers of African Americans had been attending majority white
colleges and universities since the nineteenth century. Many of the Black
students who began to enter predominantly white northern universities
in the early 1960s were athletes, but this early group also included
middle- class children of college- educated parents. A jump in Black enrollments came in 1967 and 1968, when new federal policy and the
mounting effects of the civil rights movement modestly increased the
numbers of Black undergraduates. These students tended to be from
working- class, migrant families and were often the fi rst in their families
to attend college. They, in turn, engaged in direct action protest to demand greater numbers of Black students. From 1970 to 1974, college
enrollments for African Americans shot up 56 percent, compared to a
15 percent increase for whites.4 In many respects, the broader desegregation of institutions of higher education in the American North and
West was won by the children of southern migrants and constitutes another legacy of the twentieth centurys massive internal migration.
The Black student movement was part of the Black Power movement, whose rhetoric, po liti cal analysis, and tactics broke from the civil
rights movement, but whose goals of Black repre sen ta tion and inclusion were shared with civil rights activists. Black Power emphasized the
creation of Black- controlled institutions and racial solidarity and entailed
a vigorous emphasis on culture both in celebrating African American
culture and in seeing it as a catalyst for po liti cal action and the forging
of a new Black consciousness. Black Power advocates saw themselves
as unmasking U.S. institutions including liberal ones like universities
and exposing the whiteness disguised as universalism. They were seeking to change the terms of desegregation: it must not be color- blind, but
pluralist. Their call for self- determination was not antithetical to the
quest for full inclusion and equal rights, but a strategy for achieving it
in a nation deeply shaped by a history of white supremacy. Crucially,
Black Power encouraged African Americans to see themselves as African descendants, as part of a global majority rather than an American
minority. This international consciousness intensifi ed in the 1970s, giving rise to new Pan- African and Third World identities, initiatives, and
solidarities.5
No single individual or or ga ni za tion directed the activist energies of
Black college students in this era, but several leaders and groups played
important roles. Founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966,
the Black Panther Party initially focused on combating police brutality,
Introduction | 5
but within a few years it was calling for revolution and an end to the
war in Vietnam, as well as advocating free health clinics, Black studies
in high school and college, and other programs to meet local needs. To
a greater extent than has been appreciated, students admired, followed,
and sometimes joined the Black Panther Party.6 For its part, faced with
the escalating deindustrialization of Oakland, the Black Panther Party
wanted to recruit from the lumpenproletariat, a Marxist term describing a social stratum outside the formal economy: hustlers, gang members,
and ex- convicts. Nevertheless, the party was surprisingly successful in
appealing to high school and college students, and as a result, Panther
chapters in Oakland, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago included
student leaders. As Black students sought to build new institutions on
college campuses, they were deeply inspired by the Panthers success in
creating and running their own programs. Indeed, a nationwide in de pendent Black schooling movement would arise in the 1970s from this
ethos of countercultural self- reliance. SNCC was a second critically
important source of infl uence on Black students nationwide. By the late
1960s, many veteran SNCC organizers had shifted their attention away
from the rural south toward college campuses. The most famous SNCC
leader who inspired and shaped the nationwide Black student movement
was the former Howard University student Stokely Carmichael, who by
1968 had become a seasoned or ga niz er and charismatic orator, crisscrossing the country urging Black college students to fi ght for greater
recognition and power.7 But most important, leadership in the Black
student movement was indigenous and local: students formed their own
campus organizations and led their own struggles, even as they traveled
to other campuses and learned from each other.
A major victory for the students, the achievement of African American studies quickly became its own site of struggle with a new group
of protagonists, mainly professors who held competing views of how
to build Black studies. The seemingly arcane question of whether Black
studies should take the form of a program, college, department, or center
became deeply enmeshed in the po liti cal struggle for self- determination
and the academic struggle for stature and legitimacy. Even after commitments to create Black studies had been won, another round of confl ict often ensued over precisely what form it would take and who would
be calling the shots. Similarly, an intellectual battle over the character of
Black studies developed at the same time. Pressure to show a rationale
for Black studies led many scholars to argue for the advantages of and
need for a Black perspective in teaching and research. While some
6 | Introduction
observers feared lockstep thinking in such an approach, the defense of a
Black perspective in academe relatively quickly gave way to a critical
search for various ways to understand the multivalent Black experience.
Three factors shaped the turbulent emergence of Black studies as a site
for innovative and infl uential scholarship: ideological disputes over
what should serve as the intellectual basis for Black studies, which had
the effect of establishing multiple streams of intellectual thought within
the fi eld; the desire of some scholars to pursue relatively conventional
academic careers, which led them into an ambivalent, even contentious
relationship with Black studies; and the infl uence within Black studies of
Marxist and feminist critiques of cultural nationalist approaches to the
study of the Black experience. Indeed, in contrast to what many might
expect, Afrocentricism, with its focus on reclaiming precolonial African
achievements, cultures, and value systems, was not the predominant philosophical approach as African American studies entered higher education in the United States.
The fi rst chapter examines the experiences and po liti cal outlooks of
Black college students in the mid- to late 1960s, with an eye toward
capturing their fast- growing impatience with token integration and
their attraction to a new politics of racial pride and assertion. The students Black nationalism was controversial, in both Black and white
communities. In addition to setting up the shift in Black student consciousness that helped pave the way for new forms of student protest, I
identify the beginnings of the Black student movement at historically
Black colleges and universities. Student activists met with lethal violence in Orangeburg, South Carolina, and experienced a major police
assault on the campus of Texas Southern University in Houston, but
they won an important victory at Howard University. By highlighting
the activism at historically Black colleges in the opening chapter, I unsettle the usual geography of vanguard student radicalism, which emphasizes the New Left at Berkeley, Ann Arbor, and Columbia. In contrast to
their conservative image, Black colleges were important incubators of
leadership in the Black student movement throughout the entire de cade
of the 1960s.
Chapters 2 through 5 narrate student struggles in different regions of
the country in the late 1960s and into the early 1970s. The chapters are
roughly chronological, but it is crucial to understand that campus
upheavals (especially in 1968 and 1969) were happening at virtually
the same time across the nation. Chapter 2 provides a close analysis of
what is widely understood to be the launching pad of the Black studies
Introduction | 7
movement. Vowing to shut the campus down until their demands were
met, the Black Student Union at San Francisco State College launched a
fi ve- month strike that convulsed the Bay Area, drew national media attention, and put Governor Ronald Reagan, the striking students, the
faculty, college president S. I. Hayakawa, and Black community leaders
on a collision course. Deeply infl uenced by the Panthers, the students
adopted militant tactics. The states conservative leadership, however,
was ready for a confrontation, and liberal San Francisco became, ironically, the setting for aggressive police tactics offi cers made nearly eight
hundred arrests and more or less occupied the campus for months. Remarkably, no historian has written about this enormously signifi cant
story.8
The third chapter showcases two diverse institutions in the Chicago
area where Black student or ga niz ing produced sweeping campus reforms and laid the basis for a broader modernization of the university
and for Black empowerment in the city of Chicago. In the early morning hours of May 4, 1968, one month after the assassination of Martin
Luther King Jr., about one hundred Black students at Northwestern
University in Evanston, Illinois, took over the campus building housing
the bursars offi ce. Occurring a few days after New York City police
had arrested seven hundred students in a violent confrontation to end a
protest at Columbia University, the Northwestern protest was engulfed
from the start by the fear of a police raid. It was ultimately hailed as a
success, both for its peaceful resolution and a settlement granting several of the students demands. In many respects, Northwestern typifi ed
Black experiences at elite, private historically white universities. There
was an emerging liberalism, and many openings for change, side by side
with the legacy of a racially exclusionary cultural and institutional history. But in Evanston, as elsewhere, the students forcefully and creatively asserted themselves and offered solutions that would transform
many aspects of campus life in the 1970s. They invited the famed historian Lerone Bennett and legendary Ca rib be an scholar and activist
C. L. R. James to Northwestern, but it took several years to establish a
Black studies program, a lag between activism and meaningful curricular reform that was common at elite universities.
A major location of the Black student Black studies movements
was urban public colleges and universities, both two- and four- year
institutions. Located on the predominantly Black west side of Chicago,
Crane Ju nior College had a largely white faculty, curriculum, and administrators. Black student activists at Crane began by or ga niz ing the
8 | Introduction
Negro History Club, but their struggle grew rapidly, aiming to change
the mission and character of the whole campus. They succeeded in
changing the colleges name to Malcolm X and gaining an African
American as college president the fi rst in the city but they were unsuccessful in their par tic u lar candidate, an African American woman.
The movement at Malcolm X College involved the Black Panther Party
and a group of activists who would go on to play key roles in po liti cal,
labor, and civil rights struggles in Chicago. In the students successful
effort to redefi ne the mission of a community college, Malcolm X typifi es struggles in Oakland, New York City, Detroit, San Francisco, Los
Angeles, and other large American cities.
Chapter 4 looks at Black student activism at City College and Brooklyn College, elite four- year institutions in New York City. On the eve of
the movement, these two colleges taxpayer fi nanced in the city with
the largest Black population in the United States were overwhelmingly white: Brooklyn College at 96 percent white in 1968, and City at
91 percent. A two- week occupation of City College in Harlem precipitated a po liti cal crisis in the city and ushered in a major shift in public
policy, but strikingly it has garnered little attention from historians.
Similarly, the struggle at Brooklyn College has been virtually forgotten,
even though it was crucial in reshaping the admissions policy, the universitys relationship to communities of color, and the curriculum. The
radical transformation of admissions requirements at the entire City
University of New York produced the biggest structural shift in opportunity during the long civil- rights era. This generation of students remade
public higher education in New York City, although at Brooklyn College
they fell victim to police infi ltration and trumped- up criminal charges. In
addition to the Black Panther Party, Black student unions were targets of
the FBIs Counterintelligence Program, known as cointelpro.
Chapter 5 makes clear that the Black student Black studies movements did not happen only on white campuses. The quest for selfdetermination inspired Black students to fi ght to strengthen and preserve historically Black colleges. Many students at historically Black
colleges and universities had participated in the southern civil rights
movement, but after 1967 they increasingly turned their activist energies to the campuses, demanding Black studies departments, student
inclusion in governance, more resources, and the end of compulsory
ROTC and in loco parentis. They sought to end the white control associated with the funding, mission, and governance of private Black
Introduction | 9
colleges; and in the public sector their quest was nothing less than the
preservation of Black colleges. In this era of integration, saving Black
colleges was a largely unheralded but critically important struggle. By
the early 1970s, unrest was rocking Black colleges throughout the
South. Students at Black colleges were more likely to encounter violence and campus invasion from law enforcement during their protests
than were Black students at other schools. I explore confl icts that led to
police occupations and sometimes arrests and shootings such as those
at Southern University in Baton Rouge which have been more or less
excluded from scholarship on the era and from public memorializing
of deaths associated with the civil rights movement. At Southern University in November 1972, law enforcement offi cers fi red at fl eeing
students, killing two young men. In the long term the violence at historically Black colleges and universities led to a quelling of student
activism. Together with assassinations and cointelpro, this wave of
campus violence contributed to a decline in such open and adversarial
Black re sis tance.
Chapter 6 moves away from the focus on student activism to an examination of the po liti cal controversies swirling around the early Black
studies movement. The establishment of hundreds of Black studies
programs in colleges and universities across the country was a major
achievement of the Black student movement, but their birth was marked
by contention. I explore various struggles and debates that interrogate
the meaning of Black studies; a point of contention arose around the
idea that Black studies advocated a Black perspective, and some expressed concern that this would give rise to an excessively po liti cal, narrowly nationalist, anti- intellectual thrust. In contrast, as I argue, most
articulations of a Black perspective strove to be international, critical,
and expansive.
The battle around the shape of the new Black studies unit at Harvard
illustrates how po liti cal anxieties could derail an academic unit. A student proposal for a department prevailed over an administration and
faculty proposal for a program, leading to years of struggle over the
form of Afro- American studies at Harvard, but the department ultimately survived. I conclude with a brief look at a pivotal Ford Foundation conference in Aspen, Colorado, in which this debate over the shape
of Black studies came to a head and reinforced a shift in Fords funding
strategy toward promoting diversity in American higher education. In
this era of Black self- determination, funding from white philanthropic
10 | Introduction
sources became extremely controversial. Black nationalists sometimes
rejected it but, more typically, sought to gain greater control over its use.
Chapter 7 explores how a sizeable segment of scholars and activists
in the early Black studies movement imagined Black studies as having
a broader social impact, beyond academic life. They viewed the widespread dissemination of Black history written and taught by Black
people as a means of instilling pride among African Americans and of
furthering the pro cess of Black liberation. I examine several nonacademic initiatives that were deeply related to the Black student Black
studies movements, including a remarkable series of televised Black history lectures, Black Heritage: A History of Afro- Americans. Even with
its controversial late- night/early- morning screen times, it brought prominent Black scholars like John Henrik Clarke, Vincent Harding, Robert
Browne, and St. Clair Drake into American living rooms. The Institute
of the Black World, a group of radical scholar- activists in Atlanta, succeeded to some degree in modeling a movement- inspired public intellectualism; but shorn of regular funds, it struggled to fully implement
its ambitious vision. The Nairobi Schools in East Palo Alto, California,
an example of an in de pen dent Black institution, were the locus of an
impressive grassroots project that offered instruction from preschool
through ju nior college. Refl ecting the infl uence of the Black Panthers as
well as a utopian Pan- Africanism, in de pen dent Black institutions saw
themselves as building new value systems in Black communities and
countering the destructive, profi t- seeking ethos of racist America. Relatedly, the Student Or ga ni za tion for Black Unity, formed by radical students from various campus struggles, set up a base in North Carolina
and, ultimately, adopted the view that Black people in diaspora should
acquire skills useful for building strong postcolonial nations in Africa.
Each of these examples illustrates the diverse legacies of Black Power
era student activism, beyond the campus and beyond the creation of
African American studies and affi rmative action.
In the fi nal chapter, I analyze debates and tensions in the defi nition
of the discipline of African American studies. Should it create and emphasize a single methodology, or does its strength lie in the use of multiple
methodologies? Similarly, should the Black studies movement aim for
standardized curricula across the nation, or is innovation and difference
a hallmark of academic inquiry in the United States? I conclude with
attention to scholarly innovations that have helped advance African
American studies, focusing on the effort to encompass the African diaspora in Black studies and the rise of Black womens studies. The Black
Introduction | 11
student and early Black studies movements were part of a broader constellation of social, cultural, and po liti cal developments that eventually
gave rise to Black feminism. Whether known as Africana womanism or
Black womens studies, systematic attention to gender and women
would signifi cantly shape scholarship and pedagogy in African American studies. But this development would have been hard to predict
in 1968, and took years of struggle against patriarchal attitudes and a
male- dominated opportunity structure.
In the 1970s, in par tic u lar, Black women scholars often found themselves in Black studies units indifferent or hostile to feminist perspectives. But Black feminist scholarship, particularly the concept of intersectionality, would come to exert considerable infl uence in the discipline
and in the humanities and social sciences more generally.
In contrast to conventional wisdom, which posits that Black studies
was born as a United States centered, nation- bound enterprise that, only
in more recent years, has discovered the concepts of globalism and diaspora, I argue that the early Black studies movement was internationalist
and always deeply skeptical of the mythology of American exceptionalism. Many Black studies programs and departments struggled from the
beginning with varying degrees of success to encompass Africa and
the diaspora in their curricula, nomenclature, personnel, and programming. Not a new departure, the rise of African diaspora studies refl ects
a deeply rooted tradition and aspiration.
Finally, why label a few years of campus unrest a revolution? Students neither aimed for nor achieved a revolution in the traditional
sense of seizing state power or precipitating a transformation of social
relations. Moreover, with their demands they sought inclusion and were
motivated by a desire to improve the collegiate experience. As one
scholar- activist noted about open admissions: This was certainly a
militant demand though not revolutionary, since at its core it simply
called for a widening of American democracy, not the institution of a
totally new educational or social order. But, he acknowledged, by
widening educational democracy, Black studies could pave the way for
the introduction of new and revolutionary ideas into the curriculum,
and this was correctly perceived as a threat by conservative administrators and faculty.9 The title of this book hopes to capture the sweeping
nature of many of their demands. Indeed, at San Francisco State College, students demanded that all Black applicants be admitted. Moreover,
the audacity of the children of sharecroppers and factory workers in
asserting a right to shape these institutions was in a sense revolutionary.
12 | Introduction
The Black Revolution illuminates the sense of possibility and expectation among a large cohort of ambitious, dedicated, po liti cally attuned
African American students in the late 1960s a signifi cant demographic who were attending college in unpre ce dented numbers. Revolution refl ects the students sense of their own agency, their sense of their
ability to affect the course of history, and the sense among many students that 1968 was indeed a revolutionary moment even if this
turned out to be false. Finally, the title conveys the sense of rapid, traumatic upheaval across society, especially in cities, which had been
shaken by violent unrest since 1964. Even the usually celebrity- focused,
middle- class Ebony magazine titled a special 1969 issue The Black
Revolution.
13
The explosion of Black student activism in 1968 took many observers
by surprise. Earlier in the de cade, the violence unleashed by whites on
nonviolent protesters in the South riveted a national audience. Now, tele vi sion news gave daily coverage to African American
college students assertively seeking social change, but the images were
often unsettling: violent clashes between Black students and the police
in San Francisco; militant Black students disrupting classes in Madison;
Black students occupying the computer center in Santa Barbara, the
presidents offi ce at Roo se velt University in Chicago, and the entire
south campus of City College in Harlem. This phase of the Black student movement was markedly different from the sit- ins of the early
1960s, which had featured courteous young men and women in dresses
and suits and ties. Now students hurled a defi ant vocabulary, wore
African- inspired or countercultural clothing, and otherwise pushed the
line between Black bourgeois ideals and revolutionary aesthetics. They
wanted both upward mobility and an affi rmation of African American
culture and history, inclusion as well as social justice. The students wanted
to expand Black access to higher education and make white colleges
more responsive to the needs of a diverse student body, but their confrontational tactics and rhetoric dominated news coverage and shaped
pop u lar reception and understanding of their struggles.
Where did the new style come from, and how did Black students
all over the country, without formal or gan i za tion al links, express such
Chapter 1
Moving toward Blackness
The Rise of Black Power on Campus
14 | The Rise of Black Power on Campus
similar grievances and demands? Why did the call for Black Power become increasingly pop u lar among Black youth in the late 1960s? And
why were students at historically Black colleges also up in arms? In fact,
this phase of the Black student movement actually began on Black college campuses. Why? The explosion of activism seemed abrupt to some,
and many media accounts linked it to the anger and sorrow over the
assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But the
search for a new approach to racial reform had begun to take shape in
the early 1960s, and accelerated after 1966, when most Black student
organizations were formed. The idea of Black Power spread nationally
as a challenge to nonviolence and integration and as urban insurrection
became an annual summer event. By 1969 these developments culminated in what many observers were calling a Black revolution, and
universities were on the front lines.
The burgeoning racial liberalism of the early post World War II
years had given rise to an expectation that dismantling formal racial
barriers would dramatically reduce racism among whites and usher in
rapid and meaningful social change. Even the discerning W. E. B. Du
Bois estimated shortly after the Brown v. Board of Education decision
that it would take about fi ve years to implement integration, and this
was likely a generous amount of time, in his view, for states to obey a
federal mandate.1 For a variety of reasons, education emerged as the
terrain for this national saga of racial transformation. The GI Bills expansion of higher education, the long- standing emphasis within the
Black community on higher education, and the Supreme Court victories
against professional and primary school segregation reinforced the belief that education was the key to both Black progress and the creation
of a new nation. At the same time, the combination of cold war anxieties, a rapidly expanding social science literature on race relations and
the legal liberalism of the 1950s produced a narrative of the underprivileged Negro Americans gradual and steady assimilation into the modern (white) nation. As one student said of the relentless pressure to
conform to white cultural norms: We didnt feel we had a choice; the
implication was plain that we were being let into the university on the
condition that we become white men with dark skins.2 According to
Edgar W. Beckham, a 1958 graduate of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, We believed in what you might call automatic assimilation. We thought the black students would mysteriously merge
into the white landscape. This worked because there were so few of
us, and Stokely hadnt shouted Black Power yet.3 This feeling was
The Rise of Black Power on Campus | 15
widespread. From 1948, when George McLaurin became the fi rst black
student enrolled at the University of Oklahoma, until the late 1960s,
writes pioneering Oklahoma professor George Henderson, black students at the University wished year after year that goodness would
prevail and they would be treated as people of equal worth to whites.
But it seldom happened.4
Southern students hoped that traveling North to college would provide a respite from insult and indignity. The idea that the North and
West were more racially liberal and tolerant than the South was deeply
ingrained in the national self- image and in many individual expectations.
Many Black southerners expected to encounter a liberal racial climate
in the North, but found instead a jarring disconnect between image and
reality. Frank Monteith came to Northwestern University in Evanston,
Illinois, in the late 1950s from South Carolina, where his aunt Modjeska
Simkins was a nationally known leader of the state NAACP. From the
airport, he shared a taxi to campus with a white freshman from Iowa.
She pestered him relentlessly, asking, among other things: Can I touch
your hair? Monteith worked with the Evanston NAACP to try to
remove the racial identifi cation question from the Northwestern application form, a question that was used by many colleges in the preaffi rmative- action era to enforce a limit on minority student admissions.
The university pressured Monteith to join the band so that its lone Black
musician would have a roommate on the road. It was ugly traveling
with the band, he recalls. In a sign of how widespread Jim Crow exclusions were across the Midwest, the two young men had to stay in private homes because no hotel across Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio would
admit them. Madelyn Coar graduated from Northwestern in the early
1960s. She hailed from a neighborhood in Birmingham, Alabama, called
Dynamite Hill because of the string of Klan bombings of Black homes
there. I chose a Northern school, she says, so there would be no
racism. But Coar said she would not have made it through college were
it not for an African American family in Evanston who became a second
family to dozens of Black students at Northwestern in the 1950s and
1960s. Another student, Sandra Malone, says she came not expecting
racism. But within minutes of her arrival freshman year, her white roommate requested a transfer.5 A Wellesley freshman from St. Louis echoes
these memories, recalling her arrival on campus in 1965: This was Massachusetts, the home of the abolitionists. I thought I was escaping segregation. But she soon found herself embroiled in protest against the
conservative culture at Wellesley.6
16 | The Rise of Black Power on Campus
The turmoil of the 1960s profoundly altered the liberal and colonialist conception of race and racism that had been forged in cold war
America. Notwithstanding the strength of conservative re sis tance to
racial reform in the United States, the civil rights struggle brought the
limits of American racial liberalism to the fore, sparking a crisis that
pushed many activists to consider more radical strategies and philosophies. Year after year of beatings, shootings, and murders of civil rights
workers made growing numbers of African Americans question the morality of the nation and the veracity of its claims to liberal democracy.
At the same time, rising unemployment, police violence, and segregation in the North made many Black Americans lose faith in the call for
integration and in the sincerity of northern white allies, many of whom
continued to counsel patience and gradualism. In 1963 Malcolm X offered a critique of integration: It took the United States Army to get
one Negro into the University of Mississippi; it took troops to get a few
Negroes in the white schools at Little Rock and another dozen places in
the South. It has been nine years since the Supreme Court decision outlawing segregated schools, yet less than ten per cent of the Negro students in the South are in integrated schools. That isnt integration, thats
tokenism!7
This critique of token integration would spread rapidly among late
1960s college students who began to pay close attention to numbers
and the actual scale of integration. Malcolm X convinced them of the
failure of old modes of change, and they would rise up en masse to demand new ones. Color blindness has led to blacks coming out on the
short end of the academic stick, two campus observers wrote. Universities are seas of whiteness, and student activism is forcing this out in
the open. What the universities have failed to realize in almost every
case, they declared, is that the American educational experience is a
white experience, an experience based on white history, white tradition,
white culture, white customs, and white thinking, an education designed primarily to produce a culturally sophisticated, middle class,
white American.8
Many collegiate activists of the late 1960s were fi rst exposed to
Black studies as high school students, especially in large cities like New
York, Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Oakland, where Black nationalist ideas were already in wide circulation and where large- scale
school boycotts and demonstrations had begun to move beyond the call
for integration and now called for community control of schools, Black
history in the curriculum, and more Black teachers. In 1968 in New
The Rise of Black Power on Campus | 17
York, for one example, community control advocates ran a demonstration district in the Ocean Hill Brownsville section of Brooklyn and
built on a rich local history of alternative education. Keith Baird was
the director of its Afro- American and Latin American studies programs.
A veteran public school teacher, son of a Garveyite and longtime Black
nationalist, Baird taught in the church- based freedom schools during
the 1964 New York City school boycott. And from 1965 to 1968, he
taught alongside legendary Harlem historian John Henrik Clarke in a
youth heritage program in Harlem. Baird taught lessons on freedom
fi ghters Denmark Vesey and Sojourner Truth, and institution- builders
Carter G. Woodson and Mary McLeod Bethune, as well as one comparing Ca rib be an calypso, U.S. jazz, and African music. He taught about
precolonial African societies and exposed Harlem youth to the writings
of W. E. B. Du Bois, J. A. Rogers, Melville Herskovits, and Basil Davidson.9 These experiences, as well as the introduction of Black history
courses in many urban high schools in these years, demonstrated to
young people that Black studies programs were imaginable and possible.
A handful of colleges in the country offered Black history or literature
courses, but the overwhelming majority did not, and none offered a
degree- granting program in African American studies.
Notwithstanding gradual gains in mid- decade, Black student enrollment in public or private white universities in the late 1960s was still
small. A nationwide survey of major state universities found that black
Americans are grossly underrepresented in higher education, but noted
that many state universities in the North and West, but not the South,
had launched special admissions programs. In 1969, white universities
in the South had an average Black enrollment of 1.76 percent; in the
East, the fi gure was 1.84 percent, in the Midwest it was 2.98 percent,
and in the West it was 1.34 percent a strikingly homogeneous national
portrait.10
Many students who entered college in the mid- 1960s narrate stories
of social awakening, budding activism, and transformed racial consciousness. Initially, according to a member of the class of 1969 at Wesleyan, they wanted us to pretend we were just like them. But then we
began to see that the whites werent supermen. They were just ordinary
cats with ordinary hang- ups. Thats when we stopped assimilating. Like
many colleges, Wesleyan had dispersed Black students in the dormitories.
The offi cial policy was to keep us apart, one student remembers. But
it didnt take us long to fi nd each other. In contrast, at Wellesley, the six
African American students who arrived in 1965 were given separate
18 | The Rise of Black Power on Campus
rooms away from white students: You began to realize that racism
was alive and well, one of the students recalls. According to Francille
Rusan Wilson, We were these nice little Southern girls, who had probably even brought white gloves with us. This was a period where, literally, you started off as a colored girl and ended up four years later a
black woman.11
Ramona Tascoe entered San Francisco State College in 1967 after
twelve years of Catholic school. Born in Baton Rouge, she moved with
her family to San Francisco in the early 1950s because her father had
gotten a job at the San Francisco Bay Naval Shipyard. Despite the California migration, her cultural roots were fi rmly in Louisiana. Her father
was a dark- skinned Creole, her was mother was light skinned, and
the children were not raised to be black. Her parents taught her not
to speak about race and to assimilate. She remembers that they were
not permitted to acknowledge our ethnicity, except in the pejorative.
Her parents instructed her to identify white folks who set the standard, and then do all you can to mold yourself in that model. Entering
college, she felt like a dry sponge, ready to absorb all that was missing, and took a Black studies course at the student- run Experimental
College, something I had never been exposed to. A freshman with
long, straightened hair, she converted to an Afro quickly and began
to question the whole pro cess of assimilation. Tascoe became a leader
in the Black Student Union.12
Wesley Profi t entered Harvard in 1965 right after the Watts rebellion
in Los Angeles, his hometown. The son of a Southern University graduate, Profi t had attended boarding school and considered himself fairly
sheltered. Part of a cohort of forty Black students, the largest group by
far to enter Harvard at the same time, Profi t says, they were made to
feel insecure in a thousand different ways. . . . We were an experiment
of sorts, and a lot of us had experiences that were discomforting and a
little bit alienating. Few whites believed they were actually Harvard
students. Clerks in campus and town stores would not accept their
checks or charges, questioning their affi liation with the school. One
night Profi t and a group of fellow Black male students were departing a
Radcliffe dormitory at the close of visiting hours, and were asked for
identifi cation by a Harvard security offi cer. They were reaching for their
wallets, but upon noticing that a group of white males had not been
similarly stopped, one student instructed the others: Put your cards
away! This slightly older Army veteran announced, I fought for this
country and marched at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and I am
The Rise of Black Power on Campus | 19
not going to be treated this way and submit to a discriminatory request. And in a story that shows both the anxiety triggered by the presence of Black students, and the burden placed upon them to perform
integration, a Harvard dean called a group of Black students into his
offi ce to object that they had been sitting together so often in the cafeteria and urge them to sit with white students. Profi t recalls their effort to
educate him, explaining that the kids from Phillips Andover are all
sitting together but you dont see it. You notice us.13
The small number of Black students at Columbia University in New
York in 1966 and 1967 encountered daily acts of suspicion regarding
their status as students. From day one our life on campus was po liti cal
protest, says Leon Denmark. Every time he entered a building, he was
asked for identifi cation. Angered at this selective treatment, he and a
classmate confronted the guard at Ferris Booth Hall: Were gonna
stand here for half an hour and see if you ask every white student for an
ID. But the harassment faced by Black students was even more explicit.
People actually called us nigger on campus, Denmark recalls, and says
that Black students were naturally politicized by these things. Columbia student Al Dempsey, who was raised in the South and became a
judge in Georgia, insists that the worst racism I have seen is here at
Morningside Heights. Coming together as Black students became a
critical means of coping in a hostile environment. Denmark describes
how important it was to them to form a chapter of the Black fraternity
Omega Psi Phi, and to form study groups where they taught themselves
the Black history absent in the curriculum.14
Increasingly, Black students had to contend with the charge of
separatism that they were undermining progress toward integration,
that they were afraid of competing with whites, or that they were practicing reverse racism and unfairly rejecting association with all whites.
Students had a range of reactions to this charge, depending upon their
social and po liti cal perspective. But those who did reject the assumptions underlying integration did not reject equal access to the rights
and resources of the society. Rather, most students wanted to redefi ne
integration as multiculturalism rather than assimilation into white
culture. They roundly rejected the notion that they were in retreat. As
one observer put it: They were not running away from whites, but
moving toward Blackness.15 To be sure, some students vigorously critiqued integration as part of a larger critique of the ills of white American society. In a 1969 essay, Separatism and Black Consciousness, a
Black female student wrote, The perversion of integration is that Black
20 | The Rise of Black Power on Campus
people are expected to give up a strong, healthy lifestyle, for one that is
sick, dying and rotten. . . . What can living with white people teach me
that is good? she asked. Finding that the white mans days of domination are numbered, she saw no point in trying to integrate. I am an
Afroamerican and I want to maintain my ethnicity and humanism. I
never want to be an All- American.16
In 1969 a researcher visited fi fty colleges to assess Black student
views, and found idealistic expectations of campus life. Large numbers
of Black students believed that all they had to do was present themselves and they would be accepted. But their disappointment was giving rise to a determination to assert greater control over their education. He reported a generalized suspicion and distrust of educational
authority fi gures and a strong desire for student participation in campus decision- making. They were tired of having to prove their humanity again and again to every white they met and of living in a fi shbowl. They resented the pressure to assimilate into the white majority
on white terms. According to this researcher, the students whole conception of integration changed. It should be a two- way pro cess.17
A Yale sophomore reinforced this rejection of racial ambassadorship.
I came here to be a student, not to educate whites about blacks. Im
tired of being an unpaid, untenured professor teaching these guys the
elementals of humanity.18 A Wellesley student describes the colleges
conception of integration in the mid- 1960s: It was very much a one
way street, in that there was no recognition of the African American
experience. This was our opportunity to become like them, not for
Wellesley to become more like us or learn from us. That kind of idea
just didnt exist.19 Moreover, students in this era were increasingly
coming to believe that it was white racism, not a defi ciency in skills or
preparedness among African Americans, that explained racial in e quality in society. This new perspective moved Black students to embrace a
Black identity, actively reframe Blackness in a positive fashion, push
back against white conceits, and or ga nize new, Black- identifi ed social,
cultural, and po liti cal spaces on campuses, with Black student unions
being the most prominent and well- known example. They never let
you forget you were black, a Berkeley student observed in 1967, so
we decided to remember we were black.20
In a study of Black student outlooks, po liti cal scientist Charles Hamilton, who coauthored Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, found
that students had begun to explicitly critique integration, seeing it as
synonymous with racial assimilation. Integration has traditionally
The Rise of Black Power on Campus | 21
meant that blacks should try to be like whites. It has implied that black
people were being done a favor by whites. This is part of what the black
students are rejecting, and they believe that the institutions of higher
learning have been and are insensitive to this. They expressed, he found,
a profound distrust of national government institutions as well as the
schools of higher education that they attend. He expressed surprise at
the pace of their politicization. These students, Hamilton wrote, have
formed judgments about the nature of po liti cal and economic and educational systems much faster than previous generations of activists
especially civil rights activists.21
Students expressed this new consciousness in powerful, forceful
terms, and they did so on campuses large and small, all over the nation.
figure 1. Po liti cal scientist Charles Hamilton coauthored Black Power: The Politics of
Liberation and pioneered the concept of a Black university.
22 | The Rise of Black Power on Campus
A recurring theme in the students activism was a desire to show their
loyalty to poor Black communities and not let their entrance into white
academia be seen as a rejection of their culture and communities. They
talk of the university being relevant to the needs of the black community, Charles Hamilton observed after visiting sixty- six colleges. They
have in mind the university as a place where not just a few black students come and graduate and move up and out (to the suburbs), but
where new ideas and techniques are developed for the po liti cal and
economic benefi t of the total black community. In other words, they
look to the university, naively or not, as a beginning place for social reform or revolution. 22 Protesting Black female students at Vassar
wrote this preamble to their demands: We refuse not only to waste
four years of our lives, but to jeopardize four years of our lives becoming socialized to fi t a white dominant cultural pattern. For the Black
student to be asked to submit to such acculturation is to ask the student
to willingly accept his own deculturalization his own dehumanization. We refuse to have our ties to the black community systematically
severed; to have our life styles, our ambitions, our visions of our selves
made to conform solely to any white mold.23
Along with the critique of cultural assimilation, the turn toward
Black Power affected the rhetorical style of Black student leaders.
Stokely Carmichael, coauthor of the infl uential text Black Power and
longtime leader of the Student Non- Violent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC), was pivotal in the rapid spread of revolutionary rhetoric and a
confrontational style among students. Because SNCC was unraveling in
the late 1960s, and because Carmichael moved to Africa in 1969 and
disappeared from the American media radar, his popularity has been
underappreciated. In many ways, he picked up the mantle left by the
slain Malcolm X, whose posthumous Autobiography of Malcolm X
was a similarly infl uential text. Also pushing this generation to feel that
they were part of a seismic change was the urban unrest, especially the
uprisings in Newark and Detroit in the summer of 1967 that rocked the
nation, unnerved the establishment, and made many young African
Americans feel and understand the power, danger, and threat of widespread Black rebellion. This turn toward militant rhetoric and Black
Power not only unsettled and alarmed whites but also divided African
Americans. To be authentically black became highly subjective and
depended very much on the eye of the beholder, one scholar found.
And militancy raised the stakes, serving as a means of disciplining
black students as a whole and policing the boundaries of blackness.
The Rise of Black Power on Campus | 23
The scathing epithets Tom or Oreo kept less- militant, less- separatist
black students in line.24
Alongside this pro cess of politicization, social pressure, and rejection
of older paradigms was the search for new ideologies. Students were
rejecting fundamental pillars of American society but did not have a
clear replacement. In Hamiltons view, they were almost frantically
searching for new ideas and ideologies to explain society and engaging
in endless hours of ideological discussion.25 Capturing their attention
was a new breed of revolutionaries. Fidel Castro, the socialist president
of Cuba, had defeated a U.S.- backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs and
pledged Cuban support for national liberation struggles in Africa. Castro was also a staunch supporter of the African American struggle, and
famously stayed at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem during a visit to the
United Nations. Robert F. Williams is another fi gure whose early 1960s
radicalism impressed Black students later in the de cade. An NAACP
leader in North Carolina, Williams advocated and practiced armed selfdefense, faced down the Klan, and fl ed fi rst to Cuba and later to China.
While in Cuba, his radio show, Radio Free Dixie, reached listeners in
the United States, and Negroes with Guns, his account of his use of
armed self- defense in North Carolina, inspired the found ers of the Revolutionary Action Movement, an underground Black or ga ni za tion that
for a time in the mid- 1960s attracted a coterie of college students.26
The phrase Black Power may bring to mind ghetto uprisings and incendiary rhetoric, but the rise of Black Power on campus had a strong
intellectual dimension. Campus study groups were extremely signifi cant
in shaping new racial identities and consciousness. Coinciding with the
Black arts movement, whose poetry, painting, and per for mance deeply
stirred students, an outpouring of new journals, manifestos, newspapers,
magazines, and radio and tele vi sion programming featured debates and
discussions of the new ideas percolating through the Black Power movement. Black students across the country read and debated the ideas of
Frantz Fanon, Harold Cruse, Melville Herskovits, E. Franklin Frazier,
W. E. B. Du Bois, Nathan Hare, Karl Marx, and Malcolm X. The students were passionate about fi nding ways to translate theory into practice. Their models were wide- ranging: Gillo Pontecorvos fi lm The Battle
of Algiers gave Northwestern students a strategy to maintain secrecy in
planning their building takeover; at the University of Oklahoma, the
Afro- American Student Union applied the ideas of Chicago community
or ga niz er Saul Alinsky. But if Alinsky was our tactician, Fanon was
our fi re, remembers the students faculty mentor, George Henderson.
24 | The Rise of Black Power on Campus
His books were widely read by black collegians throughout the
United States. It was not a far stretch, he notes, for most of the black
students at the University of Oklahoma to identify with the colonized
people of Africa.27 This identifi cation and solidarity with others
struggling in Africa, and in Asia and Latin America too, grew in the
1970s. A key distinction between civil rights and Black Power was
internationalism seeing the past and present of Black Americans as
inextricably linked to colonized and formerly colonized people worldwide. Study groups encouraged this new consciousness, and later, overseas travel would as well.
For some, the most startling aspect of the radicalization of Black
students was their consideration of the idea of armed struggle. I write
idea because this development should not be exaggerated and it proved
to be more posture than practice. Moreover, it is important to note that,
during the long Black freedom struggle, violence was used overwhelmingly against Black people, not by Black people. Nevertheless, militant
rhetorical strategies by student leaders and widespread admiration for
the tradition of armed self- defense as exemplifi ed by Malcolm X and
the Black Panther Party infl uenced the medias depiction of student
activists sometimes unfairly and inaccurately and shaped outcomes.
The larger social context is critical in understanding the skepticism, especially among young males, toward the rhetoric of nonviolence and
the practice of turning the other cheek that is most associated with
Martin Luther King Jr. and the southern civil rights movement.
Many factors propelled this skepticism. Young people in the late
1960s witnessed a sharp escalation in American involvement in Vietnam and very high casualty fi gures, all for an anticommunist rationale
that they increasingly came to reject. For them, Dr. Kings statement in
a 1967 speech that the United States government was the greatest purveyor of violence in the world seemed true, and it heightened the hypocrisy in the governments urging of nonviolence on protesters. Moreover, eighteen- year- olds in 1968 had spent their childhoods watching
tele vi sion news footage of racist violence infl icted on nonviolent Black
southerners, including children. The rioting that broke out in cities beginning in the summer of 1964 and peaking in 1967 and 1968 led to
hundreds of deaths, mostly of African Americans at the hands of police
offi cers, but the violence also seemed to shake up po liti cal establishments and spark efforts to placate restive urban centers. Moreover,
many Africans had embraced armed struggle in the fi ght to overthrow
Eu ro pe an colonial rule. This context altered the discursive strategies of
The Rise of Black Power on Campus | 25
many Black student activists, leading to new motifs, tactics, slogans,
and all- around style. For example, in an episode of Black Heritage, on
WCBS- TV in New York, student leaders passionately discussed racism
and education and the new role for Black students, and as the show
came to a close, an unidentifi ed man offered this suggestion to move
forward: If students took up the gun on the campus and begin to act
out on the basis of gun power . . . that might be one basis on which you
can do some challenging.28
Charles Hamilton found that students were seriously questioning
nonviolence. They do not believe in the effi cacy of nonviolence as a
philosophy or as a tactic. In fact, many are of the opinion that unless
violence is used in some form, there is little likelihood of getting attention from the power structure. 29 Students began using new language:
embracing revolution and revolt, questioning working within the
system and openly challenging the white power structure. The rhetoric gave them a meaningful frame that fi tted what they saw around
them. And their po liti cal consciousness developed. Hamilton also
found that rhetoric was used to shock whites, a tactic displayed over
and over again in campus confrontations.30 But at most campuses, even
as students embraced many aspects of Black nationalism, they remained
nonviolent in both theory and practice. In describing the popularity of
anticolonial writer Frantz Fanon among Blacks at the University of
Oklahoma, George Henderson stresses the appeal of his strategies for
achieving black solidarity and positive self- images. There was little attraction among blacks on our campus for a violent revolution.31 Still,
a 1970 study of Black high school students found that nearly half of
the activists agreed with the statement violence is cleansing, as did
more than a third of the nonactivists. Even more telling, only 7 percent
of all the Black students thought that whites could be persuaded to
change.32
Black student organizations became the most common vehicle for
Black student protest. Some Black student organizations began in the
early 1960s and were more social than po liti cal, but most began in
1967 or 1968 and were steeped in activist culture. The title Black Student Union was common on the West Coast, while many groups on the
East Coast were named Student Afro- American Society, but there was
great diversity. At Northwestern University, the new or ga ni za tion was
called For Members Only, after a sign students had seen on an exclusive
club on Chicagos north shore. The word Black had negative connotations among most Americans, but Malcolm X, in par tic u lar, reversed its
26 | The Rise of Black Power on Campus
meaning for a younger generation of African Americans, who ushered
in a lasting change in group nomenclature and identity. By thinking
black as Malcolm X urged, they transformed blackness from an inherited set of physical characteristics to a deliberate po liti cal and cultural stance.33 There were many attempts to establish regional and
national student formations. In the spring of 1968, Black students from
thirty- seven colleges in nineteen states met at Shaw University and
formed the Congress for the Unity of Black Students. There were efforts
to unify Black students in regional alliances over the next few years,
notably in California, but also in Chicago, New York, and elsewhere.
Most striking is the similarity of student grievances and reform goals,
given this autonomous, local or gan i za tion al structure.34
The Black Power movement elevated male leadership, refl ecting the
patriarchy of the larger society as well as the tactics and ideology of
the late 1960s Black liberation movement. The reappraisal of nonviolence and embrace of more militant rhetoric increased the visibility of
male leaders, as did the fallout from a report authored in 1965 by Daniel
Patrick Moynihan of the U.S. Labor Department, which identifi ed a rise
in female- headed Black families as a worrisome economic indicator and
unnatural social development. The Moynihan report would eventually
help propel the rise of Black feminism, but at the time it dovetailed with
the rise of Black nationalism, which had typically seen the cultivation of
patriarchal gender roles as essential to race advancement.
In a sign of the masculine tenor of the times, Darlene Clark Hine, an
undergraduate at Roo se velt University in Chicago in the mid- 1960s who
went on to become a leading scholar in African American womens history, remembers reading, studying, listening to, and valorizing Black
men almost exclusively. Black men and their words and experiences
represented the race. She found ample opportunity to study and learn
about black men, including, for example, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X,
Martin Luther King Jr., Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and Eldridge
Cleaver. She applauded their strong images, calling them a powerful
antidote to the widespread negative depictions of Black men in U.S.
culture. Articulate, handsome, fi ercely self- conscious freedom fi ghters,
these men garnered massive media coverage for their demands for
Black rights and social transformation. Like thousands of other Black
college students of her generation, Hine read the Autobiography of
Malcolm X, Claude Browns Manchild in the Promised Land, John A.
Williamss The Man Who Cried I Am, Richard Wrights Native Son,
James Baldwins Notes of a Native Son, and Ralph Ellisons Invisible
The Rise of Black Power on Campus | 27
Man. And like so many of her peers, she listened to John Coltrane,
Miles Davis, and Pharoah Sanders. She was oblivious to the lack of
attention paid to black womens experiences and even felt she had
developed a black masculine consciousness by the time she entered
graduate school in 1968.35
But male dominance did not go entirely uncontested. On several
campuses, female leaders of Black student organizations were pressured
to give way to male leadership: some relented, others held on. Deborah
Gray White was president of her colleges Afro- Latin Alliance when a
rise in Black student admissions in 1968 spawned demands for a separate Black or ga ni za tion. Some of the more nationalist black students
called those of us who wanted to keep the Afro- Latin Alliance names
like Oreo or Uncle Tom. White felt particularly set upon as president
of the Afro- Latin Alliance because the new students demanded masculine repre sen ta tion. She never got used to being a moderate among
black nationalists, but she persevered.36
In his survey of Black student activism, Charles Hamilton found an
occasional but conscious effort to distinguish the roles of men and
women. This was especially the case, he found, where the groups had,
as at one midwestern university, adopted a Nation of Islam (Black Muslim) motif. The men served as snappy, disciplined, military- type guards.
The women studied their role in the revolutionary vanguard. What ever
the outcome, he found that the Black consciousness upsurge had sparked
serious questioning of the relation of the sexes. On many campuses,
some of the males, sensitive to the theory of black male emasculation,
argued that leadership roles should be assumed by men especially in
such matters as occupying buildings, negotiating with school offi cials,
and talking to the press. Their view was that the black man had to
speak for the Black family of students and be out front in a position to
protect the black women. But Hamilton also observed some young
women push back. Some of the women were reluctant to give up the
egalitarian method of rewarding position, he noted. In the end, he emphasized an important feature of the movement: What ever the situation, it was quite evident that men and women students, generally, were
about equally active in the groups. Notwithstanding the popularity of
patriarchal norms or rhetoric, this was an era of youth revolt, incipient
womens liberation, and overall questioning of authority. Young women
were full participants in the Black student movement.37
Black women students on white campuses had par tic u lar grievances
that arose from the interplay between their racial and gender experience.
28 | The Rise of Black Power on Campus
The social scene became a point of tension and contestation. A student
at the University of Bridgeport told a reporter: Its much easier for a
boy to get along here. If hes a good athlete and a good dancer, he can
get into a fraternity and no white girl is going to turn him down if he
asks her to dance. But we cant ask a white boy for a date, and you can
be sure they dont ask us. With lots of the black boys dating white girls,
we just sit around the dorms and get angry.38 Still, Black women students were hardly passive participants in the negotiation of campus
gender relations. Charles Hamilton recorded a vivid example of such
a negotiation in a meeting at Northwestern University in March 1969.
A black co- ed had accused a white fraternity member of insulting her,
and Black students subsequently invaded the fraternity house and
damaged some property. At the meeting the black co- eds were asking
for commitments from the black male students to defend black womanhood. One after another, the black men spoke some vehemently in
defense of the co- eds (they were judged Men); some equivocated in
their willingness to fi ght by any means necessary (they were put down
as Mice). The session became very heated; egos were strained and challenged. Physical blows were almost passed . . . . It really got rough
there at one point, a black graduate student said. Cats were outdoing
each other and that whole black masculinity thing was coming out. At
one point, I was sitting there just hoping that some white person would
throw a brick through the window just to bring us together again. He
continued: The Sisters were really coming down hard on the dudes
who didnt sound right.39
Black nationalism married the repudiation of interracial dating with
authentic Blackness. Greensboro student leader Nelson Johnson remembers being exposed to Black Power ideas and Pan- Africanism by
the charismatic activist Howard Fuller. His critique of interracial dating
stood out. He talked a strong black power line, he says of Fuller.
There was a lot of interracial dating among activists at that time and
he challenged us to stop it. He whipped on any black man dating white
girls so hard it was no longer in vogue.40 Some students who persisted
in dating or marrying outside the race felt their loyalty to the cause
was unfairly called into question. This was true for a Black female student leader at a major midwestern university whose white boyfriend
marked her as racially suspect in the eyes of many Black nationalist
students, even with her tireless work and devotion to the movement.
What were the social origins of the students who engaged in such
militant action? Student activists were a mix of preaffi rmative action
The Rise of Black Power on Campus | 29
children of college- educated parents, fi rst- generation college students
from migrant, working- class families, and some (hailing from either
group) who had already had some experience in the Black freedom
struggle. While many colleges and universities began to implement
modest Black student recruitment programs in the early 1960s in response to the stirrings of the southern civil rights movement, the 1965
Higher Education Act propelled greater desegregation and also sparked
change in the class composition of Black students. Between 1966 and
1968, crucial seedtime for subsequent demonstrations, there was a dramatic increase in students from low- income families in predominantly
white colleges. Leon Denmark recollects that of the approximately
thirty- fi ve Black students who entered Columbia College in New York
in 1966, all were from public school. And we had a certain attitude,
he recalls.41
According to a study Charles Hamilton conducted in 1969 with 264
students at fi fteen colleges, half were getting some kind of scholarship
aid. Only one- third of students reported a parental contribution. The
vast majority of students were fi nancing education through a combination of sources: scholarships, employment, parental contribution, and
loans. Seventy- four percent of the parents had no college education.
The single most- frequent parental occupation was blue collar worker,
a category that would virtually disappear in twenty years. These students
hailed from what Hamilton termed upper- lower- or lower- middle- class
families.42 Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree entered college in
1971, and remembers that the experience was a jolt for all of them.
Most of the black students who entered Stanford in the fall were the
fi rst members of their families to attend college. And of those parents
who had attended college, most had attended historically Black colleges. So they were all integrating.43 Interestingly, Hamilton found a
pronounced break from religion among these students. Eighty- fi ve percent of students in his sample grew up in religious families, yet 65 percent
of them indicated that they were not personally followers of a religion.
Todays black student is clearly rejecting the or ga nized church of his
parents, Hamilton reported.44
In addition to the politicization of Black students on white campuses, students at historically Black colleges underwent their own process of politicization. The spread of the Black student movement at both
white and Black colleges helps account for its national breadth. Black
colleges have a reputation for conservatism. They do not typically come
to mind as locations that give rise to protest. But the fi rst large- scale
30 | The Rise of Black Power on Campus
protests by Black college students directed at campus policies occurred
at historically Black colleges and then spread to white colleges. Given
that pop u lar and scholarly accounts so often portray the Black Power
movement as taking place in the urban North and West, it is important
to acknowledge that Black student protest around the country was
largely inspired by southern campus struggles that were part and parcel
of the Black Power upsurge. Without question, the Black Power Black
Consciousness movement has been felt in the South, wrote Charles
Hamilton, formerly a professor at Tuskegee University.45 A tidal wave
of protest swept historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in
the 1960s and 1970s, inspired by a range of student grievances, most
notably white fi nancial and administrative control, excessive regulation
of student life, excessive discipline, inferior facilities and faculty, and
outmoded or Eurocentric curriculum.
Given that schools like Howard University in Washington, D.C., and
the Atlanta University Center had been home to pioneers in Black
scholarship such as historian and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, po liti cal
scientist Ralph Bunche, historian Rayford Logan, phi los o pher Alain
Locke, and sociologist E. Franklin Frazier what provoked the charge
of Eurocentrism? Darwin T. Turner, dean of the graduate school at
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, argued that
a move away from studying Black subjects emerged from the optimism
spawned by early legal decisions supporting desegregation, the defeat
of Fascism, and postwar affl uence. Po liti cal repression, too, was most
likely a factor. The tendency for black educators to neglect materials
related to Afro- American heritage intensifi ed, I believe, during the early
1950s, Turner wrote. The many indications of opening doors persuaded many blacks to discourage any education which emphasized the
existence of Afro- Americans as a body separate from the rest of America. As a result, studies of Afro- American history, literature, sociology,
economics, and politics were stuffed into the traditional surveys, which
were already so overcrowded that important materials must be omitted. He felt that integrated surveys were necessary but insuffi cient
to provide Afro- Americans with the necessary understanding of their
culture.46 Indeed, in 1968, several members of Howards board of
trustees were shocked that courses in Black history, jazz and literature
were not presently offered. We had many of these things in the 1930s,
commented one member.47 A 1968 graduate of the prestigious Spelman College complained of being taught a super kind of Eu ro pe an
The Rise of Black Power on Campus | 31
history. Of fi fteen courses in a literature department at the Atlanta
University Center, she said, fourteen of them will be on Eu ro pe an Renais sance or medieval literature, Elizabethan poetry. She also lamented
a super kind of paternalism and Puritanism, but nevertheless acknowledged the important history of black scholarship at the Atlanta
University Center and what she termed a healthy kind of racialism.48
Students at scores of Black colleges or ga nized campaigns to reverse
these trends, a story that will be taken up more fully in chapter 5, but
events at three campuses need to be highlighted because they marked the
beginning of the national Black student movement. Clashes at HBCUs
in 1967 and 1968 inspired Black students nationwide, in part because
students on these campuses faced extraordinary police invasions. In
May 1967, police led a full- scale assault on Texas Southern University
in Houston. One night a person or persons threw rocks and bottles
from a dormitory and allegedly fi red a gun as well. At two oclock in
the morning police offi cers invaded the campus, fi ring 3000 rounds of
pistol and automatic gunfi re into the dorm. Their rampage left one of
their own killed by a police offi cers bullet, two other offi cers wounded,
at least two students wounded from gunfi re, several students bitten by
police dogs, and many other students with physical injuries. The Houston
police invaded the building, tore up rooms looking for weapons, and
arrested 488 students. No bull horns were used to inform the dormitory residents of the impending attack and no tear gas was used at any
time. Instead, there was a barrage of rifl e and pistol fi re that could have
killed scores of students.49 Mrs. Hattie Harbert, a house mother in the
dormitory, said police made me lie on the fl oor and two or three of
them walked on me. She also saw police carry out fi ve or six students
bloody as beef.50
As an NAACP offi cial wired to the U.S. Attorney General the following morning: It is clear that Houston police engaged in a vengeful and
destructive rampage against persons and property at Texas Southern
University.51 The confrontation came after two months of almost continuous demonstrations against police mistreatment of TSU students
and substandard conditions generally in the Houston Black community.
No weapons were ever found in the dorm. Five students, known as the
TSU fi ve, were charged with the offi cers murder, even though he was
felled by an offi cers bullet. All the students were ultimately cleared, but
their prosecution distracted attention from the true culprits. According
to opinion surveys shortly afterward, the TSU police riot increased
32 | The Rise of Black Power on Campus
pro- Black Power sentiment among African Americans in Houston; and
with the extensive print and broadcast media coverage of the riot, this
effect was likely felt beyond Texas.52
Perhaps the massive fi repower at TSU resulted from the highly militarized riot response plans developed in police departments after the
Watts uprising of 1965; perhaps it refl ected a par tic u lar hostility toward increasingly assertive Black students. What ever the explanation,
the invasion was a disturbing harbinger of things to come, and while it
prompted many regional protests by Black students, it did not give rise
to a national outcry. But this national outcry was soon to come. Less
than a year later, in February 1968, offi cers with the South Carolina
Law Enforcement Division shot and killed three African Americans
Samuel Hammond, Henry Smith, and Delano Middleton on the campus of South Carolina State University in Orangeburg. Known as the
Orangeburg Massacre, the killings outraged and mobilized Black students nationwide. However, the rapid string of assassinations, street
clashes, global upheavals and military battles of 1968 soon overshadowed the Orangeburg killings in the major media, leading to the mistaken impression that they had generated little impact.
Students at Orangeburg had been engaged in protests against a city
bowling alley and other public facilities that were still refusing ser vice
to African Americans four years after passage of the Civil Rights Act.
On February 8, state highway patrolmen, newly outfi tted with the latest antiriot armaments, converged on a campus gathering and opened
fi re into a large group of students. Most of the students were already
fl eeing, so the bullets hit them from the back. The white police offi cers
killed three youths and wounded thirty more people. As at Texas Southern, this was an extraordinary display of fi repower, and shows how law
enforcement nationwide reacted to the urban uprisings by amassing
greater weaponry and fi repower and, in some instances, unleashing it
on student protesters. Afterward, the police rushed to whitewash the
incident, claiming falsely that the students had opened fi re. Under pressure from civil rights leaders, the federal government stepped in and
tried nine offi cers, but the white jury acquitted them. No offi cer was ever
held accountable for these murders, and incredibly, the only person ever
convicted and sentenced as a result of the Orangeburg Massacre was a
SNCC activist who had been shot in the back, Cleveland Sellers.53
The Orangeburg Massacre is widely considered one of the forgotten tragedies of the civil rights and student movements, but it sparked
a wave of sympathy protests by Black college students across the coun-
The Rise of Black Power on Campus | 33
try. These students identifi ed with the slain young men. From Howard
University in Washington, D.C., to Crane College in Chicago, students
were hurt and angry and held their own commemorations and memorials for the students. The Orangeburg massacre went through the emergent black power movement like a bolt of lightning, recalls Nelson
Johnson, who was a student leader at North Carolina A&T. Black student leaders from sixteen colleges in North Carolina gathered in Durham and agreed to hold creative demonstrations on their campuses.
At North Carolina A&T, they burned the governor of South Carolina
in effi gy and conducted a mock funeral pro cession for the slain young
men in what became one of the largest demonstrations in Greensboro.
The Orangeburg Massacre was one of a series of catalysts that generated
a national student demand for Black studies. In just one example, a year
later a commemoration of the massacre at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte led to the creation of a Black studies program.54
Students at HBCUs inspired and shaped the Black student movement
nationally not only by their martyrdom but also through their efforts to
improve and preserve Black colleges. In an extraordinarily important,
though strikingly forgotten dimension of the Black Power movement,
students fought for the survival of Black colleges in this era of desegregation. The quest by militant Black youth to save Black colleges was
an outgrowth of their commitment to Black self- determination, yet it
dovetailed with the professional desires of Black administrators, who
tended to be more po liti cally and socially conservative. Despite this
shared long- term goal, confl ict and hostility defi ned the studentadministrator relationship. Struggles at HBCUs brought into sharp relief
the twin targets of Black Power: white control and integrationist Negro
leadership. Students often criticized administrators in biting, acerbic
terms, as Uncle Toms working to manage the plantation at the expense of a younger generation of Black people eager to transform racial
dynamics across American society. The students were seeking to make
Negro colleges blacker, and this was controversial among African
Americans. At the same time, the students assailed southern white legislatures for inadequate funding of public HBCUs, and whites on the
boards of directors of private HBCUs for their paternalistic control of
Black institutions. And there were undeniable generational cleavages
as well. Students opposed the strict curfews, dress codes (especially for
women), and other in loco parentis rules,55 which they increasingly
framed as excessive and oppressive. Indeed, in a sharp rupture, the students were forgoing the politics of respectability, forged in the era of
34 | The Rise of Black Power on Campus
Jim Crow, in favor of more assertive forms of Black repre sen ta tion and
protest.
Many students at Howard, most famously Stokely Carmichael, had
been involved in the civil rights movement in the early 1960s and even
interrupted their schooling to go south and join the movement. By the
mid- 1960s their gaze had shifted to the universities themselves. Howard students staged a series of major campus protests in 1967, 1968,
and 1969. They protested the war in Vietnam, the draft, and in loco
parentis, but most controversially they argued that Howard should
declare itself a Black university in ser vice to Black communities. Surprisingly, the curriculum at Howard had few courses in either African
American studies or contemporary urban and social problems. According to one observer, Professor Sterling Brown was for years alone in
including Negro writers in literature courses, and the college had
made few efforts to study or actively participate in the black community around it.56 The rise of Black Power inspired protest at dozens of
historically Black colleges: Howard was simply one of the fi rst. A catalyst for the surge in Black nationalist feeling was President James M.
Nabrit Jr.s declaration in the fall of 1966 that Howard should raise its
admissions standards and admit more white students. This statement
came amid a larger context of anxiety over what integration portended
for Black institutions. In response, students, along with Nathan Hare,
a professor of sociology who became an important mentor and ally to
Black student activists nationwide, or ga nized the Black Power Committee to promote Black consciousness among the students in order to
prepare them to challenge the universitys new direction.57
In addition to students, a cohort of young Black professors began
to envision a new and leading role for historically Black colleges in the
post- Jim- Crow era. Charles Hamilton fi rst articulated the conception of
a black university in a 1967 speech, The Place of the Black College
in the Human Rights Struggle. He called on Black colleges to reject the
white middle- class character imposed on them by white funders and to
redefi ne their mission to provide greater aid and assistance to Black
communities. Later published in the Negro Digest, Hamiltons article
spawned a yearly tradition of devoting an entire issue of the Negro Digest (later the Black World) to the idea of a Black university. According
to Hamilton, the mission of the Black university was to develop a distinctive Black ethos; to prepare students to help solve problems in poor
Black communities; and to offer a new curriculum, one that was relevant to contemporary needs but which also required a course in ancient
The Rise of Black Power on Campus | 35
African civilizations. I am talking modernization, Hamilton asserted.
I propose a black college that would deliberately strive to inculcate a
sense of racial pride and anger and concern in its students. The ideas in
his essay illustrate the emerging view that the Black intelligentsia was a
relatively untapped and potentially radical leadership resource for the
Black liberation movement. In some respects, Hamilton was advancing
an updated version of W. E. B. Du Boiss idea of a talented tenth, an
educated elite cadre who would advance the interests of the race as a
whole. We need, Hamilton declared, militant leadership which the
church is not providing, unions are not providing and liberal groups
are not providing. . . . I propose a black college, he wrote, that would
be a felt, dominant force in the community in which it exists. A college
which would use its accumulated intellectual knowledge and economic
resources to bring about desired changes in race relations in the community. It would dispense with irrelevant PhDs, he wrote, and recruit freedom fi ghters and graduate freedom fi ghters.58
Howard became the locus of this struggle, but the quest for a Black
university did not take place in isolation. It coincided with the broader
social justice movement of the era, especially the struggle to end the war
in Vietnam, the draft, and compulsory military training courses. A visit
to Howard by General Lewis B. Hershey, head of the Selective Ser vice
System, in the spring of 1967, triggered an escalation of protest that
would shake the campus for the next two years. Someone in the audience yelled, America is a black mans true battleground, and about
forty students rushed the stage, preventing Hershey from speaking.59 In
the aftermath, Howard suspended twenty students and dismissed six
po liti cally active professors, including Nathan Hare. The university labeled these faculty members, four of whom were white, as a dangerous
element for allegedly promoting Black Power. But the student newspaper, the Hilltop, reminded readers that the charge of communism had
been used in the McCarthy era to discredit reform in general. In effect
the university used public hysteria over black power, the student- editors
wrote, to cloak its efforts to get rid of controversial teachers who
encouraged students to ask questions about the administration of the
university or the position of black people in this country.60 Nathan
Hare was immersed in student radicalism at Howard and in his next
job, at San Francisco State College; at both he adopted the rhetoric and
style of student leaders and stood with them shoulder to shoulder, a
choice that landed him in hot water with his employers on both coasts.61
Upset that Howard had no code of conduct or student inclusion in
36 | The Rise of Black Power on Campus
disciplinary procedures, the suspended students hired attorneys from
the American Civil Liberties Union and sued Howard in federal court.62
Protest continued the next academic year, including a victorious sitin in the fall that brought an end to compulsory ROTC classes. Michael
Harris, president of the freshman class, led many of the anti- ROTC
protests and also served as po liti cal director of the Black nationalist
student or ga ni za tion, Ujamma. The son of a police offi cer and a secretary, Harris said that his Catholic high school experience in Chicago
had turned him off to integration because he couldnt be himself. In his
view, Howard University should serve another purpose other than
preparing people to fi ll slots in white society. Students, he felt, want
Howard to belong to the black people in Washington, D.C., the black
people surrounding the university. Harriss comments in 1968 refl ect
the intense pace of change in the country and the sense that the United
States was undergoing unpre ce dented confrontation that was likely to
intensify. I think that in about fi ve years theres going to be an all- out
race war, he declared that summer, fresh from visiting the Poor Peoples Campaigns encampment at the Capitol, known as Resurrection
City, where he says police were threatening a violent takeover and using
tear gas against women and children. To me, black power is simply a
means of getting ready for the confrontation.63
In February 1968, hundreds of students at Howard staged a sympathy
demonstration for the slain students in Orangeburg, which quickly
turned into a protest against Howards administration. They called for
the resignation of the president and issued a long list of demands pertaining to student rights, reinstatement of professors, and Black awareness that came to be known as the Orangeburg Ultimatum. Reportedly,
Nabrit and the faculty found it reprehensible.64 A month later at the
Charter Day ceremony celebrating the anniversary of Howards founding, students stormed the stage and took control of the podium. They
passed out an alternative charter for a Black university, which renamed
Howard Sterling Brown University, gave control of academic matters
to faculty, and gave students a seat on the board of trustees and responsibility for regulating student life and conduct. According to student
leader Anthony Gittens, We are trying to bring democracy and a concern for the black student to Howard.65
But not everyone saw it this way. It was an extraordinary disruption
of Howard decorum. In a monumental show of rudeness, discourtesy,
and vulgarity, wrote a New York Amsterdam News reporter, who was
a 1966 Howard graduate, students grabbed the microphone and said,
The Rise of Black Power on Campus | 37
We declare today the end of Howard University. A new Black University is being born. She noted that fi rebombs had recently been thrown
into the homes of Dean Frank Snowden and President Nabrit. Two students were later arrested.66 Indeed, Black Power was a critique of liberalism for having failed to eradicate racial in e qual ity, and of the civil rights
old guard for still hewing to this failed course. SNCC leaders Charlie
Cobb and Courtland Cox echoed this view: In the eyes of many students, the Howard administration has come to represent all that is
negative of older generation Negro leadership. They were colluding with
white America to resist the inexorable rise of Black Power.67
When the administration summoned thirty- nine students involved in
the protest before a judiciary board, it rekindled widespread student
dis plea sure with the disciplinary pro cess. At a rally in protest, student
leader Ewart Brown called for a sit- in at the administration building,
and hundreds gathered there in the presidents offi ce and throughout
the building, causing administrators to make a hasty exit. For fi ve days
in late March, roughly two thousand students gathered inside or around
the administration building. Even with the recent history of tumult, this
was a dramatic, unpre ce dented act of student rebellion at Howard. The
administration quickly suspended most classes and closed down the campus, inadvertently furthering the students sense of having seized power.
The Howard sit- in became a focal point of the budding Black Power
movement and attracted visitors from around the region, including
SNCC leaders like Stokely Carmichael. The students sixteen demands
included a black demo cratic university, the resignation of President
James Nabrit, greater faculty and student rights, African American
studies, a black awareness institute, and the dropping of charges
against the thirty- nine students, because Howard is run by a dictatorial system.68
Students worked hard to project the protest to administrators, the
media, and supporters as respectful and disciplined, yet, as in most
such protests, they also sought to construct a visible counterculture.
There was a continuous atmosphere of black awareness and cultural
pride, one professor noted. Leaders in the Black arts movement came
to perform, and many parents came to offer solidarity. Robert Anderson, the parent of a freshman, said the sit- in was done in such a manner as to make parents proud to have a child here.69 Howard administrators, including the president, largely absented themselves from the
confl ict, leaving a leadership void that was eventually fi lled by a group
of distinguished members of the board of trustees Judge Miles Paige,
38 | The Rise of Black Power on Campus
Dr. Percy Julian, and Dr. Kenneth Clark. Clark was a well- known advocate of integration, having testifi ed before the U.S. Supreme Court for
the plaintiffs in the Brown case. But he knew that bringing the police on
campus risked a bloody confrontation. In contrast to most Howard
leaders, these prominent trustees did not want to use force to clear the
building. As the protest wore on, students increasingly demanded that
Howard declare itself a Black university, but this proved unattainable. In the end, Howard agreed to grant the student assembly power to
create a disciplinary system; to make Howard more attuned to the
times; to create a student/faculty board to work on student problems;
and not to discipline students involved in the takeover.70
Not everyone was happy with the settlement. Many of the more militant students saw it as a betrayal of the longer list of demands, and
former professor Nathan Hare urged rejection, saying too little would
be gained. Adrienne Manns, a leader of the sit- in and a rare female
spokesperson in the Black student movement, supported the settlement.
She had headed the student negotiating team. The cry of nonnegotiable demands would take off in the coming year, but Manns employed
a pragmatic approach to resolving the fi ve- day protest; moreover, she
hoped to avoid a violent showdown. We came under fi re, she refigure 2. In March 1968, students at Howard University occupied the administration
building and issued a series of demands, including the call to transform Howard into
a Black university.
The Rise of Black Power on Campus | 39
fl ected later that summer, for selling out the students from local organizations like the SNCC and other people. I guess they had been down
in Orangeburg and have seen people get killed, and they thought thats
what should happen up here. Manns felt that reaching a victory was
more important than continuing confrontation; still, her comments reveal the diffi culty many student leaders faced of knowing when to call
off a protest. I was not going to stay there to satisfy my ego. I wanted
to stay very much, but I realized it was a totally emotional reaction to
the situation. I was not prepared to sacrifi ce things for people next year
because of my own emotional needs. Some people, she said, wanted a
violent confrontation with police, but she refused to go along with the
cowboy- on- television revolutionary stuff about just dying for its own
sake. In her view, the threat of retaliation was real and would do little
to advance their cause. We have been subject to police action for a long
time, and we dont need that novelty experience of getting our heads
beat, she said.71
The media gave extensive coverage to the sit- inWNET in New York
even produced Color Us Black, an hour- long documentary devoted to
the Howard story.72 This coverage sparked protests at other HBCUs,
including Fisk, Morgan State, Cheyney State, and Tougaloo. According
to a visiting lecturer at Howard, the dramatic occupation of the administration building ended an era of internal calm, led to a series of
demonstrations on other Negro campuses, and laid their peculiar institutional problems before a public audience.73 To some extent, this effect was obscured by the assassination a few days later of Martin Luther
King Jr. His murder galvanized Black student protest all over the country, leading many observers to miss or forget the emergence of Black
student unrest prior to April.
Booker T. Washington might have rolled over in his grave if he knew
what students were up to at the school he founded, Tuskegee Institute
in Alabama, in late March and early April 1968. The Howard protest
had spurred student activists there to boycott classes in order to end
compulsory ROTC training, gain scholarships for athletes, and upgrade
conditions in housing and dining halls. A week later, frustrated with
administrative apathy, students locked twelve trustees in a guest house
for twelve hours. The police response was swift, and as at other protests
at Black colleges, dramatically disproportionate to the offense. Three
hundred National Guardsmen and seventy state troopers converged on
campus, but departed after an African American sheriff persuaded the
students to release their infl uential captives. They had already released
40 | The Rise of Black Power on Campus
retired General Lucius Clay so he could catch his plane to New York.
There was no threat of violence, Clay said. We could have called for
assistance at any time. Nevertheless, the college closed for three weeks,
ten students were charged with crimes, fi fty others were suspended, and
seventy- fi ve students were placed on probation.74 U.S. District Court
Judge Frank M. Johnson, lion of the liberal judiciary throughout the
civil rights era, later ordered that the fi fty suspended students be readmitted, because they had not been permitted a hearing.75
The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4 intensifi ed the
sense of responsibility among African American college students that
they needed to become leaders and wage battles to widen opportunities
for Black youth. Yet the murder of the foremost advocate of nonviolence embittered many, causing them to see the fi ght for inclusion as less
about moral suasion and more about or ga niz ing student power. Moreover, the assassination seemed to stand for the crushing of nonviolent
means to social change, making many young people feel increasingly
justifi ed in resorting to confrontational tactics to spur change. That
spring saw an upsurge in Black student protest. At Wellesley College, an
all- womens liberal arts college in Massachusetts, Black students, including future historian Francille Rusan Wilson, threatened a hunger
strike to get the college to admit more Black students and hire Black
professors. Students at Boston University demanded that the school of
theology be named in honor of their slain alumnus Dr. King. Two hundred male students at the predominantly Black Cheyney State College
in Pennsylvania seized a building, while their female allies formed a human chain of support outside. They demanded a student voice in governance, more courses in African American and African history and culture, and, crucially, more scholarships. The president resigned a week
later under pressure. Confrontational tactics became commonplace: at
Ohio State, Black students occupied the administration building and
reportedly held two vice presidents and four employees captive for
eight hours. What demands prompted such radical action? They wanted
more Black professors, counselors, and courses. This upsurge of Black
protest at so many campuses across the country began to assume the
shape of a movement. Only three months after expressing outrage at
the behavior of Howard students, a reporter for the Amsterdam News
now gave voice to a rapidly shifting national mood: These comparatively new student campus seizures have triggered a much needed reexamination, re- evaluation, and revamping of the future of Americas
universities, she wrote.76
The Rise of Black Power on Campus | 41
In addition to students at HBCUs, Black students in California were
pioneering in launching this new chapter of Black Power campus activism. Many factors pointed to the signifi cance of California. In the early
1960s, the state greatly expanded its system of higher education in
order to guarantee a seat in college for all high school graduates. For
southern Black migrants and their children, this would prove critical to
social mobility and went a long way in shaping their po liti cal activism.77 Harry Edwards, an activist sociologist who wrote about and orga nized the revolt of the black athlete, helped turn Black collegiate
athletes in California into a leading force for social change.78 Finally, the
Black Panther Party played a galvanizing role in California student activism, especially in the Bay Area, although, oddly, studies of the party
have neglected this.79
Before they founded the Black Panther Party, Bobby Seale and Huey
Newton had participated in the Berkeley- based Afro- American Association, a study group promoting Black history and Black consciousness.
As students at Merritt College, a two- year public college in Oakland,
they helped to win the addition of a Black history course in 1965 1966,
and with little fanfare or media attention a Black studies department
was launched in 1968.80 The demographics at Merritt College forecast
the racial change occurring in many American cities. Black student enrollment shot up, from 10 percent in 1963 to 40 percent fi ve years later,
giving Merritt the largest concentration of Black students at a predominantly white institution in the United States.81
For the students at Merritt, winning Black studies was just the beginning of an effort to gain Black power at Merritt, and beyond. Charles
Hamilton visited there in 1969 and quoted a student leaders summation
of their remarkable achievements: For the last seven years the Soul Students Advisory Council . . . of Merritt College has fought a long, hard
battle without compromise for a Black studies department. During this
time, we have increased the number of our Black faculty, acquired a
Black president, gained total control of our student body, and Black
students sit on the major decision- making bodies of this college. Community colleges were, in many cities, the fi rst large, public institutions
where African Americans assumed administrative leadership. Student
activism played an important role in hastening and shaping this demographic shift. But as would occur again in the Black studies movement
in California, the students almost immediately launched a critique of
the Black studies department for allegedly depoliticizing the struggle
and re orienting Black studies toward academic respectability rather
42 | The Rise of Black Power on Campus
than community engagement. We watch as the Black studies department we fought so hard for is bastardized by and pimped off by Negroes and Whiteys, they wrote.82
According to historian Donna Murch, Merritt clearly demonstrated
how the integration of black youth into historically white institutions
inspired new and infl uential expressions of racial militancy.83 San
Francisco State College, another public institution of higher education
in the Bay Area, did so as well, but on a much larger, more contentious,
and more publicized scale. The Black Power movement among students
had important southern origins, but it very quickly spread nationwide,
and San Francisco State was its most momentous battle. Here the students aimed for revolution.
43
In November 1968 the Black Student Union (BSU) at San Francisco
State College (SFSC or State) called a student strike. For fi ve months the
strike rocked the Bay Area, led to nearly eight hundred arrests, galvanized local and national media, and put Governor Ronald Reagan, the
Black Panther Party, students, faculty, administrators, and the board of
trustees on a collision course. The students wanted to fundamentally
redefi ne higher education. Californias reor ga ni za tion of its three- tier
system of higher education, together with the introduction of the SAT
in the mid- 1960s, had toughened admissions criteria at the state colleges, leading to a sharp drop in Black students at SFSC at precisely the
moment when African American baby boomers and children of southern migrants were coming of age and possessed of a strong desire for
upward mobility and access to education. Deeply affected by the broader
civil rights movement in which many had taken part, SFSC students orga nized a mass movement with a strong base on campus and in nearby
Black communities, calling for sweeping reforms, including the admission of all Black high school graduates and an in de pen dent department
of Black studies. Overnight, the strike put Black students at the center
of the civil rights struggle in California and, increasingly, the nation.
This epochal battle took place on a liberal campus famous for its innovation and student autonomy, but the liberal administrators were all
sacked during the confl ict and conservative state leaders fought hard to
quell the strike and punish its leaders. The aftermath was paradoxical:
Chapter 2
A Revolution Is Beginning
The Strike at San Francisco State
44 | The Strike at San Francisco State
the tools to create a multiracial university were won, but in the short
term a vision for a revolutionary student- controlled Black studies
movement was crushed.1
In 1968, nine hundred of San Francisco States eigh teen thousand
students were Black, and their average age was twenty- fi ve. It is vital to
grasp these demographics in order to appreciate the signifi cance of the
strike. How did Black students manage to wage a long strike for Black
studies on a majority white campus? How did students inspired by the
controversial politics of Black nationalism gain the wider multiracial
and intergenerational support that would be essential to pulling off a
strike? The answer lies in the complex mix of community or ga niz ing,
working- class aspiration, and coalition- building that came together
during the strike. Before entering college, many of the strike leaders had
been active in the Black freedom struggle, and their consciousness had
been shaped by the rise of revolutionary Black nationalism in the Student Non- Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party. As a social movement, the strike was the culmination of a
long pro cess of po liti cal education, or ga niz ing, and relationshipbuilding both on campus and in the Bay Area.
Jimmy Garrett was pivotal to the development of a po liti cally conscious Black student community at State. Widely regarded as a visionary,2 Garrett was a seasoned or ga niz er before transferring from Los
Angeles City College to SFSC in February 1966 at the age of twenty.
Like many young men of his generation, Garrett enrolled in college to
avoid the draft. Born in Texas, he moved with his family to Los Angeles,
where he joined a street gang but became socially aware. He credits his
mother, a domestic worker and great reader, as a pivotal po liti cal infl uence. At age fi fteen he went south participating in sit- ins and freedom rides and brought these infl uences back to California. Garrett
cites the SNCC Statement on Freedom Schools written by Charlie Cobb
and Bob Moses as an infl uence on the liberation school he helped to
later set up in Watts. How do you liberate education from the domination of the system? was the critical question he learned and applied in
his northern or ga niz ing, including at San Francisco State.3 Another
legacy of Garretts experience in SNCC was a critique of the role of
white activists in Black movements. At a 1965 conference of the Students for a Demo cratic Society (SDS), Garrett argued against interracial
student or ga niz ing. That failed in Mississippi, he said. It failed all
over.4 Instead, he championed or ga niz ing Black students around
student- centered issues, with an approach grounded in both politics
The Strike at San Francisco State | 45
and culture. We are no longer striving for an integrated society, Garrett
declared. Those days are gone. We are struggling for self- determination.
Self- determination for our black lives; self- determination for our black
communities; and self- determination for a black education.5 His po litical instincts proved prescient, as this cultural- political approach characterized the Black student uprisings of 1968 1972.
While State did not have Berkeleys reputation for radical activism,
it was a cosmopolitan, liberal campus. Strike leader George Murray
entered as a seventeen- year- old in 1963. It was a contentious kind of
place philosophically, he recalls, where he encountered elaborate critical thinking. The campus was very integration- oriented, and many
organizations recruited there, including SDS, the Congress of Racial
Equality, the United Farm Workers Union, SNCC, and the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference. Murray fi rst became politicized as a
teenager in Oakland, where he knew Bobby Seale and Huey Newton.
They had an internationalist outlook from an early age, and all three
future Panther leaders participated in protests against apartheid at the
South African consulate in 1964. FBI agents subsequently visited his
house, showed his mother pictures of him demonstrating and asked,
Do you know your son is hanging around communists and socialists?
Murray, who stayed at State to get his masters degree and taught Danny
Glover in freshman En glish, became the minister of education for the
Panthers. They needed someone who could teach the po liti cal education
courses and write, he recalls.6
Born in Mississippi, where he was expelled from high school for
joining the NAACP, Jerry Varnado entered SFSC in 1963 after serving
in the U.S. Air Force. He loved college so much that when he had compiled enough credits to graduate, he changed his major. Varnado learned
a lot at BSU po liti cal education sessions. We read everything, he says,
and he attended frequent debates on campus. It was competitive; you
had to know what you were talking about. As the BSUs on- campus
coordinator, he helped build support for the strike among Black fraternity members: Thats how the whole strike got started, he recalls. The
administration would not permit Black fraternities and sororities to use
campus facilities. Students were outraged by this.7 Ben Stewart was
twenty- three years old and chairman of the BSU when the strike began.
He had grown up in Oakland but came to State from San Franciscos
most prestigious public high school, where he had run track. According to a student journalist who covered the strike, Stewart learned to
play the role of the black militant. He customarily wears a frown on his
46 | The Strike at San Francisco State
face, attempting to project an image of uncompromising toughness.
Stewart, he wrote, wears sunglasses, even under cloudy skies.8
A second- generation Indian American, Hari Dillon entered SFSC in
the fall of 1966. His grandfather was among the Indian immigrants in
the United States and Canada who were found ers of the Ghadr Party,
which sought to liberate India from British colonial rule. Hari Dillon
was shaped by his familys tradition of anticolonial nationalism and
socialism, but more immediately by the civil rights and anti- Vietnam
war movements. He had participated in the Meredith March in Mississippi, where the slogan Black Power exploded into national consciousness, and later at State he was active in the BSU. In Dillons view, the
student struggle in San Francisco turned the slogan Black Power
into a mass movement, giving it its most sustained application in social
struggle.9
As in other Black Power era struggles, men ran the student movement in San Francisco, but it was nevertheless shaped and sustained by
a courageous and militant group of Black women, who were coming of
age on the eve of womens liberation. Jimmy Garrett launched his career
at State with a dramatic act of male chauvinism. Walking into a meeting
of the Negro Students Association in 1966, he blurted out, The fi rst
thing I want to know is why a woman is up there, referring to the
groups president, Maryum Al- Wadi. Al- Wadi stepped down under Garretts pressure, but she and another female student, Tricia Navarra,
prevailed in insisting that Black replace Negro in the title of their or gani za tion. A respected leader, Al- Wadi was seen as far ahead of her time
in wearing African garb. While Garretts gendered power play exemplifi ed a prominent strain of Black Power politics, Al- Wadis PanAfrican style and strong womanhood did as well. But still, an overall
deference to even investment in Black male leadership shaped Black
nationalism, even as the seeds of future feminist assertion were being
planted.10
The activists at San Francisco State were extraordinarily creative and
resourceful. Like the Black Panther Party, they built their own programs.
They did not just advocate instituting a Black studies department, for
example, they created one. Black studies fi rst got under way in the Experimental College, a student- run, highly innovative program that began in 1965 and quickly became a national prototype. Spreading to
many other universities the following year, experimental colleges were a
means of infusing the curricula with the social tumult of the 1960s and
of incorporating student energy and initiative. The fi rst Black studies
The Strike at San Francisco State | 47
course at SFSC was titled Black Nationalism, taught by Aubrey LaBrie
in the spring of 1966. In the fall the BSU launched a Black Arts and
Culture series within the Experimental College, which stood as an exemplar of what Black studies might offer. Poets Leroi Jones and Sonia
Sanchez, luminaries of the Black arts movement, taught courses. Jones,
who soon afterward took the name Amiri Baraka, also ran a theater
company that staged plays in Black neighborhoods. For BSU secretary
Ramona Tascoe, cultural enrichment and empowerment, combined
with courses in the Experimental College, were the foundation for
their new consciousness and identity. The Experimental College was
something I had never been exposed to. It was like a dream come true.
She took Black Economics taught by Jerry Varnado and read the bestseller The Rich and the Super- Rich by Ferdinand Lundberg, which
stressed the role of inherited wealth in the United States. For her, such
courses provided the data and evidence to back up the charged slogans
and rhetoric of the movement. The following year, eleven Black studies
courses were offered in the Experimental College. The instructors were
alumni, students, and community members, including Jimmy Garrett,
whose course The Mis- education of the Negro promoted a critique of the
Black student/intellectuals estrangement from the Black community.11
In addition, a few Black- content courses were offered in the college.
Sonia Sanchez taught a Black literature course in the En glish department. At that time, she said, it was a revolutionary idea to insert into
the En glish Department the study of African- American literature.
Many of the texts were out of print, so she often read aloud from her
copy and reproduced excerpts, using mimeograph machines with messy
ink. My hands were always blue and purple, Sanchez recalls. I
thought they would never get clean again. Sanchez thinks an important contribution of collegiate Black studies was its revival of attention
to forgotten or censored Black writers, such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul
Robeson, and Marcus Garvey. One day an FBI agent visited her home
in San Francisco to interrogate her for teaching the communist Du Bois.
We resurrected people who had been hidden, and by doing that, of
course, I got on the list, she observed, noting that the cycle of surveillance continued.12
San Francisco State gave rise to the fi rst grassroots, bottom- up Black
studies program at an American college.13 Many of the principles that
would shape the quest for Black studies nationally were fi rst articulated
in Bay Area struggles, especially at State, notably the desire for as
much autonomy in form as possible, student leadership, and a strong
48 | The Strike at San Francisco State
connection to off- campus Black communities. In March 1967 Jimmy
Garrett submitted a proposal for Black studies to the college. Imagined
as an institute with a ten- person board of directors, seven of whom
would be selected by Black students, the design exemplifi es the studentcenteredness of Black studies as envisioned by students. It emphasized
that Black educators would shape the institute, and that Black students
would form the majority in the classroom, but it rejected a narrowly
nationalist approach. There is room for a minority of whites, because
everybody must learn, Garrett wrote. The proposal also included a
plan to help Black high school students gain entry to State. In fact, reforming admissions requirements and heavily promoting higher education to Black high school graduates would increasingly move to the
forefront of BSU activism over the next two years. Garretts efforts
began to pay off. A committee quickly approved the proposal, but it
needed to pass through several more stages, a pro cess that the students
insisted should not apply in this unique, volatile situation. A big source
of student discontent was dealing with what they saw as a slow, infl exible bureaucracy that was controlled by Sacramento as much as by San
Francisco. For their part, administrators tended to have more respect
for the regular procedures of curricular change, even as they saw themselves as sympathetic to the students goals.14
On Garretts recommendation, the college hired Nathan Hare, a
sociologist recently dismissed from his teaching position at Howard University, to set up and direct Black studies.15 Hare was a Black nationalist scholar- activist who supported the students desire to take power
into their own hands. He began in February 1968 with the mission of
gaining departmental status, a large bud get and faculty, and as much
autonomy from the administration as possible.16 SFSC was unusual in
that it offered an array of Black studies courses before the creation of a
formal program in Black studies. When Hare arrived, there were fi fteen
Black- studies- oriented courses offered throughout the college, including History of the Third World, Sociology of Black Oppression, and
Avant- Garde Jazz. Roland Snellings, the poet who soon changed his
name to Askia Toure, and who was a coauthor of SNCCs position
paper on Black Power, taught a course in the Experimental College
on ancient African History. Hare and the BSU proposed moving these
courses to a new department. The BSU prized the quest for autonomy, a buzzword from the era that signaled, in essence, their desire to
be free from white and traditional disciplinary oversight and control
something that departmental status, with its practice of allowing fac-
The Strike at San Francisco State | 49
ulty to hire each other and control bud gets and curriculum, seemed to
offer.
A year after Garretts fi rst proposal, Hare submitted A Conceptual
Proposal for Black Studies, which stressed the goal of serving the educational needs of the Black community as a whole.17 A commitment to
advancing the interests of all Black people, not just students, was a core,
animating principle of the Black student Black studies movements.18
Previewing the controversy to come, po liti cal science professor John
Bunzel assailed Hare and his vision. He described Hare as a man
seething with anger about the path of Negro leadership, duplicity of
many whites, and fallibility of many Negroes who follow it. He also
criticized the students Black nationalism, warning that the emphasis
on collective identity and community fealty will produce group think
rather than critical inquiry.19 This fear was expressed again and again
among critics of Black studies over the next several years. At San Francisco State, Bunzel was harassed in a variety of ways over the next year
or so after his article appeared; his car was painted and the tires slashed.20
Strikingly for an academic initiative, Black studies elicited an intense
response. It arose, and acquired po liti cal symbolism, at precisely the
juncture when the concept of self- determination was challenging integration as the goal of African American activism. Reactions to Black
studies, then, often expressed a range of social and po liti cal anxieties.
Berkeley City councilman and future congressman Ron Dellums warned,
If black studies is perceived as a separate entity, completely unto itself,
for time immemorial, then it is a bad bag. The ultimate quest, he argued, is to change the institution.21 The sole Black member of the state
college systems board of trustees became irritated when Board members begin to express concern that the staff of a Black studies unit
would be all Black. They never worried about all- white departments.
Nor do I see them talking in terms of integrating all white departments right now.22 The role of whites in Black studies often became a
charged point of debate. Nathan Hare thought white scholars might
eventually teach in the department, but felt there are very few whites
who could do it now. He acknowledged a white member of the department at Merritt College whom students liked and who taught from a
black point of view.23
Pivotal to the students ability to sustain their long protest at State
was the support of prominent community leaders. Cecil Williams, a
minister at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, often joined the
students at meetings with administrators and faculty. He experienced
figure 3. Sociologist Nathan Hare was hired to design a Black studies department
at San Francisco State. He was a staunch supporter of the Black Student Union and their
decision to go on strike.
The Strike at San Francisco State | 51
considerable frustration in trying to explain their desire for Black studies and the rising appeal of self- determination, and found university responses unreasonable. He considered the liberals worse than conservatives because they acted as allies but slowed the pro cess. Frustration
over the pace of change was a signifi cant factor in causing the strike.
They didnt understand the need for immediate action. Everything
would always be two to fi ve years off, Williams said. As radical youth
moved to the forefront of activism in the Bay Area, Rev. Williams felt
that support from elders was important: No longer are the Black students going to be able to say: Those old folks dont know what we are
talking about or what we are trying to do. He admired the fact that
Black young people feel they can change society, and believed that
civil rights leaders had an obligation to support them.24
Coinciding with the push for curricular change, Black students and,
increasingly, other students of color demanded an increase in the admission of students of color in the state college system. California was
home to an extensive public system of higher education, but restructuring in 1960 had the effect of reducing the numbers of Black students
at four- year colleges and concentrating them in the two- year ju nior colleges. With the Master Plan for Education, California implemented a
tracking system in its three tiers of higher education that offered a seat
at college for every high school graduate, but Black students were overwhelmingly relegated to ju nior colleges, the lowest rung. The Master
Plan dramatically reduced the percentage of those admitted to state colleges, from the top 70 percent of high school graduates to the top 33
percent. A major cause of Black student discontent was the sharp recent
decline in Black enrollments. In contrast to virtually every other predominantly white college or university in this period, where Black student
presence prior to 1968 was extremely limited, San Francisco State had
had larger numbers of Black students before the Master Plan and before
the introduction of standardized entrance tests in 1965. In just four
years, Black student presence plunged, from 10 to 4 percent of the student body.25
Ironically, in 1964 1965, at the exact same time that the Black student presence at San Francisco State was in decline, the Educational
Opportunity Program (EOP) began at the University of California; by
1969, EOP programs had been established on nine California campuses, including SFSC. This modest affi rmative action program waived
admissions criteria for 2 percent of incoming students. There had long
been a special admissions category applied to students with special
52 | The Strike at San Francisco State
skills, such as musicians and athletes, but African American activists
fought to extend this program to students who had the talent to succeed in college but who had been deprived of an adequate secondary
education. After Kings assassination, the board of trustees doubled the
quota to 4 percent and projected it as a way to increase the numbers
of African American and Mexican American students. Yet, the program
remained multiracial. In 1968, for example, EOP students at the University of California included 147 whites, 918 Blacks, 500 Mexicans,
217 Orientals, 150 unidentifi ed, and 16 American Indians. The EOP
provided fi nancial aid, tutoring, counseling, and housing aid.26
Just as Black studies emerged out of a student- led, grassroots struggle,
so too did the character of this early special admissions program.
Students, not admissions offi cers, went out looking for Black students,
and they had to lobby for their entry. BSU leaders had to convince skeptical administrators that the slots used to recruit musicians and athletes
should be used to admit more Black students, and that the Black students they identifi ed were qualifi ed. The BSU recruited Clarence Thomas
and Danny Glover from San Francisco City College in 1967. Thomas
remembers watching Garrett, Stewart, and Varnado advocate in his behalf at a meeting with college offi cials. After his admission, he went
through an extensive BSU- organized orientation, which included readings by Che Guevara, Frantz Fanon, and Nathan Hare, as well as
W. E. B. Du Boiss Souls of Black Folk. For Thomas, the whole experience was Black Power in action.27
An event in November 1967 put the BSU in direct confl ict with the
administration and set the students on a more assertive, confrontational
path. A group of BSU members, including George Murray, Clarence
Thomas, and Danny Glover, visited the offi ces of the campus newspaper,
the Gater, to protest a description of Muhammad Ali as a clown
and the likening of the Nation of Islam to the Ku Klux Klan. Moreover,
editor Jim Vazcko had editorialized that the colleges new affi rmative
action program had tarnished its image. The visit was in keeping with
the BSU policy of boldly confronting acts of racism on campus. A melee
developed, and the students beat up Vazcko and were caught in the act
by the papers photographer. A few students were suspended, and six,
including Murray, were arrested and given six- month suspended sentences. The suspensions prompted another round of protests, including
a building occupation after President John Summerskill reversed an
unrelated suspension of white students. The Republican establishment
assailed Summerskills decision to briefl y close the campus rather than
The Strike at San Francisco State | 53
risk calling in police to end the occupation, even though this decision
had been reached in consultation with the San Francisco police, and
even though student leaders, including Jimmy Garrett and Hari Dillon,
were later arrested. The Gater incident and its legacy signifi ed Black
student assertion, a punitive response, an unsympathetic media, and
external po liti cal pressure to reject negotiation in favor of bringing in
the police, a scenario that repeated itself many times over during the
next couple of years.28
Student leaders felt that the extremely modest special admissions
program at SFSC was insuffi cient to meet the demand for college by
students of color. By 1970, half the population of San Francisco was
Latino, Asian American or Black. Inspired by the BSU and seeking to
build a broader student movement on campus, a group of Mexican
American, Black, and Asian American students formed the Third World
Liberation Front. Together with the SDS, they took over the administration building in May 1968, demanding, among other things, the rehiring of a pop u lar Chicano professor and a sharp increase in the admissions of Third World students. Hari Dillon believes the creation of
the TWLF, and this protest with its strong message challenging institutionalized racism on campus, were crucial to developing the co ali tion
that would sustain the strike the following year.29
The students faced enormous obstacles in their quest to build Black
Power on campus: not only were they pushing charged questions of
race and usurping traditionally adult areas of authority, but they were
also facing a conservative state government wedded to principles of tax
cutting and government shrinkage. Just as the baby boom generation
was entering higher education, the state of California sharply cut its
funding of state colleges. And just as students were fi ghting for greater
admission of Black, Latino, and Asian American students, the state was
cutting fi nancial aid. Over the summer, Republican governor Ronald
Reagan struck $250,000 from the Educational Opportunity Program,
and his next bud get failed to include the $2.5 million recommended for
the EOP.30 This conservative vision clashed with the rising expectations
of working- class college- bound youth. In the words of one student,
Reagans public demeanor toward state fi nanced colleges was one
of barely concealed, unremitting hostility.31 But administrators felt the
pinch as well, especially as newly centralized control over bud gets in
the chancellors offi ce tied the hands of college presidents. Student unrest may have caught the medias attention, but the faculty and administration were equally at loggerheads with the chancellor and board of
54 | The Strike at San Francisco State
trustees during this same period. Fatefully, John Summerskill, a liberal
administrator who had hired Nathan Hare and preferred negotiations
with students over calling in the police, resigned early in 1968, contending that the college was being seriously eroded by po liti cal interference
and fi nancial starvation. State offi cials were leading attacks on public
higher education in California, he charged. He was gone by May.32
Jimmy Garrett also left San Francisco State in the spring of 1968. He
had been arrested for his role in a December protest over the Gater
suspensions. More than a dozen police offi cers had come to arrest him,
or as Garrett remembers thinking, they came to kill me. Garrett had a
gun in his possession that day and was convicted of assault on a police
offi cer with a deadly weapon, a felony. His attorney, state assemblyman
Willie Brown, and the black lawyer elite persuaded the judge to offer
an alternative to prison. His choice was fi ve to twenty- fi ve years or to
leave San Francisco. So I left San Francisco. He was barred from entering the city or county until 1973 and had to fi nish school by mail.
Coincidentally, Garrett was also ousted from leadership of the Black
Student Union that spring. I began to believe my own press notices,
he recalled, letting leadership go to his head. I centered much of what
was going on around myself. And he had less time to devote to State:
as the leader of the sixty- member Western Regional Alliance of Black
Student Unions, he was traveling around the West, building Black studies programs and Black student unions. Garrett relocated to Washington, D.C., where he continued in the same work, building the Black
studies program at Federal City College, which later became the University of the District of Columbia.33
By the fall of 1968, with new president Robert Smith at the helm, the
promises made to Nathan Hare and the BSU seemed farther off. The
fl edgling Black studies department had only 1.3 positions: Hare plus a
part- time staff person. A highly contentious meeting in September with
BSU leaders, administrators, and community leaders Willie Brown and
the Reverend Cecil Williams revealed sharp differences in how various
people understood Black studies. In a major sticking point, President
Smith refused to move Black content courses taught in other departments
into the new unit. Smith and the other administrators bristled at the idea
of autonomy for Black studies and reaffi rmed the need to go through
many stages of university approval for the creation of a Black studies
department.34 In his own account, Smith wrote that he promised to set
up Black studies by the spring but worried that board of trustees approval for a new major would be stymied by concerns over black sepa-
The Strike at San Francisco State | 55
ratism and possible indoctrination.35 For its part, shortly after this
meeting, the BSU issued a statement declaring, In the coming semester
we will be engaged in revolutionary po liti cal activity.36
The fall of 1968 was marked by student rebellions up and down the
state of California. In October, Black students at UC Santa Barbara occupied the computer center. At San Fernando Valley State College in
Northridge a Black student occupation of the presidents offi ce in November produced a mass felony arrest the largest arrest of college
students in U.S. history. That fall Bay Area schools and colleges were
requiring police action at one or another campus almost daily.37 The
Black Panther Party had close relationships with Black student activists
in California. SFSC student Ramona Tascoe sometimes wore the Panther uniform. It was a way to say, Be afraid of us, she recalls. Notwithstanding the militant image, the Panthers wanted students to stay
in school, thrive, and succeed. Our education was central to the
masses, was their philosophy, according to Tascoe. Being on the frontline of the BSUthat was your assignment for the cause of the
people.38 Students at Berkeley had invited Panther leader Eldridge
Cleaver to give a series of lectures in an experimental course, outraging Governor Reagan and Superintendent of Public Instruction Max
Rafferty, who called the appointment of Cleaver asinine and ridiculous and blocked his paycheck. The clash generated vitriol and condemnation until Cleavers fl ight into exile ended his brief teaching career at Berkeley.
Similarly, when the media discovered that Panther leader and graduate student George Murray was slated to teach at State in the fall of
1968, they ran headlines exposing his foreign radicalism and questioning the appropriateness of his hiring. SFS Puts Admirer of Mao on
the Teaching Staff, declared the San Francisco Examiner, and reminded
readers of Murrays speech in Cuba over the summer assailing U.S. imperialism and supporting the Vietcong.39 That same summer, Panther
found er Huey Newton was tried for the murder of Oakland police offi cer John Frey and convicted of voluntary manslaughter in September.
In October, Murray gave a speech in Fresno, The Necessity of a Black
Revolution, in which he proclaimed: Po liti cal power comes from the
barrel of a gun. His alleged statement We are slaves and the only way
to become free is to kill all the slave masters prompted the board of
trustees of the state colleges to order President Smith to fi re Murray.
The fi ery rhetoric of a Panther leader notwithstanding, Smith felt that
fi ring Murray, whose classroom per for mance was by all accounts solid,
56 | The Strike at San Francisco State
would violate personnel procedures and certainly infl ame the faculty
and students, so he tried to buy time.40
At the same time, seeking new means to pressure the administration,
Jerry Varnado broached the idea of a student strike. He was inspired to
step up students militancy after seeing The Battle of Algiers, a highly
infl uential fi lm for student activists of this era, which documented the
Algerian peoples struggle against French colonialism. At a meeting of
Black faculty and students, Varnado and Murray proposed a one- day
Black- community strike for November 6.41 On October 28, the fi rst anniversary of Huey Newtons arrest, BSU leaders led a march across
campus to test the waters and assess the degree of Black student awareness and interest. They chanted common slogans of the Black Panther
Party: Free Huey Black Is Beautiful, The Revolution Has Come,
and Off the Pig.42 In the cafeteria, Murray gave a speech decrying the
low numbers of Black students at the college and complaining that
four and one- half million black and brown people in California pay
taxes to pay for the racist departments here, but none of their taxes go
to black and brown people. He defended the Panthers policy of selfdefense and carry ing arms and urged the students to join the fi ght. If a
fraternity takes up guns to defend our communities from the pigs, then
it is doing something. Otherwise, he declared, its not.43
At a press conference on November 4, the BSU announced: Black
people, including students, staff workers, teachers and administrators,
will be striking on November 6.44 Nathan Hare and other Black administrators attended in support. Hare was thirty- four and very close to
the student leaders, whom he described as the most sophisticated in
the country.45 Of the BSUs ten demands, the fi rst called for the transfer of all Black content courses offered in the college to a new Black
studies department. We, the Black students at San Francisco State College, they wrote, feel that it is detrimental to us as Black human beings to be controlled by racists, who have absolute power over determining what we should learn. The students felt that, after two years
of struggle, all they had was a paper department, without funds and
faculty. Some of the demands pertained to Nathan Hares rank and salary, because he was paid less than initially promised. They called for
admission of all Black students wishing to be admitted in Fall 1969, a
demand for open admissions that would be made at many other urban
campuses the following year. The students demanded twenty full- time
positions in the Black studies department. George Murray had fi nally
been suspended on October 31, and his rehiring became one of the strike
The Strike at San Francisco State | 57
demands. In a controversial stance, the BSU declared the demands nonnegotiable.46 Jerry Varnado told a New York Times reporter, What
we are doing is revolutionary. We are going to have a black studies department that we control. Where we can hire and fi re who we want. . . .
Theres not a department like that in the country.47 For the students,
the overriding goal was to achieve the Black nationalist idea of selfdetermination: for Black people at SFSC to gain control of their educational destiny.
On the eve of the strike, Stokely Carmichael gave a fi ery speech to a
packed Blacks- only audience urging the students to recognize the necessity of protracted struggle. Our fi ght is a fi ght of this generation, he
declared. The entire generation has to give its blood, its talents, its
skills, its sweat . . . and its life to this struggle. Its not a fi ght thats
gonna be over tomorrow, next year, two years from now. . . . Weve got
to fi ght our whole lives.48 His speech helped to inspire the devotion
and commitment that would be needed to sustain a strike. The next
speaker was BSU president Ben Stewart, who tried to persuade the audience to adopt the strategy of the fl ea, which he had learned from
Robert Tabers book, The War of the Flea. Taber captures a brief but
po liti cally explosive moment when American power was under siege.
Events in Cuba and Vietnam appeared to confi rm that well- organized,
nationalist forces could withstand the military might of the United States,
while domestic dissent had helped to bring down President Johnson. This
surging realignment of power, globally and locally, made a deep impression on this generation and reinforced its own sense of being able to
decisively shape the fl ow of history. But Stewart was more interested in
the books explication of guerilla tactics. He told the students that the
war of the fl ea was a series of actions intended to frustrate authorities. You just begin to wear them down. Something is always costin
them. Something happens all the time. Toilets are stopped up. Pipes is cut.
Water in the bathroom is just runnin all over the place. Smoke is coming
out of the bathroom.49
On the fi rst day of the strike, during a large meeting on campus, students debated what to do. In a decisive moment, a young man stood up
and asked, If were on strike, why are we sitting here? Lets go shut it
down. And on strike, shut it down quickly became the strikes rallying cry. At once, the idea of a symbolic Black community strike changed
decisively to a campuswide shutdown. The students divided into fl ying
squads to go around campus and persuade students, staff, and faculty
to join them. Groups of ten or so Black students entered classrooms,
58 | The Strike at San Francisco State
explained the strike demands, and urged professors to halt teaching.
BSU secretary Ramona Tascoe was in a group that visited the anthropology offi ce. As she began reading the demands, someone threw a
typewriter out a window, another student cut phone wires, and sparks
began to fl y. The students began to fl ee, but she was either too naive or
too foolish to run so she just kept on reading. She was on the third
demand, when a secretary told her, Honey, youd better go. Her more
emphatic Go! fi nally sent Tascoe running. She broke, fell, got up and
ran; and then fell and got up again. The third time she fell was over the
foot of a plainclothes offi cer, several of whom were undercover in various departments, waiting for the strike to commence. The fi rst of nearly
eight hundred arrests during the fi ve- month strike, Tascoe immediately
imagined her face plastered on the citys front pages and dreaded her
parents reaction. She hailed from a large, socially conservative Louisiana migrant family and had attended Catholic school all her life before
entering State. Her parents had no idea that their daughter was a Black
Panther, and she certainly wasnt going to tell them she got arrested. So,
the San Francisco State coed arrested that day was identifi ed in the
press as Mona Williams. Her attorney, Assemblyman Willie Brown,
got the two felony charges down to a misdemeanor and a sentence of
two to three years of probation. While some students engaged in vandalism or other disruptive tactics in order to shut the campus down, the
main tactic was the boycott of classes and the enormous rallies and
picket lines that became a near daily occurrence.50
The Black Student Union had an elaborately defi ned structure with
strong gender divisions, even as gender roles in society were on the
verge of major change. Wanting to avoid investing leadership in one
person, the BSU was run by its twelve- member central committee.51
And it was all male, consisting of the most vocal, the most assertive,
the most recognized brothers.52 Refl ecting their belief that a revolution
was possible, BSU members wore green fatigues throughout the strike,
and some practiced at fi ring ranges to become familiar with weaponry.
The next layer of leadership, the presidium, was mostly female. According to Ramona Tascoe, the gender division was part of the culture of
the times. It was a time in history when women were still actively subjugated to supportive roles. But, she noted, if membership on the central committee had been determined by the work people did, she
would have been on it. Like other Black women on campus, Tascoe
fought shoulder to shoulder with the male students, getting arrested,
walking picket lines, and attending rallies, but her BSU duties were tra-
The Strike at San Francisco State | 59
ditionally female tasks: she typed speeches for George Murray and
other leaders, scheduled meetings, and sent out notices.53 This period
was marked by strong women and high levels of female participation
Varnado described the women in the BSU as fi ghters who were on
the front lines54 but also, as in society at large, by pervasive chauvinism and presumptions of male leadership. On the fi rst or second day of
the strike, a large group of students went to the BSU off- campus offi ce
for a meeting. As it was about to start, one male student said to a group
of other males: Were ready to start; we should send the women out.
They debated and ultimately decided against it, but it didnt change the
all- male leadership structure, which lasted throughout the strike.55 In
Tascoes view, theirs was a generation of African American brothers
and sisters who were transitioning from an era of male chauvinism and
overt oppression of women toward an affi rmation of, and making of
room for, women as comrades.56
Two days into the strike, the Third World Liberation Front endorsed
it and attached fi ve more demands, including a call for a School of Ethnic Studies, which would encompass the study of other racially oppressed
groups. The TWLF endorsement broadened support for the strike, and
serious coalition- building among diverse organizations of students of
color developed over the next several months. But members of the
Black Student Union remained the primary leaders. As Tascoe remembers it, They assimilated behind us respectfully. It was an affi rmation
of Black student leadership.57 The de cades-long civil rights movement
had given Black students valuable experience, which other students
recognized and admired. We would tell them: just watch what we do,
Varnado said, because blacks have been struggling for years and
years.58 In fact, Jimmy Garrett had helped form the TWLF the previous spring, and the BSU helped publicize its existence, leading to the
creation of chapters on other California campuses.59
There was a genuine effort to bridge Black nationalism and Third
Worldism a term the radical students of color used to signify their
sense of shared condition and perspective but differences still remained. Like the BSU, the TWLF included both seasoned radicals and
many students who were new to po liti cal struggle, as well as more traditional fi rst- generation college students. According to TWLF leader
Roger Alvarado, Black Power affected non- black Third World people
too, but he did not see an alliance as inevitable or natural. Rather, he
saw each groups relationship to their community of origin as the bond
that held them together. That is essentially to us the key that has brought
60 | The Strike at San Francisco State
us to where we are now, he said. Being able to refer to our communities
and being actively involved in the different aspects of those communities has developed for us some attitudes and perspectives, which has
taken us from the bourgeois context of higher education. For Mason
Wong, a Chinese American student, the TWLF provided an opportunity
to educate others about the plight of Chinese American workers and
dispel the image of Asian Americans as the model minority. The Chinese
community has the same basic problems as all other non- white communities, he argued, pointing to the exploitation of Chinese workers in the
sweatshops, laundries, and restaurants of Chinatown. Another fallacy
according to Wong, is the myth that Orientals are the best educated
minority in the United States. In actuality, the formal educational
grade level of Chinese people under 25 years old in Chinatown is 1.7,
not even a second grade level.60
To succeed, the BSU and TWLF also needed the support of white students and faculty. The decision to shut down a majority white campus
clearly entailed enlisting as many students and faculty as possible. The
local tele vi sion stations gave extensive coverage to the strike, and their
footage illustrates that large numbers of white students walked picket
lines and attended rallies.61 In addition to the many liberal whites, there
was a smaller but well- organized group of radicals, many of whom were
affi liated with the Students for a Demo cratic Society; and in turn, many
SDS members at State were part of the Worker- Student Alliance, which
was a satellite of the Maoist Progressive Labor Party. A few members of
the BSU were also in the Progressive Labor Party. When the strike began,
SDS members debated whether to insist upon an antiwar plank in exchange for their endorsement. But they concluded that the strike was not
about Vietnam anymore than it was about the grape boycott or any other
struggle. It was a strike about racist policies and practices of the university, and since destroying racism was key to the revolutionary goal,
they voted to give the strike and the BSU and TWLF their full support.
According to SDS leader John Levin, white supporters were not just sympathetic observers but also active participants who saw the strike as their
fi ght too. It was a different time, and the general attitude toward the
fi fteen demands was that these were good things that would improve
the college. Still, he recalls, some students were scared of the militancy
of the Third World students, who often attended meetings with side arms,
and by the fi ery nationalism of their rhetoric. But he felt that Hari Dillons view that nationalism was aimed at white racism not white people
The Strike at San Francisco State | 61
helped give po liti cal clarity and build unity between Third World and
white students.62
Many white students and faculty at State also felt that the board of
trustees, chancellor, and elected offi cials were interfering with local affairs in an aggressive, unwarranted manner. The calls for due pro cess,
student rights, and local autonomy were important factors in pushing
white students and faculty to support a strike led by Black and Third
World student groups. And their support grew as the citys infamous
tactical squad adopted aggressive policing. Hundreds of white students
were arrested during the fi ve- month strike, creating solidarity with the
TWLF forged in blood and struggle. White students, led by Margaret
Leahy, ran the bail campaign, traveling to churches, unions, and other
campuses to raise funds. Students had massive support in the community, Levin remembers.63 Some of the more militant white students used
stinkbombs, smoke bombs, or other forms of vandalism to help shut the
campus down. Indeed, a government observer reported that far more
whites than blacks or other minorities could be seen throwing rocks or
shouting insults at police.64
figure 4. Strike leaders address a rally. Black Student Union members Nesbit Crutchfi eld, on the left, Bridges Randle with the improvised megaphone, and Don Smothers
between them.
62 | The Strike at San Francisco State
A violent confrontation between hundreds of San Francisco Tactical
Squad police offi cers and students on November 13 shocked many on
campus and set in motion a shift toward much greater campus support
for the strike. As on many college campuses in 1968 and 1969, excessive use of force by police pushed moderate students over to the side of
radicals. Ironically, after a week of intense strike activity, many BSU
leaders were exhausted, and they planned to have a press conference the
next day to help lay the groundwork, possibly, for a end to the strike.65
But police aggression changed everything. President Smith sought to
cool tempers by temporarily closing the college and holding a campuswide convocation. A tele vi sion news reporter called the convocation
historic: Its the fi rst time an American college has stopped all its academic pursuits to devote its entire attention to the educational needs
and demands of American minorities. But Sacramento wanted a hard
line, and on November 26 Robert Smith resigned the presidency under
pressure from the trustees.66
Ronald Reagan offered the job to Professor S. I. Hayakawa, a Japanese American semanticist, who came to relish his public image as a
hard- line president, arranging a stream of tele vi sion and radio appearances.67 As one colleague put it, Hayakawa felt that somebody should
stand up to these kids and not be bullied by them.68 Thats exactly
what he did. Hayakawa set out to crush the strike. On December 3,
Bloody Tuesday, the new president declared a state of emergency,
suspended civil liberties, and called in hundreds of heavily armed members of the tac squad. The police swarmed onto campus in full riot gear,
with billy clubs at the ready as they marched in formation. It was the
most riotous [day] in the schools history, according to one reporter.
Hayakawa, Governor Reagan, and San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto
held a press conference announcing arrest warrants for seven strike
leaders: Jack Alexis, Roger Alvarado, Nesbit Crutchfi eld, Hari Dillon,
John Levin, Tony Miranda, Bridges Randle, and Jerry Varnado. The
police aggressively moved to break up the now banned demonstration
and knocked down and arrested many. This marked the start of a period of bloody police- student clashes known as the December days.
But instead of crushing the strike, Hayakawas repression widened its
base of support. We were not intimidated, remembers Dillon, and
the strike became more massive and determined.69 Police arrested
Alexis, Dillon and Randle a few days later. They seized Randle after he
spoke to a rally of hundreds with a makeshift cardboard megaphone.
In former president Smiths view, nothing radicalized the SFS student
The Strike at San Francisco State | 63
body and faculty as much as the sight of the brawny, helmeted Taq
Squad chasing a single student, felling him with a truncheon blow, then
striking him several times on the ground as the blood spurted out.
While not typical police behavior, he said, this happened often enough,
in sight of thousands, that it created many strike sympathizers and
police- and- Hayakawa haters.70 Overall, eighty students were injured
during the course of the strike while being handled and arrested by the
San Francisco Police Department. Hayakawas tenure was marked by a
massive police presence, frequent and numerous arrests, ongoing clashes
with students, and other less visible curtailments of student power.71
Bystanders were not immune to police abuse. A nonstriking student
objected when he saw a police offi cer clubbing a woman lying on the
ground. After being arrested and charged, his view of the strike changed.
He subsequently dropped his economics major, saying he wanted to
learn something that will help people socially.72 On December 3, an
African American apprentice reporter with KQED witnessed police
running at students and hitting them. I actually saw them run up and
hit a girl across her behind and laugh about it, you know, actually
laughing, in public. Unfortunately, his press credentials did not protect
him from the offi cers wrath. The police clubbed him, called him racial
epithets, beat him again in the paddy wagon, and arrested and stripsearched him at the station. I have never seen anyone carry a weapon
in their asshole before. . . . In other words, they break you down to
where you dont even feel like a human being anymore.73 In an effort
to resolve the strike, eighty African American leaders met with President
figure 5. Strike leaders at the head of a mass march of ten thousand students on campus during
December days. From left, Thomas Williams, Roger Alvarado in sunglasses, Carlotta Simon,
Bridges Randle with fi sts in front, Hari Dillon with raised fi st, Don Smothers, Claude Wilson
with megaphone, and Paul Yamazaki with neck scarf.
64 | The Strike at San Francisco State
Hayakawa in early December at the offi ces of the Sun- Reporter, a newspaper published by physician and activist Dr. Carleton Goodlett. In
1937 at the age of twenty- three, Goodlett had received a PhD in psychology from the University California, Berkeley, but it was thirty more
years before Berkeley awarded another PhD to a Black person, a striking illustration of what the Black student movement was trying to
change. At the meeting, Hayakawa was by many accounts rude and
tone deaf to the sentiments of Black leaders. His condescending remark
to a woman, Now look, baby, you people have got to understand . . . ,
unleashed a heated exchange. And then, abruptly, Hayakawa got up
figure 6. Tactical squad police brutally beat and arrested Don McAllister on Bloody
Tuesday, December 2. A second striking student being pulled with a nightstick at his
neck was another of many arrested.
The Strike at San Francisco State | 65
and walked out. Ron Dellums was in the room and heard Hayakawa
say, I, as a minority, see my role as interpreting your concern to the
white community. Dellums was stunned. Man, if black people aint
said nothing in the last two years, they said dont be speaking for me.74
Similarly, Willie Brown saw Hayakawa as plantation oriented. Calling the college presidents behavior bizarre, Brown stated that Hayakawa said, You be good boys and girls and help me on the campus,
and I will go back and tell all the white folks what you did. . . . Those
were his exact words. He was almost lynched.75 According to another
participant, the meeting united the black community in total support
of the student strike, even though many of us did not have all the detailed information that was the basis of the strike.76
The strike generated considerable controversy in San Francisco and
nationally. San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto convened a Committee
of Concerned Citizens chaired by Catholic Archbishop Mark Hurley,
which began negotiating a resolution to the strike in December, but at
that time the BSU wasnt ready to negotiate.77 The federal government
dispatched a team of researchers who were studying urban violence.
Appointed by President Lyndon Johnson in the spring of 1968, the
National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence visited
San Francisco in the fall and interviewed many participants in the confl ict, as well as African American leaders in the city. Anxious about the
students revolutionary rhetoric and confrontational tactics, the researchers found community leaders who, while not necessarily endorsing the
tactics, overwhelmingly defended the students. Willie Brown explained
that the Black community saw the young activists not as irresponsible
but instead as persons to be loved, nurtured and guided.78
In fact, in terms of legal, po liti cal, and moral support, community
leaders especially Dr. Carlton Goodlett, a longtime civil rights activist;
Brown; and the Reverend Cecil Williams were very important allies
to the striking students. One reason for the solidarity of Bay Area leaders was the fact that the students had long been involved in community
struggles. The students have taken out a membership of some kind
in every or ga ni za tion that is attempting to improve the life of people
in this ghetto, noted the Reverend Hannibal Williams, including involvement in his own Western Addition Community Or ga ni za tion, helping to halt a redevelopment project that threatened to displace poor
Black residents of Fillmore. Williams applauded the BSU for taking
the view that college for the black student is not an ivory tower but a
place where he gets some kind of preparation to come back to these
66 | The Strike at San Francisco State
ghetto communities. In Williamss view, the police, who come in with
the blessing of the authority structure . . . to establish law and order,
and who were vicious and violent, deserved public scorn and condemnation.79 More than anything else, witnessing excessive use of force
on campus brought community leaders to the side of the students.
Moreover, the Black Student Union gained the support of many Black
faculty and administrators. EOP director Reginald Major defended the
verbal brashness of the BSU leaders, calling their willingness to speak
openly about racism and to assail authority, and their decision to cultivate a hostile, aggressive style, their most potent weapon.80
But the San Francisco State strike wasnt simply another version of
Birmingham or Selma, where nonviolent protesters endured brutal police violence. Some students used violent tactics, and this certainly infl uenced the medias framing of the event. Eight bombs were planted during the strike, and four were detonated, in mostly deserted areas.81 On
the second day of the strike, a twenty- eight- year- old Nigerian student
was arrested for carry ing a small homemade bomb.82 The offi ce of a vice
president was burned, and two fi rebombs were hurled into the house of
an assistant to the president. And on March 5, freshman Tim Peebles
attempted to plant a bomb in the creative arts building, but it went off
prematurely and he suffered hand and face injuries. He was partially
blinded.83 William Pulliam, another student, was also injured, and both
young men were arrested. Ramona Tascoe said the accident jolted
them into reality.84 Central committee member Jerry Varnado claims
that individuals who set off bombs or vandalized automobiles were doing their own thing. . . . We did not want to destroy anything. We
were trying to build something. He says their main goal was to shut the
school down. Some people did those things on their own. We might
hear about it later, and they would come to us and say, Well, what did
you think about this or that? We tried to persuade people not to do
that kind of stuff. Still, Varnado himself was arrested seven or eight
times during the strike and was sentenced to a year in jail for tossing a
fi rebomb at a building. He pled guilty to a felony, though he insists he
was innocent. A campus police offi cer identifi ed him as the culprit, and
Varnado says he couldnt prove [he] didnt do it and felt it was too
risky to go to trial.85
The strike garnered daily coverage by tele vi sion, radio, and print
journalists, and, as a media event, its framing swung beyond the students control. The media tended to portray the students as intent upon
destroying the university, which increased the clamor for punitive
The Strike at San Francisco State | 67
crackdowns.86 A mediator who had been brought in by the city to help
settle the strike complained that the media was only focusing on radical
slogans and failing to see the substance in the students demands.87
Conservative Californians sent thousands of letters to Hayakawa and
the board of trustees. After seeing a televised interview with George
Murray, one person wrote, In the course of the interview he expressed
disdain for the United States, and in par tic u lar, said, To Hell with
America. I wish to express to you my amazement and dismay that the
California state college system is persuaded to employ this type of
man. Many in the public absorbed the image of spoiled youth whose
radicalism was paid for by hard- working taxpayers. But that picture
was far from accurate: 80 percent of SFSC students were employed, and
their average age was twenty- four.88
Meanwhile, the strike was fairly effective in closing down the campus. A survey of the classes that met on January 14, 1969, at a time
when 115 classes were scheduled, indicated that forty- three classes were
held, or 37 percent. And all of these reportedly had an attendance rate
below 50 percent.89 The academic senate found that class attendance
was off by 50 percent: Although still open in some legal or po liti cal
sense, . . . the college is rapidly closing intellectually and spiritually.90
The strikes reverberation into the broader San Francisco community
widened when the campus chapter of the American Federation of
Teachers struck on January 6, 1969. The citys labor council sanctioned
the strike, giving the faculty, and indirectly the students, the backing of
scores of workers across this pro- labor town. In one example of material support, the International Longshore and Ware house Union offered
casual jobs to individuals affected by the strike. The father and grandfather of BSU leader Clarence Thomas had been members of that union,
and Thomas would later become a leader in the union. Walter Riley was
a bus driver during the strike and or ga niz er of a Black caucus in the
militant Transport Workers Union. He had also attended SFSC the year
before and was active in the BSU and SDS. He brought groups of bus
drivers in uniform to the picket lines to offer visible strike support.91
The faculty struck to protest the state of emergency, suspension of civil
liberties, refusal of Reagan and the trustees to negotiate, mass arrests,
and daily presence of several hundred police. With a picket line now
circling in front of the campus gates, the location of protest activity
shifted off- campus and violence declined. The 350 teachers who struck
also had their own professional demands, including the desire for a
contract. Their strike lasted two months.92
68 | The Strike at San Francisco State
The height of the strike coincided with the Federal Bureau of Investigations effort to destroy the Black Panther Party through a range of
secret methods known as counterintelligence programs, or cointelpro.93 These methods included surveillance, false arrest, disinformation, and even assassination and went a long way toward decimating
the party by the early 1970s. A slight detour southward, to the movement in Los Angeles, will help illustrate the wider context of California
Black student activism, the lethal affects of repression on college campuses, the intense ideological ferment in the student movement, and a
contrasting example of a student vision for African American studies. In
distinction to the Bay Area, where the Panthers were predominant, the
Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party was embroiled in a sharp
rivalry with us, a cultural nationalist or ga ni za tion headed by Maulana
Karenga. Both groups emphasized physical prowess and training in
weaponry. But in contrast to the leftist, anti- imperialist politics of the
Panthers, who criticized the government and built dynamic communitybased programs, cultural nationalists tended to emphasize African
roots, cultural grounding, and gender hierarchies as remedies for contemporary racism. Their confl ict culminated on January 17, 1969, with
the shooting deaths of Panther leaders Alprentice Bunchy Carter and
John Huggins by us members after a Black Student Union meeting on
the campus of the University of California at Los Angeles. Subsequent
accounts revealed that the FBI had infi ltrated and provoked discord
between the two groups.94 Strike leader and Panther Minister of Education George Murray believes those bullets were actually meant for him.
Even though the Black student movement in Los Angeles was deeply
marked by the Panther-us rivalry, the students who spearheaded the
creation of the Center for Afro- American Studies at UCLA endeavored
to withstand these ideological currents. And in many respects they
stood in contrast to the students who devised Black studies at San Francisco State. Black students did not always agree on the form or function
of African American studies, and the local political landscape shaped
their thinking. The UCLA student leaders tried to resist the efforts of
community leaders to gain infl uence over Afro- American studies, and
endeavored to imbue the program with academic rigor and in de pendence. The creation of the center gave rise to a fi erce battle for control between these student leaders and members of the Community
Advisory Board, who wanted the center to be a social and po liti cal force
in the Black community. The Black Student Union itself was divided over
this issue. According to Mary Jane Hewitt, an African American admin-
The Strike at San Francisco State | 69
istrator and advisor to Black students at UCLA, The prime movers in
getting that Center started were Virgil Roberts, Arthur Frazier, Mike
Downing, and Tim Ricks. She remembers them as a group of very
bright, very energetic, and very determined young African American
students. They also helped design and administer the High Potential
Program, an affi rmative action program that actively utilized Black students in student recruitment. Members of the us or ga ni za tion as well as
the Black Panther Party, including Bunchy Carter and John Huggins,
were recruited to UCLA through High Potential. Beginning in the summer of 1968, Roberts, Downing, Frazier, and Ricks researched Black
studies programs and proposed an interdisciplinary center consisting
of four ethnic studies units. As part of their proposal, they called for
support for an academic journal (which later became the important
Journal of Black Studies) and funding for conferences and research. The
students visited San Francisco State to examine how Black studies was
evolving there and borrowed some of their ideas. But in the end, they
advocated creating, and won, a center rather than a department, incorporating Asian American, Mexican American, and Native American units, because, in their view, this promised to be more salable
po liti cally.95
It was a time of intense nationalism, but they built alliances, in part
because the number of Black students at UCLA was small. Roberts recalls that Black students and faculty were unifi ed in their desire to create the center. The confl ict later on came over who the people were
going to be. We had this confl ict with Maulana (Ron) Karenga and our
Community Advisory Board. But the president of the BSU, history
graduate student Floyd Hayes, opposed the plan and virtually excommunicated Roberts, Frazier, Ricks, and Downing. There was a meeting in which the BSU members said they felt we were selling out to
white folks, and they were going to kill all of us, Roberts recalls, still
taken aback at the threats and level of vitriol. The four students felt
betrayed and ostracized, he says, after having given so much of themselves to build the center, so much so that Virgil Roberts stopped wearing his dashiki in favor of a suit and tie when he came to campus, so as
not to be associated with the BSU.96
Students and community leaders had contending visions for the center. Dr. Alfred Cannon, a psychiatrist at the medical school and prominent community leader, sat on the Community Advisory Board for the
Center for Afro- American Studies and promoted as director of the new
center Dr. Charles Thomas, the director of a health center in Watts. Ron
70 | The Strike at San Francisco State
Karenga, who also sat on the Community Advisory Board as head of
the us or ga ni za tion, supported Thomas as well. Take the community
to the campus, bring the campus to the community theres no way
around it, Karenga later described his stance.97 Hewitt, who directed
the EOP and High Potential programs, recalls that us members had
given the very fi rst director of the center, UCLA po liti cal scientist Sylvester Whittaker, a bad time, helping hasten his departure to Prince ton.
Among some students and faculty, there was a concern that Karenga
and the advisory board were overreaching in campus affairs. Roberts
and several of the other students came to view Thomas as unacceptable after he visited campus and gave a job talk. They questioned his
ability to hold his own in a rigorous academic environment. We
wanted to have a really heavy brother come in who could deal with
UCLA, and we were convinced at the meeting that theres no way he
could deal with UCLA you know the faculty would be able to just
push him over.98
At a packed meeting in Campbell Hall where the shootings would
happen two days later the students related their opposition to Thomas
to the Community Advisory Board. Virgil Roberts was there, along with
Bunchy Carter and John Huggins. The Simbas, the appointed muscle for
the us or ga ni za tion, were out in force. Roberts remembers that advisory
board members went ballistic, especially Maulana. The students adjourned to another room and Karenga began lecturing them about what
was in their best interest, when Mary Jane Hewitt stood up and confronted him. I just remember saying to him I thought he was damned
irresponsible to be playing this kind of role and bringing this kind of
madness to campus, she later recalled. I chastened him. I can remember saying that you ought to know better than to do this kind of thing,
manipulating young people like this. Community groups should advise, she told him, not dictate. Virgil Roberts remembers her upbraiding
Karenga: The students ( were) cheering and stuff, but Karenga was
totally upset. Meanwhile, Panthers and us members lined the hallways
of Campbell Hall in long coats, which allegedly concealed their weapons. Before departing, the students formed a new search committee, on
which Carter and Huggins were appointed to serve.99
Two days later, an alleged FBI operative in the us or ga ni za tion
gunned down Carter and Huggins in Campbell Hall, killing them both.
Claude Hubert, the alleged gunman, was never apprehended, but Donald Hawkins and brothers Larry Stiner and George Stiner were convicted of conspiracy and second- degree murder. In 1974 the Stiners es-
The Strike at San Francisco State | 71
caped from the maximum- security prison at San Quentin and went to
live as fugitives in South America. All three men had been members of
the Simbas. A group of Simbas, Virgil Roberts said, came in, walked in,
shot in the hall and ran out.100 The killings traumatized students and
ushered in a long period of po liti cal quiescence, anxiety, and fear on
campus. There were many witnesses, including some who lived under
police protection for the rest of the quarter. FBI counterintelligence operations against the Panthers, including assassination, have been well
documented, yet neither the Panthers nor us shied from armed struggle.
Members of both groups carried weapons and physically disciplined
members; Karenga was himself imprisoned in 1971 for ordering the
beating of a woman.101 But after gaining an early release, he embarked
on a long career teaching Black studies at California State University in
Long Beach and, most famously, developed the African- inspired holiday Kwanzaa, which became pop u lar among many African Americans
nationwide.
As noted, San Francisco State strike leader George Murray thinks the
bullets in Los Angeles that January day were actually intended for him.
The twenty- three- year- old was meant to have been at UCLA as a guest
of the Los Angeles Panthers, but because of the demands of the strike,
his exhaustion, and his wifes pregnancy, he cancelled at the last minute.
I was supposed to have been there, he says, and remembers learning
the news over the radio. He assumes he was the real target because of
his intense notoriety in the state and his leadership position in both the
BSU and the Black Panther Party.102 At the same time, authorities in San
Francisco were determined to arrest strike leaders and remove them
from the scene. About one month later, Murray was sentenced to six
months in jail for violating the terms of probation he received following
the Gater melee. After he was rearrested, police said they found two
guns in his car, although Murray contended that the us or ga ni za tion
had broken into his car and planted the guns. In a courtroom packed
with eighty spectators, many of them militant blacks, Panther leader
Bobby Seale testifi ed that Murray could not have had the guns.103 Murray thinks that authorities hoped his incarceration would end the strike.
The judge had it in for us, he remembers. He must have been under
a lot of pressure.104
Meanwhile, Bay Area support for the students continued to grow.
On January 23, close to two hundred community supporters joined a
rally on campus. Hayakawa had banned all demonstrations, and when
police surrounded the large crowd, demanding that they disperse, the
72 | The Strike at San Francisco State
elders inserted themselves between police and students. It is not necessary to brutalize us in order to arrest us, Dr. Goodlett declared through
a bullhorn.105 Four hundred and fi fty people were arrested that day, the
largest mass arrest in San Francisco history, leading to more than a year
of mass trials and harsh sentencing. Importantly, it was not simply police or administrative overzealousness that brought students deep local
support. The BSU and TWLF demands refl ected community aspirations, and symbolized the new direction of the Black freedom struggle
as it was expanding across the country. Students were trying to open up
institutions of higher education to underserved Black and Latino communities. Adults in these communities recognized that the outcome of
these protests had signifi cant long- term implications. The doors to
college, said Ron Dellums, who was soon to be elected to Congress,
should be open to all interested ethnic minorities who seek admission. Moreover, he felt, taxpayers should view this quest for upward
mobility as a smart antipoverty program. Colleges must spend more
on tutoring, counseling, [and] support ser vices to help students thrive,
he also insisted, reminding us that advocates of expanded admissions
still believed in academic rigor and proper preparation. He too thought
the medias and governments focus on tactics was a distraction from
the substantive issues of the strike, and he resisted pressure to condemn the students. Some people get hung up on the tactics, he thought.
But that is a bad bag for us as community people to get into. It is a divisive bag. The students had already gone through eigh teen months of
negotiations and committee meetings and more committee meetings,
only to get broken promises and extended negotiations.106
As the violence, arrests, and media attention intensifi ed, offi cials
stepped up efforts to fi nd a resolution. Joseph White thought the students were frozen in revolutionary rhetoric and should have begun
talks much earlier. You see the students did not know how to negotiate, so we went into the Black community to get the elders and se nior
ministers to show the students how to negotiate with the administration. He helped, he said, even though the students had viewed him
skeptically as a house Negro.107 According to BSU secretary Ramona
Tascoe, the strike ended in March because the crescendo had peaked,
and because the brothers were gone and they were the lead strategists.108 After the mass arrest in January, authorities began to seek out
the strike leaders in earnest to either lock them up or make them afraid
to come on campus. But it wasnt just arrests and repression that
brought the strike to a close. BSU off- campus coordinator Leroy Good-
The Strike at San Francisco State | 73
win said it was simply very challenging to keep a co ali tion of different
organizations and constituencies united and mobilized for so long. Black
student support and morale was weakening. In his view, class differences
between BSU and TWLF members were more pronounced than initially
anticipated, leading to different po liti cal approaches and sensibilities.
Not insignifi cantly, the administration seemed poised to offer many of
things the students had been fi ghting for.109
Several committees negotiated an end to the strike, and a settlement
was signed on March 20, 1969. The college agreed to design a School of
Ethnic Studies and to move all Black studies courses to the new Department of Black Studies, to be launched in the fall with 11.3 staff positions. The school was later renamed the College of Ethnic Studies and
also included programs in Chicano, Asian American, and Native American studies. Hayakawa had fi red Nathan Hare in February after Hare
and several students disrupted a speech in which Hayakawa was boasting of the recent mass arrest and claiming victory. Hare was never reinstated, never had the opportunity to build the department he had envisioned, and feels he was blacklisted from future employment in the
state college system because of his strike activities. San Francisco State
has developed the reputation of launching the fi rst Black studies department in the United States, but because of the delay caused by the strike,
a Black studies department apparently got under way at Merritt College
fi rst. But the long birth of Black studies in the Experimental College and
its fi nal creation as part of a new School of Ethnic Studies was pioneering
and unpre ce dented. The college agreed to undertake steps to increase the
enrollment of students of color and to withdraw police from campus.
More signifi cantly, California enacted an EOP law in 1969 that gave
affi rmative action greater legal and po liti cal footing. Hayakawa was
determined to discipline strike supporters even though the settlement
recommended leniency. In the end, most ordinary students got amnesty
for strike participation, but most strike leaders went to jail and were
banned from campus.
All the BSU and TWLF leaders had been arrested, many several
times. And many served time in jail. According to Hari Dillon, Reagan
and Hayakawas assault on the strike was a severe blow. George Murray served two and a half months in jail. The judge called him all kinds
of names and accused him of rending the social fabric of San Francisco, but progressive forces in the legal system assisted Murray. His
lawyer announced that he had undergone a spiritual awakening and
was committing himself to the church, and indeed the former Panther
74 | The Strike at San Francisco State
minister has led an Oakland church for de cades.110 Still, after jail, Murray remembers, I was watched everywhere I went.111 Several student
leaders went on trial in the spring. Dillon, Bridges Randle, and John
Levin were tried together; as a tactic to put the power structure and
police on trial, they declined an attorney and Dillon acted as the lead
counsel. But Dillon doubts an actual attorney could have mitigated the
outcome. They faced the charge of inciting to riot, and authorities had
fi lm footage of all the defendants playing leading roles at strike rallies
and marches. Dillon and Bridges each got a year in the San Bruno jail,
while Levin, the white defendant, got six months. BSU leader Jack
Alexis was deported to his native Trinidad.112
Jerry Varnado faced a lot of time, so he concluded that going to trial
was too great a risk. He got a year but was released a couple of months
early on the condition that he begin law school. Varnado stayed in the
Bay Area, but it was twenty years before he set foot on campus again.113
Danny Glover spent a couple of months in jail. Nesbit Crutchfi eld, a
BSU leader who was clubbed and arrested in November, did sixteen
months in jail and earned a criminal record that follows me around to
this day. Yet Crutchfi eld says he would do it all again. As a result of
their struggle, many, many young people throughout this state and
nation, and the world, are seen now as whole people, as people who
have the ability to excel, as people who should be evaluated based on
their worth rather than on something as arbitrary as their race or
background.114
It took some time for the progressive legacy of the strike to emerge.
In the fi rst couple of years, Hayakawa pursued a revanchist regime. He
fi red about twenty- fi ve professors; battled the Black studies department;
used fi nancial aid to intimidate students; deprived student organizations
of funds; attacked student government; and barred many students and
teachers from involvement with the Educational Opportunity Program.
In the summer of 1969, the college announced that anyone who had
been arrested in the strike could not teach in the new Black studies department. This happened at several colleges in California, alienating
student activists from the departments that their sacrifi ces helped spawn.
Hayakawa precipitated an exodus of Black administrators, including
Joseph White, Elmer Cooper, and Reginald Major. Im glad to see them
go, the future U.S. senator declared. For his part, Major called Hayakawa the biggest single disaster that non- white people at San Francisco
State College have ever experienced.115
The Strike at San Francisco State | 75
The Educational Opportunity Program became a target of conservative retribution, since some critics claimed that EOP students had caused
campus rebellions. But a report by the state assembly found that only
58 of the 958 arrests on state college campuses were EOP admits, and
these students represented only 2 percent of EOP enrollment.116 In 1969
California put the board of trustees more squarely in control of the
EOP and solidifi ed the professionalization of affi rmative action and
the move away from student- activist- community control. This coincided
with Hayakawas move locally to keep activists out of the EOP program
at SFSC, turning the EOP, in Nesbit Crutchfi elds words, from a peoples
program to a pigs program.117 For his part, even though he cosponsored the EOP bill in the state legislature, Willie Brown called it only a
band- aid where surgery is required. Refl ecting the sense of revolutionary change so prevalent in this era, Brown called for a redefi nition of the
mission of the university and a fundamental redistribution of campus
power toward students. We must give them the opportunity to reshape the society that they will inherit, he argued.118
As soon as the strike was settled, Joseph White and Robert Chrisman, an assistant professor and found er, along with Nathan Hare, of
the important journal The Black Scholar, convened a group of African
American faculty (and Black Student Union members) to recommend
professors for the new Black studies department. They hired six fulltime and twelve part- time instructors, who taught fi ve hundred students
(almost all Black) in thirty- four courses that fall.119 A female scholar,
Lucille Jones, was hired as chair, an interesting outcome given the allmale leadership of the strike. Her spouse, Woodrow Jones, was also
hired, and both, with PhDs, were considered traditional academics; but
the couple lived near the campus and had been supportive of the students during the strike. Four more women were hired, including Judith
Thomas, who had graduated from SFSC that spring; she had served as
editor of the BSU newspaper Black Fire and as the fi rst female editor of
the Black Panther. She taught the course Black Journalism. Other courses
included Black Psychology, Black Economics, and African American
History. Refl ecting the strong infl uence of the Black arts movement on
the early Black studies movement, a visual artist joined the faculty, as did
the famed saxophonist and composer John Handy. Clarence Thomas,
who was active in the BSU that year, had recommended hiring Frank
Kofsky, a white writer on politics and jazz, but he was voted down. It
was too early to bring white folks in, Thomas concluded.120
76 | The Strike at San Francisco State
After waging a bitter fi ve- month strike, the Black Student Union was
determined to play a leading role in shaping the mission of Black studies at San Francisco State. The students felt that they had won this right.
We created it, emphasized Clarence Thomas. It was our vision. And
that vision was to educate black students on the question of selfdetermination. According to Thomas, the students helped develop a
curriculum that was informed by a basic principle: preparing black
folks to carry out self- determination in the black community, teaching
students how to gain po liti cal and economic control of the community.121 Trickier for Dr. Jones was the BSUs view that Nathan Hare was
the rightful chair. She resigned after only a month because of threats, she
said, from disgruntled students who wanted Hare rehired.122 Hare
stayed close to the BSU that fall, but after a gun- possession arrest in December, and continued opposition by Hayakawa, he fi nally abandoned
efforts to be reinstated. The students were loyal to Hare, a scholar of
working- class origins and militant sensibility whom they saw as an important ally.123
The fi rst year of the Department of Black Studies was marked by
clashes between the students and administrators over control of the
department. The BSU was committed to making the department an arm
of the Black revolution and to win for it as much autonomy from the
State administration as possible. Acting director of ethnic studies Urban
Whittaker said the overriding points of contention that year were: Who
shall control the Black studies program, faculty or students? What shall
be the purpose of the program, education or revolution? The BSUs
central committee, Whittaker said, insists on control of Black studies
by the students for the purposes of perpetuating a revolution. Nesbit
Crutchfi eld defi ned revolution as a radical and abrupt change in direction and attitudes. But Lucille Jones expressed a more critical view.
They arent much like real revolutionaries, she felt. Some of them
cant even wake up in time to come to class. In her view, the time had
come to switch from protest to education, but for many students in the
BSU the struggle continued.124
That fall the BSU sought to exercise infl uence in the classroom, assigning student assistants to each class to to or ga nize the students to
form collective student power and to talk about the strike if
necessary tell how the students got their heads beat in and how they
are now facing unjust charges because they were fi ghting for their
beliefs the troubles they are having in the courts and in jail. Whittaker complained that the faculty refused to meet with him all semester.
The Strike at San Francisco State | 77
Moreover, he stated that faculty who had resisted control of their
classes by students faced harassing phone calls, vandalized personal
property, intimidation, and physical threats. According to Whittaker,
some sought police protection and transfer of their classes out of the
Black studies department, but none made formal charges or complaints.
In March 1970, declaring that the department was a mess and has
been mishandled, Hayakawa fi red the faculty.125 BSU leaders felt betrayed. A photo in a student newspaper pictured two members, including Danny Glover, burning the strike agreement. We learned, said
Clarence Thomas, that just because you get a Black studies department doesnt mean you get the faculty you want.126 Two years later,
instructors were still at odds with Hayakawa, complaining that he had
starved them of resources, faculty, and status.127 In essence, the students
failed to achieve either autonomy for the department from university
oversight, or student control of departmental affairs and governance.
And compounding matters, the department had to endure a general
punitive crackdown from the administration.
In contrast, for Hayakawa, the strikes aftermath brought immediate
benefi ts. The strike increased his administrative power on campus, propelling him into the po liti cal limelight and into the U.S. Senate in 1976.
As a one- term senator, he opposed many liberal causes, from bilingual
education to reparations for Japa nese Americans interned during World
War II. An advocate of immigrant assimilation, Hayakawa introduced
an amendment to make En glish the offi cial language of the United
States.128 The crackdown at SFSC and other California campuses left a
bitterness and sense of failure among many of those who had participated in the struggle. As the director of ethnic studies at Mills College
observed, Most of the pioneers have moved on, the vast majority involuntarily. Nathan Hare exemplifi ed this outcome. Three years after
the strike, he viewed most Black studies programs as polka- dot studies, as too traditional and not taught from a Black perspective. Black
studies has to express the ideology, goals, and thought of the black
struggle, he insisted. An ousted professor at Berkeley concurred: The
potential and wealth of scholarly potential is there, but Im not sure on
a racist campus one can ever have a black studies program.129
Despite the fi erce crackdown from state offi cialdom, most of the student activists thought the gains were worth the fi ght. Bernard Stringer,
the fi rst student to graduate from State with a degree in Black studies,
said the strike was the beginning of making education relevant for
Black people. It was hard, he conceded, but we did what we thought
78 | The Strike at San Francisco State
was best to improve the education of black people.130 In a keynote address at a twenty- year commemoration of the strike, Hari Dillon declared that the ultimate mea sure of the moral veracity and social signifi cance of any mass movement is the verdict of history. Hayakawa
and the Tactical Squad are gone, but the Educational Opportunity Program is standing strong! He cited the thousands of students of color
who had gone to college as a result.131 But in more recent years, affi rmative action in college admissions has come under heavy assault, and
it was legally dismantled in California, causing a decline in the proportion of African American students at University of California campuses,
the states fl agship campuses. George Murray feels the incarceration
and intense opposition was the price they paid for being agents of
change. You pay an extreme penalty for being ahead of your time,
Murray said.132 Carleton Goodletts view in 1969 proved prescient.
There wont be a college in the country now that wont have black
studies, he predicted. But in the meantime, there are going to be some
casualties.133 Even though he feels that the strike went on for too long,
Joseph White thinks it succeeded in giving legitimacy to the idea that
a public university should refl ect the ethnic makeup of the people in the
community. The university did not look like America before that, he
says. While inclusion may seem like a modest, reasonable aspiration, it
was diffi cult and controversial, White believes, because young people were telling old people how to run the university, and black people
were telling white people how to run the university.134
The explosion of Black student protest in California was especially
militant and dramatic, but it was not unique. Black students rose up in
protest nationwide in the late 1960s. Cities like San Francisco, Chicago,
New York, and Washington, D.C., were particularly important as movement centers because they brought students into closer contact with
other campuses, civil rights leaders, ministers, attorneys, and community members. While the beginnings of student protest were in historically Black colleges and the Bay Area, the movement spread nationwide
very, very quickly, assuming a character of simultaneity.
79
Confl ict and confrontation may have characterized the student movement in California, but in the Midwest the movement unfolded in less
violent, if still dramatic, form. If San Francisco State showed that a
revolutionary conception of Black studies would be diffi cult to realize,
the movement in Chicago demonstrated that it was still possible to
achieve a signifi cant transformation of educational institutions. And in
a city with a Black po liti cal class closely tethered to the machinations of
Mayor Richard M. Daley, student protest helped usher in changes that
reverberated more broadly in the citys po liti cal, cultural, and institutional life, laying the groundwork for a wider upsurge of in de pen dent
Black or ga niz ing and assertion. Student protest at Northwestern University, an elite, private research university in suburban Evanston, and at
Crane Ju nior College, a two- year public institution on Chicagos west
side, illustrate the diverse locations and goals of the Black student rebellion. Both campuses produced disciplined and savvy organizers who
championed campus improvement and greater African American access
to higher education. Studying these two campuses together underscores
the diverse institutional base of Black student activism, as well as the
importance of urban culture, politics, and institutions in shaping student
demands and strategies. In later years African American studies would
become associated with elite professors and Ivy League universities, but
the movement began close to urban Black communities and was inspired, shaped, and galvanized by the broader Black Power upsurge.
Chapter 3
A Turbulent Era of Transition
Black Students and a New Chicago
80 | Black Students and a New Chicago
Black students claimed the right to shape their education in a variety of ways. At Northwestern they pressured the university to adopt
African American studies, affi rmative action, and other initiatives to
promote greater inclusion and equality for Black students. In many
respects, Northwestern typifi ed Black experiences at elite, private historically white universities. There was an emerging liberalism, and many
openings for change, side by side with the legacy of a racist cultural
and institutional history. In Evanston, as elsewhere, the students forcefully and creatively asserted themselves. In contrast, the students at
Crane aimed not for a Black studies department but the infusion of
Black content across the curriculum. Crane came to exemplify the
quest for Black control of an institution in a Black community, as it
was renamed Malcolm X College and gained an African American
president. Well before victories in city hall, public two- year colleges in
cities such as Chicago, Oakland, Detroit, and New York became early
sites of Black administrative management in a context of urban white
fl ight. Northwestern and Malcolm X both produced a generation of
student- leaders who went on to play important roles in academia,
government, law, and politics for de cades, in Chicago and across the
country.
It is impossible to write about the Black student movement in Chicago without acknowledging the signifi cance of Roo se velt University,
an important incubator of collegiate activism well before the 1960s.
Roo se velt was founded in 1945 by a group of professors who had quit
the Central YMCA College in protest over the use of racial and religious quotas in student admissions. With an explicit policy of nondiscrimination, Roo se velt was one of the few private colleges, outside of
historically Black colleges, where Black scholars could fi nd employment
and signifi cant numbers of Black students could gain admission. Scholars St. Clair Drake, Lorenzo Dow Turner, Charles Hamilton, and Hollis
Lynch all taught there. The student body was similarly diverse. Bennett
Johnson entered in January 1948. An Evanston high school graduate
and future publisher and civil rights or ga niz er, Johnson joined a formidable Black student group that included future congressman and mayor
Harold Washington; future congressman Gus Savage; future real estate
mogul, activist, and writer Dempsey Travis; future novelist Frank London Brown; and future historian Tim Black. We were all there, Johnson recalls, and the group forged lifelong po liti cal and social ties. They
won election to student government and waged direct action protest to
desegregate downtown establishments, learning or ga niz ing skills that
Black Students and a New Chicago | 81
they put to use for years after graduation.1 Many pioneering scholars in
Black studies took their undergraduate degrees at Roo se velt, including
Charles Hamilton, Christopher Reed, Darlene Clark Hine, and John
Bracey. And the campus continued to be a launching pad for civil rights
activism in Chicago throughout the 1960s. In contrast, this activist interracial culture did not characterize life at Northwestern University,
a private Big Ten university located just over the city limits, in Evanston. Northwestern fi rst admitted a Black student in the early twentieth
century, but admitted only a very small number until the 1960s, when it
began to recruit student athletes.
In 1968 the quiescence of this tony north shore campus unraveled as
Black students launched a struggle that would push Northwestern into
the modern era. In the early morning hours of May 4, exactly a month
after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., about 100 Black students at Northwestern occupied the universitys business offi ce, with its
enormous mainframe computer, which happened to contain fi nancial
and admissions rec ords for the entire university. With a well- organized
supply and communications network and, eventually, a large group of
white student sympathizers surrounding the building, they vowed to
stay until the administration met their list of demands. A few days earlier, New York City police had forcibly ejected Columbia University
students from several campus buildings, arresting 700 and injuring 150.
Northwestern students feared a similar police raid, and the Evanston
police were reportedly eager to move in. What provoked virtually every
Black student to join a protest that might lead to arrest, expulsion, or
loss of fi nancial aid?
In 1965 there were twenty- six Black students at Northwestern,
twenty of whom were athletes. The athletes experience of integration
was telling. One day after class in the early 1960s, Don Jackson, who
played on the basketball team, was walking down Sheridan Road with
his white male and female classmates. A member of the universitys
board of trustees happened to drive by and saw Jackson, who was summoned by his coach and instructed to avoid being seen in public with
white coeds. Such hysteria over Black male white female intimacy is
perhaps more associated with the Jim Crow South, but this anxiety and
prohibition was widespread across the nation. Many Black student
athletes reported strong pressure from athletic departments not to date
white females. Such surveillance and regulation doubtless sent them a
message that the university valued their athletic talents and skills but
opposed their full integration in campus life.2
82 | Black Students and a New Chicago
The Higher Education Act of 1965, part of President Lyndon Johnsons Great Society, increased federal aid to universities and created
scholarships and low- interest loans, spurring colleges and universities
to increase the admission of African American and other underrepresented students. This marked the beginning of a more signifi cant Black
student presence on many historically white campuses. In addition to
admitting more Catholic and Jewish students, Northwestern admitted
fi fty- four African American freshmen in the fall of 1966, up from fi ve
the year before, and during that summer the university established the
Chicago Action Project to orient and acclimate incoming freshmen
recruited from Chicago.3 In a classic articulation of postwar liberalism, Northwestern labeled the Chicago Action Project students culturally deprived, and required their participation in weekly cultural outings. It was so shocking to me, former participant Sandra Hill said,
that they would tell me with a straight face that I was culturally deprived. More Black female students entered that fall than ever before,
and a few faced rejection from their white roommates, who had the
option of choosing a same- race roommate, a right that Black students
were denied. When it was discovered that Sandra Hill had been assigned a Black roommate, evidently by mistake, Northwestern offered
the students single rooms. They did not want two African Americans
rooming together, Hill says. Students who took over the bursars offi ce
in 1968 demanded all- Black living units in order to give African Americans the same option whites had enjoyed. They treated us like objects, Kathryn Ogletree recalls, and wanted to maximize our exposure. In addition to housing, the other major source of racial animus
and friction on campus was the all- white Greek- letter organizations,
which were recurring sites of physical clashes and racial insult during
this entire period.4
Events in 1967 spurred a new militancy among the students. In January, undergraduate Leslie Harris penned an open letter interrogating
liberalism at Northwestern. We Negroes have not been accepted as
part of Northwesterns family, she wrote, and asked her fellow students: are we going to be satisfi ed with this worn and tattered form of
pacifi cation, known as token integration, or are we going to attempt to
obtain the type of equality upon which our country was founded?5
That summer, Detroit and Newark exploded in the most serious domestic unrest since World War I. Fifty Black people were killed, more than
a thousand people were injured, and thousands more were arrested.
The student counselors in the Chicago Action Project or ga nized a new
Black Students and a New Chicago | 83
Black student or ga ni za tion, called For Members Only (FMO), in order
to nurture and unite the community.6 And a few months later, other
students formed the smaller, more politically conscious Afro- American
Student Union (AASU).
The two organizations worked together to build unity among Black
students, negotiating differences between athletes and nonathletes, students of different class and regional backgrounds, and Greeks and nonGreeks. The president of FMO, Kathryn Ogletree, a freshman from
Chicagos west side, was a rare female leader in this Black nationalist
era. James Turner, a charismatic graduate student in the sociology department headed AASU. Two other graduate students, James Pitts, also
in sociology, and John Bracey in history, were key sources of counsel for
the undergraduates. Infl uential undergraduate activists Eric Perkins and
John Higginson led regular rap sessions on the works of revolutionary
theorists like Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral, and Karl Marx. The level
of consciousness- raising was extreme, remembers Michael Smith, now
a sociologist.7 A few student activists had been exposed to radical politics or involved in the civil rights movement, but the majority of Black
students had not been po liti cally active or especially socially conscious
before 1968.
Active in the wider Black freedom struggle, John Bracey enrolled in
graduate school at Northwestern in 1966 in order to cool down after
things got kind of hot in Chicago. He took a seminar, History of the
South, taught by white historian George Frederickson, along with another African American graduate student, Sterling Stuckey. All the
books were by white people, he recalls. There was no Black history.
They challenged Frederickson, and for Bracey, the outcome was signifi –
cant. Within two years he had switched over, Bracey says, noting that
Frederickson eventually became a faculty ally in the struggle to wrest a
commitment from the administration to implement Black studies. Frederickson went on to write The Black Image in the White Mind: The
Debate on Afro- American Character and Destiny; Black Liberation: A
Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South
Africa; and Racism: A Short History. In Braceys words, Now Fredericksons like a world famous expert on Black people.8
When Martin Luther King was murdered on April 4 in Memphis, the
students at Northwestern quickly turned their attention southward
to assist besieged Black communities in Chicago. Activism on campus
could wait. Students worried about the welfare of friends and family
after rioting broke out on the west side and the National Guard sealed
84 | Black Students and a New Chicago
off the neighborhood. In one dramatic example of their desire to help,
students secured a large truck and loaded it with food donated by a
supermarket chain owned by the parents of a Northwestern student.
John Bracey and Wayne Watson, an undergraduate on the wrestling
team, were able to talk their way through roadblocks in order to distribute the supplies to various shelters on the west side. But the assassination also stepped up their determination to win change on campus
and open more opportunities for young Black Chicagoans to enjoy a
Northwestern education. As Bracey puts it, Our goal was to get Chicagos black population a beachhead at Northwestern.9
After many months of student research, discussion, and or ga niz ing,
on April 22, 1968, FMO head Kathy Ogletree and AASU head James
Turner presented a detailed list of demands to the university administration. They asked for many things, including that Northwestern declare its opposition to racism on campus and in Evanston; admit more
Black students, with half coming from the inner city; shift its fi nancial
aid policy, away from work requirements to grants; change its housing
policy so that Black students who had previously been required to live
apart could choose to live together; establish Black studies courses with
Black professors chosen by the students, since no one in the administration is capable of adequately judging their qualifi cations; hire a
Black counselor to aid students in coping with tensions resulting from
the dualism of our existence as black college students ; and designate a facility to house Black student organizations and activities, since
Black students have nothing at Northwestern to call our own; and
fi nally, they asked that Northwestern fully desegregate its real estate
holdings in Evanston. The tone was insistent: We have been to the administration before but with very little consequence. We want tangible
results, not excuses or even promises. Two days later, the administration responded with a couple of concessions, several rebuffs, and, according to the students, a rejection of the basic principles on which
our demands were based.10
A small group of student leaders began to plan for a major action.
Later, the media would focus on graduate student leaders, but Bracey
emphasized that it was the undergraduates who took the lead in initiating and planning the takeover of the bursars offi ce. Graduate students
tried to assist and protect them as much as possible, but it was the
undergraduates who had the courage to say, Were taking this thing
over the edge. 11 In planning their protest, the students wanted to protect each other and guard against infi ltration by an in for mant, so, bor-
Black Students and a New Chicago | 85
rowing from Gillo Pontecorvos fi lm The Battle of Algiers, they used a
system of secret cells to or ga nize re sis tance. Students worked in groups,
or cells, of three; this way, nobody knew more than two other people
involved. Their caution turned out to be justifi ed. At a mass meeting the
night before the sit- in, student leaders announced plans to occupy the
administration building. They intentionally gave false information, assuming that word would get back to the administration even though
no white people were present. Sure enough, according to John Bracey,
the next morning the administration building was fi lled with Northwestern police.12
The choice of the building to occupy refl ected the careful planning
and strategizing that went into every facet of the protest. The students
wanted a building that was manageable in size, somewhat isolated,
with easy access, but one that was critical to university functions. The
small, two- story building that housed the bursars offi ce fi t all these
criteria, and it housed the universitys central computer system as well,
where all fi nancial and admission information was stored. Indeed, the
fact that one of the student leaders was a computer whiz was made
known to the administration at a crucial juncture in the negotiations. In
order to cultivate wide support and participation in the protest, every
student was assigned a task. Steve Colson, who later became a prominent jazz musician, had to investigate and ensure there were no underground tunnels linking the bursars offi ce to other buildings, as rumored. Along with Eric Perkins and Michael Smith, he also had to
procure chains and padlocks. Victor Goode, a future director of the
National Conference of Black Lawyers, was part of a diversion team
charged with luring the police away from the bursars building. Wayne
Watson, who later became chancellor of Chicago City Colleges, coordinated the acquisition of a large supply of food with the assistance of
Evanston teenagers. Unbeknownst to the administration, the students
were prepared for a very long sit- in.13
One hundred members of the total Black student population of 115
120 took part in the protest, so the overwhelming majority of Black
students on campus participated. And evidently those few students who
did not participate agreed to go to the movies downtown or otherwise
be away. They agreed to say nothing to the press and support a public
stance of Black unity. By many accounts, student leaders were remarkably successful in building trust with the students. Students showed up
on the appointed day and hour with overnight provisions in tow without knowing further details. Early on the morning of May 3, 1968,
86 | Black Students and a New Chicago
students gathered in an alley near the business offi ce, and when the diversion team raced off toward the administration building to distract
the African American security guard, they rushed into the building.
They heard him report, The building has been occupied. Bracey feels
that both the guard and white clerical staff were sympathetic. Northwestern treated their help badly, he recalls. As the secretaries were
leaving the bursars building they smiled at the students and gave them
thumbs up.
Naturally, parents were concerned about their students participation in a building takeover, and in one instance a father commanded his
daughter to leave the building. Eva Jefferson (later Eva Jefferson Paterson), called her parents after they had taken over the bursars offi ce.
figure 7. Students in front of the Northwestern building that housed the bursars
offi ce. Stephen Brousard is standing to the left, Michael Hudson is seated next
to Jocklyn Harris, center.
Black Students and a New Chicago | 87
They told me to leave or they would cut off my money for school, she
said. All our parents were afraid for us. Paterson left through a window and began collecting supplies for the students. But the experience
changed her. The next day I decided I would support myself at NU and
went back inside. She stayed in Evanston over the summer and ended
up getting teargassed at the demonstrations around the Demo cratic
convention. In many respects, her life revealed in microcosm a pro cess
that many others in her generation were undergoing. They were going
through formative activist experiences, not in any year, but in 1968, a
year of intense po liti cal upheaval and mobilization in the United States
and around the world. Paterson went on to become a leader in the antiwar movement and was elected the fi rst African American president of
the Associated Student Government at Northwestern; she has spent her
professional life as a civil rights lawyer in California.14
The students developed a sophisticated media strategy that illustrated
their commitment to the idea of self- determination. Fearing that the
mainstream media would likely misinterpret or distort their actions,
they wanted to personally control the framing and dissemination of their
story. They had cultivated ties with Jeff Kamen, the host of a pop u lar
talk radio show in Chicago who had previously covered the southern
civil rights movement. Kamen was told to be on a par tic u lar street corner
in Evanston at a specifi ed time on May 3, 1968. When the students had
taken over the building and decided the time was ripe to announce their
demands, they used his microphone to directly state their demands to
the thousands of listeners in Chicago.15
Northwestern president J. Roscoe Miller was at a meeting of the
board of directors of the Sears Company when he learned that Black
students had taken over the universitys business offi ce at 619 Clark
Street. He directed his subordinates to throw the recalcitrants (sic) out,
call the cops, and throw them in jail. A college dean later cited the decisive role played by Franklin Kreml, vice president for planning and
development, in persuading Miller to agree to negotiations. A former
police offi cer, Kreml was aware of what happened at Columbia and
feared there would be disastrous results at Northwestern if the police
were summoned.16 He was referring to the massive police bust at Columbia University a few days earlier, which resulted in hundreds of
student arrests, scores of injuries, and damaging front- page publicity.
The fact that the students at Northwestern were African American likely
increased the concerns among some administrators about calling in
the police. Lucius Gregg, the only Black administrator at Northwestern,
88 | Black Students and a New Chicago
was immediately summoned to join the negotiating team. Concerned
parents of students inside the bursars offi ce had been telephoning
Gregg and were relieved to hear that the protest would be resolved
without the police.17 The student negotiating team also credited Kremls
constructive role in negotiating a settlement. Kreml was not a liberal
figure 8. Northwestern student Eva Jefferson (later Eva Jefferson Paterson) speaking
at a womens liberation rally in Chicago.
Black Students and a New Chicago | 89
but a money guy, who had a person with a calculator next to him
adding up the cost of every demand. In John Braceys recollection,
Kreml thought the demands were quite reasonable and wanted to accede to all of them, but felt the university needed to save face, so they
crafted a statement in which the settlement appeared more balanced.
But the students understood: it was a big victory.18
Dean Gregg recalls that the toughest part for the administration was
simply acknowledging that Northwestern shared in the racism of the
broader society. The students felt accurately as it turns out that genuine change would begin only after such an admission. The fi rst paragraph of the May 4th agreement began: Northwestern recognizes that
throughout its history it has been a university of the white establishment. Gregg says they debated this plank for hours, spending more
time on it than anything else.19
Clearly, the thirty- eight- hour sit- in at Northwestern was not as traumatic as the fi ve- month strike at San Francisco State, but it shook the
university community and marked a turning point in racial conditions
at Northwestern. One of the many consequences of the student demonstrations, the president of the Alumni Association declared, has
been an active reexamination of Northwesterns proper role as a leading privately- supported university in the second half of the twentieth
century.20 In essence, the agreement reached between the administration
and Black student leaders projected a new paradigm for racial reform
rejecting an ostensibly color- blind approach, which had left white status unchallenged and not made meaningful space for Black participation, in favor of more race- conscious efforts toward inclusion. The
agreement even narrated this shift: For many of us, the solution has
always seemed to be one of simply obliterating in our laws and in our
personal relations the distinction between the races: that is, if only man
would ignore in his human relations the difference in skin colors, racial
problems would immediately disappear. We are now learning that this
notion does not come fully to grips with the problems of the present
turbulent era of transition. In short, this means that special recognition
and special concern must be given, for some unspecifi ed time, to the
black community that is emerging within our institution.21
Of the several demands that FMO and the AASU persuaded the administration to grant, a few were new, while others involved pro cesses
already under way, such as the universitys pledge to continue to increase
Black student enrollment. Northwestern would not explicitly commit
itself to a 10 to 12 percent Black student body, but the university did
figure 9. White student sympathizers surround the bursars offi ce in a show of support.
Black Students and a New Chicago | 91
agree to seek 50 percent of Black students from inner- city schools. The
students felt a strong sense of responsibility to serve as access points
for young people from poor urban communities. Their sensitivity to
class was not an anomaly in the Black Power era: the riots forced attention to socioeconomic conditions, and as young people from these
neighborhoods became po liti cally active, they carried this awareness
with them to college campuses. Northwestern agreed to create salaried
positions for Black students in the admissions offi ce (fi ve students were
employed in the admissions offi ce in 1970); increase fi nancial aid; create space for Black student activities; and expand studies of black history and black culture in the University. The university also agreed to
reserve residential space for Black men and women, but the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the federal entity charged with
enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, objected to explicitly racebased housing. On many campuses, including Northwestern, administrators found ways to resolve this by allotting space, usually a fl oor in a
dorm, to those with a cultural or other interest- based affi liation, or by
opening Black- identifi ed housing to any interested student. Interestingly, Northwestern had reversed its opposition to Black- identifi ed
housing only after students forced it to acknowledge the inconsistency
figure 10. Graduate student James Turner explains the goals for the sit- in to the
media. The protest was a major media event in the Chicago area.
92 | Black Students and a New Chicago
of tolerating the exclusionary policies of white fraternities and sororities. The May 4th agreement, as the settlement became known, was a
major victory for the students, even though they did not gain the
decision- making power over faculty hiring or distributing fi nancial aid
that they had sought. They did, however, carve out new roles for student leadership, participation, and consultation in many matters of
university life, including the selection of a chair in African American
studies.
Media reaction to the protest was mixed. As had happened in California, conservatives wrote lots of letters to newspapers. In the Chicago
Daily News, Helen Welker declared, I speak for all middle class white
and black people, who pay their taxes, respect the law, work hard, and
try to bring our children up the same way. Start a real crackdown on
lawlessness. Quit coddling lawbreakers or this country is headed for
ruin!22 This was a common reaction to student protest that was voiced
around the country. Many of the more conservative news outlets criticized, even assailed, the decision not to call the police. The Chicago
Tribune published an editorial denouncing the universitys handling of
the crisis and portraying the Black students as ungrateful, criminal militants. Northwestern had condoned lawlessness and agreed to a humiliating and complete capitulation. Forgotten in the disgraceful
articles of unconditional surrender signed by university offi cials, wrote
the editors, was the fact that friends and alumni who had given countless millions of dollars to Northwestern were not contributing to a
Tuskegee or a Howard university and had never conceived that their
gifts were directed toward creating a racial enclave and calling it Northwestern university. The Tribune ridiculed the deans for having negotiated, and it described the sit- in as being more like an outbreak in a
penitentiary than a university dedicated to intellectual freedom. The
Tribune was especially incensed at the universitys ac know ledg ment of
white racism, that invidious term coined gratuitously by the Kerner
commission and eagerly accepted by every masochistic breast- beater in
the white liberal community. Finally, the paper accused the students
of seeking apartheid on campus and of harboring hatred toward
whites.23 The signifi cantly different response by the Chicago Daily
News began: Northwestern has never been regarded as a pacesetter of
liberalism, and one of the surprises to come out of its showdown with
black students was the universitys ability to cope with radical change.
The paper condemned the students tactics, but noted with approval
that violence had been avoided.24
Black Students and a New Chicago | 93
In a public statement on May 13, President Miller indirectly responded to the Tribune and other critics. Yes, the sincere but misguided students had engaged in an illegal trespass, but the grievances of the students were real and deserved relief, and the university
had failed to understand the depth of the problems presented by prior
petitions. Moreover, far from the complete capitulation to the demands of the students that has been charged in some quarters, the university refused to grant many of the demands.25 The May 4th agreement exposed Northwestern to a period of intense scrutiny and criticism,
but backing from the board of trustees and timely donations from local
corporate and fi nancial titans shored up the administrations position.
Associate Dean Lucius Gregg vividly recalls the day in May when the
director of the Chicago- based Harris Bank walked into the presidents
offi ce and wrote a check for a very large sum. He had been intending to
make a donation for quite some time, he reportedly told the president,
and concluded that now seemed appropriate. Gregg believes the May
4th agreement helped catapult Northwestern onto the national stage
and increase its competitiveness. The development and admissions offi ces closely monitored the aftermath of the protests for effects on giving and applications, and both went up.26
The university had recently launched its First Plan of the Seventies,
a $180- million fund- raising campaign, and by the end of May, Jewel
Food Stores, a large area chain, had made a pledge, and corporate giants Esso, Swift and Company, and United Airlines quickly followed
suit.27 Corporate America was making peace with racial change, perhaps fi nding it preferable to the annual summer riots. In the words of
student leader John Higginson, We made Northwestern more than
what it was. They were compelled to face up to the world in which they
lived.28 In a refl ection on the legacy of the bursars-offi ce sit- in twenty
years later, former dean Robert Strotz said, I think we moved into the
modern era. We became less of a country club school and more of an
intellectual center with po liti cal and social concerns, and at the same
time, we didnt surrender anything of importance to us.29
The May 4th agreement did not specify the form that Black studies
should take, and, surprisingly, this seemingly arcane academic question
was quickly becoming a source of volatile confl ict nationwide. A key
question was whether Black studies should be a full department, with
its own faculty, or a weaker program, borrowing faculty from departments. Both of these formations were, and are, interdisciplinary, but
since a discipline was often confl ated with departmental status such
94 | Black Students and a New Chicago
as history, En glish, or chemistryinterdisciplinary in this period was
almost always understood to refer to a program rather than a department, since it was understood to signify an interdepartmental entity. At
Northwestern, the May 4th agreement offered a vague commitment to
expanding studies of Black history and culture in the University but
left the matter entirely in the hands of the faculty to decide.30 Students
did propose suggestions for visiting lecturers, and this led to the greatly
acclaimed and pop u lar Lerone Bennett and C. L. R. James coming to
campus as visiting scholars in 1968 1969. The students preference for
James and Bennett shows their desire to inject a movement sensibility
and critical edge to the forging of a Black studies curriculum in Evanston. Both Bennett and James were prolifi c exemplars of nonacademic
Black history writing; and as it happened, neither man was particularly
interested in a career in academia. Northwestern experienced major
challenges, successes, mistakes, and conundrums in hiring faculty for
Black studies, and this experience exemplifi ed patterns nationwide.
C. L. R. James electrifi ed students. A Trinidadian- born journalist,
novelist, playwright, historian, anticolonial agitator, and Marxist theorist, C. L. R. James was the leader of several small socialist formations,
including the Johnson Forest Tendency, the Correspondence Publishing
Committee, and Facing Reality. He became well known and admired
among Black college students in the late 1960s as the author of The
Black Jacobins: Toussaint LOuverture and the San Domingo Revolution, an account of the Haitian Revolution that became required reading in the early Black studies movement. James was a transatlantic radical who did po liti cal or ga niz ing and writing in London, Trinidad, New
York, and other cities. The United States government deported him during the McCarthy era, and his hiring by Northwestern illustrates an interesting, unintended consequence of the early Black studies movement.
Many radical thinkers or activists from other countries had been barred
from entering the United States since the 1950s, but the easing of these
restrictions by the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the creation of academic positions as a result of the emergence of Black studies programs,
enabled many overseas intellectuals and activists to work and speak in
the United States. James was able to return to the United States for the
fi rst time since the 1950s. But despite the opportunity that the Black
studies movement opened up for him, James never felt po liti cally at
home in the academy. According to John Bracey, James grew restless in
Evanston and often posed the questions What is a university? Where is
the self- activity of the masses? After his stint at Northwestern, James
Black Students and a New Chicago | 95
moved to Washington, D.C., where for a short time he taught Black
studies at Federal City College (now the University of the District of
Columbia). James had been invited to teach there by Jimmy Garrett, the
legendary or ga niz er who moved to Washington after a felony charge
forced him out of the San Francisco Bay Area.31
Born in Mississippi, Lerone Bennett was the executive editor of Ebony magazine and author of the best- selling text Before the Mayfl ower:
A History of Black America, 1619 1962. During Bennetts visiting professorship in the history department, his lectures on African American
history were packed, helping to put him atop the students wish list as a
permanent professor and possible department chair. The following year,
the history department hired pioneering journalist Vernon D. Jarrett to
teach African American history, upon the recommendation of graduate
student Sterling Stuckey, who specialized in African American history.
Jarrett and singer- activist Oscar Brown Jr. produced the fi rst Black daily
radio show, Negro Newsfront, in 1948, and in 1970 Jarrett became the
fi rst African American columnist for the Tribune. He also hosted a
Black public affairs tele vi sion show in Chicago for thirty years and was
a found er of the National Association of Black Journalists, initiatives that
paralleled the emergence of Black studies and sprang from a similar politics and strategies for Black professional inclusion and advancement.
Several months after the bursars-offi ce takeover, a faculty committee
issued a report opposing the creation of a Department of Afro- American
Studies. We do not believe in a separate degree for black studies, or in
an exclusive or separatist pursuit of this knowledge, they stated, illustrating just how much Black studies lacked academic legitimacy and was
seen as a Black nationalist intrusion in academia. They faculty opted instead for a program: The courses planned are conceived as a Program
in Afro- American Studies, a collection of courses offered in various departments dealing with the Negro in America and with what he identifi es as his cultural heritage. They offered two reasons for opposing a
department: Black Studies does not constitute a distinct discipline
and it would distract students from the disciplinary training they need.32
But students immediately pushed back and insisted on a department.
The debate over the structure of Black studies was a debate about race,
control, and self- determination. The most crucial question, according
to student John Higginson, is: who will control the program, black
people or white people? Northwestern, or any other white college,
must have the courage to believe that Black people know what they
want and have the facility to realize their interests and needs. In the
figure 11. Lerone Bennett, executive editor of Ebony magazine and author of Before
the Mayfl ower: A History of Black America, was a visiting professor at Northwestern
and was later hired to be the fi rst chair of the Department of African American Studies.
Black Students and a New Chicago | 97
spring of 1969, Dean Robert Strotz appointed a Committee on AfroAmerican Studies to launch a unit and hire faculty. He projected ten
positions by 1971 1972. But over the next two years, Black students
frequently disputed the committees legitimacy, causing a series of skirmishes and resignations, as a result of the students view that they should
have more say in the design of African American studies, and that the
university should explicitly commit to establishing a respectable, continuing academic department. As they put it, We view the appeasement
tactics of making one- and two- quarter appointments to a non ex is tent
Afro- American Studies Program as mere paternalism. They charged the
committee with a profound lack of direction and purpose.33
Tension also arose over how to structure appointments whether to
house faculty fully in the new department or share the appointment
with the discipline of their training. This issue was similarly po liti cally
charged. In the fall of 1970, the mostly white committee urged the college to move ahead with hiring Black faculty, postponing a decision
about structure until more specialists in the fi eld could be present and
involved in the decision. It is our impression, the committee chair
wrote, that many black scholars identify with an existing academic
discipline and would prefer to have at least a joint appointment in an
existing department rather than to receive an appointment in a Black
Studies Department alone. However, until we have more faculty who
enjoy credibility with our black students, this argument may continue
to be met with skepticism.34
The administration dragged their feet throughout the following year
until a revival of student pressure got things rolling again. In June,
FMO leaders demanded a restatement of the universitys commitment
to developing African American studies and called for a new committee
with a Black majority and student participation. The students at Northwestern fought hard to create an in de pen dent, robust Black studies
department, and this resurgence of protest had an effect.35 In October
1971, the board of trustees fi nally approved the creation of a Department of African American Studies, and the college reconstituted the
Committee on Afro- American Studies under the chairmanship of white
historian George Frederickson. Two Black professors joined the committee: Sterling Stuckey, who was on his way to becoming a leading
scholar in African American history, and Joshua Leslie, a highly regarded professor in the Department of Mathematics. A Northwestern
PhD, Stuckey joined the history department in 1971. Strikingly, the college had tried to entice Stuckey with the opportunity to chair African
98 | Black Students and a New Chicago
American studies a couple of years before, while he was still a graduate
student. He declined and never joined the department during his many
years at Northwestern, but he often assisted in faculty searches.36
Stuckeys interest in Black history was deeply rooted. Son of a poet, and
graduate of Du Sable High School, Stuckey was close to his mothers
friend Margaret Burroughs, a poet, artist, and found er of the Du Sable
Museum of African American History and Culture, and he defi ed anticommunist pressure to host a reception for his hero Paul Robeson at
his parents home in 1951. After going south in 1960 with the Congress
of Racial Equality to join the civil rights struggle, Stuckey returned to
Chicago, taught history at Wendell Phillips High School, and was one
of the found ers of the Amistad Society, a little- known but important
precursor to the Black studies movement. The work of the Amistad
Society was pointing toward Black studies, Stuckey recalls. It was
certainly creating an atmosphere in which Black studies would be found
desirable. Interestingly, John Bracey, another Chicago- based activist
who would go on to graduate school at Northwestern, was also active
in Amistad. The group hosted talks by prominent artists and scholars,
including Sterling Brown, John Oliver Killens, and Lerone Bennett.37
With Black student consultation and support, the Committee on
Afro- American Studies fairly quickly settled on Lerone Bennett as their
choice to direct the new department, and in February 1972 Northwestern hired Bennett to chair and set up a new Department of African
American Studies. Adamant that the college commit to a sizeable department, Stuckey, Leslie, and graduate student leader Freddye Hill urged
Bennett to demand several faculty positions. And on paper at least, Bennett prevailed. In their agreement with Bennett, administrators pledged
to build a fi rst rate interdisciplinary department with attention to
economics, history, literature, and music, among other fi elds, and to include within its scope the study of Africa and the Ca rib be an. They
agreed to hire four professors during the coming academic year and
four more over the next two years.
A sharp dispute, however, quickly arose over whether the Committee
on Afro- American Studies should continue to play a role in hiring additional faculty or should dissolve with the arrival of a chair. Bennett
objected to the committees continuing to play a role in the formation
of the department. He felt his promised authority over hiring was compromised by having to collaborate with the committee. He was, he
said, not prepared to take orders on the interpretation of the Black
experience.38 Stuckey and Leslie took a very different view. Stuckey
Black Students and a New Chicago | 99
complained that Bennetts style was authoritarian, and that he had
declined to share information with the committee about hiring and
would not allow their input. His way of doing business made cooperation impossible, Stuckey said, and, in his view, jeopardized the future
of the department.39 And so, after only a few months, and before even
moving into his campus offi ce, Bennett resigned. When FMO leaders
figure 12. Historian Sterling Stuckey, a professor at Northwestern, helped launch the
Department of African American Studies.
100 | Black Students and a New Chicago
returned in September, they were incensed. Feeling that Bennetts judgment and leadership had been unfairly called into question, and convinced as well that his lack of a PhD might have played a role, they
mobilized an effort to bring him back, even marching on the presidents
house as a group one hundred strong. At a large, very heated meeting of
the Northwestern Black community at a church in Evanston that fall,
there was an ugly scene between the students and Professors Leslie
and Stuckey, who walked out. This student- faculty confl ict was clearly
an inauspicious way to launch the department. Even though Bennett
never came to Northwestern, Robert Hill, a Jamaican- born scholar of
Marcus Garvey, and Mari Evans, the Ohio- born Black- arts- movement
poet, entered that fall as the departments fi rst hires, with math scholar
Leslie serving as acting chair. The Guyanese novelist Jan Carew was set
to come in January and assume the chairmanship.40
Ironically, in light of the fact that the new dean, Hanna Gray, had
supported Stuckey and Leslies view that the Committee on AfroAmerican Studies should continue to play an active role in hiring, her
January offer to Jan Carew signaled the success of the students fall
mobilization. She granted him considerable authority in initiating hiring and stressed that the committees role would be purely consultative.
Robert Hill recalls that the department began with high hopes but
then everything fell apart. First Bennett withdrew, and then things got
worse as a long period of internal acrimony, poor leadership, and irregular procedures followed. In the spring of 1973, chagrined at not
having been consulted in the selection of Carew as chair, FMO called a
boycott of African American studies classes, as well as those taught by
Professors Leslie and Stuckey. The newly hired faculty Hill and Evans
were obviously in a tight spot, and both supported the students and
their principles. Refl ecting the students long- simmering discontent over
feeling marginalized in the formation of African American studies, the
boycott was a success. By October 1973 there was a virtual absence of
black students from African American Studies, with seats fi lled instead
by white and Asian American students. After two quarters, FMO called
off the boycott. They had fl exed their muscles and made their point;
and in the aftermath, faculty in the department worked harder to forge
closer relationships with Black student leaders. Carew in par tic u lar cultivated ties with students and helped raise fi nancing for overseas student travel.41
Despite consternation over various aspects of Carews term as chair,
his tenure was notable for launching African American studies within
Black Students and a New Chicago | 101
an African diaspora rather than a U.S.- centered context. Carew wrote
that the new department must embrace the Afro- American core, but
if these studies are to validate themselves, they must of necessity deal
with the other Black peoples of the New World diaspora and with Africa, the continent from which the African American people derived.
Yet approaches to the study of diaspora have varied greatly and changed
over time, and Carew, for his part, urged the inclusion of linguistic anthropology, folklore, oral traditions, and expressive culture in the curriculum. Illustrating another important characteristic of early Black
studies, Carew offered a defi nition of the new discipline that emphasized
its expansive, humanist, and searching character. Black Studies, he
wrote, must be both local and international in character, must be based
on a worldview that is par tic u lar for Afro- Americans but also universal. Moreover, these studies must fearlessly cross new frontiers of
knowledge; must allow no forces, no philosophy of expediency, no plastic anger or superfi cial rage to divert them from this principled path.42
Even as the Department of African American Studies sponsored
innovative symposia, workshops, and lectures, and offered pop u lar
courses, it struggled for many years with mostly assistant, adjunct, and
visiting professors. This was typical of early Black studies programs,
even in research universities. Although to be sure, there were young
scholars in Black studies departments who would later become leaders
in their fi elds, including the historian Barbara J. Fields at Northwestern.
Strikingly, the tenured faculty in the department at Northwestern all
happened to be novelists rather than academics, including the highly
acclaimed writer Leon Forrest and the departments next chair, Cyrus
Colter, who was also a longtime member of the Illinois Commerce
Commission. It is very likely that many administrators and scholars
saw these creative artists as outsiders; but without the willingness of the
latter to take on leadership roles in Black studies, the department, like
others around the country, would probably not have survived. The department hung on, proving itself and laying the groundwork for expansion, as Northwestern fi nally approved a major in African American
studies in 1982, fourteen years after the bursars-offi ce takeover.43 As
elsewhere, the foresight of Black students in calling for departments
over programs helped to ensure the survival of this newly incorporated
and controversial discipline.
In many cities, the Black student movement was based, to a large degree, at community colleges. The fi rst Black studies course on the West
102 | Black Students and a New Chicago
Coast was established at Merritt College in Oakland. Crane Ju nior College, founded in 1911 and one of the Chicago City Colleges, became a
center of the Black liberation movement in Chicago: Black students
virtually took over the school, won a Black president, redefi ned the
colleges mission, and rechristened it Malcolm X College. By the late
1960s, this public institution located on the predominantly Black west
side had a majority Black student body but a largely white faculty, curriculum, and administration. Crane may have seemed ripe for change,
and some administrators likely grasped the tide of history, but the
students still needed to engage in extensive or ga niz ing and even class
boycotts to win reforms. Black student activists at Crane began their
campaign with a Negro History Club but came to embrace a more
sweeping mission. We wanted to change the mission and character of
the whole campus, said Henry En glish, the fi rst Black student body
president. The student leaders that emerged at Crane were slightly older
than traditional students. In their midtwenties, many were raising families, and many had served in the military. As on other campuses, most of
the formal Black student leaders were male, but females played critical
if less visible or recognized roles. Women would begin to assert more
claims to leadership in a couple of years; but from 1966 to 1969, young
men took the lead.
Standish Willis was a leading activist at Crane. Born on the west side
to southern parents, he graduated from Crane High School, became a
father at age seventeen, got a job, fl unked out of Crane Ju nior College
in his fi rst semester, and then joined the Air Force for four years. He
reenrolled in Crane Ju nior College in 1966 while also working as a bus
driver. After hearing a white female historian lecture on African American history, Willis experienced his fi rst real awareness of the dimensions of African American history. I started the Negro History club,
and students began reading and discussing history. Not long after, the
pop u lar club changed its name to the Afro- American History Club and
linked up with students doing Black- history- related initiatives on other
Chicago City College campuses. The club brought in many speakers;
among the most pop u lar were Nahaz Rogers, a local follower of Marcus Garvey who later had his own cable tele vi sion show, and Lerone
Bennett, the historian and the executive editor at Ebony. Henry En glish,
too, became active on campus. His family moved to Chicago from Mississippi when En glish was six. He served in the Marine Corps for fi ve
years and entered Crane in the fall of 1966 as a part- time student. He
worked at an aluminum company, and, taking advantage of a vacation
Black Students and a New Chicago | 103
clause in his union contract, he was able to go to school full- time in
January and quickly got involved in student government.44
According to Willis, Malcolm X stimulated an interest in Black
nationalism among his generation, yet the students nationalism was
new and controversial even in Black communities. I remember in my
house hold people saying, Why you growing your hair like that? But
after a while the whole community was kind of feeling it. Black nationalism in Chicago was an indigenous development, but outside groups like
SNCC were powerfully articulating the new mood. We had a lot of respect for them, and we followed them, Willis remembers. In keeping
with the Black nationalist inclination toward self- determination and institution building, the activists at Crane went beyond critique to building alternatives. For example, they complained that the regular student
newspaper prints no news that is controversial or thought- provoking
and avoids contact with the radical elements on campus. So they created the Phoenix, which became a fount of creativity and gave students
space to explore and debate new cultural and po liti cal ideas.45
In 1968, contributors to the Phoenix devoted considerable attention
to the issue of identity, particularly to the po liti cal valence of the terms
Negro, Black, and African American. Christine C. Johnson, the principal of the University of Islam, the Nation of Islams high school in Chicago, contributed a poem called No Longer a Negro, which began
I am an African American / No longer shall I be called Negro. / I give
this name back to my oppressors. She continued: I am a Man, / Not
a thing. Her declaration I am a Man is striking and refl ects the Black
nationalist investment in promoting images of strong Black men or, more
generally, the equation of manhood with strength and power. Another
student wrote an essay arguing that the most insidious aspect of white
supremacy in the United States is the way it disguises itself in the myth
of American exceptionalism. Our biggest problem, he wrote, is getting ourselves together mentally. When we do this, the rest will come
naturally. The critical mental shift entailed seeing the United States not
as the land of the free and home of the brave but as a racist, sickening society. This more critical posture toward the nation as a whole,
not just the South, set many Black Power advocates apart from classic
integrationists.46
The students were audacious and set out to build a movement that
would enable them to reshape the culture, mission, and curriculum of
Crane College. We were energetic and idealistic, En glish perceptively
recalls, and in some ways out of touch with reality. Because of that we
104 | Black Students and a New Chicago
didnt see any restrictions; and because of that we were able to bring
about a lot of change.47 The students built power through many channels. Our fi rst strategy was to take over student government, recalls
Stan Willis who was elected president of the student senate in 1967.
Robert Clay, also a leader in the Afro- American History Club, succeeded Willis, and Henry En glish succeeded Clay. Additionally, En glish
was a found er and the fi rst president of Chicago City College student
government. At the same time, En glish became a leader in the Chicago
chapter of the Black Panther Party. We became a formidable group,
he recalls. As Willis puts it, We were all working- class kids who, for
the most part, lived on the west side of Chicago.
The students also began to build support in the surrounding community. After the massacre of three young men on the campus of South
Carolina State University in Orangeburg in February 1968, Willis or ganized a march through the neighborhood in the guise of a funeral procession, complete with a casket. This march will also give notice, Willis
wrote in the Phoenix, to the city, nation and the world, that the members of Crane Ju nior College have thrusted themselves into an all out
fi ght against human injustice and human misery. It really had an
impact, Willis recalls. Crane was becoming a center of student and
community activism, and students even began to gain support from
staff, administrators, and faculty. They were really beginning to listen. Henry En glish says that, while Crane was comparatively a small
school, it became a focal point for Black activism in the city. There was
always a lot of activity, and politicians regularly made the campus a
destination. Longtime Chicago activist Edward L. Buzz Palmer was
working in security at Crane when he and Renault Robinson or ga nized
the Afro- American Patrolmans League in 1968 in the aftermath of riots
that shook the west side. Stan Willis took part in a major two- week wildcat strike by Black bus drivers in 1968. Muhammad Ali, Dick Gregory,
and Jesse Jackson spoke at rallies, and Black and white college students
walked picket lines in support. Many of the Black student leaders at
Chicago City Colleges were themselves union members or came from
families whose wages and benefi ts fl owed from union membership.48
Black students from Malcolm X, as well as those from Northwestern, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Roo se velt, and the University
of Chicago, connected with each other and the broader world of Black
Chicago via a lively and vibrant Black arts movement in the city. Willis
remembers frequent trips to the Affro- Arts Theater, at Thirty- Ninth
Street and Drexel Boulevard, which was owned by legendary Chicago
Black Students and a New Chicago | 105
musician Phil Cohran, a found er of the Association for the Advancement
of Creative Musicians (AACM). According to a scholar of the AACM,
the Affro- Arts Theater was part of a complex network of forces operating around black cultural consciousness in Chicago, which included
AACM and the Or ga ni za tion of Black American Culture. Steve Colson,
a Northwestern student who took part in the bursars-offi ce sit- in, was
a member of the AACM. Willis remembers the Affro- Arts Theater as
the most pop u lar gathering of artists in city.49 Poets Haki Madhubuti,
Gwendolyn Brooks, and Amiri Baraka performed there, and po liti cal
activists such as Stokely Carmichael attracted large crowds. Carmichael
was at the height of his infl uence among Black college students. Wherever he was, Stan Willis says, we went. Unfortunately, the theaters
connections to radical activists and artists brought police attention, occasional raids, and other harassment, leading Phil Cohran to close it in
1971.50
The students at this working- class community college on the west
side of Chicago played leading roles in developing citywide Black student conferences and organizations. A large Black student conference
was held in November 1967 at Christ United Methodist Church in the
south side Englewood neighborhood, whose pastor, John Porter, was an
important fi gure in the Chicago Freedom Movement. Willis remembers
it as the largest meeting Black students had had up until that time. Evidently, James Bevel, a leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, got into a heated argument with the head of Roo se velt Universitys Black student or ga ni za tion after Bevel argued that black men
should mate with white women in order to create a mixed race of
kids. The students felt insulted by his theory, and Willis recalls that it
led to a shoving match.51 The following year, students from sixteen area
colleges formed the Black Student Congress in order to or ga nize Black
students for liberation. Its positions refl ected the radicalism of 1968; in
addition to support for all revolutionary movement of nonwhite people in their struggle for liberation against oppression, the Congress
opposed the present po liti cal, eco nom ical, and social structure of the
United States government and other Western capitalist structures and
governments in general. Moreover, the students opposed the racist
police state in which the Black community is held and supported the
right of armed struggle against such a structure.52 Such a stance was a
far cry from the sentiments of the found ers of the Student Non- Violence
Coordinating Committee in 1960 and shows the extent to which
young Americans had been infl uenced by revolutionary rhetoric and
106 | Black Students and a New Chicago
perspectives from Algeria or Cuba or the ghettos of Oakland, Detroit,
Newark, and Cleveland. The cry of the Black Panthers for armed selfdefense against the police was particularly appealing.
Crane Ju nior Colleges neighborhood was home to a chapter of the
Black Panther Party under the dynamic leadership of Fred Hampton.
The BPP in Chicago attracted students from Roo se velt, University of
Illinois, and many City College campuses, and as a result students
played an important role in the local leadership of the Black Panther
Party. Moreover, the Panthers targeted community colleges as profi table
places to or ga nize. Hampton, as well as future congressman Bobby
Rush, came to Crane to or ga nize students, and Hampton even enrolled
there in the fall of 1967. Henry En glish participated in a meeting where
we came together and formed a central committee and decided to
house their offi ce on Madison Street on the west side. The whole crux
of the central committee was students; others came later, according to
En glish. One of his party assignments was or ga niz ing students. Other
Crane students involved in the Panthers included Willie Calvin, Rufus
Chaka Walls, who became minister of information, and Robert Clay,
who became the partys minister of culture. The Panthers gained considerable status on campus, rivaling that of student groups. In What
Black Students Want, Willie Calvin echoed the Panthers Ten Point
Platform in his framing of education as a right of citizenship: We
believe that the city and federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man a decent education as so defi ned by their jive
constitution.53
In the spring of 1968, after Dr. Kings assassination and a wave of
rioting on the west side, students held a memorial on campus. In his
remarks, Stan Willis quoted Stokely Carmichaels pledge of undying
love for Black people. Fred Hampton, who was under growing police
surveillance and would himself be assassinated the following year
with the assistance of a Black in for mant, spoke next. He attacked my
speech, Willis recalls. Hampton said you cant have undying love for
black people, because some black people are betraying us. The feeling
of being under siege was actually widespread. Motivated by the Panthers and Malcolm Xs emphasis on armed self- defense, as well as by
Mayor Richard Daleys notorious order to city police in April 1968 to
shoot to kill any arsonist, students at Crane contacted Kermit Coleman of the American Civil Liberties Union about starting a campus
rifl e club, and they eventually did. We were arming ourselves, Willis
remembers.54
Black Students and a New Chicago | 107
It was this context of turmoil, activism, high expectation, and solidarity in which student leaders at Crane issued a list of demands to
transform their campus. And they did so, not as leaders of a Black student or ga ni za tion, but as leaders of the student senate. They spoke as
authorized representatives of the student body. Rather than a Black
studies program, the students wanted the integration of the history of
African Americans into the existing curriculum of the entire college.
They boycotted professors who did not support their vision: If you
could not integrate [African Americans] into the curriculum, Henry
En glish says of their view, then you should fi nd somewhere else to go.
When Willis and En glish had arrived at Crane, there were three African
American professors: Elliot Evans, Frank Banks, and J. Neal. Banks had
been a Tuskegee airman and a union or ga niz er who served as the teachers representative on campus. Shortly after, Carol Adams, who would
become a prominent cultural and education leader in Chicago for decades, joined the faculty, as did Barbara Lewis King, who served as
assistant dean of community ser vices. The students goal was to bring
in more Black professors. Many of the white teachers could not relate
to the surge of Black nationalist feeling among students, and many
would leave after Crane became Malcolm X. There were some white
professors who supported the students, such as Beatrice Lumpkin, who
also happened to be one of a few communists on the faculty. Nobody
knew they were communists at the time, Willis remembers. Lumpkin,
who was married to Black steelworker activist Frank Lumpkin, later
wrote an Afrocentric childrens math book.55
In May 1968, declaring their profound devotion to our community, the students issued ten demands designed to make Crane intellectually and socially relevant to the community as a whole. Since the
student body at Crane is predominantly black, and the community is
predominantly black, they felt the curriculum and academic policies
should cater to the needs of the black students of this institution and to
the black people of this community. Their demands show their desire
to make the community college a vehicle for upward mobility and enhanced opportunity for the students and community as a whole. The
fi rst demand was for a formal policy enshrining student rights, and the
second asked for the right of students to name the colleges modern new
campus. They demanded a Black president, more Black instructors,
more Black clerical personnel, the upgrading of existing Black workers,
and new American history texts that covered the African American experience without distortions, as well as more advanced courses in the
108 | Black Students and a New Chicago
curriculum to promote greater readiness for transfer to four- year
institutions.56
A committee of administrators, faculty, and students, including college president Irving Slutsky, found the demands reasonable, moral
and just. In a sign of the students extraordinary po liti cal skills and,
certainly the activism and ferment on the west side more broadly, they
won virtually every demand. In May 1969, Malcolm X College got a
Black president, the fi rst in the City College system. Interestingly, in
light of the largely male leadership at the college and the general male
thrust of Black Power politics, the students fi rst choice was an African
American woman, Barbara Lewis King, who was serving as dean of
community relations. Henry En glish describes her as an imposing
woman who cared about the students. We didnt understand that
this was way ahead of the time, he says, referring to the possibility of a
Black woman president. We didnt get Barbara King. They were just
not going to hire a female, is the way En glish remembers it. They advanced a man instead. En glish was in jail when Charles Hurst, the
forty- one year- old Howard audiologist, visited campus, so he missed
the interview. But other students were impressed. Hurst got the job and
arrived with a lot of fanfare and media attention. The fi rst thing he
did, according to En glish, was he did Barbara in. Barbara King moved
to Atlanta and became one of the citys most prominent civil rights, education, and religious leaders.57
The students had begun calling Crane Malcolm X before the name
was offi cially adopted. We were following international events, Willis
remembers. We knew about Lumumba and Nkrumah, referring to the
fi rst postcolonial presidents of the Congo and Ghana, and this made
us feel like Black people should be running this college, and it should be
named after a Black person. The City Colleges resisted at fi rst, then
encouraged the selection of Booker T. Washington as the new name; but
the students stood their ground and ultimately prevailed.58 In September 1969, despite stern re sis tance from a variety of sources to the naming of a public college after the Black Nationalist, Crane was rechristened Malcolm X College.59 The administration acknowledged that its
faculty needed further training in order to competently incorporate
African American subjects into their course material, so they proposed
a series of mandatory seminars and workshops and hoped to bring in
scholars such as St. Clair Drake, John Hope Franklin, and Charles
Hamilton as con sul tants. Under the new administration, the role of
Malcolm X was to establish a dynamic learning community in which
Black Students and a New Chicago | 109
all are teachers and all are learners. The ultimate objectives are selfactualization and a new social order through the educational pro cess.60
There was an open admissions policy. The student handbook for the
1970 1971 academic year featured a bold red, black, and green cover
emblazoned with Malcolm X College and the words Education, Liberation, and Unity around a clenched fi st. It included a comprehensive,
detailed section on student rights and responsibilities. Martin Luther
Kings and Malcolm Xs birthdays were both included among school
holidays, and Phil Cohran, found er of the AACM and African Heritage
Ensemble, composed the school song, which included the lyrics We once
were the Kings (or Queens) of / the ancient Empires now we / must move
from the / slave makers fi re we come / to Malcolm X to fi nd a way.61
Charles Hurst was very theatrical and an excellent communicator.
We called him sugar tongue, En glish recalls. The students got along
well with the new president, even though he resisted some of their
efforts to institutionalize the role of students in campus governance.
Hurst gave lip ser vice to this; he didnt really support it. But the
students were strengthened by the tremendous community support in
the background, says En glish including allies on the board of trustees.
While we were out on the front lines doing the battle, they were in the
back room doing the deal.62 The students won not only a new name
for the college and a new president but also a new, modern campus,
which opened in 1971. Stan Willis remembers Hurst as an advocate of
Black capitalism and a supporter of President Nixon. And indeed in his
fi rst semester in 1969, he developed an internship program with twentyfi ve large companies in Chicago and hosted a corporate fair called
Black Excellence Unlimited.63 But Malcolm Xs outreach went in
many directions. One of the programs that students had advocated, and
which was established during Hursts tenure, was at the Stateville
prison, where the inmates would receive course credit at Malcolm X.
Willis taught a course there after he had begun graduate school at the
University of Chicago.64
African rhythms, courtesy of Phil Cohrans band, infused commencement ceremonies in the spring of 1970, after Hursts fi rst year as president and the fi rst year ever for Malcolm X College. Dick Gregory was
awarded an honorary doctorate, and achievement awards were given to
Bobby Rush, Illinois Black Panther Party chairman; two aldermen;
and Mrs. Francis Hampton, the mother of slain Panther leader Fred
Hampton. In a sign of how interconnected student activism had become
across campuses and across the country, James Turner, a former graduate
110 | Black Students and a New Chicago
student at Northwestern and the recently appointed director of the new
Center for Africana Studies at Cornell, gave the graduation address. He
urged students not to forget their roots and to choose careers that would
benefi t their communities. Your people need you, he intoned in the
spirit of nation building. They need doctors, lawyers, architects.65
After the colleges fi rst two years as Malcolm X, an accrediting team
commended the college for its utilization of indigenous leadership at
all program levels; it also noted the high faculty turnover of recent
years, but reported an ongoing reduction of faculty tensions. The faculty seemed to be a very dedicated group of individuals working far
above the expected call of duty, yet there is some observable strain
produced by the slight degree of racial polarization. The team praised
the continuing education program in par tic u lar. The strength of the
program lies in its strong communal base and the recognition by the
community that the college is sensitive to, and is or ga niz ing programs
relevant to, their needs. Malcolm X was building up its occupational
training in nursing, business, and engineering and related technology,
figure 13. Celebrating a new name and a new president. Jesse L. Jackson, director of
Operation Breadbasket, and Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X, fl ank Charles Hurst,
president of Malcolm X College.
Black Students and a New Chicago | 111
but its arts and sciences division still claimed the most students. With
open admissions, compensatory and remedial education assumed a new
visibility in the college. Also new was a strong Black studies program,
which the committee praised for elevating student self- esteem and promoting closer town- gown relations. The avowed two- fold objective of
Black Studies knowledge and creativity was evident in the programs
for a week entitled Focus on Black.66
A concluding look at a community- based Black education program
called the Communiversity reinforces the portrait in this chapter of a
loosely connected Black student movement in Chicago even across
public and private school lines and underscores that the students desire to give back to the community was more than rhetoric. Graduate
and undergraduate students from the University of Chicago and other
universities, along with in de pen dent artists and educators, came together in 1970 under the name Communiversity a fusion of the words
community and university to offer weekend courses in a Black neighborhood to Chicagoans who did not have access to formal Black studies programs. In addition to realizing the oft- professed desire to connect
town and gown, the Communiversity made visible the ideological developments and splits that were emerging in the Black liberation movement, including the Black student Black studies movements.
When Stan Willis transferred to the University of Chicago from Crane
Ju nior College in the fall of 1968, he was very strong in my nationalist
beliefs, but in Hyde Park he met some socialist brothers and sisters
who were strong too. He majored in history and studied with John
Hope Franklin. The Black students at the University of Chicago were
studying Marxism and producing and attracting very strong theoreticians. Robert Rhodes, a po liti cal science graduate student who introduced many Black students to Marxism and briefl y taught at the Communiversity, was a leader of these study groups. Stan Willis recalls that
Ishmael Flory, an African American leader in the Communist Party in
Chicago, was around all the time and tried to recruit me to the
party, saying I reminded him of [Paul] Robeson. Also participating in
these study groups and teaching at the Communiversity were Harold
Rogers, a graduate student who would later chair African American
studies at Olive- Harvey College in Chicago and be a leader in the Coali tion of Black Trade Unionists, and Linda Murray, an undergraduate
who would later become a physician and go on to be president of the
American Public Health Association. Willis called her one of our strongest theoreticians. The weekend courses of the Communiversity, which
112 | Black Students and a New Chicago
lasted for a few years, took place in the building on Oakwood Boulevard in Bronzeville where St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton had written Black Metropolis and where the Center for Inner City Studies of
Northeastern Illinois University now stands.
Teachers at the Communiversity included Marxists, socialists, and
Black nationalists who emphasized the study of classical African civilizations, an orientation later embraced by the Center for Inner City Studies. In addition to Rhodes, Rogers, and Murray, instructors included
Ebon Dooley, a poet, lawyer, and activist; Jerry Wilburn, a community
or ga niz er; Anderson Thompson, who has taught at the Center for Inner
City Studies for de cades and leads regular trips to Africa; Bobby Wright,
a prominent psychologist; and the anthropologist Leith Mullins, then a
graduate student. Robert (Bob) Rhodes, who was a pop u lar instructor
in po liti cal economy in the early years, said the Communiversity combined a fascination with ancient Egypt and contemporary politics.
According to Stan Willis, Once [the students] got into Bobs class, they
wouldnt go to any other classes; so we had to cancel all the classes that
confl icted with Bob. . . . People never heard it before. People really liked
it.67 Still, according to both Willis and Rhodes, the cultural nationalists
outnumbered leftist instructors, and several continued teaching there
when Northeastern Illinois University moved into the building, while
the more leftist instructors fi nished graduate study and moved on.68
As historian Adam Green has argued, a core characteristic of Black
Chicago history has been institution building, and the struggle for educational self- determination exemplifi es this thrust.69 There are numerous
examples beyond higher education. Acclaimed poet Haki Madhubuti
founded Third World Press in 1967 and, with his wife, Safi sha Madhubuti, founded the Institute of Positive Education/New Concept School
in 1969. Margaret Burroughs, one of the best- known Chicago institution builders, was an artist and educator who built the fi rst African
American history and culture museum in the United States. A longtime
leftist and found er of the South Side Community Arts Center, the only
surviving Works Progress Administration project in the country, Burroughs taught high school in Chicago for de cades and with her husband,
Charles Burroughs, opened the Du Sable Museum of African American
History and Culture. Typifying the community- based, po liti cally engaged
educators who populated many early urban- based Black studies programs, Burroughs taught African American art at Elmhurst College and
was a professor of humanities at Kennedy- King College, a two- year
public college, from 1969 to 1979.
Black Students and a New Chicago | 113
The Black student movement had effects and legacies that went beyond transforming institutions of higher education. It accelerated the
push for Black po liti cal empowerment more generally. The activists
who came out of the Malcolm X struggle have made important contributions to the civic, educational, and cultural life of Chicago. As in many
other cities, the po liti cal intensity of the late 1960s exerted a long and
wide- ranging infl uence; and in a city marked by formidable machine
politics, the rise of new sources of leadership and in de pen dent power
bases shaped po liti cal mobilization as well. An attorney, Standish Willis
has been a leader both in the fi ght against police torture and in the
movement to rearticulate domestic civil rights as international human
rights. Henry En glish became president of the National Black United
Fund, a philanthropy aimed at promoting collaboration and self- reliance.
Carol Adams, formerly on the faculty of Malcolm X, is president of the
Du Sable Museum of African American History and Culture. Many
former activists at Malcolm X see a direct connection between their
victories on the west side and the election in 1983 of Harold Washington as Chicagos fi rst African American mayor. By channeling Black activist energy outside machine politics, and creating alternative sites and
sources of power and mobilization, the Black Power movement laid
critical groundwork for Washingtons electoral challenge. The Black
student movement in New York City, too, reverberated well beyond
campus and helped to reconfi gure power and politics across the metropolitan region.
114
Black student activism exploded in the spring of 1969. It was the highwater mark of the Black student movement, with militant actions and
mass confrontations at campuses across the country, most notably at
the University of California, Berkeley; Cornell University; Harvard University; Rutgers University; and Howard University. Coinciding with
the community- control- of- public- schools movement, the Black student
movement in New York City aimed to redefi ne the relationship between
universities and Black communities. Like students in San Francisco,
Chicago, and other cities, students in New York wanted some form of
open admissions in public institutions of higher education. But as elsewhere, the struggle over higher education in New York was hardly over
a single issue: it encompassed admissions, faculty hiring, curriculum,
and overall mission. In the spring of 1969, students at every single division of the City University of New York (cuny) rose up in protest. The
two- week occupation of City College in Harlem precipitated a po liti cal
crisis in the city and ushered in a major shift in public policy; as a result,
the protest received extensive local and national media attention, but
strikingly it has garnered little attention from historians. Similarly, the
struggle at Brooklyn College has been virtually forgotten, even though
it was pivotal in reshaping the admissions policy, the universitys relationship to communities of color, and the curriculum. As one observer
noted, The integration of cuny has been the most signifi cant civil
rights victory in higher education in the history of the United States.1
Chapter 4
Brooklyn College Belongs
to Us
The Transformation of Higher Education
in New York City
Transformation in New York City | 115
Yet the Black student movement in New York City has been left out
of most narratives of the Black freedom struggle, a striking elision in
light of the fact that much of the post- civil- rights backlash has focused
on ending affi rmative action in college admissions.2 The quest for open
admissions, and the articulation of higher education as a social right of
the working class, has been either vilifi ed or erased from movement history. Black students in New York had an enormous impact on university policies, structures, and cultures. These students may have read
Quotations from Chairman Mao, but they won reforms that dramatically opened up public higher education and opportunity structures in
the region, paving the way for the expansion of the Black middle class.
While they achieved a great deal, they inspired formidable opposition,
previewing the po liti cal conservatism that would later gain wider ascendancy in urban, state, and federal governments.
This story, like the stories of other campuses, complicates the widely
held view that Black nationalist politics of the late 1960s blocked multiracial alliances, moved class issues off the radar, muted Black womens
voices, and alienated and drove away white allies. In fact, this generation had a fl exible and dynamic conception of so- called identity politics:
they forged alliances with Latino and Asian American activists and kept
socioeconomic issues front and center. African American female students,
moreover, fought for Black studies and affi rmative action as much as
their male peers, notwithstanding the prevalence of male leadership.
And the students won considerable support from elders in the community. Yet, as elsewhere, the emphasis was not on interracial or ga niz ing
but on Black student assertion. Black and Puerto Rican students on
cuny campuses took the lead in shaping the tactics and goals of antiracist activism, while radical or liberal white students or ga nized support
efforts separately.
Black and Puerto Rican students had long gained entry to tuitionfree City, Brooklyn, Hunter, and other colleges under the prevailing admissions standards. Affi rmative action, meaning programs and policies
aimed at admitting minority students who did not meet the prevailing entrance criteria, began with the Search for Education, Elevation
and Knowledge (seek) program enacted by the legislature in 1966. Refl ecting the new clout of a growing block of Black and Puerto Rican
legislators in Albany, as well as the efforts of Black professors Kenneth
Clark and Allen Ballard in allegiance with enlightened white administrators, seek provided promising graduates of city high schools a college
education and the extra academic support, counseling, and remediation
116 | Transformation in New York City
needed to succeed. It was by far the largest program of its kind in the
country. seek shows the legislative origins of affi rmative action in
higher education, as well as the leading role of Black elected offi cials in
making access to higher education a critical public policy issue in the
state.3 Still, the small but growing number of Black students at cuny
colleges in the mid- 1960s were troubled by the overwhelmingly white
student bodies, faculties, courses, and cultural programming. The fact
that these were taxpayer- funded institutions gave students of color the
confi dence to make far- reaching claims of belonging and entitlement.
Labeled as culturally deprived, seek students were expected to be
grateful for their access to an excellent education. The students pushed
back against these terms and assumptions. As in San Francisco, student
leaders at cuny interrogated both the mission of public universities and
the criteria for determining merit. They posed a question: Should public colleges be expected to offer opportunity to a broad range of taxpaying New Yorkers, or should they be permitted to adopt the exclusionary
practices of private institutions and rely on test scores to determine admission? Moreover, students demanded a new answer to an old but
critical question of the civil rights era: How should the United States
correct the consequences of segregation, in this case the unequal educational system that it has produced? The prevailing view had been that
efforts should focus on improving primary and secondary schools in
order to better prepare students for college. But in the late 1960s, African American youth argued that it was the colleges responsibility to
offer the appropriate remediation. They increasingly framed access to
higher education as a right of postwar U.S. citizenship. Fortunately for
them, the broader urban turmoil across the United States played a role
in encouraging college offi cials to reevaluate admissions policies. After
several summers of very serious and deadly urban unrest, white administrators feared Black militancy and the prospect of riots at their gates.4
Even with several new admissions programs seeking to recruit students of color, Brooklyn College was 96 percent white in 1968.5 In a
profound sense, the campus tumult of the late 1960s reveals the snails
pace of court- mandated integration and the stunning lack of preparation for it on American campuses. For its part, Brooklyn College had
appointed a committee in 1964 to look into the need to create educational opportunities for students on the campus, or students who were
not being admitted. In the words of acting president George A. Peck, it
worked sporadically at fi rst and fi nally came up with a plan to admit
Transformation in New York City | 117
two hundred Black and Puerto Rican students in a special program in
1968.6 What Peck did not mention was that two left- wing student organizations, the W. E. B. Du Bois Club and Students for a Demo cratic Society, had occupied the registrars offi ce in May 1968, demanding that
one thousand minority students be admitted that fall.7 The faculty and
curriculum, too, lacked diversity. For all the vaunted cosmopolitanism
of the faculties at the City University of New York, Brooklyn College
offered thirteen courses with content related to American minority
groups, the presidents offi ce reported in 1969, and all of these had begun in 1968! A big problem, the administration contended, was fi nding
faculty to teach them,8 a statement that points to the slow pace of producing African American PhDs in the United States fourteen years after
Brown and twenty years after President Harry S. Truman had appointed
a committee to study minority access to higher education.
Among the small number of Black students at Brooklyn College, a
few key leaders emerged, notably Leroy (Askia) Davis and Orlando
Pile. Both young men were involved in off- campus or ga niz ing, and their
efforts at Brooklyn College were part of the overall Black freedom struggle. Pile was the student representative on the Ocean Hill Brownsville
community school board and was also involved in welfare- rights or ganiz ing. African American women were at the center of both these campaigns, a fact that balances the largely masculinist portrait of Black
Power politics and suggests a broader range of infl uences, especially at
the grassroots, on a generation that venerated Malcolm X and Frantz
Fanon. Askia Davis came up to New York from Georgia at age fi fteen.
He saw The Battle of Algiers, read Black Skin, White Masks and joined
the Black Panther Party. But Malcolm X had the most decisive infl uence
on his life. All his boyhood, Davis had eagerly waited for the day he
could join the military. I always dreamed of going to the air force academy, he says, becoming a pi lot, and dropping bombs. That was my
goal. I was a warrior. He might have gone to Vietnam like his brother
had he not encountered The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Reading
Malcolm X really changed me really, like overnight.9
In 1968 Davis and Pile began to reach out to the small number of
Black students approaching them in the library and soon or ga nized
blac, the Black League of Afro- American Collegians. In conjunction
with the Puerto Rican Alliance, blac quickly became a force on campus. blac would present eigh teen demands to the administration in the
spring of 1969, but they also tried to change campus conditions through
118 | Transformation in New York City
their own direct action. One tactic they used in order to overcome
Black students sense of isolation in the classroom, especially in the face
of offensive or insensitive racial remarks, was to get groups of Black
students to register for the same course. In 1969, fi ve or six Black student activists plus several more nonpo liti cal Black students enrolled in
an introductory literature course taught by Robert Fitzhugh. The fi rst
day, Askia Davis recalls, Fitzhugh walked in and saw this sea of Black
faces. He was shocked. We were polite, he remembers. We wanted
to learn. Orlando Pile asked Fitzhugh why there were no Black writers
on the syllabus, and he even presented the professor with a list of important Black writers. One imagines that James Baldwin and Richard
Wright were probably on this list. Fitzhugh retorted that these writers
were social activists, not major novelists. A personal confrontation
ensued. Fitzhugh asked Pile why he didnt leave the class if he didnt like
it, and Pile replied, Why dont you? And then, says Pile, still incredulous many years later, the professor walked out! blac leaders arranged
with the dean for the Black students to withdraw from the course, and
the activists did, but the nonpo liti cal Black students chose to remain.
A couple of weeks later, they had changed their minds and told Pile that
Fitzhugh was grading all of their work poorly, and had disrespected
them when they brought it up. Number eleven on the list of eigh teen
demands called for the dismissal of all White professors who have
demonstrated racist tendencies, specifi cally, Robert Fitzhugh of the English department.10
The 18 Demands illustrate the students po liti cal sensibilities and
vision. The demands are bold and wide- ranging, yet at the same time,
specifi c and pragmatic, suggesting the students complex sense of their
role. The fi rst demand called for the admission to the college of all Black
and Puerto Rican high school graduates who applied.11 The second demand called for a free tutorial program and basic skills courses to
enable students to fulfi ll their scholastic potential. While the fi rst goal
seems to reject all entrance criteria, the second one illustrates that the
students still took academic success seriously. Even though students
were challenging prevailing defi nitions of who was qualifi ed to enter
college, they were not rejecting academic culture or excellence. On the
contrary, they wanted to benefi t from it.12 Most signifi cantly, the demands show the students desire to have Brooklyn College serve the educational needs of the population of Brooklyn, not only of those whose
test scores were the highest.
Transformation in New York City | 119
The students called for Afro- American and Puerto Rican institutes to
be controlled by Black and Puerto Rican students with the help of the
Black and Puerto Rican faculty and the community. The wording of
this demand suggests that the students did not trust the college to set up
the institutes, and so claimed this role for students of color and their
faculty and community allies. At many campuses, student activists
had a conception of Black studies as a social movement seeing it as
a bridge between Black students and Black communities, in addition to
its transformative intellectual potential. The thirteenth demand called
for a special course that would give academic credit for fi eld work in
the community, refl ecting this generations desire to make their college
educations relevant to community needs, and their desire not to wall
themselves off in an ivory tower. Indeed, Brooklyn College set up an
entirely new college the School for Contemporary Studies that incorporated many of these goals. Echoing a similar demand at City College, the fi fteenth demand asserted that students majoring in education
future public school teachers should be required to take courses in
Black and Puerto Rican studies. This refl ected the students sense of
obligation to use their position inside the college to affect the education of Brooklyn youth of all ages. The students also demanded the
hiring of Black and Puerto Rican professors in all units of the college,
showing their desire not to let the creation of the new Afro- American
and Puerto Rican institutes create an excuse for the other departments
not to diversify.13
By early 1969, student activists had engaged in extensive or ga niz ing
on campus and had gained considerable support. The blac faculty advisor was Professor Craig Bell, but all among the small number of Black
professors on campus supported them, as did several white professors,
especially and very vocally Bart Meyers.14 Refl ecting the movements
turn toward self- determination, it was important to Black and Puerto
Rican students to or ga nize and lead their own struggle. The largely
white Students for a Demo cratic Society chapter on campus supported
the citywide push for open enrollment, and they were engaged in a
range of campus actions that spring. Pile said that their support was
fi ne, but they could not be part of us.15
In mid- April, frustrated that neither the administration nor the faculty had yet considered the eigh teen demands, a group of Black and
Puerto Rican students took over the microphone at a faculty meeting and
commanded the professors not to leave. Militant students disrupting
120 | Transformation in New York City
normal campus procedures and making demands to a frightened
faculty became the archetypical sequence of events at American campuses in 1969. We want the 18 demands presented now, Askia Davis
declared. You will not shut your eyes any longer, he told the faculty.
Brooklyn College belongs to us, not you.16 The president subsequently participated in a forum of two thousand people, but the administration, according to the student- radicals, took a rigid stance.17
Student demonstrations culminated in a mass demonstration at the
end of April. One hundred and fi fty students from blac and the Puerto
Rican Alliance, as well as forty white students, squeezed into the presidents offi ce in Boylan Hall, where a meeting among administrators and
student representatives over Black and Puerto Rican issues was in progress. They dramatically presented the eigh teen demands, but the president was actually out of the offi ce. Some students engaged in minor
vandalism, and someone spray- painted the words power and revolution
on walls inside and outside the building. In the meantime, some white
students took over other campus buildings, and unknown persons set
small fi res on the campus. The students stayed in Boylan Hall for a couple of hours and left when they heard that the police had been called.18
In early May, one hundred students led by SDS held a demonstration
inside the deans offi ce, and acts of arson and vandalism continued,
alongside daily and increasingly large rallies. On May 6, President Peck
alleged that a hundred, mostly Black and Puerto Rican students blocked
fi refi ghters from entering the administration building to douse a small
fi re, reportedly the fi fth small blaze of the day.
In contrast to City College, where administrators negotiated with
student activists, at Brooklyn College they turned to law enforcement
to quell student protest. They got an injunction barring students from
congregating in or near buildings, creating loud or excessive noise, or
employing, inciting or encouraging force or violence. Students fought
the injunction with attorneys from the Emergency Civil Liberties Commission and the New York Civil Liberties Union, who argued that it
was an unconstitutional restraint on freedom of speech and assembly. It
should be noted that there were many white students who had been
advocating and engaging in aggressive forms of protest and this was
well known to campus authorities. Indeed, some Brooklyn College offi –
cials, like administrators at many American colleges, saw radical whites,
especially those in SDS, as more destructive than Black student activists.
Some even viewed white radicals as instigating Black student revolt. Peck
later testifi ed before a U.S. Senate committee investigating campus riots.
Transformation in New York City | 121
Montana senator Lee Metcalf asked him, So you think that SDS in
spite of the fact that they were not part of this black revolt, spurred it
on and encouraged it, and, using your phrase, masterminded it? To
which Peck replied, All they could. He added that he did not think
SDS had the same emotional commitment to the cause of blacks but
used it to advance general social destruction. Interestingly, though, this
worldview did not prevent Peck from targeting Black and Puerto Rican
students and no white students for arrest that spring.19
Shortly before dawn on May 12, 1969, police offi cers raided the
homes of seventeen Brooklyn College students, all of them either African
American or Puerto Rican, including Orlando Pile and Askia Davis.
They arrested the students and even arrested Piles mother, Blanche Pile,
for interference. Another two students were also indicted. Because they
were college students with no criminal rec ords, and they had strong
family and community ties, the fi fteen- thousand- dollar bail for each
student was widely seen as excessive. The students spent four days at
Rikers Island. They were each charged with eigh teen felonies and fi ve
misdemeanors, including inciting riot and arson, which together carried
a sentence of 228 years. The allegations had come from an undercover
police in for mant who had infi ltrated blac and befriended the students.
He looked the part, given his big Afro, dark skin, and beard, Askia
Davis notes. He had the rhetoric, but he was really a cop. In Piles
view, the allegations by the police in for mant were a form of retaliation: they represented the administrations attempt to thwart the Black
student movement and block their demands to change Brooklyn College. The day after the raids, the prosecutor claimed to have found in
various homes a revolver, a sharp- edged spear and clubs, as well as
batteries and gasoline, which he called material used to manufacture
fi rebombs.20
The eighteen- year- old Davis was a member of the Black Panther
Party and had actually been named on the original warrant for the New
York Panther 21, but had been in California when the police made
those arrests. It was meant to be the Panther 22, he says, which likely
explains the overwhelming force they used to arrest him that morning
in May. He remembers his thoughts when he heard a knock on the door
early that morning. A young lady lived next door. I was basically trying to seduce her. She used to knock at my door; we used to tease and
fl irt, but nothing ever happened. So I get this knock at fi ve oclock in the
morning, and I said, Wow, she fi nally gave in. Nine police offi cers
came to make the arrest. Three came through the door. They threw me
122 | Transformation in New York City
to the fl oor; put a gun to my head, and cocked the trigger. When the
offi cer fi nally pulled the gun back and saw the very youthful- looking
Davis, he said, God, youre nothing but a kid. They searched the
house and found nothing unlawful. Rikers was a rough experience,
but it made him feel he could endure hardship and prevail. He believed
that authorities were trying to punish and intimidate them for their
activism.21
The media gave an infl ammatory account. The New York Post reported that the students were in possession of The Writings of Che
Guevara, Quotations from Mao Tse- tung, and a typewritten document entitled Blueprint for Campus Revolt, which the district attorney said referred to the strategy at San Francisco State College.22
New York Daily News readers were given an over- the- top account designed to stoke fears of communism: Brooklyn District Attorney Eugene Gold revealed that 122 detectives making pre- dawn arrests in four
boroughs found infl ammatory writings of Chinese and Cuban Communists.23 This media frame exacerbated the already powerful stigma of
criminal prosecution in the eyes of the broader public. But closer to
home, the arrests backfi red, generating greater support for blac from
both the campus and community.
Black leaders in par tic u lar stepped up. The black community really
got together to support us, Davis says. Attorneys George Wade and
Ray Williams argued before Judge Dominic Rinaldi that the bail was
punitive. Williams also pointed to the racial bias in the arrests, noting
that there were S.D.S. students involved but they were not brought
in because they are white. Outraged at the assertion, the judge warned
him against using the courtroom as a vehicle for racist statements.
But the Appellate Division ordered the bail reduced to sixty- fi ve hundred dollars. U.S. Representative Shirley Chisholm, herself a Brooklyn
College graduate, raised the bail money. She convinced Dr. Thomas W.
Matthew, the president of the National Economic Growth and Reconstruction Or ga ni za tion, to put up his share of Interfaith Hospital, a drug
treatment clinic in Queens, as collateral. And she got Reverend William
A. Jones of Bethany Baptist to put up his church.24 As it turns out, the
case never went anywhere the state never produced any evidence. After about a year of delay and negotiation, the attorneys and judge
reached a deal in which the students accepted a short probationary
period, and the charges were dismissed and the students rec ords ultimately expunged. The Kingsman editorialized that the probationary
Transformation in New York City | 123
period seems suspiciously like a move to repress dissent on campus,
since the 19 are not guilty enough to be prosecuted.25
After the arrests and the stationing of one hundred police offi cers on
campus, a large group of students and faculty went on strike. Their demands were: drop the charges against the BC 19, implement the eighteen demands, and get the police off campus. Askia Davis says he didnt
realize how much support they had from the majority white campus
until this point. The Kingsman editorialized in support: The 20 arrests
on Tuesday morning were conducted in a manner that heaped disgrace
on the American legal system and added to many students hatred and
distrust of the New York City Police. It demanded that the administration remove police from campus, reporting that an offi cer had arrested
a student for spitting, which had led to a bloody clash.26 The relentless
pressure fi nally induced the college to make concessions, and President
Peck and the faculty went on record urging the Board of Higher Education, the governing body of cuny colleges, to enact a new open admissions policy. They passed a resolution urging the board to offer a college education to every high school graduate in the city, particularly
needy Negroes and Puerto Ricans.27 Clearly, the students efforts to
bring the Black liberation movement to Brooklyn College had an effect.
An even more epochal story unfolded in Manhattan.
Student activists at the City College of New York (CCNY), too, had
engaged in a long series of escalating tactics before two hundred of
them took over the buildings of south campus on April 22, 1969, and
renamed it the University of Harlem. This was preceded on April 16
with a boisterous march through campus by Black and Puerto Rican
college and high school students and their left- wing white supporters,
who chanted the pop u lar Black Panther refrain: The Revolution has
come, time to pick up the gun. As at most colleges, the assassination of
Martin Luther King Jr. sparked a new determination, even a sense of obligation, to accelerate the pace of change. The movement really began in
1968, recalls south campus occupier Robert Feaster, who later took
the name Sekou Sundiata.28 The struggle at City was led by the Black
and Puerto Rican Student Community a name that richly signifi es
the politics of the era by emphasizing the collective over the individual
and asserting a Black- brown partnership in a Black nationalist era that
was moving toward Third Worldism. The left- wing W. E. B. Du Bois
Club also contributed to the formulation of the fi ve demands, having
presented President Buell Gallagher in November 1968 with a petition
124 | Transformation in New York City
of sixteen hundred signatures titled End Racism at CCNY. This evidently motivated students of color to launch their own effort. We were
indignant, Sundiata says, that the Du Bois Society was circulating
those kinds of demands which really articulated our interests, and that
we had not moved on them ourselves.29
City College, located in the heart of Harlem, was only 4 percent Black
and 5 percent Puerto Rican.30 As a CCNY professor put it, There City
College sits, smack dab in the middle of the largest Black community in
the country, and only 9% of its daytime students are Black or Puerto
Rican. And 5% of that 9% came through the seek program.31 Like
Brooklyn College, Citys faculty and students were predominantly Jewish, a composition that refl ected, in part, the legacy of anti- Semitic admissions and hiring practices at private universities. City College had
developed a reputation as the proletarian Harvard, as a bastion of educational excellence for the sons and daughters of immigrants. The students relied on research by cuny economics professor Alfred Conrad to
ascertain the racial composition of area high schools, and as a result,
they called for a student body that was 43 percent Black. The racial
composition of all entering classes should refl ect the Black and Puerto
Rican population of the New York City high schools, was the most
controversial of the fi ve demands. It envisioned an enormous change in
enrollment and suggests that students had embraced a radically new
conception of a public universitys responsibility to its community. As
the students put it, We are committed to make this college more relevant to the community.32 In some respects, though, this was an approach steeped in City College history. CCNY had been founded as a
free college to serve the children of the poor and, from 1900 to 1925,
had required only a high school diploma for entrance. A minimum
grade average was then introduced, but open admissions returned for
World War II veterans.33 Kenneth Clark, a City College psychology professor, often reminded New Yorkers that the policy of open admissions
is as old as the history of the college itself. . . . We are not developing
something new, he said; we are returning to the historic purposes of
the city colleges, the basic rationale upon which they were set up over
100 years ago, when the deprived groups were immigrants from southern and eastern Eu rope.34
Students in seek developed a distinct consciousness that helped forge
the unity and discipline that were at the heart of successful Black student
or ga niz ing. A series of rules differentiated seek students from others at
City College and made them feel like outsiders: they were barred from
Transformation in New York City | 125
playing on athletic teams, for example, and from participating in student government. As a result, the Onyx Society, the City College Black
student or ga ni za tion originally formed in 1966, shifted away from a
social focus toward a more po liti cal orientation. A Committee of Ten
emerged within Onyx, and these students became the leaders of the
south campus takeover in April. As on other campuses, these budding
revolutionaries did not just pick up megaphones and shout slogans
they immersed themselves in the contemporary literature of Black radicalism. They read and debated Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon, Nathan Hares
Black Anglo- Saxons, Carmichael and Hamiltons Black Power, and
Harold Cruses Crisis of the Negro Intellectual.35
During the 1969 protest, three students played leading roles as negotiators: Charles Powell, who was also a member of the Black Panther
Party, Serge Mullery, and Rick Reed, who had formerly worked with
SNCC. Reed was reportedly the visionary and the strategist. According to one student, he had great insight and inspired the belief that we
could change the admissions system. Henry Arce and Luis Reyes Rivera were key Puerto Rican student leaders. During the two- week occupation of south campus, Arces mother or ga nized the delivery of food
from the community, and prominent politicians and activists visited
the University of Harlem, including Kathleen Cleaver, Betty Shabazz,
Adam Clayton Powell Jr., and James Forman.36 Members of the community are constantly coming onto the campus to examine what we are
doing and to give support, the Black and Puerto Rican Student Community (BPRSC) announced. These visitors sometimes joined studentled classes offering po liti cal and social analysis of what is happening in
this country.37
After admissions, the second- most controversial BPRSC demand was
for a School for Black and Puerto Rican Studies. According to the students, the curriculum at City College offered virtually nothing on
Africa or African Americans. In the words of Toni Cade, author of the
groundbreaking feminist text The Black Woman: An Anthology, and a
highly regarded mentor to the students, the En glish department clung
to the deeply entrenched notion that Anglo- Saxon literature is The
Literature.38 The leadership of seek professor Toni Cade is worth
elaborating on, especially since the Black liberation movement from the
late 1960s has been framed and not without some merit as a quest
to restore Black manhood.39 Still, Black women played critical roles in
the campus uprisings. Cade penned an open letter to students encouraging them to seize control of their educational destinies. Steeped in the
126 | Transformation in New York City
vernacular of the era, it offered both guidance and solidarity and conveyed the humanism propelling radical activism. It bears quoting at
length. Dear Bloods, she wrote, There are two traditions within our
culture that are worth looking at, for they tell us a great deal about our
responses. One, we have been conditioned to turn off, short out, be
cool; two, we have often been pushed to make something from nothing.
The fi rst response is a negative one. We did it, or do it, to survive surely
but at great cost to ourselves. Weve learned how to bottle up anger, put
our minds in a jar, wear a mask. The second is a creative urge. It too
comes out of the need to survive. . . . Out of which bag do you dip?
she asked. Something out of nothing is so much better than blowing
a fuse, she advised. On the assumption that all of you mumblers,
grumblers, malcontents, workers, designers, etc. are serious about what
youve been saying (A real education blah, blah, blah), the AfroAmerican- Hispanic Studies Center is/was set up. Until it is fully operating, the responsibility of getting that education rests with you in large
part. Jumping up and down, foaming at the mouth, rattling coffee- cups
and other weaponry dont get it. If you are serious, set up a counter
course in the Experimental College. If you are serious, contact each
other. She closed with: Serious, Miss Cade.40
Cade was not only an adviser to the students, but she also formulated and publicized a model for a Black and Hispanic studies center at
City College. At least 90% of the several hundred rebellions that have
taken place on the American college campuses and in the American
high schools in the last six years, she wrote in a campus newspaper,
were propelled by and revealed a gross dissatisfaction with the curriculum (its premises, its omissions, its pre sen ta tions, its designers).
Struggles over knowledge and learning had moved to the forefront of
Black activism. This essay was composed before the takeover of south
campus, but Cade saw it coming: We can safely assume that an explosion is imminent, she declared. The students have already indicated
that they are weary of being lied to, tired of playing games, damned if
theyll be indoctrinated, programmed, ripped off any longer. Cade proposed that the center be a course- offering agency, a research agency,
a buttress, a skills bank, [and] a conference center. Doubtless the most
controversial idea in Cades proposal was for the center to be controlled by Black and Latin students and faculty who will have the
power to hire using their own standards, and to design courses considering their own needs. She appended a list of courses that the center might
offer, including American Justice and the Afro- American, Negritude,
Transformation in New York City | 127
Revolution, and Trends in Western Thought. Her eventual goal,
which in light of the demographics of City College constituted a radical departure, was that the Center would lead ultimately to a Black
University.41
In February 1969, the college had hired Barbara Christian, a
Caribbean- born literary scholar who would produce pioneering scholarship on Black women writers during her long career at Berkeley, and
Wilfred Cartey, a Trinidadian-born literary scholar, to design a Black
studies program. Both were also affi liated with Columbia University;
Christian completed her doctorate there with honors in 1970. According to Christian, the call for a School for Black and Puerto Rican Studies
was a very controversial demand. Initially, she wrote, the students
were primarily concerned with their own culture Black, African, AfroAmerican, West Indian, Puerto Rican culture. But the involvement of
Asian American students in the struggle at City College encouraged
them to broaden their vision. The students then took a look at how
many courses were offered on Latin America, how many courses on
Asia. And there were very few. This desire to address the needs of all
minority groups on campus induced Christian and Cartey to propose
a School of Urban and Third World Studies, but the faculty senate rejected their proposal late that spring.42 As we shall see, the college administration resisted the proposals designed by Black professors and moved
instead to implement a very different vision.
Paradoxically, as the students were struggling to radically expand the
size of cuny colleges, the already existing seek program was slated
for drastic cuts, a development that foreshadowed worrisome things
to come. In his February 1969 bud get proposal, Governor Nelson B.
Rocke fel ler slashed seek funding. This sparked a spring mobilization on
New York campuses, which all sent busloads of students to Albany to
save seek. CCNY alone sent thirty- fi ve buses. Still, despite their staunch
support for seek, the BPRSC rejected paternalist aspects of its structure.
Most bothersome was that seek counselors were required to be clinical
psychologists, a requirement that helped make them mostly white. seek
students felt this stigmatized them as psychologically fl awed. The
only counselor of color was Betty Rawls, who became a strong ally and
mentor to the student activists, and who participated in the spring negotiations with administrators. Thus, the BPRSC demanded a voice
for seek students in setting guidelines for the seek Program, including
the hiring and fi ring of all personnel. And in their list of fi ve demands,
the students, like their counterparts in Brooklyn, stipulated that courses
128 | Transformation in New York City
in Spanish language and Black and Puerto Rican history be required for
all education majors.43
The response to the protest was sharply polarized. On the one hand,
the students received considerable support from many Black and Puerto
Rican New Yorkers, who provided the students occupying south campus with supplies, solidarity, and legal protection. These community
members viewed the sit- in as part of the civil rights movements quest
for inclusion. But the students also faced substantial criticism and, they
felt, misunderstanding. They were accused of lowering standards, supporting racial exclusion, and pushing an agenda that was more po liti cal
than academic. In response to such criticism, the students issued press
releases offering careful elaboration of their positions. They explained
that, yes, white students could take courses in the School for Black and
Puerto Rican studies; it was not a racial project, but one meant to
teach and research the history and culture of 80% of the worlds
population. Moreover, the school is not a vehicle for po liti cal indoctrination. It will not have a watered down degree, they emphasized.
Students had to meet all the regular requirements to graduate. And the
admissions demand to offer graduates of area high schools a proportionate place at Citywill not lower the standards of the college.
Students would be given supportive ser vices on the model of seek and
would not be allowed to move on through the college unless they fulfi lled the standards for graduation at CCNY.44
Many Jewish leaders in New York City vocally opposed the new
Black and Puerto Rican radicalism, seeing it as an unwise rejection of
time- honored liberal assimilation strategies and a possible conduit for
anti- Zionism or even anti- Semitism. The years 1968 and 1969 saw
many fl ashpoints of Black- Jewish confl ict in New York City, as well as
various efforts to articulate the source of tensions. The Black and Puerto
Rican student struggles at City and Brooklyn Colleges took place in this
context. The rhetoric of the Black Power movement, wrote a New
York rabbi, has made Negroes less willing than the youngsters of previous ethnic groups to demonstrate the patience required for the laborious step- by- step ascent up the economic ladder. . . . The belief that special advantages are due him now being impressed upon the young
Negro by militants is disastrous and should be exposed for the crippler it is. Jews, at least, had the advantage of knowing how diffi cult
their advance would be and therefore plunged into the task of selfpreparation with enormous self- sacrifi ce and without the self- delusion
being instilled in young Negroes.45 This kind of approach, which pre-
Transformation in New York City | 129
sumed to know the best interests of African Americans, and which
failed to acknowledge the signifi cance of skin color in comparing Black
and Jewish experiences, was being roundly rejected by African Americans. SNCC activist Julius Lester offered this response to the rabbi: I
think that black people have destroyed the previous relationship which
they had with the Jewish community, in which we were the victims of a
kind of paternalism, which is only a benevolent racism. It is oppressive,
no matter how gentle its touch. That old relationship has been destroyed and the stage is set now for a real relationship where our feelings, our view of America and how to operate has to be given serious
consideration.46
Students leaders won support from the Black and Puerto Rican Faculty group and the integrated but predominately white Faculty for Action.47 As white seek professor Fran Geteles remembers, the student
activists were savvy organizers who understood that both groups had
something to offer. Some historians of the civil rights movement have
lamented that the rise of Black Power politics led to an emphasis on
slogans and speeches at the expense of grassroots or ga niz ing.48 But Geteless memory complicates this interpretation. She feels that the students were very smart po liti cally. They adopted Black nationalist ideas
but didnt behave in an exclusionary way. They were shrewd organizers.49 A Brooklyn College professor had a similar recollection. Carlos
Russell, an Afro- Panamanian educator and activist who directed seek
before becoming dean of the School for Contemporary Studies at
Brooklyn College, described Black student activists there as committed,
idealistic, and skilled organizers.50
The BPRSC gained considerable support from white students, notwithstanding a visible and aggressive band of white opponents. SDS,
the City College Commune, and the Du Bois Club or ga nized white support. In a broadside, The Stake of Whites in the Struggle, the latter
group declared, Right now, it is Black and Puerto Rican youth who are
in the main fi ghting for this right because it is they who have been
most excluded. But, is it not in everyones interest to fi ght for the right
to go to college? Shouldnt white people join their black and Puerto Rican brothers and sisters in this fi ght and demand an education for all?
After the protest, southern civil rights leader Floyd McKissick praised
this support as a shift from previous patterns: This support can signify
the beginning of a truly useful coalition not the kind of co ali tion advocated by so many white labor leaders and their Black fl unkies, the kind
that leaves Blacks to rely on the decisions and leadership of whites, but
130 | Transformation in New York City
the kind of co ali tion which is led by Blacks especially when dealing
with issues which most directly affect the Black Community.51
After the seizure of south campus, President Buell G. Gallagher
closed the college and began an intense period of round- the- clock negotiations with student leaders. But an array of critics swung into action.
City College alumni held infl uential positions in the city, and many
clamored for a police response. Mayor John Lindsays policy was to
bring in police only if requested to do so by the college president, and
Gallagher did not want a police raid. And Wilfred Cartey had stirred
his faculty colleagues with moving arguments against calling the police
to south campus, in favor of conciliation with black students. Also
infl uencing administrators was CCNYs location in Harlem, an African
American neighborhood whose community leaders had aligned themselves with the students. Askia Davis thinks this is the main reason arrests were not made at City, but were made at Brooklyn College, which
figure 14. Support the Five Demands was the rallying cry for students at City
College of New York during the occupation of south campus in spring 1969.
Transformation in New York City | 131
is located in an area that was affl uent and white.52 A year earlier, when
protesting students at Columbia University had taken over several buildings on the upper Manhattan campus, city police had evicted the Black
and white students with different methods, in part because of the fear
of a Black uprising in nearby Harlem. Police clobbered many of the white
students at Columbia as they forcibly evicted them, while they arrested
Black students without violence.53
The occupation of south campus at City College occurred shortly after
a photo had circulated around the world, of heavily armed Black students at Cornell exiting a building after the administration had agreed to
several of their demands. In the eyes of some, Cornell became Munich
and denunciations of liberal capitulation to threats of armed violence
proliferated. Buell Gallagher took to the radio in New York City, declaring, Both incidents [CCNY and Cornell] illustrate graphically the failure
of student extremists to understand what a university stands for. At this
juncture, Gallagher revealed his distance from Black students: The student militants rejection of personal accountability, regardless of whether
their background is privileged or ghetto, stands at the heart of the campus revolution across the country. Tyranny, whether exercised by the
majority, or a minority, is still tyranny. He also echoed a widely held
view among college offi cials that student radicalism would strengthen
conservatism. With each forcible takeover, each ransacking of administration fi les, each disruption of classes for the majority of students, the
hands of the ultraconservatives in the legislature are strengthened.54 Yet
at the same time, as Gallagher began negotiations with the students, he
came to respect their sincerity and the seriousness of their mission. A
week later he was asked to defend his decision not to call the police when
he had called them several months earlier to quell a largely white antiwar
protest. The circumstances are not the same, he explained. They were
causing extensive damage . . . smoking pot and fornicating in public, but
the Black and Puerto Rican students occupying south campus are behaving in an orderly manner. And as he got to know Black and Puerto
Rican student activists that spring, this view solidifi ed.55
The upcoming fall election turned the CCNY sit- in into a citywide
po liti cal controversy and foreshadowed the way in which racial backlash politics would dramatically shape electoral discourse in the ensuing de cades. State Senator John J. Marchi, who was opposing the liberal
Lindsay for the Republican nomination, attacked the mayor for not
taking swift police action at City and other cuny campuses.56 Actually, there had been at least one police offi cer on south campus an
132 | Transformation in New York City
undercover agent, whom the students had discovered, interrogated, and
released.57 Another candidate took the matter to court. City Comptroller Mario Procaccino, who was seeking the Demo cratic nomination for
mayor, obtained a Supreme Court injunction directing the college to
open on May 5, precisely the point at which students and administrators believed they were making substantial progress. It is important to
stress that there were many liberal administrators at CCNY and cuny
who favored negotiation rather than strong- arm tactics. Still, as ordered by the court, police opened the campus and occupied it for the
rest of the term as a wave of fi res, vandalism, and violent attacks on
Black students followed. The protest leaders and their faculty supporters responded with a continued boycott of classes. And the college lost
its president. Gallagher, who had been president for seventeen years, resigned on May 10.58 He said that po liti cally motivated outside forces
had made it impossible to carry on the pro cess of reason and persuasion.59 Indeed, that same day a New York Daily News editorial called
for the House Internal Security Committee to probe charges that Red
Cuba and Red China are helping to fi nance some of the worst campus
troublemakers. It called for a Hayakawa for City College, referring
to the authoritarian president of San Francisco State College who was
willingly doing the bidding of conservative California politicians, most
notably Governor Ronald Reagan. Their wish seemed to come true
with the selection of Joseph Copeland, a sixty- one- year- old botanist, as
acting president, whose commencement address equated the occupiers
of south campus with the Ku Klux Klan, sparking a walkout by graduating Black and Puerto Rican students.60
More than sixty students walked out of the commencement ceremonies at Madison Square Garden about midway through Copelands
speech when, after denouncing the old and new left, he went on to assail racial extremists, both white and black, who seek to impose a new
apartheid or racial separatism on American society at a moment when
for the fi rst time in three centuries the promise and possibility of racial
reconciliation have at last appeared on the horizon. Forces on the left,
he said, exploited every grievance, real and imaginary, in order to
create disorder and disruption. He garnered a combination of boos,
hissing, and applause while the students departed. He moved on to pillory racial quotas declaring that no real contributions can be made
by lowering standards to the level of per for mance of the ghetto high
schools. One young man replied to a query about why he had walked
out: Did you hear the speech? You had no choice.61
Transformation in New York City | 133
To be sure, many administrators at CCNY applauded the student
movement. In May 1969 George Paster, the dean of students at City
College, resigned in protest over what he viewed as the hidebound nature of academic institutions. People who want to change such institutions, he said, have to grab them by the scruff of the neck and yell:
please listen to me if they are ever to be heard. I honestly dont know
any way you can break through the rigidity of the institution other than
the way the blacks and Puerto Ricans have done it. He felt that students
used force to be heard not really to destroy. Moreover, in a point
echoed by administrators at other campuses, Paster felt that, once they
had been heard, we sat down to some of the best and most productive
discussions ever in the college they have taught us so much.62
It was not just college administrators, alumni, po liti cal conservatives,
or white ethnic politicians who found fault with the Black and Puerto
Rican student movement. Several Black leaders did as well. These critics
included many from the integrationist old guard, like Roy Wilkins, the
longtime executive director of the NAACP, and social demo crats, like
Bayard Rustin, for whom the identity politics of Black Power was anathema. But since their target was Black nationalism as much as Black studies, they sometimes invoked an inaccurate or superfi cial conception of
Black studies. In their hurt pride in themselves, and in their outrage,
they have called retreat from the tough and trying battle of a minority
for dignity and equality, Wilkins said of student militants. They dont
call it retreat, of course. They have all sorts of fancy rationalizations for
their course. Wilkins was particularly aghast at any proposal that
seemed geared for Black students only, calling this black Jim Crow
studies or black academic separatism.63 Bayard Rustin, a longtime
civil rights activist and key adviser to Martin Luther King, echoed this
concern over separatism and added two others. Black studies, he wrote,
must not be used for the purpose of image- building or to enable young
black students to escape the challenges of the university by setting up a
program of soul courses that they can just play with and pass. And it
must not become subordinated to po liti cal and ideological goals or
used to train cadres of ghetto organizers.64
But the BPRSC at City College also had important supporters among
the citywide Black and Puerto Rican leadership. Louis Nunez, executive
director of Aspira, a Puerto Rican educational advocacy or ga ni za tion,
and an alumnus of City College, expressed his support for the fi ve demands to the Board of Higher Education. City College, he argued, must
do in the 1970s what it did so well in the 1930s, namely, raise up
134 | Transformation in New York City
from poverty, in one generation, an entire group. He endorsed open
admissions, but cautioned that cuny cannot blandly assume that mere
admittance meets the problem. The curriculum would have to be updated, faculty- to- student ratios reassessed, and the qualifi cations for
faculty reconsidered.65
The student uprisings across the city induced the Board of Higher
Education to accelerate and broaden an open admissions plan slated to
begin in 1975. The original plan was to assign most high school graduates to community colleges rather than four- year, or se nior, colleges, but
student protest won a much larger number of slots at the se nior colleges and moved up the launch date of the admissions plan to 1970. Of
course, the students had not led the call for open admissions, but their
support for quotas to increase the Black and Puerto Rican student population had inspired intense opposition. Allen Ballard, a Black CCNY
professor, director of seek, and scholar of Black education, argued that,
by moving from a quota arrangement specifi cally designed to serve the
needs of Black and Puerto Rican students to a position of open admissions, the board both diverted the thrust of the Black and Puerto Rican
demands and gained a white middle class constituency for the program.
Ballard, it should be noted, was the fi rst Black director of seek, and he
implemented the BPRSC demand to permit the hiring of social workers,
rather than solely clinical psychologists, as seek counselors. Still, the
impact of open admissions on Black and Puerto Rican educational opportunity was substantial. I dont know, as of this writing, Ballard
wrote in 1973, whether open admissions will be a success or not.
However, it has opened vistas for Black and Puerto Rican high school
youth previously condemned to a life of poverty because their averages
and SAT scores did meet the requirements of the City University of New
York.66 Indeed, the activism of 1968 and 1969 irrevocably altered the
character and mission of the cuny colleges. For their part, alumni saw
open admissions as the death knell of a great university, and donations
plunged.67
The impact of open admissions was stunning: thirty- fi ve thousand
freshmen entered cuny campuses in 1970, a 75 percent increase from
1969. One- quarter of these entering students were Black or Latino. According to New York Post columnist Murray Kempton, The proof
is not in, but there are grounds for real hope that the deprived can
compete. . . . For the fi rst time, a student at Benjamin Franklin can believe it when his counselor tells him that, with work, he has a chance to
go to college, and not just any college, but City College.68 After open
Transformation in New York City | 135
admissions, 75 percent of New York City high school graduates attended college, a rate well ahead of the national average. According to
historian Conrad Dyer, two- thirds of these students would have been
ineligible to attend college, even community college, under the old admissions standards. In 1975, fi ve times as many Black and Puerto Rican
students were enrolled in the se nior colleges than in 1969. The Black
community struggle for greater access to public higher education also
created many new administrative positions for African Americans. Just
as Charles Hurst became the fi rst Black college president in Chicago
during this time, Richard Trent achieved that status in New York in
1970, when he became president of the newly created Medgar Evers
College, a four- year CUNY institution located in Bedford- Stuyvesant.69
The quest for Black studies encountered much greater diffi culties. To
the extent that there was a Black revolution on campus, it was often
followed by a counterrevolution, an administrative attempt to contain
or delimit the expansive vision of student activists and their faculty allies. This is precisely what happened at City College. Over the summer,
the Board of Higher Education had rejected the demand to establish a
separate school of Third World studies, but it authorized cuny colleges
to set up urban and ethnic studies departments. Without consulting the
BPRSC or Black and Puerto Rican professors, including the two
Christian and Cartey that City had hired to design such a program,
acting CCNY president Joseph Copeland announced the creation of a
new Urban and Ethnic Studies department and appointed Osborne E.
Scott, a former Army chaplain and current vice president of the American Leprosy Missions, as chair.70 Wilfred Cartey called the two- course
department an insult not only to the black and Puerto Rican community, but to City College itself. This move by a college president to
grant a Black studies program and then turn around and contain or
undermine it was not unique to City College. Most colleges around the
country failed to fi nance or build the kinds of innovative, large, and
comprehensive African American studies units that Black student activists and their faculty allies had envisioned. At City, this development
was transparent, as Copeland had been hired as a revanchist president.
His quest found blunt expression when he publicly called Professor
Cartey shiftless. Calling it an insidious and malicious remark, Cartey
threatened a lawsuit, declaring, Im not seeking an apology. Im seeking
redress for a group. For his part, Copeland claimed to have never
associated that word in my understanding with any racial group. But
this supposed navet is contradicted by his evident awareness of the
136 | Transformation in New York City
connotations of the word in his original statement. Hes too goddamn
shiftless and you can use that word in your story there shiftless, he
had declared.71
Students at City College shunned the department, kept up a battle,
and fi nally won a Black studies department three years later. In the fall
of 1972, at the urging of a Black faculty and student panel, the college
figure 15. The new open admissions policy quickly changed the demographics of
City College, making it better refl ect the racial composition of local high schools.
Transformation in New York City | 137
made an offer of tenure to Leonard Jeffries, a 1971 cuny PhD in po litical science who had been teaching Black studies at San Jose State College.72 He served for more than two de cades as chair before stepping
down as a result of controversy generated by a televised speech that
traded in generalizations and pandering a speech that called whites
and Blacks, ice and sun people, respectively, and singled out Jews, from
the broader category of whites, as perpetrators of racism. As a rule, a
long- serving chair is not a sign of departmental vitality. Jeffries left the
academic research track early and became active in a grassroots circle
of Afrocentric educators and community members. In the context of
intense demand for Black studies scholars and limited supply, Jeffries
exemplifi ed a phenomenon of graduate students and newly minted
PhDs hired into se nior leadership roles very early in their academic
careers. But the arc of Black studies at CCNY is instructive: a comparative, expansive model was replaced by an administrative shell, and
what fi nally emerged was a unit known for narrow nationalism and
disconnected from either scholarship and research or a broader social
movement.
The tendency by many to credit or blame the City College protest
with the onset of open admissions has, along with the legacy of the criminal prosecution, worked to suppress an acknowledgement of the signifi –
cance of the struggle at Brooklyn College. But the students there achieved
a great deal. We were responsible for changing the climate of the campus, says Orlando Pile, now a physician.73 After open admissions, the
number of Black and Puerto Rican students rose signifi cantly, but as
Askia Davis acknowledges, it wasnt just Blacks and Latinos who benefi ted from open admissions a lot of working- class whites had been
shut out too. Other reforms included the establishment of the AfroAmerican Studies Institute and the Puerto Rican Studies Institute, which
later became departments; signifi cant changes in required courses; and
more Black and Puerto Rican counselors.74
A signifi cant, though controversial, outgrowth of the protest was the
creation in 1972 of a new division in the college called the School for
Contemporary Studies (SCS), whose mission was to be present oriented, concerned primarily with the social problems that are engaging
our contemporary world. Faculty included Eli Messenger of the New
York Marxist School and the prominent po liti cal economist Sumner
Rosen. Until its demise in 1976, the school was in downtown Brooklyn,
quite a distance from the main campus, and it offered a unique fi eld
studies requirement: students did internships in legal ser vices agencies,
138 | Transformation in New York City
health ser vice organizations, and penal institutions. A special feature
of the program, according to the SCS dean Carlos Russell, will be an
attempt to blend theory and practice towards the creation of a scholaractivist. As a two- year program, it also required students to have an
additional major in another division of the college. As Dean Russell recalls, the program exemplifi ed the call for relevance raised in the 1960s
by bringing the streets and classrooms together.75
But at least one student leader was ambivalent. Askia Davis was
of two minds about the School for Contemporary Studies. I was anxious about it, he recalls. He saw the circumstances of its location as
putting Blacks and Latinos at this extension campus downtown and off
the main campus. He felt this undercut their mission of reimagining
Brooklyn College as a whole. We were just beginning to transform the
main campus, he notes, and that was very, very important to us.
The student activists debated these issues. They respected Russell but
were not responsible for his hiring.76
An evaluation in 1976 found that some students appear to have
been profoundly affected by their experience in fi eld study. But the report cast light on an ironic outcome of the student movement. The SCS,
the evaluation committee felt, had been designed for the bright, activist students of the late 1960s, but it had come to serve the openadmissions studentsworking- class Black, Puerto Rican, and white
students whose educational needs were different. The students needed
remediation and skills development, and they were not being suffi –
ciently prepared at SCS for the transfer, after two years, to the main
Brooklyn College campus in Midwood. The report called for more
counseling and tutoring and a greater focus on writing and the development of academic skills. It lamented that Brooklyn College faculty
seemed to view the SCS curriculum, faculty, and students as beneath the
standards of the college, and it concluded that racism shaped their judgments. Evidently, a majority of the students at the SCS were Black, and
whites on the main campus commonly referred to it as the black
school. Midwood faculty should not describe the SCS as a dumping
ground for unwanted students, the committee warned, nor should
they describe it as the black school nor should they commit the serious
educational error of cruelly and publicly pre- judging the ability of the
Schools students not on the basis of their ability or per for mance but
merely on their attendance at the School. Adding to this problem were
internal rifts between Russell and his faculty, and concerns about effective school leadership. The SCS did not survive the citys fi scal crisis.77
Transformation in New York City | 139
Critics of open admissions always remained, arguing that high admissions standards had made City and Brooklyn top schools. Only at
cuny, a seek professor wryly observed, were those standards viewed
as fi xed, immutable and exempt from social and po liti cal realities.78
Albert H. Bowker, former chancellor of cuny, thought racial resentment drove the attacks on open admissions. Theres been a lot of white
fl ight from City College, he observed. And most of the people who
write about this are City College graduates who are mad.79 In a fateful
conjuncture, open admissions coincided with the New York City fi scal
crisis of the 1970s, and the sharp drop in funding seemed to make the
discourse of failure shrouding open admissions a self- fulfi lling prophecy. The severe bud get cuts climaxed in the retrenchment of 1976,
when the State of New York took over the City University of New
York, laid off many faculty, and imposed tuition for the fi rst time.80 The
case load of seek counselor Fran Geteles doubled from fi fty to one hundred students. Class sizes also grew sharply, she says, which made it
much harder to help students as before. Remedial classes had been no
more than twenty; now some had forty students.81
At Brooklyn there was a similar surge in enrollments, and a failure
to add the necessary resources and ser vices for the new student body,
prompting a high dropout rate. According to one estimate, in 1970,
thirteen hundred students entered Brooklyn College who would not
otherwise have been eligible. This included several hundred minority
students in the older seek and EOP programs. But the majority of openadmission students hailed from the white working class. They were
not welcomed with open arms but faced stigma. The tracking arising
from the need for remediation was expected but reinforced their separation from the rest of the college. By 1974, a signifi cant portion of the
fi rst open admissions class had dropped out, while the share of open
admissions students in succeeding classes had grown to constitute onehalf of the entering class. Then the fi scal crisis hit, sinking the whole experiment. Large numbers of remedial teachers lost their jobs, and some
entrance requirements were reintroduced. We have come full circle, a
student said.82
As a result, an increasingly negative view of open admissions took
root. One observer summed up the prevailing view by the early 1980s:
it shuffl es its poor students through four years of over- crowded and
under- taught classes then pushes them out the door with a worthless
diploma.83 Still, those worthless diplomas brought thousands of
Black and Puerto Rican graduates into the middle class. But the attacks
140 | Transformation in New York City
took their toll. By 1990, some of the creators and proponents of open
admissions were lamenting that the college had made such a radical
change with too little resources and planning. Allen Ballard thinks
cuny should have implemented a well articulated, gradually phased in,
well funded operation aimed at a saveable number of Black and Puerto
Rican students in the high schools. Former seek Professor Leslie Berger
feels similarly: It was almost criminal to let them come in and let them
fail because of the lack of ser vice. We knew what we needed. It was no
mystery.84 In 1998, Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani declared that
open enrollment is a failure, and the cuny Board of Trustees replaced it with standardized tests for admissions and eliminated all remedial courses from the se nior colleges. As a City College student wrote,
The avenue for education for many NY high school students has been
closed.85
This discourse of failure obscures the fact that a generation of lawyers, civil servants, teachers, artists, and social workers in New York
City got their start through open admissions, notwithstanding its severe
underfunding and other fl aws. Black and Puerto Rican college students
in the late 1960s rejected market- driven approaches to higher education. They insisted upon the right of working- class African American
and Puerto Ricans to receive the benefi ts of public higher education
in New York City. As Barbara Christian put it in 1969, a much overlooked factor is that City College is supported by taxes. And Black and
Puerto Rican people pay taxes just like everybody else. Yet they are not
in any way represented in the ethnic make- up of the College.86
Inspiring this generation was the conviction that se niors at poorly
funded and poorly performing public high schools should not be punished for societys failure to provide high- quality secondary education
for all, but rather, should be rewarded for their determination and desire to gain a college education. These student activists understood that
college was critical to social mobility, especially since workers of color
in New York City had already been hit hard by deindustrialization and
automation.87 Its important to appreciate that the struggle for affi rmative action, open admissions, and Black and Third World studies was
centered at public universities as much as, if not more than, at private
ones. This was a struggle not of elites but of the children of migrants
and immigrants. Even with the restoration of stricter admissions requirements and the increased tuition in the 1990s, cuny campuses still
felt the legacy of the 1960s. The student struggles brought an irrevocable
Transformation in New York City | 141
change to urban higher education and opened doors that were diffi cult
to entirely shut. A related but different kind of student movement was
taking place at the same time on campuses of historically Black colleges
and universities. All of these diverse campus struggles shared the fundamental goal of using higher education to advance the economic security
and social status of African Americans in the United States.
142
Black student protest at white colleges in the North and West garnered
extensive mainstream media coverage, yet most Black collegians in the
late 1960s still attended historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and students on these campuses, too, were up in arms. But journalists gave these struggles scant attention, and historians have given
them even less. If the goal of the civil rights movement was to open the
doors of white universities to more Black students and faculty, why did
Black colleges become such volatile sites of struggle? As chapter 1 illustrates, part of the answer lies in the shift among youth away from the
discourse of integration toward a new politics of self- determination.
Black students wanted to save public Black institutions from being integrated into white- run universities, and to generally strengthen, upgrade, and modernize HBCUs, making them exemplars of Black selfdetermination. Black colleges were vital institutions: even as emblems
of Jim Crow, they testifi ed to the signal importance of education and
striving in Black life and culture since the nineteenth century. Moreover,
since most Black students in the late 1960s still attended Black colleges,
they became a very logical base for the student movement. In 1968,
150,000 Black students, or 61 percent of all Blacks enrolled in college,
attended HBCUs.1 There were three main goals of the student movement on Black campuses: to increase Black consciousness, upgrade academics and improve the physical plant, and fi nally, expand student
participation in governance. Tragically, as the struggle escalated, stuChapter 5
Toward a Black University
Radicalism, Repression, and Reform at Historically
Black Colleges
Toward a Black University | 143
dents on many campuses faced an onslaught of lethal violence by police
forces.
This powerful, bottom- up push by students to modernize and transform Black colleges came at a time of intense policy focus on the desegregation of educational institutions. There was anxiety and concern
about the future of Black colleges: would Black students shun them?
Would courts and legislatures close them? Would integration be a oneway street? Would Black communities lose control over another set of
educational institutions? In many respects, the student movement prefi gured and encouraged the transition in federal education policy away
from support for strict integration toward support for public Black colleges as part of a pluralist educational system. Black students were laying claim to Black colleges and struggling to reshape them for a new
day. During the 1970s, a battle raged between the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the presidents of historically Black colleges over the best
way to achieve educational parity for Blacks in southern public higher
education. HBCU leaders feared that the federal court decision Adams
v. Richardson, directing states to dismantle race- based dual systems of
public higher education, would spell the end of Black- controlled institutions. But the judge in Adams ruled that states could not close HBCUs
to achieve parity. It turns out that Adams unlocked new funding that
was used to improve rather than dismantle Black schools as states
moved toward unitary systems. Student activism to save and improve
historically Black colleges was an unheralded but critical factor in producing this outcome. In the late 1960s, as white colleges intensifi ed recruitment of African Americans, enrollment fi gures in Black colleges
began to decline; but they stabilized in the 1970s and rose in the 1980s.2
As we saw in the fi rst chapter, the students at Howard University in
Washington, D.C., were pivotal in launching the Black student movement. Their struggle intensifi ed the following year, erupting in a major
showdown with the administration that ushered in a season of change.
Founded after the Civil War, Howard was considered among the best
of Black colleges. In an unusual arrangement, Howard defi nes itself as
private although it receives the bulk of its funding from appropriations
by the United States Congress. When students returned to Howard in
the fall of 1968, they noted some changes since the protests of the previous spring they had the option of taking several new African and
African American studies courses. But many students still hoped to see
Howard made into a Black university and for students to be invested
with greater power. Activists had won a big victory in spring elections,
144 | Toward a Black University
bringing into offi ce strong supporters of what incoming student council
president Lewis Myers called the black agenda. QT Jackson, the new
head of the student assembly, declared to a skeptical audience of faculty
and administrators at the Opening Day ceremonies: We intend to
bring blackness to Howard University. Black brotherhood, Black unity,
Black thought, and Black action.3
What did students and intellectuals mean by a Black university?
Generally advocates meant either the establishment of a brand new entity, or the pro cess by which Negro colleges would transform themselves for the post- Jim- Crow era. As Vincent Harding, historian at Spelman College, put it, The search for the Black University is really a part
of our larger search for a sense of direction and life in the new, blackoriented time that is upon us. In his view, a key challenge of the era
was fi nding pathways toward unity and solidarity, toward inner
strength and communal wisdom. A Black university marked a decisive
rejection of the view promoted by Booker T. Washington that higher
education should prepare Black youth to live in world of white domination and control, and instead sought to enter that stream of global
anti- colonialism which refuses to educate young people primarily for
the ser vice of the colonizers. The overriding goal was to serve the
Black community, whose needs, Harding and others insisted, were different from the needs of the white community. He called the quest a
clear response to Frantz Fanons challenge to risk the creation of new
institutions and new modes of thought on behalf of a new humanity.
Rather than constitute a rejection of academic discipline, a Black university would, in Hardings view, make even greater demands for rigor
and commitment from its students.4 Sociology graduate student Gerald
McWorter similarly saw a Black university as a prophetic institution
that ought to be focused on the Afro- American community. Blackness,
he argued, is an affi rmation of an identity in de pen dent of the historical
human evils of modern nation- states, and is closely tied to the emerging
international identity of man in his struggle for a better life. The Black
university must seek the greatest possible psychological and structural
in de pen dence from the oppressor and replace U.S. individualism with
communalism.5
Some proponents saw a Black university as a more effi cient alternative to the scattering of underfunded, understaffed Black studies units
at white colleges; it would be a means to consolidate Black intellectual
and pedagogical talent and maximize its infl uence. Vincent Harding
promoted this view. More controversially, he urged Black students and
Toward a Black University | 145
faculty in the North to reject the lure of integration, which in his view
was aiding in the destruction of Black colleges.6 The quest to transform
HBCUs would not be easy. The novelist John Oliver Killens had been a
writer in residence at Fisk University in Nashville, where he dreamed of
a Black communiversity a place to unify Black people and bring
them home. Human reconstruction is the goal of the black university, he wrote (echoing a common theme), in order to rid the world of
niggers. Killens conceded that the quest for a Black university at Fisk
faced many challenges, including the board of trustees and white
faculty who, he said, might be liberal or radical but would likely envision an Afro- American Berkeley rather than a W. E. B. DuBois University. But the most insidious group in opposition was our own
black brothers and sisters of the faculty, who feared white opposition
and wanted Fisk to be a fi nishing school for nice young ladies and
gentlemen.7
It was not only Black radicals who saw Howard as a seedbed for
revolutionary change. The Black Revolution is upon us and it wont go
away just because we ignore it or refuse to believe that its spokesmen
mean what they say.8 So declared retired Marine Corps counterinsurgency specialist Robert Corson, who served as a visiting professor in
the economics department at Howard during the 1968 1969 year. In a
remarkable encounter, Bernard Fall, a Howard professor who was doing research in South Vietnam, met Corson there and impressed upon
him the great urgency of the Black revolution back home. Black students were on the precipice of revolution, Fall insisted, and stopping
them would entail winning over their hearts and minds. When Professor Fall died from a mine explosion the very next day, Corson decided
to investigate his admonition. After a friend in the Justice Department
confi rmed Falls fears, Corson returned to the states and got himself
hired at Howard.
When he arrived, administrators told him that student protest was
linked to a Communist plot. They were petrifi ed of black student
power, Corson wrote, and they blamed the whole protest on a sinister
Communist conspiracy. The student demands were unreasonable, administrators complained to him, and based on a Marxist view of
shared authority in running a university. Moreover, nonstudents were
using Howard as a center for the distribution of black power literature
to other Negro colleges. This is the problem that Corson, the counterinsurgency specialist, came to solve. A classic cold war liberal, he wrote
a book about his year at Howard and used it to make a plea for the
146 | Toward a Black University
greater integration of African Americans, particularly college graduates,
in American life. In his view, Black revolutionaries had the power to
lure Black college students into a violent revolutionary struggle unless
white society changed its ways. He ended his book with an appeal to
the nation: To eliminate racism, make use of the full potential of the
black minority, and avoid a black revolution to bring about meaningful, positive, peaceful social change is a task for all Americans.9
Student government leaders at Howard University took advantage of
their control of student activity fees to host a fi ve- day national conference in November called Toward A Black University (tabu). Two
thousand people attended and heard Stokely Carmichael, Harold Cruse,
and Ron Karenga exhort students to make their education relevant to
the total black community. Nathan Hare, who had been fi red by Howard the previous summer, declined to attend. In his view, unless every
Howard student comes armed with a shotgun and Molotov cocktail
they are defenseless against an Amos n Andy administration. But the
conference was intended for discussion not confrontation, and it featured
seventy- fi ve workshops analyzing every aspect of the Black university.
During those bright warm fi ve days, a journalist wrote, the Howard
campus was full of dashikis, Afros, undercover FBI agents and revolutionary talk.10
Stokely Carmichaels two speeches attracted packed audiences. His
keynote before two thousand people hammered home a message he had
been telling students around the country: Youve got to quit talking
and start acting.11 And as he had just done at San Francisco State College, Carmichael openly and forcefully advocated armed struggle. We
are for revolutionary violence, he declared, adding: The system has
begun to recognize this and implemented counterrevolutionary violence. He insisted that being a revolutionary required violence. In order to become a revolutionary, Carmichael said, one must be willing
to pick up the gun and kill for ones own people not kill ones own
people.12 Several months later, the eminent scholar St. Clair Drake
noted that Carmichael was going around giving speeches promoting a
kind of violence by students.13 Given the intense federal surveillance of
Black radicals, and the potential for counterrevolutionary violence, as
Carmichael put it, it is perhaps not very surprising that he soon relocated to the African nation of Guinea.
The Black arts movement had an empowering and inspiring relationship to the student movement at Howard and all over the country.
tabu featured per for mances by poet Amiri Baraka, actor Ossie Davis,
Toward a Black University | 147
poet Ted Joans, jazz drummer Max Roach, and jazz vocalist Abby Lincoln. An odd note at the conference was the pre sen ta tion by Harold
Cruse, author of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, a pop u lar polemic
known for its attack on virtually every major Black leader, past and
present. Cruse abruptly stopped in the middle of his address before
figure 16. Greatly admired by black college students, Stokely Carmichael, a leader of
the Student Non- Violent Coordinating Committee, spoke at colleges across the country
in 1968 and 1969 and inspired students to engage in direct action protest.
148 | Toward a Black University
about seven hundred people and left the stage, citing illness. Student
leader Lewis Myers recalls that Cruse had come in for a lot of criticism
at the conference, and that he had a diffi cult time holding his own with
either the academics or the young radicals. Still, Myers admired Cruse
and felt he was misunderstood.14
The economist Robert S. Browne gave a paper, Financing the Black
University, that mixed practicality with a vision for far- reaching change.
An underappreciated scholar and activist, Browne exemplifi ed the idealism and commitment of young intellectuals in the movement. An early
critic of the war in Vietnam, where he had worked for the U.S. government in the late 1950s, Browne later left his teaching position at Fairleigh Dickinson University to devote himself full time to building Black
institutions. He founded and directed the Black Economic Research
Center in Harlem, which published the important journal Review of
Black Po liti cal Economy; he also established the Emergency Land Fund
to save Black- owned land in the South, and the 21st Century Foundation to encourage and channel Black philanthropy to social justice and
economic development projects in Black communities. At tabu Browne
commended the student organizers of the conference. In my travels
around the country I have had indelibly impressed upon me the fervency with which todays young black college men and women are
striving to discover new forms in which they can express their desire to
play a meaningful role in building a new future for Afro- Americans.
The creation of a black university is perhaps the most promising
means for realizing these objectives, he declared as he outlined a variety of forms such an initiative might take and offered innovative fundraising strategies. But he urged activists to be realistic about the touchy
subject of funding. We must be cautious in accepting money from others, to be sure, he said. But money we must have if we are going to
make notable improvements in our position. My recommendation would
be to admit this unpalatable truth and to accept fi nancing from accepted white sources, at least for our capital plant.15
To be sure, making Howard a Black university was not a universal
quest among Howard students. Many wondered if this was even an appropriate mission for an institution of higher education, and others
disagreed with Black nationalism. Some of these critics formed a group,
Students for an Educational Institution, which opposed the push for a
Black university. It is important to state that a sizeable cohort of more
traditional or conservative students could be found on all Black college
campuses. A Black university, this group argued, would not adequately
Toward a Black University | 149
prepare students to live in a diverse society, and some felt that overemphasizing racial consciousness might still creativity and undermine a
broader collegiate training.16 While the conferees were debating how
to make existing colleges more responsive to the Negro revolution,
other Howard students worried that such a setting would ill prepare
them to compete in the job market. All right, conceded one young
woman, Howard is bourgeois and not revolutionary, but what are
they going to replace it with? Where are they going to get $50 million
to even replace this school?17
At the same time, the tabu conference strongly infl uenced the students
in attendance, including Ewart Brown, a leader of the Howard protests
in 1968 as well as 1969. He hoped that a Black university would completely obliterate the Negro concept, by which he meant the concern
for white authority and validation, which he felt was a constant presence.18 In his view, a Black university did not have to exclude whites: A
black university is not a hatred school. However, he acknowledged
that some students had a different view. Evidently, white reporters had
been barred from the workshops, and white professors had been asked
to leave, causing radio station WWDC to blast discrimination at Howard.19 The Bermuda- born Brown noted some of the excesses of Black
nationalism but saw this as a charged moment in history, a stage in politi cal development. Commenting on the recent expulsion of whites
from meetings, he said, Now obviously there is no merit whatsoever;
no logical reason for anyone to go in and chase whites out of a building; but you see this is where we are. There are many reasons to hate
white people, he observed. But its not constructive. The focus needs to
be on black people, not white people.20 Brown also thought that arming the masses was a bad idea.21 For student council president Lewis
Myers, the conference was a turning point in black collegiate life and
in black life. It was one of the major events of that time. I had never
seen anything like it. He felt that tabu solidifi ed the black student
movement. From 1966 to 1968, Black student activism had been emerging in various locations in isolation. But tabu brought a lot of people
together. Moreover, according to Myers, who went on to become a leading civil rights attorney, the conference shook Howard.22
The shaking began in earnest that winter. Early in 1969, protest
erupted at Howards professional schools, hardly typical locations of
student unrest. These future lawyers, social workers, and doctors took
over buildings and boycotted classes in an effort to upgrade a Howard
education. And in keeping with the Black Power ethos of serving the
150 | Toward a Black University
people, students in all these divisions pressed administrators to make
the curriculum and training more relevant to the needs of Black communities. In January students at the medical school began a boycott of
anatomy classes.23 According to Ewart Brown, the Howard anatomy
department was not adequately preparing students for the national
boards, and as a result, Howard students had low passing rates. No
stranger to protest, Brown had occupied the administration building
the previous spring as an undergraduate. He reported that, of the 106
students in his class, not a single one broke the boycott. Their target
was department chair Montague Cobb, a pioneering African American
anthropologist, prolifi c scholar, and later president of the NAACP. He
was a giant. A very talented man, recalls Brown. In class he was an
entertainer, a performer. Class was like a theater. He sometimes played
the violin, Brown said. Passing the board, however, was a secondary concern.24 After an eighteen- day boycott, the university announced
that Cobb, who had been head of the department for twenty- one years,
would not be reappointed as head after June. But following a faculty
outcry, Howard offset the embarrassment by naming him a Distinguished Professor of Anatomy.25
In February, students at the Howard Law School began a boycott of
classes and a week later seized the main building and chained the doors
shut. Ironically, Patricia Roberts Harris had just been installed as the
fi rst female dean of the Law School, and she stepped into the job just as
students escalated their tactics. Administrators had previously agreed to
a series of demands, including a reduction in the semester hours required for graduation, the addition of courses more relevant to the
practice of law in Black communities, extended hours at the library,
and a new grading system. Showing how seriously they took their role
in making change, the students occupied the building in order to win
student participation in the committee charged with implementing
these reforms.26 According to Joseph Clair, president of the second- year
law class, students wanted a voice in the operation of this law school
to make it more relevant to the students here and the communities to
which we hope to return. The administration granted other demands
but was adamant in not ceding such an elevated role in governance to the
students. Faced with a court order to leave the building, the future lawyers departed. And so did Dean Harris. She resigned her position as dean
after only one month, in protest over President James M. Nabrit Jr.s
failure to keep her and the law faculty involved in discussions with students over resolving the boycott, which continued until mid- March.27
Toward a Black University | 151
In another illustration of the widespread nature of graduate and professional student discontent, students in the School of Social Work boycotted classes for more than a month later that semester. They wanted a
greater role in hiring faculty and, like the other students in professional
divisions, wanted to reshape Howards educational mission and product. Student Arthur J. Cox, from the Bronx, explained, Most of us, including the white students, came to Howards Social Work School looking for that something extra that would help us be more effective in the
black community.28
Dissent soon spread to the undergraduate college. The campus newspaper reprinted the previous years demands and noted that a few had
been met, but that the underlying issue of power has been avoided.
Students deserved a voice in running Howard, the student editors
believed.29 And here at the Capstone of Negro Education, declared
Ewart Brown, there still is no Black Studies program.30 Indeed, the
professional school protests turned out to be a mere prelude for an even
bigger convulsion in May, when militant students took over eight
buildings and the faculty voted to close the campus. There was more
student protest across the United States strikes, building seizures,
demonstrations in May 1969 than ever before in American history,
although it would escalate even further the following spring. A coordinating committee of graduates and undergraduates or ga nized the May
protests at Howard. Still, only about two hundred students, considerably
fewer than the previous spring, participated in the occupations, but activists from the city joined in. Members of the Black United Front, several
clergy, Marion Berry of the Student Non- Violent Coordinating Committee, and the ever- present Jimmy Garrett from Federal City College
all gave support. No longer do we conceive of Howard University as
an educational community separate and distinct from the total black
community, an activist insisted. There is now a united black community of which a black university becomes the educational apparatus for
defi ning black values and black goals.
The students hoped to dramatically reshape governance of the university, calling for an equal student say over faculty hiring and promotion and the participation of community representatives in such
matters. They also wanted an increase in Black faculty. A sign on the
anthropology- sociology building declared: This is a Black Struggle. And
protesters called for the sociology department, whose faculty was predominantly white, to be desegregated to the point of having at least
an equal balance of Blacks and whites. The support of off- campus
152 | Toward a Black University
Black activists emboldened Howard students but also entailed the loss
of some control. According to the press, youth from the community
threw rocks at cars and set fi res, which included a fi re set at a building
housing the Reserve Offi cer Training Corps. The nonstudent activists
evidently took the lead in asking white journalists to leave a rally, and
according to one account, at least a half dozen Negroes carry ing clubs
observed the departure of white reporters and cameramen.31 Babalola
Cole, a lecturer in po liti cal science, praised the 1968 protest, calling it
well- organized and not destructive. The one in 1969, he felt, was not
bad but there were some unpleasant overtones.32 The presence of outside activists in the occupied buildings reportedly paved the way for the
faculty to endorse President Nabrits resolution to get rid of the revolutionaries.33 Nabrit went on tele vi sion and warned students to leave
or face forcible removal. It would be the fi rst time in Howard history
that administrators had moved to arrest protesting students. Many students decided to exit, but others students and nonstudents stayed,
and federal marshals moved in, arresting twenty and ending the threeday seizure.34
The administration successfully reopened the campus, but their subsequent behavior caused a federal judge to dismiss contempt charges
against the twenty defendants. Evidently without consulting counsel,
Howard offi cials purchased full- page advertisements in two major
newspapers at the outset of criminal proceedings, providing the administrations account of the protests and their view of student culpability.
Defense attorneys were outraged and the judge dumbfounded at such
obvious interference: The Court has concluded that in light of these
circumstances which fall short of contempt it will nonetheless be diffi –
cult if not impossible to select an impartial jury for the remaining trials
scheduled this month. The judge urged Howard offi cials to make responsible use of the summer months to make genuine progress on the
problems at hand and recommended that students engage in permissible forms of dissent upon returning to campus in the fall.35
Since the Black Power era, Howard has continued to be regarded as
a traditional university conservative in many respects and certainly
not exemplifying the idea of a Black university advanced in the late
1960s. Yet the student revolts that rocked Howard from 1966 to 1969
left a lasting legacy, and more strides were taken to fulfi ll the demands
of students than is perhaps remembered or publicly commemorated.
Ewart Brown, who later served as the premier of Bermuda and joined
the Howard University Board of Trustees in 1990, believes his generation
Toward a Black University | 153
had an enduring effect on Howard. Howard is a different place. Many
of the directions it took were irreversible, such as making a commitment
to be excellent as Howard University (not as the black Harvard); and a
commitment to producing black professionals whose work could relieve
some of the diffi culties facing black people. The medical school, for
example, takes on diabetes, hypertension, and sickle cell projects and
outreach. All of this, he feels, is a result of the challenges of the late
1960s. In fact a Center for Sickle Cell Disease opened in 1971, followed
by a new, spacious hospital in 1975.36
A Department of African American Studies was established at Howard, and the po liti cal scientist Russell Adams served as chair for more
than thirty years. In 1970 Andrew Billingsley, a scholar closely associated with the Black studies movement, was named vice president for
academic affairs and charged with reor ga niz ing graduate studies and
several professional schools. Billingsley helped bring many changes to
Howard, including establishing an Institute for Urban Affairs and Research, which included a University Without Walls Program and a University Year for Action, which offered course credit for ser vice projects
in disadvantaged communities. Billingsley also helped launch new professional programs in business, human ecol ogy, education, and telecommunications and several new PhD programs. He was recruited to serve
as president of Morgan State University, in Baltimore, in 1975, and said
one of the attractions was a chance to build an urban university. Thats
what I came to do. The idea was to produce black leadership.37
It was not just urban, cosmopolitan Howard that was rocked by
student unrest in this era. Serious student or ga niz ing and militant acts
of protest became commonplace on historically Black college campuses
large and small, public and private. Much of this activity, including
even violent clashes, fell off the national media radar, especially because
the spring of 1969 saw scores of elite universities Cornell, Harvard,
Berkeley, City College overtaken by student protest. The Orangeburg
Massacre had deeply affected Black college students, reminding them
of the ever- present potential for police violence. For some, the April
1969 building occupation at Cornell, where Black students had armed
themselves in anticipation of a white student assault and emerged unscathed, prompted a serious consideration of armed self- defense. On
April 28, 1969, the very same month, seventy- fi ve students at tiny Voorhees College, an Episcopalian college in Denmark, South Carolina, less
than thirty miles from Orangeburg, took over the library- administration
building. Fearing police aggression, they brought rifl es.
154 | Toward a Black University
They christened the college the liberated Malcolm X University,
plastering the walls with pictures of Malcolm X, as well as antiwar
posters emblazoned with No Vietcong ever called me nigger. They
threw leafl ets out the windows explaining that their weapons were
solely for self- defense. We arent going to allow another Orangeburg,
they boldly declared.38 The students desired an Afro- American studies
program, additional Black faculty, and greater collegiate involvement in
the local community. Against the wishes of the president, the board of
trustees acceded to po liti cal pressure and called in the National Guard.
But quick- thinking faculty intervention helped defuse the crisis before
the Guard arrived on campus. Physics professor Bernie Dingle convinced the students to leave the building. According to another faculty
member, Dingle persuaded the kids to come out and get on the bus and
go to jail and put down their guns cause otherwise someone was going
to get killed. And they followed him out and onto the bus.39 No shots
were fi red, there was no damage, and no one was hurt, but thirty- six
students were later arrested, and a large number suspended, at the insistence of the board of trustees. The president of Voorhees had granted
amnesty to the students, but Governor Robert E. McNair insisted that
an example must be set, and eight students were tried the following
year. The college administration was predominantly Black, but it was
subordinate to the board, which was predominantly white. The college
was closed for the rest of the semester.40
Some of the Black faculty and administrators supported the students
and recognized the need for reform. John Potts, the president of Voorhees, had actually reached an agreement with the students during the
occupation, and later affi rmed that he had not been under duress. He
promised to or ga nize a Black studies program and end compulsory
class attendance after freshman year. In May, Bernie Dingle, an African
American who served as chairman of the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors, presented a petition on behalf
of the association chapter supporting Potts for not wanting to call in
law enforcement, and calling for the resignation of the chairman of the
board for usurping administrative prerogatives.41
In February 1970, Voorhees abruptly announced that the contracts
of Dingle and four other Black professors would not be renewed the
following year. Even though Dingle had helped to peacefully end the
protest of the previous spring, the college, in one colleagues view,
seemed to suspect him of having caused it.42 Students quickly mobilized
a protest: they called for the removal of the Reverend J. Kenneth Mor-
Toward a Black University | 155
ris, the white chairman of the board of trustees, and the rehiring of the
fi ve professors. We cannot continually sit by, their statement read,
and watch black faculty who are concerned about our education get
fi red. We must take stands. The larger context was critical. Since 1965,
there had been a sharp jump in the number of white faculty, who by
1970 were 60 percent of the faculty, adding to growing concerns about
the fate of Black colleges in the post- Jim- Crow era. We are determined
to do what ever is necessary to see that Voorhees College meets the
needs and aspirations of black people, declared student activist Alvin
Evans. The head of the state chapter of the NAACP called Rev. Morris
an arrogant, paternalistic white who once referred to Voorhees as
my hobby. Refl ecting the approach of students at other HBCUs, the
students at Voorhees also became advocates for the broader Black community. They called for higher wages for workers at the college and for
Black participation in local governance. African Americans constituted
60 percent of the county, but there was not a single Black offi ceholder
in city or county government. The campus Black Awareness Coordinating Committee or ga nized a highly effective one- day campus boycott,
but the next day, a Friday, the college responded by offi cially closing the
campus and ordering all students to leave. In defi ance, a group reported
to be between sixty and two hundred students stayed on campus and
conferred with local Black community leaders for support and guidance. An Urban League offi cial said, Ive never seen a group of more
nonviolent young people, but, fearing another armed takeover and the
attendant negative publicity, the administration called the governor for
assistance over the weekend, and he brought in a couple of hundred
National Guardsmen. They smashed windows and broke down doors,
but found no guns and turned up only two students, both leaders in
student government, whom they arrested for trespassing before sealing
off the campus.43
In their search, troops forced their way into a faculty members home
seeking out students. Well, the troops did come about three oclock in
the morning, Robert Romer recalls. Romer was a white professor who
was seen as sympathetic to the students concerns. It was cold, about
the fi rst of February, I think. Theres a pounding on the door and I go
down in my pajamas and theres a bunch of soldiers, with guns, with
bayonets. And heres a guy with a bayonet pointed at my stomach. I still
sort of have nightmares occasionally. Its the middle of the night, its
cold, Im holding up my pajamas with the one hand, theres a bayonet
at my stomach . . . and the sergeant says, Were going to search your
156 | Toward a Black University
house. So I did what I was told to do by the ACLU, American Civil
Liberties Union, I said, I deny you permission to search the house.
And then he says to his troops, Search the house, men. And so I said
again, I refuse to give you permission to search my house. And then I
stood aside, I mean, what am I gonna do? The administration closed
the campus for a month, during which time everyone was in a panic
that this campus was going to disappear. After the school reopened,
everybody practically agreed not to talk about anything; just, cross
your fi ngers and pray and hope we get to the end of May without
anybody getting hurt.44 In a letter to parents, a college administrator
blamed a small group of revolutionary militants on our campus for
the campus closure, whose goal, he alleged, was the destruction of Voorhees College.45
After closing the campus, the administration moved to immediately
dismiss the fi ve faculty members, alleging that their presence would incite students further. They even banned them from campus. The American Association of University Professors investigated and termed these
actions unwarranted and draconian, and deemed Dingles dismissal a
violation of due pro cess and endorsed his reinstatement.46 In July 1970
a jury convicted seven students from the 1969 protest for rioting, looting, and arson, and they were sentenced to eigh teen months to two
years at hard labor. In trials resulting from campus disturbances, there
were sometimes disagreements between the more traditional attorneys
and the more militant students. In the Voorhees case, Matthew Perry,
a prominent civil rights lawyer who later became a federal judge, defended the students. One of those convicted, Alvin Evans, became a
leader in a new national or ga ni za tion of Black students called sobu, the
Student Or ga ni za tion for Black Unity. The sobu News Ser vice opposed
Perrys courtroom strategy, which was to minimize politicking and to
stress that all of the defendants were from Denmark and had no police
rec ords. He advised against staging demonstrations or rallying support
in the community. But after the convictions, the students felt that he
had failed to take into account the power of American racism. Voorhees, in sobus view, was a white- controlled college run by racists in
the name of the church. In the aftermath of the protests, sobu felt that
the administration tried to create an apo liti cal climate by purging the
campus of militants, threatening to cut off fi nancial aid, and promoting
the fraternity system.47 But at the same time, Episcopal Church leaders
formed a task force to investigate overall conditions at the college, including curriculum and faculty hiring, and to make recommendations
Toward a Black University | 157
for reform. In an ironic development nearly four de cades later, Cleveland Sellers, who had been shot in Orangeburg, became president of
Voorhees College.
Voorhees might have narrowly averted bloodshed, but North Carolina A&T State University did not. This public college in Greensboro
with four thousand students illustrates two important points about
the student movement at HBCUs: they often had close connections to
community- based civil rights struggles, and they faced a greater likelihood of police occupation and invasion than Black protesters on majority white campuses. We have seen this second point demonstrated at
Orangeburg, Howard, Voorhees, and Texas Southern University, but
the intensity and lethality of police crackdowns was increasing. As the
Black student movement intensifi ed in the South, so, too, did the police
response. The shooting deaths of Black students at Jackson State College in Mississippi in 1970 are sometimes remembered alongside the
killings that same year of white students at Kent State in Ohio, but
they were part of a rising tide of lethal police assaults on Black college
campuses.
It is useful to recall, as well, that police offi cers nationwide had
highly negative attitudes toward students, African Americans, and radicals. The National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence found that student demonstrators and black militants arouse
extreme hatred, fear, contempt and anger among the police. An observer with the Presidents Commission on Law Enforcement rode with
police offi cers in three Northern cities and heard 72 percent of them
express considerable prejudice against Black people. The 1968 report
of the Kerner Commission included similar fi ndings. One scholar warned,
When college administrators consider bringing in the police on campus, they must realize that they are bringing in an armed body of men
who harbor powerful antagonisms against those with whom they are
called upon to deal.48
Greensboro had been a center of civil rights activity throughout the
1960s and was at the forefront of Black Power activism in the South.49
A cohort of young activists infl uenced by Malcolm X, dedicated to
grassroots or ga niz ing, and in some cases funded by War on Poverty programs began to question the emphasis on integration and gradualism
that, to them, seemed to deliver few gains. Nelson Johnson, Air Force
veteran and student at North Carolina A&T, became a key campus and
community leader. North Carolina A&T was at the center of the
movement, Johnson discovered when he enrolled there in 1965. Issues
158 | Toward a Black University
ranging from community control of schools to opposition to the Vietnam War inspired intense or ga niz ing. In 1968, Nelson Johnson helped
to or ga nize a mock funeral pro cession for the slain students in Orangeburg, in which the governor of South Carolina was burned in effi gy. The
demonstration was one of the largest in Greensboro history. By Johnsons se nior year, the city was in the midst of a widespread Black student rebellion. There was one confrontation after another. In March
1969 cafeteria workers at A&T went on strike and twenty- fi ve hundred
students marched to the presidents offi ce in support.50
In May the refusal to honor the results of a high school election
sparked a confl agration between Black students and city and state police. When the white school board overturned the election of an activist
as president of the student council at all- Black Dudley High School, hundreds of students walked out. Police gassed and arrested rock- throwing
students, beginning three days of siege. Angered over the schools usurpation of democracy and its heavy- handed response, Dudley students
went to nearby North Carolina A&T for support, and soon hundreds
of college students joined their protest. Coincidentally, the founding
convention of a new national Black student group, the Student Or ga niza tion for Black Unity, was taking place at A&T. Nelson Johnson stood
on a table there and urged support for the Dudley students, an act that
was later labeled an incitement to riot, which landed him in jail.51
The National Guard soon joined forces with the police, arresting and
beating hundreds of students.
Students staged protests on the A&T campus, and police amassed in
force after reports of sniper fi re from a dormitory, Scott Hall. Despite
the restive atmosphere, not all students were involved in activism. Late
at night on Wednesday, May 21, Willie Grimes and a group of fi ve or
more friends were walking across campus en route to a nearby restaurant. Grimes was not an activist and had not been involved in the campus
uprisings. His companions, whom investigators never consulted, reported
that shots rang out from an automobile that came out of nowhere
whose lights came on at the last minute. The young men scrambled
for cover, got up, and found Grimes lying unconscious. An FBI investigator said he was very sure it was a stray bullet that killed the
sophomore, but said he was never able to determine where it came
from. Students believed otherwise. Doctors declared Willie Grimes, a
twenty- year- old from rural North Carolina, dead in the early morning
hours of May 22, while the campus continued to explode, now in anger
and mourning over the senseless killing. John Collins and Larry Kirby
Toward a Black University | 159
were with Grimes during the shooting and took him to the hospital.
They returned to campus, where Collins remembers a lot of fi re all
night long. He heard bullets fl ying from above as police teargassed
the building. He and other students stayed close to the fl oor with wet
towels over their heads as protection against the tear gas. Larry Kirby
said there was a lot of shooting from campus, from the dormitory
that night so much so that he remembers a counselor getting on the
loudspeaker asking students to hold their fi re so the police could
withdraw.52
Early in the morning of May 23, there was an ambush on Luther
Street in which fi ve police offi cers and two students were shot, but all
survived. The governor and military offi cials mobilized a massive response. The president of the college had announced the closing of the
campus by the next eve ning, but unbeknownst to school offi cials, the
governor ordered an earlier clearing of campus. A combined ground
and air offensive descended upon A&T, featuring six hundred National Guardsman, a tank, several armed personnel carriers, an airplane
and a he li cop ter, which dropped tear gas canisters onto Scott Hall, reportedly the source of per sis tent sniping. A journalist called it the most
massive armed assault ever made against an American university.53
Around 6:45 in the morning, students were told to evacuate Scott Hall.
Hundreds of infantryman from the Second Battalion surrounded the
building, while a he li cop ter released nausea gas. An airplane dropped
canisters of smoke, reportedly to conceal the advance of National
Guardsmen. Shots rang from the dorm, and soldiers responded with a
barrage of automatic rifl e fi re and threw gas grenades into the building. The troops took out a hundred students from Scott Hall and two
hundred more from other buildings. There was no gunfi re, no re sis tance.
They sent them to two state prisons, where they were fi ngerprinted and
detained for the rest of the day. It looked like war, a photojournalist
for United Press International, said of the attack. Some were later
charged with crimes, although no student was caught using or possessing a gun during the massive search and seizure. Guardsmen ransacked
Scott Hall, destroying furniture and student belongings in the search for
weapons.54
Nelson Johnson played a leading role in convincing the North Carolina State Advisory Committee of the United States Commission on Civil
Rights to hold an open meeting in Greensboro in order to ascertain
the causes of the civil disturbances and whether the response of law
enforcement was excessive and racially motivated. Thirty- two people
160 | Toward a Black University
offered information at the two- day meeting that fall, although the
North Carolina National Guard refused to participate. Issued in March,
the report, Trouble in Greensboro, rebuked the school board and a
range of community leaders for ignoring student discontent at Dudley
and spurning efforts at negotiated solutions. It is a sad commentary
that the only group in the community who would take the Dudley students seriously were the students at A&T State University. The committee concluded that widespread racism in education, housing, and
employment in the city of Greensboro was ultimately culpable for the
May protests. They strongly condemned the conduct of the National
Guard and the entire military offensive at A&T, fi nding that the president of the university should have been allowed to resolve the crisis.
The committee rebuked the use of arms by students, but found that
more professional methods could have been used to subdue those few
students who engaged in such activity. The Guard confi scated student
property and infl icted widespread and costly damage in the dormitories, including smashing or shooting in 65 percent of the doors, when
keys could have been used. The troops found only two weapons, underscoring, in the committees view, that their response far exceeded the
danger. It is diffi cult to justify the lawlessness and disorder in which
this operation was executed, they concluded.55
It is hard to know the impact of this report on local authorities, but
it seems to have been ignored. In Nelson Johnsons view, Greensboros
po liti cal elite trashed the report.56 And tragically, ten years later, what
became known as the Greensboro Massacre showed yet again the hostile gulf separating the police and grassroots activists.
Sadly, the death of Willie Grimes was only the fi rst in a wave of police killings of college students over the next few years. The invasion of
Cambodia by United States ground forces in April 1970 sparked a new
wave of campus uprisings, leading to a nationwide student strike and
the closure of scores of universities. At Ohio State in Columbus, antiwar protesters joined Black student activists who had been pressing
unsuccessfully for change ever since Kings assassination two years
before for a campuswide student strike. For several days, city and
state police and the National Guard unleashed a barrage of tear gas and
live ammunition to put down the strike. At least seven people were
shot, perhaps a hundred were injured and several hundred students
were arrested. There were no deaths, but the use of shotguns stunned
and outraged the campus community and fi nally pushed the administration to launch a Black studies program and increase Black student
Toward a Black University | 161
admissions.57 This open warfare in Columbus has been largely forgotten, most likely because the National Guard unleashed even greater and
more lethal violence on another Ohio campus only a couple of days
later. On May 4, at Kent State University, the National Guard shot into
a crowd of students, killing four and wounding nine, all white. Americans were appalled at the loss of life and this military- type assault on a
college campus.
Still, police forces continued a season of violent suppression of dissent. On May 11 police killed six African American protesters in
Augusta, Georgia. Four days later forty city and state police fi red 140
shots into the windows of a womens dormitory at Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi, killing two African American students
one a ju nior at the college, the other a high schooler, and injuring
twelve others. The police claimed to be responding to a sniper or rock
thrower. The Jackson State students were protesting racism in the city,
the war in Vietnam and Cambodia, and the Kent State murders. No one
was ever held responsible for any of these deaths the only result was
the appointment of a Presidential Commission on Campus Unrest, which
investigated both the Jackson and Kent State shootings. The commission,
headed by former Pennsylvania governor William Scranton and known
as the Scranton Commission, held public hearings over the summer,
which aired intense anger at the war in Vietnam and blamed Nixon, and
especially Vice President Spiro Agnew, for encouraging violence against
students and other radicals.
Police violence against Black students put pressure on Black college
administrators to condemn the governments actions. A group of students, faculty, and administrators at Atlanta University denounced the
terror directed against black people in the United States. It laid a share
of the blame on divisive politicians who sought po liti cal advance by instigating racial resentment. In the current era of systematic repression
of black people, police authorities are wantonly shooting down black
men, women, and children while elected offi cials, both national and
local, by their outrageously false and infl ammatory public utterances,
fan the fi res of hatred and bigotry. Citing, too, the police execution of
Black Panther Party leaders in Chicago, the Atlanta University statement
called this violence genocide. Victims of this oppression, wherever
they may be, along with other men of goodwill, must join together to
halt this brutal assault.58 On May 20, 1970, a delegation of fi fteen
Black college presidents presented a forceful statement to President
Nixon listing and lamenting the many injustices imposed on Black
162 | Toward a Black University
Americans and denouncing Nixon policies of law and order and benign neglect for exacerbating white racism. We wish to convey to you
the disenchantment of blacks, especially black youth, with our society
and with the Federal Government, they declared. They called for a
shift away from militarism to domestic priorities; the appointment of
a black Deputy Attorney General of unquestioned commitment to
civil liberties to be responsible for the investigation and recommendations for prosecutions for those responsible for the killings of unarmed
citizens and to monitor the use of law enforcement assistance; and a
presidential conference with Black student leaders. Black college students are their own best spokesmen, they declared. A sense of their
mood is crucial to understanding the urgency of greater responsiveness
to the black community.59
J. Otis Cochran, the national chairman of the Black American Law
Students Association, testifi ed before the Scranton Commission and
gave a blistering reproach to the Nixon administration and a powerful
defense of student radicals. No matter what personal culpability is
eventually assigned to individual guardsmen and police or their commanding offi cers in the tragedies that occurred this spring, Cochran
declared, nothing should be allowed to divert blame from the truly
guilty party members of the Nixon/Agnew Administration whose
crude attacks on dissenters created the climate of intolerance and repression that some people interpreted as a license to kill. In the period
before public disclosure of the Federal Bureau of Investigations Counterintelligence Program, or cointelpro, his testimony shows that activists were beginning to suspect that they had become targets of a government conspiracy. We had already seen the Administration implicitly
declare war on po liti cal dissent in this country the pattern behind the
various Black Panther raids and trials and the trial of the Chicago Eight
was too clear to allow any other conclusion, Cochran told the commission. Finally, he explained the rise of radicalism as an understandable reaction to an unyielding society. Black and white dissenters in
this country did not adopt more radical views of protest by choice: it
was only after repeated failures of the passive, nonviolent strategy identifi ed with Martin Luther King Jr. that the dissenters were forced to
adopt different theories of dissent, he declared. Many advocates of
violence, of course, remain, but in general the policy of black brinkmanship has been tempered by caution, and uncontrolled or spontaneous violence spurned as an anachronism.60
Toward a Black University | 163
James E. Cheek, who had succeeded James Nabrit as president of
Howard, very briefl y served as a special advisor to the president on campus affairs, along with Vanderbilt University chancellor Alexander
Heard, and later wrote the paper Black Institutions and Black Students. Tellingly, he opened by equating the mood of Black students with
African Americans as a whole: The frustration, anger, outrage, fears
and anxieties of black students are expressive of the same feelings and
emotions which exist among a large spectrum of the black population
moderate as well as militant. In an effort to reconcile integration
with Black Power, he argued that the push for civil rights had given
way to a quest for social justice, which included an emphasis on Black
pride, Black studies, and racial solidarity. But more crucially, it required
a fundamental redistribution of the nations opportunities, rewards,
benefi ts, and powers. He made a series of recommendations to Nixon,
urging much stronger federal support for Black access to higher education and for historically Black institutions of higher education.61 The
Cheek memo had great effect. At the time, the Nixon administration was
searching for a civil rights policy that would de- emphasize integration,
but not appear too hostile to African Americans. Strengthening Black
educational institutions offered a solution. According to scholar Dean
Kotlowski, the Nixon administration signifi cantly enlarged federal aid
to black colleges. After reading Cheeks memo, Nixon directed his staff
to develop a plan of assistance, albeit with condescension: It is vitally
important to have Black colleges going strong . . . so that Blacks develop
the capacity to run something themselves. As a bonus, the policy might
cultivate a loyal Black leadership cadre. In Kotlowskis telling, Nixon
saw the policy as one way we can encourage the good Blacks such as
Cheek, who seems willing to work with us. Regardless of his motives,
Nixons fi nancial support of HBCUs dovetailed with a growing Black
skepticism of white- designed integration plans and a new determination
to preserve Black- controlled institutions.62
Many law enforcement agencies apparently ignored the Scranton
Commissions many recommendations promoting nonlethal resolution
of campus disputes. Violence fl ared again two years after Jackson State
in a deadly police assault against student protesters at Southern University in Baton Rouge, an event that has been largely omitted from
civil rights historiography and neglected in public memory of the movement. On November 16, 1972, a still- unidentifi ed sheriffs deputy fi red
his shotgun at twenty- year- old Denver A. Smith and twenty- year- old
164 | Toward a Black University
Leonard D. Brown, killing both. No one was ever charged or prosecuted for these slayings, nor did the victims families prevail in civil lawsuits. Strikingly, Governor Edwin Edwards, and Sheriff Al Amiss of East
Baton Rouge, blamed students for the deaths, even though a commission
appointed by the Louisiana Attorney General would corroborate witness
testimony that shots had been fi red without cause at unarmed, fl eeing
students. What happened at Southern? Had members of the Black Panther Party or Republic of New Africa smuggled guns onto campus or
threatened to kill the college president, as the governor and other offi cials
told the media in the immediate aftermath of the deaths? These charges,
of course, helped to frame the story in the public eye, even though such
allegations had nothing to do with the killing of Brown and Smith.
Southern, like all public Black colleges in the segregated South, had
been underfunded, allotted inferior facilities, and po liti cally controlled
by means of a conservative administration. The university was governed by the all- white State Board of Education. And separate was
never equal during Jim Crow, a pattern that persisted into the 1970s
and beyond. The 1972 1973 per- student expenditure at predominantly
white Louisiana State University was $2,325, while the fi gure for Southern was only $1,327.63 In the early 1970s, recalls student leader Fred
Prejean, the Louisiana legislature threatened to close Southern University as part of the integration of public higher education in the
state. This put a fear in us, he says. We did not want to see that
happen. Notwithstanding the blatant funding disparity and other inequities, Prejean and other students were committed to Southerns preservation. Desegregation, in their view, should not mean the dismantling
of Black institutions, what ever their shortcomings. With twelve thousand
students on campuses in Baton Rouge, its main campus; Shreveport; and
New Orleans, Southern was the nations largest public HBCU. Southern
students built a large movement on both campuses with the goal of preserving, improving, and transforming their college.
Born in Lafayette, Fred Prejean graduated from high school in 1964
and joined the civil rights struggle, working in the burgeoning consumer cooperative movement and acquiring considerable experience
as a community or ga niz er before entering college in 1970. He went to
Southern on a Eleanor Roo se velt Leadership Fellowship, funded by the
Ford Foundation, and used his or ga niz ing skills to help build a campus
movement. A small group of students in the psychology department
began meeting to discuss the inadequacies in their department, and the
group quickly expanded to cover many other departments. They or ga-
Toward a Black University | 165
nized student leaders from each department, who went out and canvassed the students in their departments to fi nd out their par tic u lar
needs and grievances. Each department compiled a list of things that
needed to be fi xed, Prejean recounts. They felt an own ership of the
document. This formed the basis of the demands presented to G. Leon
Netterville, Southerns president, that fall. They named their group Students United because it had the same initials as the university, a sign of
their support for the institution they were endeavoring to reform.
The students document of grievances began with a bold preface:
We, as students united, fi nd it necessary to exercise our duly possessed rights as Black men and women to abolish all conditions which
threaten our existence. For too long we have been victims of constant
neglect and administration censorship; for too long we have been denied a voice in the selection of those people who administer the functions of this University. With extraordinary range and detail, the students enumerated 197 specifi c complaints. They called for more black
awareness in the curriculum, a greater student voice in administrative
affairs, and the improvement of basic campus ser vices, such as cafeteria
food, medical ser vices, and housing. Students complained that the mattresses in the dormitories were so old that it was preferable to sleep on
the fl oor. Moreover, they accused the president of being authoritarian
and insensitive to their needs and to the changing times.
In October 1972, Charles Waddell, the chair of the psychology department and a sympathetic fi gure to students resigned, blaming administration encroachment on his rights and responsibilities. This set off
weeks of marches, boycotts, and sit- ins at the Baton Rouge and New
Orleans campuses. On October 23, students presented Netterville with
their demands. The scale of their protests indicates both deep- seated
student discontent and remarkable or ga ni za tion and discipline. One
thousand students marched to Louisianas Board of Education and met
with two assistant superintendents. Determined for action, they then
marched to the capitol and met with the governor. On October 31, another large group of students marched on the administration building
in Baton Rouge to see President Netterville. The governor dispatched
the National Guard, but the students had already left by the time they
arrived. In the meantime, students boycotted classes.64
Southern had a reputation during the civil rights era for expelling student activists and punishing dissent. In spite of our efforts to promote
nonviolent behavior, Fred Prejean says, we were constantly harassed,
threatened, and placed under surveillance by police. He faced intense
166 | Toward a Black University
intimidation in his effort to increase Black student rights. There were
the phone calls. A woman professing to be student would phone Prejean
in the middle of the night and try to maintain a conversation for a long
time. He fi gured the goal was to interfere with his sleep and generally
harass him. The woman would ramble, posing as a student, but did not
seem to know much about the university. It was always a female caller,
Prejean remembers. Police offi cers also followed him. Once, on a threehour drive to Monroe, Louisiana, two state police cars followed him.
One was in front and the other tailed him from behind, sandwiching
him for the whole drive.65
On the New Orleans campus, the students staged their own boycott
of classes and occupied the administration building for nine days, adding the demand that Vice President Emmett W. Bashful, a po liti cal scientist who headed the New Orleans campus, also resign. Governor Edwards told the press that he had been given information by secretive,
highly confi dential means that militant groups had smuggled weapons
inside, so he assembled a force to retake the building. He ordered the
students to leave, while 150 sheriffs deputies and state troopers converged on campus along with two he li cop ters and an armored truck. At
the last minute, Bashful resigned, saying he hoped to avoid violence
and possible bloodshed. In retrospect his concerns appear highly justifi ed, and with this partial victory the students left the building. The
state declined to accept Bashfuls resignation, however, and he would
spend the next twenty years as chancellor.66
Back in Baton Rouge, administrators, faculty, and students were engaged in intense negotiations. But mysterious, destructive acts, whose
perpetrators were never identifi ed, also occurred. On November 7, an
explosive device went off in a campus building, a fi re destroyed the horticulture barn, and six Molotov cocktails were found in the vicinity.
According to Fred Prejean, Students United was avowedly nonviolent,
but there were men on campus with military experience, and radicals
of many stripes. But they usually followed us, he said, meaning the
broader based student leadership. The next day, warrants were issued
for the arrest of eight student leaders, and two were arrested. Yet at the
same time, the negotiating teams were making progress and had reached
agreement on many issues.67 As the class boycott and demonstrations
continued, President Netterville promised to announce amnesty for the
arrested students, and administrators continued close communication
with the sheriffs department. In an abrupt reversal, the promise of amnesty was withdrawn, and administrators ordered the arrest of Fred
Toward a Black University | 167
Prejean and three other student leaders. At four oclock in the morning
on November 16, police offi cers came to Prejeans home and took him
into custody. The university had secured injunctions barring him from
campus, but Prejean had gone there many times to lead demonstrations.
Why, he wondered, did they arrest him for criminal trespass on that
morning and then hold him in jail all day long? His family had come
immediately to post the bond.68
Upset when they learned the news, a large contingent of students went
to President Nettervilles offi ce in the administration building to appeal
for the students release from jail. Netterville met with the students
briefl y, left to take a phone call, and never returned. The students stayed
in his offi ce while large numbers of students gathered outside. Claiming
to have been alerted by an in for mant that the students were intending to
seize the building, the governor had dispatched a state police tactical
squad and about fi fty- fi ve sheriffs deputies to the campus and put a few
hundred national guardsmen on alert. But the students insisted that they
had no such plans: it was the universitys actions that prompted their
presence in the building that morning, not a planned protest.
Sheriff Al Amiss announced to the roughly two hundred students
milling around the administration building that they had fi ve minutes
to disperse. Denver Smiths nineteen- year- old sister, Josephine, said later
that many students could not hear what the police were saying because
he li cop ters fl ying overhead drowned out their words. But in short order,
the troops began fi ring volleys of tear gas into the crowd. Tele vi sion
fi lm showed students Denver Smith and Leonard Brown running away
from the administration building, fl eeing the tear gas, when each was
hit at virtually the same time.69 Number 4 shotgun pellets in the head
and arms killed the two young men. Neither student was an activist.
Remarkably, Sheriff Amiss allowed offi cers to carry weapons of their
choice to campus. In this time of great confl ict, emotions, and upheaval,
the sheriff permitted his men wide discretion in lethal weaponry. And
on that day the offi cers were equipped with a variety of ammunition,
including tear gas shotgun shells, tear gas canisters, number 4 and 00
buckshot shells and high velocity rifl e ammunition.70
Immediately after the shootings the governor and sheriff plastered
the local and national media with denials of police shootings, and continuous efforts to blame students or outside agitators for the deaths.
They exerted considerable energy in seeking to frame the story in this
light. The governor claimed that it was perfectly clear that someone
inside the building or in the crowd of students fi red one or more smoke
168 | Toward a Black University
bombs at the police before they fi red tear gas. In fact, a state investigation later revealed that no such thing happened; the students neither
had nor used any weapons or incendiary devices. Tele vi sion footage
showed a sheriffs deputy fi re a tear gas canister at a student who caught
it, and tossed it back. It took authorities longer to identify the body of
Leonard Brown, leading Governor Edwards to speculate that he was
an outsider. And in the next sentence he mentioned that members of
the Black Panther Party and Republic of New Africa happened to be
present in the state of Louisiana.71
At the same time, Edwin Edwards began to rationalize the killings as
a regrettable but necessary reassertion of state power. For two weeks I
have withstood criticism that I have been too lenient with the students,
he said, referring to the building occupation in New Orleans. What
happened in Baton Rouge is a clear example of what happens in a violent confrontation.72 In an exchange with students who asked him if
he valued property rights over human rights, the governor declared,
No. But Ill tell you what I do hold above human life, and this is lawfully constituted authority.73 A controversial and outspoken fi gure in
Louisiana politics, Edwards would serve four terms as governor, before
being convicted of racketeering charges in 2001 and sentenced to ten
years in prison. Formerly a member of Congress, Edwards had served
on the House Internal Security Committee, which had investigated antiwar demonstrators in 1970. During testimony by the chief of police of
Washington, D.C., Edwards asked why the police never discharged
their weapons. In some instances the use of force is clearly justifi ed,
Edwards declared. Why do you carry guns if you seem to have a mental block against using them?74
In the midst of campus despair, anger, and shock, President Netterville continued the crackdown. The day after the slayings, he fi red two
faculty members whom he accused of aiding student protesters. The
only support professors ever gave, according to Prejean, was answering
student questions and seeking to provide them with a mea sure of protection. Much like the governors obsession with outside agitators,
the presidents focus on faculty as the provocateurs, just like at Voorhees, denied the students own agency and grievances. The faculty members, Joseph Johnson, chairman of the physics department, and George
Baker, an assistant professor of engineering, sued the university in federal court with the aid of the National Education Association.75 Students were alarmed at the police action, and several felt they had been
set up for an intentional attack. Fred Prejean called the incident a
Toward a Black University | 169
conspiracy on the part of the president of Southern University, Leon
Netterville; the sheriff, Al Amiss, and the Governor of this state. Netterville held a press conference to deny the allegation that he had set up
the students. One of the fi red professors, George Baker, called the killings the last dying gasp . . . of the white leadership downtown . . . to
control the black community.76
Many expressed outrage at the deaths of the two young men. Two
hundred students marched from LSU to the capitol, where they held a
memorial ser vice for the slain students. College presidents issued statements deploring the violence; students held demonstrations at Stanford,
Boston College, University of California at Los Angeles, and many
other campuses.77 Still, this mourning and outrage was small and selective. The nation as a whole ignored the killings of Denver Smith and
Leonard Brown. Southern soon joined Jackson State, North Carolina
A&T, and Orangeburg in the roster of forgotten Black casualties of the
civil rights era. Distrustful of the governments ability to conduct a fair
and impartial investigation, African American activists from Louisiana
and around the country or ga nized a separate Black- led investigation of
the slayings. Just a couple of days after the killings, the Black Peoples
Committee of Inquiry was formed under the leadership of Haywood
Burns, a civil rights attorney and found er of the National Conference of
Black Lawyers, and DArmy Bailey, a sit- in leader expelled from Southern who had become a lawyer, and who was then a member of the city
council in Berkeley, California.
As soon as he read about the shootings and the claim that students
were culpable, DArmy Bailey called Murphy Bell, a prominent Black
attorney in Baton Rouge who had represented Bailey in his Southern
case a few years back. Is there anything I can do? he asked Bell, who
encouraged him to come to Louisiana. He fl ew down and conferred
with Bell and some students, and met with local Black attorneys Etta
Kay Hearn, R. Judge Eames, and Robert Williams, and they decided to
or ga nize an inquiry. They had little faith in the criminal justice system
of Louisiana. Baileys next stop was New York, where Leslie Dunbar
helped him secure fi ve thousand dollars from the Field Foundation.
With that grant, I called various national fi gures to get involved in the
hearing, including Haywood Burns, who became cochair, John Lewis,
Owusu Sadauki, Walter Lee Bailey, and Ira Simmons, another city councilman in Berkeley.
The decision to convene an autonomous inquiry showed the widespread belief in entrenched racism in law enforcement, but it also
170 | Toward a Black University
demonstrated the Black freedom struggles commitment to building
demo cratic procedures in the South. James Wayne, a top Black aide to
Governor Edwards, was DArmy Baileys college friend, and he helped
secure the noninterference of the governor. The attorneys secured a hall
in the Black community, lined up witnesses, and hired a court reporter.
The sheriffs offi ce had not initiated an investigation immediately after
the killings, so students had collected shotgun shells at the scene. In a
surprise, the governor showed up at the hearing. It was an extraordinary event, Bailey remembers, and there was extensive media coverage.
It was important. We were able to puncture the claim that it was student
rambunctiousness that led to the killing of these two boys. Although no
one was able to identify the shooter, it was clear that it [the shots] came
from the line of offi cers who were fi ring the tear gas. George Baker, one
of the recently dismissed professors, testifi ed that students were at all
times willing to negotiate their demands. After the hearings, Bailey and
Haywood Burns returned to Baton Rouge to write their report. They
stayed up all night at a roadside motel going through the testimony.
Nearly forty years later, he recalls the discomfort being there in that
atmosphere. We didnt publicize our arrival, but people knew. It was
known that we were there.78
They issued the Preliminary Findings of the Black Peoples Committee of Inquiry at a press conference the next day. The report concluded
that students did not throw nor fi re the fi rst tear gas canister, and were
not armed on November 16, 1972, and found fault with the administrations suppression of due pro cess and student dissent on campus. The
committee found the governor negligent and irresponsible in his rush
to erroneous judgment, and the sheriff emotionally and professionally ill- equipped to cope with the situation at Southern University on
November 16, 1972, to the point of a clear, demonstrative, and wanton
disregard for human life. Moreover, the committee concluded that a
sheriffs deputy or deputies fi red the fatal shots which claimed the lives
of Denver Smith and Leonard Brown. At the press conference, Bailey
and Burns also offered their opinion that authorities in Louisiana knew
who pulled the trigger. Our conclusion was that they could discern the
identity and that some people knew. We were trying to smoke them
out, Bailey recalls. A federal grand jury later subpoenaed Bailey and
asked him what made Haywood Burns and him think that the state
knew the shooters identity. But we had no further information to provide. So that was the end of it. But the Black Peoples Committee was
widely seen as crucial to ensuring a fairer state investigation.79
Toward a Black University | 171
The same day that the Black Peoples Committee held its public hearings, the Louisiana attorney generals Special Commission of Inquiry on
the Southern University Tragedy began its own, closed- door sessions. The
twelve- member commission was half Black and half white, a notable
degree of racial integration for an adjudicating body in a southern state.
The report of the latter found fault with law enforcement and elected
offi cials, and concluded that a single shot felled both young men, and
that it most likely came from a sheriffs deputy. But they failed to identify the shooter and no one was ever indicted in the case.80 Interestingly,
the National Education Association conducted its own comprehensive
inquiry into the violation of teacher and student rights at Southern. After
receiving requests from local affi liates, the NEA set up a seven- member
biracial commission chaired by the New York State commissioner of
education.81 Many national observers blamed President Netterville for
bringing the police on campus. As the Chicago Defender noted, The
experience at Kent College and Jackson University, where student lives
were sacrifi ced on the altar of conformity, should have taught the authorities at Southern University that school discipline when enforced
through outside forces often has a tragic ending.82 Indeed many questioned why the recommendations issued by the Presidents Commission
on Campus Unrest had not been more widely adopted by college presidents. The president of the YMCA scolded President Nixon for not doing more to endorse the work of his own commission. We wonder why
the recommendations of that Commission have not been more forcefully supported by you, since they would help to avoid such drastic
confrontations.83 The chaplains at the Atlanta University Center wired
Governor Edwards and President Nixon, urging action. Does not
South Carolina State, Kent State and Jackson State Universities teach
anything? the clergy leaders implored. Does the state always have to
be found supporting and condoning wrongful actions on the part of its
offi cials?84
Like the police assault on the dormitory in Jackson State, which left
two young people dead, the police killing of Denver Smith and Leonard
Brown seemed to many to stir very little outrage, especially compared
to the national outpouring of grief over the National Guard killings of
four white students at Kent State in Ohio. An editorial in the Black Collegian criticized this double standard of remembrance and outrage.
Several students had been killed at South Carolina State, Jackson State,
and Texas Southern, the author declared.85 Yet no case has been reopened. Why are we not screaming about the injustice? Good God, we
172 | Toward a Black University
are being murdered, not just on the college campus, but everywhere,
with the same lack of consideration and lack of law as during the days
of lynching. The Kent State victims had been immortalized in a song
by Neil Young. Ask any kid on the street and he can sing it for you.
Where were the tributes to the Black students, the writer demanded to
know. In actuality, two performers did recognize the slain students at
Jackson State and Southern in pop u lar song: the Steve Miller Band recorded Jackson- Kent Blues and Gil Scott- Herons H20 Gate Blues
mentioned Kent State, Jackson State, Southern Louisiana. But these
were modest acknowledgements of an upsurge of violence that most
Americans chose to forget.86
The shock over the slayings of the two young men, not to mention
the remarkable amnesia that has surrounded this case ever since, has
obscured the larger signifi cance of the student movement at Southern
University. Fred Prejean thinks student power pushed the idea of closing Southern off the Louisiana legislative agenda. As a result of the
protest, and demonstration of student strength and power, the legislature backed off of the merger and began to increase spending. Southern today is totally different from the campus of the early 1970s, he
says. Federal and state fi nancing helped upgrade the physical plant. There
are new buildings across campus. They refurbished the Law School,
injected more funding, and attracted many white students. A journalist
captured a critical dimension of the Black student movement, which
this Black Power generation is rarely given credit for: More and more
nowadays, white Southerners are heard to say the black colleges should
be closed permanently and the students sent to the integrated, predominantly white state universities. But more and more of the black students
who attend schools like Southern are fi ghting to keep the black institutions because these colleges, they argue, are the best training grounds
for black leaders. Do not close them the students say; just fi re the old
administrators and turn the colleges over to younger persons who are
in step with black thinking.87
But notwithstanding the survival of Southern University, the murder
of Smith and Brown left deep scars. The killings had a traumatic effect
on me, Prejean says. I think of it everyday. It showed me an ugly reality. After the violence, Prejean had to fi ght to continue his education.
Southern blocked him and fi ve other student leaders from returning to
campus in January 1973. Prejean had pled guilty to the criminal trespass charge at the urging of an attorney who had telephoned him out of
the blue and identifi ed himself as his counsel. This attorney refused to
Toward a Black University | 173
say who had hired him, and he made Prejean stay in the hallway during
the court hearing. In turn, Southern used this criminal conviction to bar
him from returning to campus. Prejean decided to sue, and James Gray,
the fi rst Black law professor at Louisiana State University, won the case.
Prejean graduated from Southern University with a degree in accounting in 1974.88
The student movement of the 1960s and early 1970s brought meaningful changes to historically Black colleges. Even the administrators
who often opposed the students tactics were persuaded of the merits of
their demands. According to a 1972 survey of Black college administrators, 70 per cent or more of the deans believed that the students dissatisfactions with food ser vice, dormitory facilities, dormitory regulations, absence of an or ga nized program of black studies, instructional
practices, lack of student participation in running the school, student
personnel ser vices, and social privileges were legitimate.89 Thats a high
percentage and a long list. Students may not have achieved a Black university in its utopian form, but they helped make HBCUs better serve
their needs. To a largely unappreciated extent, this upsurge transformed
many aspects of Black college life, including, in the words of one administrator, the codes of campus citizenship, relations among administrators, students and faculty members, decision- making pro cess, student
expectations, disciplinary procedures and other aspects of the college
community.90
Moreover, students played a critical role in simply preserving public
institutions of Black higher education after the demise of Jim Crow.
This contribution in many ways deserves to stand as one of the most
important achievements and legacies of the Black Power movement as a
whole, yet it often goes unacknowledged. Preserving HBCUs, moreover,
was a goal shared by both the militant students and the more conservative college presidents. Strikingly, despite this chapter in their history,
historically Black colleges and universities retain a reputation for po litical quiescence and student conservatism. The police occupations and
violence that engulfed many campuses, and the unprosecuted killings
of so many students, likely contributed to this parallel legacy, stilling
activism and engendering a certain forgetting.
174
The incorporation of Black studies in American higher education was a
major goal of the Black student movement, but as we have seen from
San Francisco State College, City College of New York, Northwestern
University, and many other campuses, the promise to implement it was
typically followed by another period of struggle. Whether it was because of hostility, clashing visions, bud get cuts, indifference, or other
challenges, the effort to institutionalize Black studies was long and diffi cult. To the extent that there was a black revolution on campus, it
was followed, in many instances, by a counterrevolution, a determined
effort to contain the more ambitious desires of students and intellectuals. This chapter explores critical challenges and points of contention
during the early Black studies movement, with a par tic u lar focus on
events at Harvard University. The struggle at Harvard concerned issues
common to virtually every effort to institutionalize Black studies, although not all were as contentious or politicized as in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the early 1970s. As St. Clair Drake dryly noted, The
1968 73 period was a unique one in American academia.1
This chapter also examines the controversy and confl icts surrounding the meaning and mission of Black studies. Black studies was controversial among many, both inside and outside academe, for its intellectual ideas, shaped as they were by the swirling ideological currents of
Black nationalism. Black studies was seen by many as an academically
suspect, antiwhite, emotional intrusion into a landscape of rigor and
Chapter 6
The Counterrevolution
on Campus
Why Was Black Studies So Controversial?
The Counterrevolution on Campus | 175
reason. But rather than a movement of narrow nationalism and antiintellectualism, as some critics charged, the early Black studies movement advanced ideas that have had signifi cant infl uence in American
and African American intellectual life. It emphasized interdisciplinary
study, questioned notions of objectivity, destabilized metanarratives,
and interrogated prevailing methodologies. Indeed, the capacious vision
of most architects of Black studies is striking: they viewed it as an opportunity to create Black- controlled institutions and to assume greater
authority over research in Black culture and history. At the same time,
they saw African American studies as a means to transform American
intellectual life more generally and, ultimately, some hoped, the status
of Black people in society as a whole. While the early Black studies movement broke new ground, it was not, by any means, of one voice: there
were spirited debates about the direction ahead and, indeed, the very
defi nition and mission of the new discipline.
Because Black studies arrived like an explosion on the American
scene, and because students brought it into being and then graduated,
Black scholars had to move quickly to give it defi nition and shape.
Many stressed the innovation and legitimacy of a Black perspective
as a unifying principle almost a methodology for this new multidisciplinary academic formation. A Black perspective not only answered critics who questioned the rationale for Black studies, but it also
aimed to unmask the pretense of universalism in Euro- American intellectual thought and teaching. It is vital to underscore the overwhelmingly
Eurocentric nature of the American college curricula and the extent to
which white scholars argued that their theories and research had universal application. The Black studies movement forcefully pushed
back against this claim and began a pro cess that would open up space
for other marginalized experiences, perspectives, and identities to fi nd
their own space in higher education.
Some critics of a Black perspective tended to see it as little more
than racial essentialism. There is no white truth or black truth or Aryan
physics or Bolshevik biology, retorted white scholar Sidney Hook. For
other skeptics, the notion of a Black perspective connoted a didactic
mission aimed at molding Black minds into one view or a monolithic
conception, which risked disguising the ideological heterogeneity among
Black people. This was the objection voiced by historian Eugene Genovese. There is no such thing as a black ideology or a black point of
view, he declared. Rather there are various black nationalist biases,
and conservative and integrationist views too.2
176 | The Counterrevolution on Campus
Proponents of a Black perspective, however, anticipated these criticisms. Black intellectual production, from the nineteenth century
through its professionalization in historically Black colleges, has been
part of a cosmopolitan, humanist tradition,3 but African American politi cal and intellectual thought of the late 1960s and early 1970s is often
fl attened, caricatured and squeezed into a narrowly nationalist box. Indeed, there is much that belongs in that box, especially the pervasive
patriarchy and homophobia. Yet the various articulations of a Black
perspective that arose in these years of radical po liti cal struggle and
upheaval were transnational, critical, and expansive. The foundational
moment of modern Black studies bears out historian Manning Marables
assertion that pluralism and diversity are at the heart of the Black
intellectual tradition.4 And this is true in spite of powerful countervailing pressures coming not only from po liti cal ferment but also from
many peoples perception of what a new academic enterprise entailed
the widespread sense that discipline- building required an authoritative
move, that it demanded a unifi ed theory of Black reality to justify the
creation of Black studies.
The early Black studies movement produced a rich and voluminous
outpouring of writings seeking to defi ne its mission many fi rst appeared in the Black Scholar, the Journal of Negro Education, or the
Journal of Black Studies. A sampling of these has since been anthologized, but many were also presented at the multitude of conferences,
workshops, and gatherings and remain unpublished. At a California
workshop, Lawrence Crouchetts pre sen ta tion, The Black Perspective: From A Blacks Perspective underscored the idea that an assertion of commonality did not preclude difference and individuality. A
black perspective simply means a way of perceiving an object, a situation, an issue or a problem as a black person because of his unique
experiences in the United States would perceive it, he argued. This
notion of positionality would in fact powerfully infl uence ethnic
studies in the ensuing de cades. Hardly rigid and essentialist, a Black
perspective was in this view necessarily improvisational and creative:
These unique experiences cause black people to weigh things differently from the way others do. You must understand that black people
are involved in a struggle to cause mainstream America to relate to us
as equal human beings. Therefore, black people must be defensive, sensitive, militant, suspicious, cautious, and committed to democracy. All
this is part of our survival kit. Conventional education has ignored the
The Counterrevolution on Campus | 177
black perspective; it was too anxious and committed to justifying the
white perspective. 5
According to its proponents, Black studies exposed not only the racial bias in Euro- American scholarship but also destabilized notions of
scholarly objectivity, detachment, and universality that were the hallmarks of professional academic culture in the United States. Historian
Vincent Harding wrote, No longer is the black view accepted as one
which is narrow compared to the white or the universal but it is
considered a view far richer and humane, pressing us beyond the constructions of the white, conquering, west, moving us out into the true
universe. . . . Blackness is perhaps a door to a far larger view of the
world than white America has ever known. Black students, in Hardings view, were no longer fooled by the special claims of the great
universities to be the sources of wisdom, objectivity and truth.6 In an
essay exploring the distinction between Black Studies and the Study of
Black People, Cedric Clark defi ned the former as the research, practice, and teaching of a social science whose repertoire of concepts include as fundamental and essential those derived directly from the
Black American cultural experience. He emphasized that Black studies
challenged the epistemology and methodology of the social sciences. It
raises fundamental questions with regard to the objectivity of social
knowledge, and despite efforts by [Peter] Berger, [Robert] Merton,
and others, the relevance of epistemology . . . remains a relatively undeveloped area of American social science. Now, with the rise of Black
studies, a social scientists unquestioned assumptions will be held up
to a closer, more critical scrutiny than ever before.7
The Trinidadian scholar Basil Matthews, a professor at Talladega College, saw a Black perspective as part of the search for a new humanity.
Western social theory is assumed to be universal. But its applicability to
black people and black experience is open to serious question, he asserted. He clarifi ed, however, that the task of Black studies was not simply corrective. It might appear, he wrote, that the primary purpose of
the new discipline is to correct and remedy the shortcomings of Western
science. But such a view would refl ect less than half the truth. The approach corrects and remedies precisely because it is different and regenerative in approach. The new approach is essentially a promise and an
effort to positively and creatively advance the knowledge of the specifi cs
of the black experience. The answer to white studies is not a narrow reaction but black wisdom within the wider context of total humanity.8
178 | The Counterrevolution on Campus
Many scholars emphasized academes omission of the experience
of Black people and the transformative potential it thus carried. The
black perspective, wrote one scholar, is desperately needed because
American intellectualism has failed to deal adequately with the realities
of the black presence in America. As education activist Preston Wilcox
put it, The old perspectives have assigned inhuman status to Blacks.
The demand for a Black perspective represents a broad condemnation
of the integrity, adequacy and honesty of the US educational establishment. Common to this discourse was the idea that the affi rmation of a
racial particularity served as a springboard to a broader intellectual insurgency, or humanism. In a speech later published in book form as the
Challenge of Blackness, Lerone Bennett defi ned Blackness as the search
for universal truth. We cannot think now because we have no intellectual instruments, he argued, save those which were designed expressly to keep us from seeing. It is necessary for us to develop a new
frame of reference, which transcends the limits of white concepts. We
must abandon the partial frame of reference of our oppressors and create new concepts which will release our reality, which is also the reality
of the overwhelming majority of men and women on this globe.9
For many, the idea of a Black perspective meant reclaiming scholarly
debates about Black people from scholars who appeared disparaging
and dismissive of Black life. There are white sociologists, Harvards
Ewart Guinier observed, who examine the black experience with a
concept that black people are a problem, that black culture does not
exist or if it exists is a distorted and inferior imitation of American culture. In contrast, a Black point of view says Black culture has been a
viable means of survival for Black people. Black culture expresses the
Black experience, and is neither inferior nor superior to another culture.10 Historian Vincent Harding saw the need to claim control as an
assertion of Black peoples dignity: Black history is refusal to give over
our lives, our creativity, our history, our future into the hands of white
America, for they proved themselves totally inadequate and ultimately
dangerous. So we demand hegemony over our institutions. We seek
control of the telling of our story.11 This we may appear monolithic,
but many and divergent Black perspectives on the telling of the history
of the African diaspora asserted themselves in these years.
Many theorists of a Black perspective were careful to articulate an
expansive and critical vision. After visiting more than a hundred campuses in 1969, one scholar defi ned Black studies as an attempt to create a humane and viable intellectual and ideological alternative to
The Counterrevolution on Campus | 179
Western cultural imperialism. By widening the narrow perspective of
white studies, black studies will force American intellectualism toward, not away from, attainment of the intellectual idea of encompassing the totality of human perspectives and experiences. In fact, Black
studies would enable the academy to actually begin to do the comprehensive universal work that it had long claimed to do. This same scholar
wrote, Black studies is an attempt to return American intellectualism
to its proper mission, namely, to conserve, to examine, to expand, and
to communicate the scope of human experience as it exists and has existed. Moreover, ac cep tance of a Black perspective would legitimize
other marginalized perspectives. This researcher wrote, If interpreting
reality from the Black perspective is a legitimate extension of intellectual endeavors, then so too must other long ignored perspectives be capable of shedding new light on the human experience. . . . For example,
American intellectualism has a masculine bias which is as entrenched as
its bias against non- Western people. At this moment we know far too
little about the feminine perspective to be able to assess its potential
impact. The best guess is that it will have a profound balancing effect
on what has been an almost exclusively male- oriented vision of human
reality. Imagine, too, how the Native American perspective would alter the dominant view of the American West.12
Proponents of Black studies did not conceptualize it as an insular
area of inquiry only of interest to black people, but as the opening salvo
in major changes in the American academy. Armstead Robinson called
Black studies the cutting edge of a revolution in American education.
American intellectualism is on the verge of a new age, another scholar
declared, and Black studies is the forerunner of that new age. And
doubtless in all seriousness, the sociologist Andrew Billingsley, who
helped set up Black studies at Berkeley, called it an instrument for the
redemption of western society as we know it. In his view, Black studies provides us with an opportunity to dream of things that never were
and to ask why not. Black people have never controlled anything on
these shores, he noted, and the new discipline offers a unique opportunity for African Americans to build something new.13
The young historian Armstead Robinson, who had or ga nized an important symposium on Black studies at Yale University in 1968 as a
graduate student, and who then went on to help develop several Black
studies programs, conducted a survey of the fi eld in 1969. In his view,
Black studies provoked a crisis because it was exposing the fact that the
education system in the United States upheld Western cultural imperial-
180 | The Counterrevolution on Campus
ism. Black studies revealed that the rest of the curriculum constituted
white studies. With its mask of objectivity pulled off, what would
white studies do now? Black studies cannot be understood outside
the context of a black revolution, he argued, because it should involve you from the cradle to the grave. We have to create a totality of
learning experiences for Black people which will make blackness automatic and avoid for the next generation of black children the kind of
agonizing appraisals, anxieties and doubts that upset black people
today.14
A dominant theme among Black studies proponents was its transformative potential and ability to illuminate larger truths about the United
States. Black history can give the American society unparalleled insights into the defi ciencies of its own value system as carried out in
practice, two white historians wrote. Americans have, in a sense, built
a nation upon the deception that they are a community of co- equal individuals participating co- equally in community affairs. Solid studies in
Black history will put that illusion into perspective.15 Darwin Turner
echoed this view that Black studies could generate a more faithful alternative to the core myths of American life. Reality and the offi cial
ideology of Americanism could not and cannot be reconciled, he argued, seeing in Black studies the potential to develop a new, more honest
national narrative.16 The historian Benjamin Quarles was of a generation of Black academicians who were more skeptical of the new idiom,
but he still found much to approve. The newer black history has a
revolutionary potential, Quarles declared. For blacks it is a new way
to see themselves. For whites it furnishes a new version of American history, one that especially challenges our national sense of smugness and
self- righteousness and our avowal of fair play. Beyond this the newer
black history summons the entire historical guild writers, teachers
and learners to higher levels of expectation and per for mance.17
In many respects, these idealistic visions for the new discipline of
African American studies seem at a far remove from the rough- andtumble po liti cal battles that propelled its birth. Black student activism
may have won Black studies, but to many white academic elites, Black
studies remained an oxymoron. Could a Black perspective produce
valuable knowledge? Was there a Black intellectual tradition? Was there
suffi cient scholarship and imagination to justify a department of African American studies? For many white American intellectuals, the answer
to all these questions was an unblinking no. Establishing the discipline
in such an intellectual and po liti cal environment was a profound chal-
The Counterrevolution on Campus | 181
lenge, even with the many opportunities and concessions won in the
late 1960s.
As at many other schools, the assassination of Dr. King propelled the
creation of Black studies at Harvard. As a result of Black student agitation, a student- faculty committee under the chairmanship of economics
professor Henry Rosovsky issued a report in January 1969 recommending the creation of a degree- granting program in Afro- American
studies, a research center in Afro- American studies, a Black cultural
center, improvement of the program in African studies, and a sharp increase in the number of Black graduate students. It was a strong affi rmation of change that validated the many grievances of Black students
at Harvard and endorsed their ideas for change. But it did make two
recommendations that would become points of contention. The Rosovsky Report recommended that majors (or concentrators, at Harvard) in
Afro- American studies also complete a second major, and that faculty in
Black studies also hold appointments in other departments. Thus, decisions over faculty hiring and promotion would be made in concert with
another department and since every other department at Harvard was
virtually all white, this granted those with a poor record in hiring African Americans, and little experience in Black subject matter, authority
over faculty in Black studies. The rule requiring double majors also suggested that Black studies was not suffi ciently developed or academically
rigorous to stand alone as a major. But for the members of the Rosovsky Committee, this model was in many respects ideal because it
brought a new, politicized area of study into the broader curriculum in
a way that tethered it to the preexisting culture and norms of the college. It was the responsible, sensible choice, designed to affi rm the high
standards of the institution.18
Between January and April 1969, students in the Association of African and Afro- American Students at Harvard and Radcliffe (afro) conducted their own investigation into the best way to establish Black
studies at Harvard, and came to a different conclusion. They concluded
that a traditional department was the best means of ensuring stature,
permanence, and greater autonomy over faculty selection. (Of course,
there is no such thing as complete departmental autonomy in hiring
and promotion, since the college and university must ratify such decisions.) Michael Thelwell, a founding member of the Department of
Afro- American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, summed up
this view when he noted that traditional departments have, over the
years, displayed no interest in incorporating the black experience, a
182 | The Counterrevolution on Campus
black perspective, or even Negro faculty- members into their operations.
What should now dispose us to trust them? And even if we should, how
will they, after centuries of indifference, suddenly develop the competence and sensitivity which would enable them to do an acceptable
job?19 Similarly, afro came to view the requirement for a double major as onerous and a result of a double standard.
Of course there were other issues roiling Harvard in the spring of
1969, and the struggle for Black studies got bound up with the antiwar
movement, specifi cally the effort to abolish the Reserve Offi cer Training
Corps program. Students for a Demo cratic Society led a takeover in
April of University Hall, and when the administration called in the police to forcibly evict the students, it infl amed the campus and caused
a majority of the student body to go on strike. The call for a Black
studies department became one the demands. April was fi lled with intense, heated debates among students and faculty over the form and
nature of Black studies.20 Students Jeff Howard and Wesley Profi t spoke
at the April 17 meeting of the faculty, seeking to persuade them to support afros vision for Black studies. Were not here to intimidate you,
to accuse you, or hopefully, to argue with you Howard began in his
remarks to the assembly, but in a spirit of cooperation. He called their
proposal not a repudiation of the Rosovsky Report but a friendly
amendment. That spring a standing committee comprised exclusively
of faculty had begun to design an Afro- American studies program, and
troubled by some of their decisions, afro proposed a formal role for
students. Pro cess, or the role of students, became an additional point of
divergence between afro and the committee, although the students argued that their participation was faithful to the original intent of the
Rosovsky Report. At the faculty meeting, Jeff Howard quoted the reports endorsement of students participation, in light of their high
degree of interest, knowledge, and competence in this emerging and in
some ways unique fi eld of studies.
Henry Rosovsky spoke next, defended the current plan and pro cess,
and reminded the faculty that a double concentration was part of the
original Rosovsky Report. But in a seeming concession, he noted, It is
possible that Afro- American studies will be a major on its own in the
future. And then, in apparent contradiction to what the standing committee was in the midst of doing, he added that it was best to let the
incoming chairman set the lasting guidelines of the program. But he
rejected student membership in the standing committee, because it
would grant students a voice in the hiring of tenured faculty members.
The Counterrevolution on Campus | 183
At a follow- up meeting on April 22, the faculty voted in favor of afros
proposal, giving Afro- American studies departmental status, offering
a standard fi eld of concentration, and adding six students to the standing committee, three to be chosen by afro and three by potential concentrators.21 Clyde Lindsay, a student, hailed the faculty resolution. I
consider this a great victory for black students and for American education. But Rosovsky immediately resigned from the standing committee,
saying such a major change in educational policy should be studied
carefully and considered in a calm atmosphere. Richard Musgrave, another economist, took his place as chair.22
Two points need to be added to this account of the departments origins. First, in his remarks to the faculty on April 17, Professor Rosovsky
noted that the standing committee had already offered a tenured position to three distinguished scholars: two had declined and one was still
weighing the offer; and it had offered visiting faculty positions to two
other individuals, who had each turned them down. To our knowledge, Rosovsky stated, no one declined because he found fault with
our program. After students had acquired voting rights on the standing
committee, opponents of this development contended that it would obstruct hiring, since, in their view, no self- respecting scholar would submit to a review by undergraduates. Similarly, many faculty and administrators at Harvard and elsewhere came to believe that the departmental
structure also thwarted hiring in Black studies, since in their view most
scholars would naturally prefer affi liation with an established discipline. But it is important to note that the diffi culty in hiring faculty at
Harvard preceded both the addition of students to the standing committee and the turn to departmental status. As we have already seen and
will examine further, there were numerous challenges in recruiting faculty to teach Black studies, regardless of its structure.23
Second, critics of the afro proposal subsequently promoted the notion that professors had voted for it under duress, in a pressure- fi lled
atmosphere of student upheaval and rebellion. Exemplifying this portrayal, a story circulated that a Black student had come to the faculty
meeting carry ing a large knife. (It is perhaps relevant to recall that earlier that same month, an Associated Press photograph of Black student
protesters at Cornell University carry ing rifl es and ammunition appeared
on the covers of magazines and newspapers around the country.) The
Crimson actually ran a photo of an unidentifi ed Black male student
walking on campus carry ing a meat cleaver on the day of the faculty
vote. But according to Wesley Profi t, this student never spoke at the
184 | The Counterrevolution on Campus
meeting, and faculty members never saw the knife. The young man
who hoped to speak at the faculty meeting had a dramatic, preacherlike style and thought that, for better effect, in the middle of his remarks
he would take out the hatchetlike knife and slam it into podium. But
Profi t, fellow leader Skip Griffi n, and other students refused to allow
him to bring the knife into the faculty meeting. Profi t said they all understood the historic nature of the day it was evidently the fi rst time
students ever addressed the faculty, and the meeting was being broadcast on the college radio station. There was no need for a hatchet! The
disappointed student departed and was later photographed walking
with his girlfriend on campus, still carry ing the knife. The Crimson photo
likely helped to convince many at Harvard that a student had actually
come to the faculty meeting with a knife, presumably with a threatening
intent.24
Still, despite the student strike and atmosphere of protest, faculty
supporters of the resolution defended their vote, and the professors
who worked with students on the standing committee expressed satisfaction with the pro cess.25 When Martin Kilson, an African American
po liti cal scientist and member of the Rosovsky Committee, blamed the
po liti cal threats of the militant extremists in afro for intimidating
the faculty to allow a student role in or ga niz ing the department, Professor Jack Stein disagreed. He defended his vote, believing students had a
legitimate concern over pedagogy and deserved the right to have a
voice. In Kilsons view, only persons of tested scholarly abilities and
training should be involved in the or ga ni za tion and administration of
black studies curricula. He found it galling that Harvard had allowed
students to exercise scholarly authority over a complex interdisciplinary fi eld.26 However, the new chair of the standing committee, Richard
Musgrave, denied the rumor that people were spurning their job offers
because of the presence of students on the committee. The heavy competition for the few specialists in the fi eld accounted for their diffi culties, he reported.27 Nevertheless, the facultys rejection of the Rosovsky
plan in favor of afros was deeply resented by many at Harvard, some
of whom would continue to fi ght for their vision of Afro- American
studies notwithstanding the 1969 defeat.
The demand for greater student rights and voice was in fact widespread on American campuses in these years students were even
demanding voting rights in the U.S. Department of Education.28 So
Harvard was hardly unique. Still, student leadership was particularly
associated with Black studies for a simple reason. Students not
The Counterrevolution on Campus | 185
scholars were responsible for the creation of Black studies programs.
It is absolutely vital to appreciate this distinction if one wants to truly
understand the contentious early years of Black studies. Black studies
programs came into existence not because of the efforts of scholars who
detected the cavernous lacunae in the curriculum vis– vis the AfroAmerican experience, observed Tobe Johnson, a professor at Morehouse. They came into existence primarily because of the pressures of
black students and their white allies for a curriculum more relevant to
that experience.29 This is not to downplay the paramount signifi cance
of sympathetic faculty and administrators. But the fact remains that,
at most places, a petition drive, sit- in, demonstration, or strike, or the
threat of these, led to the creation of new courses.
Indeed, on many campuses, the faculty initially rebuffed student entreaties for Black- content courses. The bedrock foundation for the
emergence of contemporary Black studies was laid by Black urban,
lower- class students as they tried to get better Black studies courses
from traditional departments, noted education scholar Carlos Brossard.30 Sadly, this group garnered very little credit for their founding
role and faced a lot of criticism and scorn. As Carlene Young, a director
of Black studies at UCLA, observed, Black studies has been available
to scholars for several generations. But it was not until the Black consciousness movement of the 1960s forced the issue that Afro- Americans
began to be afforded their rightful place in the annals of the history and
development of American society.31
Harvard faced a question every campus faced. If students had demanded and won Black studies, who would give it form? Who would
actually build the new departments and programs? The white faculty
and administrators who had heretofore failed to integrate their faculties
and curriculum? The one or two Black scholars who were on the faculty of the university, and who may or may not have been involved in
the student push for Black studies? Or, would the Black students who
had fought for it play a leading role in its implementation? Some people
anticipated the student desire for involvement. Since the black studies
movement was initiated by black students rather than by teachers and
educators, one scholar predicted, it can be assumed that the former
will try to exercise a quasi- proprietary infl uence on the future development of black studies programs.32
Students did not demand the same degree of involvement everywhere,
and it was not controversial everywhere but the students sense of
own ership over Black studies and their desire to be involved in forging it
186 | The Counterrevolution on Campus
was common. At Stanford, for example, a committee of four Black students, three Black professors, and two white professors oversaw the
fi rst year in Afro- American studies.33 Students at Wesleyan formed a
committee to review all candidates applying for Afro- American studies
positions.34 In the prospectus for the Africana Studies and Research
Center at Cornell, James Turner wrote that students will participate
signifi cantly in the direction and development of the Center and will
be involved in matters of policy, curriculum and faculty recruitment.35
But there was hardly consensus on student involvement. As at Harvard, some people saw student involvement in faculty affairs as a sign
of academic weakness. Many scholars suspected that the student activists demanding Black studies were driven more by emotional and po litical considerations than intellectual interest, and worried that their commitment to the new units would prove ephemeral or that universities
would use Black studies to reinvent separate but equal and thus shortchange Black students just as they were entering white universities in
large numbers. The young historian John Blassingame applauded Black
students for shining a light on discriminatory hiring practices, but worried that student preference for Black teachers would overlook knowledgeable whites and lead to the hiring of unqualifi ed personnel. Negro
students ignore the possible crippling effects of hiring simply any black
man, he asserted, although, to be fair, the evidence does not indicate
that most students had such a simple yardstick of evaluation when rejecting whites and demanding Black professors. When Columbia University hired white historian Eric Foner to teach a course in Black history,
for example, some Black students took the course and also picketed it,
recognizing the white professors qualifi cations, but viewing this as an
advantageous opportunity to press Columbia to integrate the history
department. And sure enough their protest contributed to the hiring of
Nathan Huggins.36
Blassingames biggest concern was what he saw as the im mense politi cal pressure emanating from students. The threat to black intellectuals is real, he wrote. Not only do the black students demand that
the teachers in black studies be Negroes, they also want them to have
the right shade of blackness. In essence, this means that the black
scholar must have the right ideological leanings. As some of us succumb
to the persuasive arguments to hop on the treadmill and try to keep up
with the mercurial changes in the black party line, he wrote, serious
scholarship is likely to suffer.37 As the Black studies department at San
Francisco State in 1969 1970 illustrates, students who were well or ga-
The Counterrevolution on Campus | 187
nized and possessed of a clear po liti cal agenda for Black studies could
be dogmatic and intimidating toward Black faculty. But in most schools,
students did not seek to exert that level of ideological control.
One area of student participation in departmental governance that
troubled many scholars was the questioning of job applicants about the
race of their spouses. In their view, this illustrated the risk of students
assuming professional roles without the appropriate professionalization. Fairly or not, with the ascendancy of Black nationalism, students
often interpreted the marital affi liations of Black scholars (men, in the
main) as a sign of their larger communal affi liation and orientation. An
interracial couple did not exemplify the idea of Black people coming
together that animated much of the Black Power movement, and some
felt that marriages of Black men to white women, in par tic u lar, constituted a race- based rejection of African American women. But the introduction of this issue in the hiring pro cess signaled, for many scholars,
an inappropriate entry of ideology into a professional context. During
an interview for a job in the Black studies department at Lehman College in the Bronx, a committee of students asked the historian William
Seraille about the racial identity of his wife. He happens to be married
to a Black woman, and he got the job, but he remembers his surprise
at the question. Blassingame described a friends different experience.
After being approved by the faculty, he went before the black students
to prove his ideological fi tness, Blassingame wrote. When he opened
up his remarks to them by pointing out that he had a white wife, the
students rejected him. In spite of his qualifi cations he was not hired.38
Mary Jane Hewitt, an administrator at UCLA in the late 1960s, recalls
the hostility encountered by African American scholar Sylvester Whittaker, who served very briefl y as the director of the Center for African
American Studies. His ex- wife was white, she says. And all the ladies
he dated were white, and this is why he marvels today at Claudia
Mitchell- Kernan having been a successful director of that center for all
those years with a white husband, when he thinks about how they crucifi ed him because of his white wife and white girlfriends. Ron Karengas
guys she recalls, gave Whittaker a hard time.39
St. Clair Drake said that until 1967 the criticism he received for being married interracially came from whites, but then Black women
began to question him. At Roo se velt last year the Black Student Association wasnt having much to do with me, he noted, summing up
the students view of him this way: The thing that is wrong with
[Drake] is that he is a nigger that talks black and sleeps white. But
188 | The Counterrevolution on Campus
Drake criticized others for concealing from public knowledge the fact
that they were sleeping with white women. In his view, he was at least
honest and got married. Fifty- eight years old and a distinguished social
scientist, Drake was one of the scholars that Harvard tried to hire to
chair Afro- American studies, but he had already said yes to Stanfords
same offer. When Harvard called, he said, I felt like telling them, why
didnt you ask me 20 years ago, when I really could have used the research facilities and support. But they wait until the kids are ready to
burn the place down before they ask me.40
This leads to another major challenge and point of contestation in
the early Black studies movement who was qualifi ed and willing to
teach Black studies? It was not easy to staff the scores of new Black
studies programs, centers, and departments that sprang up across the
country in 1969 and the early 1970s. A couple of hundred campuses
launched search committees for specialists in Black studies all at the
same time. After Martin Luther Kings assassination, Charles Hamilton
discovered, black professors (preferably with PhDs) became one of the
most sought after commodities on the market.41 Black PhDs were the
most in demand, but they were few in number. Of the thirteen thousand
professional sociologists in 1970, for example, only eighty- fi ve were
Black.42 According to a survey in 1970, fewer than 1 percent of PhD
holders in the United States were Black, and most in this group were
over age fi fty- fi ve.43 Spelman historian Vincent Harding was committed
to staying in the South and teaching Black students. I have received in
the past several years, you have no idea how many offers to come teach
in the North. This is a time that schools that were not interested in black
teachers fi ve years ago will do anything to get them. He made a passionate attempt to convince Black students and scholars to resist the
brain drain of HBCUs and stay in or move to the South.44
While still a graduate student at Northwestern in the late 1960s, John
Bracey was fl ooded with job offers. Both he and James Turner, another
Northwestern graduate student, joined African American studies programs before completing their doctorates, and their stories further illustrate the unusual or unconventional circumstances that often shaped
hiring in the fi eld. Turner became the fi rst director of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University. A Black nationalist, he
sought to recruit scholars of like mind and argued against white- defi ned
academic qualifi cations. They call them objective criteria, but these refl ect colonial education, he felt. At Cornell, he argued for a hiring process where there could be no judgment by whites, and no review
The Counterrevolution on Campus | 189
mechanism of the hiring of Blacks at all. Our defi nition of the program
meant, in the fi rst instance, that Black people must hire each other.45
John Braceys hiring in the Department of Afro- American Studies at the
University of Massachusetts in 1972 was the ironic result of an even
more unpop u lar po liti cal philosophy. W. E. B. Du Bois had instructed
that the executor of his estate, Herbert Aptheker, also an historian and
member of the Communist Party, accompany the gift of his personal
papers to the University of Massachusetts. But the state legislature
balked at the prospect of hiring this openly communist scholar, though
they remained interested in acquiring Du Boiss massive and highly
valuable personal archive. Aptheker decided to take advantage of whatever leverage he might have and proposed that, in his place, the university add fi ve additional faculty positions in Afro- American studies, one
of which became Braceys position.46
To be sure, not every young Black scholar who worked on African
American subjects wanted to join a Black studies program. It is vital to
remember that even though universities were designing new courses
and programs, most academics did not regard the fi eld as academically
legitimate. Plus, many did not share the Black nationalist project of
some of the fi elds found ers. James Turner encountered this dilemma in
hiring at Cornell. The problem we have found is fi nding Black people
who can understand that their whole notion of scholarship has been so
shaped by white people that they cant see and think for themselves, he
declared. Too many of them really believe that the stuff we are talking
about is a compromise of intellectual integrity. They look at us and say,
I think you cats really want to discourage doing academic work. In
Turners opinion, the real problem is not simply personnel, but personnel who are inclined towards a Black orientation and who wont blow
the whole thing.47
Many young Black scholars likely questioned whether Black studies
would even last, and may have viewed launching a career in the fi eld as
risky. On this reluctance by Black scholars, St. Clair Drake observed,
They want the security and prestige of being in a traditional department. Black studies might be a fad, and theyd be left out in the cold.48
Norvel Smith, the Black president of Merritt College in Oakland, alma
mater of Huey P. Newton and home of one of the fi rst Black studies
departments, saw a signifi cant tension between the career aspirations of
many Black scholars and the po liti cal sensibilities of radical Black
youth. A black faculty member, in his view, likes to feel that his professional position is justifi ed on a basis other than race, and he resents
190 | The Counterrevolution on Campus
the encumbrances of black students. . . . In addition, many faculty
members are turned off by the student rhetoric.49 Charles Hamilton
was inundated with job offers in the late 1960s; he chose not to join
a Black studies program, deciding instead to join the po liti cal science
faculty at Columbia University. While still a graduate student, Sterling
Stuckey was invited to chair the new Department of African American
Studies at Northwestern, but he declined and subsequently began his
career in the history department. Jim Pitts, who also did his graduate
work at Northwestern and later joined their sociology department, remembers the atmosphere in African American studies at Northwestern
as poisoned and found the idea of working there unappealing.50
Sometimes, this scenario was reversed, and a Black scholar on the
faculty regardless of scholarly expertise was tapped to teach African
American studies. Robert Singleton, an assistant professor of industrial
relations at the University of California, Los Angeles, was asked by students to head the new Center for Afro- American Studies. He thinks his
efforts to restrain police who were rounding up all Black males after
the shooting deaths of two students who were leaders in the Black Panther Party on campus in January 1969 made the students like him.
At the time, he felt he was not qualifi ed he had not yet completed his
PhD but he agreed to serve on an interim basis because he felt that the
job needed to be done.51
As for the prospect of hiring whites, the general view in the early
years, especially, is summed up by the white chairman of a Black studies
planning committee at a large, urban university: Our students do not
say that no white professor can teach any aspect of Black studies, but
that few are competent to do so, few have the right attitudes or knowledge, and most importantly, the typical liberal professor allows the
interracial class to become a rap session. Our black students do not
want to be in the position of fi nding either that they are guinea- pigs for
class discussion or that they know more of the subject at hand than the
instructor.52 Overall, Black students voiced a strong preference for
Black professors in Black studies courses, while Black scholars expressed
more openness to the participation of qualifi ed non- Black professors.
An all- Black search committee at Fordham University in the Bronx
hired the white historian Mark Naison in 1970. Naison felt he had been
hired not only because of my research on black history but because
the programs found ers saw teaching whites about African American
history and culture as complementary to their mission of promoting
black unity and empowerment. He became an evangelist for black
The Counterrevolution on Campus | 191
studies among white and Latino students, and found that some black
students resented what I was doing. But with the passage of time and
large course enrollments, the hostility dissipated and Naison became
integrated into the life of the program.53
Historian Clayborne Carson attributes his quick ascent from computer programmer to professor to, in part, the signifi cance of race in the
early Black studies movement and the desire by Black students to have
Black professors in this burgeoning fi eld. As an auditor of a new course
at UCLA on the history of race in the United States, taught by white
historian Gary Nash, he ended up leading a discussion section. This
propelled Carson to enter graduate school in 1969, and two years later
he became an acting assistant professor. The professors who engineered
my recruitment were responding to forceful Black student demands for
an African American history course taught by a Black professor. My
hiring followed an interview session with leaders of the Black Student
Union and was made possible by an expedient decision to deny tenure
to a non- Black professor, Ronald Takaki, the superb historian who
taught UCLAs fi rst African American history course. Carson regretted the racial politics in the hiring pro cess and the denial of tenure to
Takaki, a Hawaiian of Japa nese descent, who went on to a distinguished career in Asian American studies at Berkeley, where he helped
to launch the ethnic studies department. For his part, Carson was relieved to leave the po liti cal hot house of UCLA for a position at Stanford, where he built a career as one of the nations leading scholars of
the civil rights movement.54
As Harvards early attempts to hire in Afro- American studies show,
the fact that many universities were competing for the same scholars, and
that many Black PhDs shunned Black studies, made hiring diffi cult. Universities often turned to nontraditional sources of recruitment, which in
turn served to reinforce the notion that Black studies was not a serious
academic venture. John Blassingame, ever the gadfl y, expressed sharp
criticism of early Black studies instructors. Because of their lack of
commitment and the urgent demand, Blassingame wrote, many colleges are hiring all manner of people to teach black- oriented courses,
especially if they are black. Social workers, graduate students who have
just embarked on their graduate careers, high school teachers, principals,
and practically anyone who looks black or has mentioned Negroes in an
article, book or seminar paper are hired to teach Afro- American courses.
While clearly hyperbole, this statement does capture the sense of improvisation and scrambling by an unprepared academic establishment in
192 | The Counterrevolution on Campus
the wake of a major nationwide movement victory. Sterling Stuckey,
who assisted in recruiting candidates for the African American studies
department at Northwestern, concedes that it was diffi cult to fi nd qualifi ed people and thinks they made a few inappropriate hires. And ultimately, there were instances where inappropriate instructors either
intimidated administrators into promoting them, or preserved their
jobs as a result of the low opinion or misunderstanding of the fi eld held
by many in academia. These early hiring decisions adversely affected
some departments for de cades and certainly infl uenced the broader image of the fi eld.55 Michael Thelwell offered a broader perspective. He
noted the concern of many that colleges would set up hastily manufactured and meaningless programs taught by semi- literate dashiki- clad
demagogues with nothing to offer but a militant black rap. He had
seen very few of these, although he acknowledged the risk. It would be
pointless to pretend that this danger does not exist in some small degree, he wrote, but my impression of the basic good sense of this student generation, and their serious commitment and sense of responsibility to themselves and their community, reassures me that this tendency
will be a short- lived one.56
As much as faculty supporters of Black studies wanted to be responsive to student demands, they also wanted quality programs, and many
worried that an insuffi cient faculty supply would lead to a pattern of
weak, understaffed programs that might cast the whole discipline in a
bad light and put it in actual jeopardy. A few scholars proposed models
to consolidate talent and guide the creation of the fi eld in a more purposeful, coherent fashion. Vincent Harding called for a Commission for
Black Education to plan and or ga nize higher education for African
Americans.57 Expressing a pop u lar idea, Melvin Drimmer argued for
the development of a dozen or so centers for the teaching and study of
Black history, and he envisioned Black colleges as the logical starting
point.58 Darwin Turner, the dean of the graduate school at North Carolina A&T, wanted both respectability and innovation in Black studies:
I am suffi ciently traditional and black that I want to be certain that
Afro- American studies programs are respectably staffed with a core of
Ph.Ds. Otherwise the intellectual snobs of our campuses will cite the
sparsity of them in the program to support their suspicion that AfroAmerican studies are designed for the dumb and disadvantaged, and
good students may fear to become identifi ed with a program stigmatized as intellectually inferior. But at the same time, Turner defended
the view that a broader range of talent should be tapped for the college
The Counterrevolution on Campus | 193
classroom. I warn against the pompous pretense that a teacher cannot
be used unless he has a masters or doctors degree, he declared, fi guring that an or ga niz er with ten years experience in the black ghetto
could teach a course in sociology maybe better than someone whose
research only came from libraries. He urged three solutions: fi nance
and encourage Black students to attend graduate school; develop regional, cooperative Black studies centers; and utilize those individuals
who have a lot of practical experience but lack an advanced degree.
This was already happening for creative writers and artists. Ralph Ellison and Gwendolyn Brooks would be hired at almost any institution
in the country, Turner noted.59
After losing St. Clair Drake to Stanford and being turned down by
John Hope Franklin, who held a distinguished professorship at the University of Chicago and moreover had no interest in joining a department of Black studies, Harvard hired Ewart Guinier, a lawyer, former
trade unionist, and longtime Black community leader, to chair the new
Department of Afro- American Studies. As a nonacademic operating in
an elite academic environment, Guinier called upon prominent scholars
for counsel and advice, notably Charles Hamilton, Hollis Lynch, and
especially Sterling Stuckey. But Guinier encountered enormous challenges in getting Harvard to fulfi ll its commitments to the department.
As Hollis Lynch later observed, The Harvard administration did not
share Professor Guiniers grand ambition and design for his Department and certainly put many obstacles in the way of actualizing them.60
The university succeeded in undermining or reversing key victories of
1969, including the student role in hiring, full faculty appointments,
inclusion of African studies, and development of a research institute.
Faculty and student leaders in Afro- American studies managed to preserve its departmental character, but the toll in demoralization and
shrinkage was high.
A review of the department by internal and external scholars in 1972
provided the fi rst occasion to trim its sails. By this point, the department had graduated its fi rst class of fourteen concentrators who were
headed to law, business, and graduate schools. It had ten instructors,
although Guinier remained the sole tenured professor, and offered a
wide range of courses each semester in African and African American
studies. Guinier had a global conception of Black studies, believing that
it should cover the history and culture of Black people from ancient
times to the present, including experiences in Africa and North America and the Ca rib be an.61 The students, course offerings, and faculty
194 | The Counterrevolution on Campus
were diverse, with white students generally comprising 40 to 60 percent
of course enrollments. But nonetheless a portrait of a racially exclusive
and philosophically separatist department was widely promoted. Po litical scientist Martin Kilson the fi rst tenured Black faculty member at
Harvard had served on the Rosovsky Committee and was a fi rm believer in the benefi ts of joint appointments, program status, and traditional faculty control for African American studies. He was severely
disappointed in the April 1969 faculty decision and became a vocal
critic of the department in the 1970s. He portrayed departmental status
as tragic and argued that it made Black studies academically and
technically diffuse and disoriented, and put this generation of Black
students at a disadvantage. They will be dilettantes at best, and charlatans at worst, he warned.62
During the 1972 review of the department, Kilson circulated his
Memorandum on Direction of Reforms in Afro- American Studies
Curriculum at Harvard University, which expressed his objections, especially the idea that students should not be able to major exclusively in
figure 17. Lerone Bennett and Ewart Guinier, the fi rst chair of the Department of
Afro- American Studies at Harvard, converse at a conference of the Association for
the Study of Afro- American Life and History.
The Counterrevolution on Campus | 195
Afro- American studies. Aggressively seeking to shape the review, Kilson
characterized the department as a hostile Black island in the erudite sea
of Harvard. He assailed the inclusion of students on the executive
committee, describing them as black racialist if not black racist in
outlook and blaming them for the lack of white teachers, who in his
view had a kind of right to be there. (And there actually had been white
instructors in the department.) Kilson wanted the rich talent of white
scholars at Harvard to be brought to bear on the struggling department, even suggesting, remarkably, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick
Moynihan, whose Beyond the Melting Pot, had questioned the vitality
and contribution of Black American culture. Glazer and Moynihan
were part of a generation of white experts whose scant encounter
with Black history and culture had given rise to the Black studies movement.63 Contacted by Harvard for his view of the Afro- American studies departments status, po liti cal scientist Ron Walters expressed concern about Martin Kilsons characterization of the department. Black
studies did not politicize the university, he argued, it was already politicized by a thousand issues more volatile than black studies. Moreover, in forming the department, Harvard recognized that any legitimate black effort is controlled and developed by black people. Walters
expressed frustration that Kilson would reduce this quest to the dictates of a bunch of militants. It is the desire of those involved in black
studies whether they be militants or moderates, he declared, to have
an authentically black educational experience.64
Ewart Guinier felt that many infl uential people at Harvard wished
to undo the faculty vote of April 1969, so the department produced
its own self- evaluation as a means of ensuring that their perspective
many accomplishments despite weak university support would get a
public airing. Harvard graduate students Andrea Rushing and Wesley
Profi t helped put together The First Three Years. It was released two
days before the offi cial review, and in Profi ts view, it saved the department. The report prevented the university from dismantling the department, he believes. He credits Guiniers seasoned or ga niz ing skills and
willingness to fi ght back as essential to the survival of Afro- American
studies as a department.65
The review committee, headed by federal judge Wade H. McCree Jr.,
found a middle ground between the department and its critics. The
committees report praised the dedication of the departments chair
and concentrators, yet many of its recommendations undercut the departments vision. It urged Harvard to reaffi rm its commitment to the
196 | The Counterrevolution on Campus
department and to immediately hire at least two more se nior faculty;
recommended but did not require joint majors; suggested greater focus
on Afro- Americans and less attention to African studies; dissolved the
standing committee which had been the vehicle for including students
in faculty recruitment but kept students on all other departmental
committees; created a new interdepartmental faculty search committee;
and urged creation of the delayed W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for AfroAmerican Research. It also recommended (but did not require) that
joint appointments with other departments be used to facilitate faculty
recruitment. The committee found that one of the problems of attracting eminent black and white scholars to the Department is the fact that
they have earned ac cep tance in conventional disciplines at other institutions which they would not want to forsake by going into a department which appears to be on trial and/or accorded second- class status
by Harvard.66
In the aftermath of the review, the marginalization and isolation of
the department intensifi ed. The effort to assemble a stable tenure- track
faculty remained a challenge, and it took several more years to hire the
second tenured faculty member, the music scholar Eileen Southern, who
was jointly appointed to the music department. The sociologist Orlando Patterson had joined the department as an assistant professor but
later moved to sociology after an acrimonious falling out with Guinier.
The departments fi rst internal tenure candidate, Ephraim Issac, a specialist in African languages and a Harvard PhD, was denied tenure but
won a settlement after it was discovered that the college had wrongfully
instructed an external review committee that Issac had to be jointly appointed in order to get tenure.67
In the meantime, Professor Kilson escalated his criticism of the department and aimed his guns at Harvards use of affi rmative action in
undergraduate admissions, which, like Afro- American studies, he saw
as leading to an inferior Black presence at Harvard. Kilson used the
words militant and militancy repeatedly in diagnosing this apparent
problem. The effects of the separatism and militancy of the late 1960s,
he insisted, were having a disastrous impact on the academic achievement and intellectual growth of Negro students.68 Kilson spent much
of 1973 publicly disparaging the qualities and abilities of Black Harvard students and even took it upon himself to lobby for shift in admissions policy. In a lengthy memo to the university president and deans of
the college, Kilson complained that many Black students admitted in
the past six years lack a desire or capacity to acculturate to competi-
The Counterrevolution on Campus | 197
tive academic and intellectual lifestyles and urged a reconsideration of
admissions criteria.69 In yet another letter to Harvard administrators,
he complained that there are still too many black girls recruited into
Radcliffe who are simply marginal intellectually; they are not really
capable of or not really interested in superior intellectual and academic
per for mance at an elite institution like Harvard.70
A series of articles in the Harvard Bulletin launched the public phase
of his attack. He reiterated his concern that the future quality of the
Afro- American elites or professional classes is at stake and alleged that
the Afro- American studies department, like others around the country,
was created with scant concern for academic or intellectual standards.
He questioned the competence of Black faculty and staff hired as a result of student protest which included most Black faculty and staff at
Harvard. He urged a move away from admitting ghetto- type blacks
and toward favoring those possessed of a strong preference for individualistic acculturation. Like some other traditionalist critics of the
Black campus movement, Kilson sought to portray himself as its truest
friend through his unabashed and fearless, and evidently lone, insistence on rigor. But the Harvard Bulletin researched some of Kilsons
claims and reported that between 75 and 80 percent of Black students
admitted in recent years would not be categorized as disadvantaged,
and found as well that Black students from disadvantaged backgrounds
do equivalent work to that done by middle- class blacks, in terms of rank
list and grade- point averages.71
The Bulletin provided space for rebuttals, and a group of students
answered with aplomb. They assailed the collective portrait of Black
incompetence that Kilson had put forward. It is apparent, they argued,
that by making his generalizations, Kilson denies to Harvard blacks
the very individuality which he accuses them of rejecting and which for
himself he holds so dear. Blacks at Harvard are such a heterogeneous
lot that only someone with the professors lively imagination could even
conceive of the kinds of collective attitudes with which he associates
us. The students debunked his claims of lower Black qualifi cations by
pointing to the (comparatively high) SAT scores of Black admits in the
preceding fi ve years. Much of their dispute mirrored larger debates about
the meaning of Blackness in the aftermath of Black Power. For Kilson,
black solidarity behavior is a problem an obstruction to high academic achievement and upward social mobility that must be eliminated
before blacks can approach the nirvana of middle- class American society. The students rejected this view, saying, He genuinely believes, it
198 | The Counterrevolution on Campus
seems, that there is no signifi cance in cultural blackness unless it apes
or imitates white cultural norms every step of the way. They offered a
strong defense of cultural pluralism and the mutually constituted nature of Black and American identities. But their chief intervention was
in vigorously questioning the portrait he had painted of them as provincial, anti- intellectual, and victims and purveyors of groupthink.72
Law professor Derrick Bell, too, offered a rebuttal, noting that Kilson had been sounding this alarm for several years. Like a bawdy tune
with lyrics one would dare not repeat in public, Bell wrote, clearly fed
up, Martins Melodies sing almost gleefully of black intellectual unreadiness in terms so broadly indicting the race that no sophisticated
white would dare repeat them, however much he might agree with their
expressions. It is no surprise that University publications have given
Kilsons statements so much space. One can almost see the advocates of
meritocracy rejoicing each time Kilson takes aim at the shortcomings of
blacks in academe. . . . It may be that Professor Kilson is trying to help
black students by his repeated public attacks. But as every social scientist should know, oppressed minorities are burdened by doubts of selfworth. Public criticism by a member of that group (particularly one as
eminent as Professor Kilson) that focuses on shortcomings and ignores
positive values will be used by the majority to justify continuance rather
than cessation of oppressive behavior.73
On another occasion when Bell rose to the defense of Black students
after a series of public criticism by Kilson, he noted that the Black community at Harvard had tried for a long time to ignore Kilsons vicious
slanders. But Bell had come to worry that administrators might mistake their silence for support.74 Kilson was per sis tent. He reprised the
essays as The Black Experience at Harvard, for the New York Times
Magazine a few months later, and in the fi rst sentence declared that
Black students have reached a crisis created in large mea sure by
black separatism and militancy. The essay is fi lled with lament for the
glory days of his college years, and alarm and despair over what he sees
as Black intolerance and failure on campus. Since 1971, he claimed
without an illustration, the pressures for conformity to black- solidarity
behavior have been well- nigh overwhelming at Harvard. But more
damaging was his assertion that black- solidarity forces are distinctly
anti- intellectual and antiachievement in orientation, citing as evidence
student pride in participating in community affairs and posturing
Black power in relation to po liti cal issues like Harvards Gulf Oil investments in Africa.
The Counterrevolution on Campus | 199
After the Times essay, Ewart Guinier offered a series of forceful
responses in various media. What has made the situation at Harvard
so sadly disturbing is that, while white antagonists of Afro- American
studies have remained almost completely silent, one or two Negro
professors . . . have engaged in an orgy of rage against us. He regretted
waiting so long to answer the attacks and contended that it had interfered with faculty recruitment.75 Subsequently, in what became a fi nal
public embarrassment and major campus confl ict, and in defi ance of
the recommendations by several committees, the administration excluded the department and Guinier from the planning and creation of
the Du Bois Institute, sparking an outpouring of criticism by Professor
Guinier on the eve of his retirement. Henry Rosovsky was dean of the
college, and Derek Bok was president. Guinier released a strongly
worded nineteen- page statement in which he accused Bok and Rosovsky of undermining the department, and surrendering to forces supporting white supremacy within Harvard. There had been no success
in making joint appointments ever since the McCree committee had
recommended it as a recruitment tool. Guinier had long opposed this
strategy, saying it deterred those interested in African American studies,
and noted that he found it absurd to grant such a leading role to departments with histories of racist scholarship and all- white hiring practices. Still, they had tried to hire John Blassingame jointly, but the history department had rejected him; and according to Guinier, when they
tried to hire him exclusively in Afro- American studies the university
failed to provide suffi cient research funds. Bok and Rosovsky termed
Guiniers words intemperate and countered that they were seeking to
strengthen the department. Bok appointed Andrew Brimmer, a Black
former member of the Federal Reserve, to head a panel charged with
developing the Du Bois Institute.76
But the exclusion of the department from the planning pro cess for
the institute also galvanized students, leading the Du Bois Institute
Student Co ali tion to conduct a sit- in at Massachusetts Hall. For his
part, Guinier accused administrators of abandoning any pretense of
manners, of courtesy, or civility in relating the Afro- American Studies
Department. Their intent, he insisted, was to hold black people up to
ridicule and humiliation and, fi nally, to isolate and pistol whip us into
submission as the entire Harvard community watches. Once and for
all, he declared, they want to teach us a lesson, to show us our
place.77 As a result of these heated and widely publicized confl icts,
lack of administrative support, and divergent views of how to develop
200 | The Counterrevolution on Campus
African American studies, the department at Harvard remained very
small until the early 1990s. Given that the positive media attention paid
to Black studies at Harvard in later years helped to raise the profi le of
the department and likely enhanced the stature of the discipline in academe more generally, one can imagine that the spate of negative stories
penned by Kilson and others in the 1970s fueled a broader skepticism
of, if not contempt for, African American studies in general.78
The Harvard story seemed to confi rm a discourse of crisis in, even
failure of, Black studies that permeated discussions and repre sen ta tions
of the fi eld in the 1970s. A headline in the Wall Street Journal blared:
Black Studies Found er as Student Interest Declines and Faculties Grow
More Skeptical. The Washington Post announced: Once Pop u lar Black
Studies Now Attracting Only a Handful of Students.79 Black studies is
in deep trouble, declared the Black Scholar under the headline Politics of the Attack on Black Studies, which at least reframed the character of the crisis. In that article, Robert Allen found that three hundred
programs had closed in the early 1970s, a dramatic but infl ated fi gure.80
As the fate of open admissions at the City University of New York demonstrated, widespread bud get cuts during the recession of the mid1970s had a devastating effect on new programs. At a 1975 conference
titled The Future of Black Studies, with more than a hundred program directors in attendance, all but one reported fi nancial cutbacks.81
To survive and succeed, one critic noted, Black programs required
the support of the very structures they were designed to counterpose.
This basic contradiction was not properly analyzed, understood or confronted. As a result, the new units were underfunded, given low status,
and marginalized, and predictably this negatively affected student
perceptions.82
Challenges to the disciplines academic legitimacy were common
throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Leaders in Black studies regularly
complained about the lack of support and ac cep tance from administrators and colleagues and the seemingly unending quest to prove its legitimacy. Carlene Young wrote, Afro- American studies have been forced
to struggle against continual assaults on their limited resources and
structural integrity while maintaining strong academic programs, highly
qualifi ed faculty, and good enrollments. Moreover, she lamented,
there are still too many in the Academy who resent the intrusion and,
as a consequence, agitate for the demise of Afro- American Studies.83
The Ford Foundations relationship to African American studies illustrates how the desire for self- determination and African American
The Counterrevolution on Campus | 201
intellectual leadership profoundly shaped the early Black studies movement. Ford began an association with Black studies in 1968 when it
funded a high- profi le conference at Yale University. The young radicals
Nathan Hare, Ron Karenga, and Gerald McWorter debated professors
David Brion Davis, Robert Ferris Thompson, and Martin Kilson, showcasing the generational and po liti cal cleavages and challenges in the
early Black studies movement. Most people at Ford held a conservative
or traditionalist view of Black studies best path much like Rosovskys
at Harvard and urged this view in grant making. I would not favor
support for the notion that only Blacks can teach or understand this
subject, and that therefore the Department of Black studies must be
separately or ga nized, a top offi cial informed foundation president McGeorge Bundy. I fear it will become a cultural war camp, marked by
myth- making and collective self- deception.84 As we have seen, many
liberal leaders of this era confl ated departmental status with a commitment to racial separatism and, as the quote further suggests, had deep
reservations about the intellectual legitimacy of African American studies. Roger Wilkins, a young African American program offi cer, urged
Bundy to include the younger and angrier Black scholars in the advisory pro cess. But as Farah Griffi n has shown, Bundy instead heeded the
advice of Sir Arthur Lewis, a Princeton- trained, Caribbean- born economist, who urged support for programs that aspired to the same standards as the established disciplines, as well as support for the production of more Black PhDs.85
In 1969 Ford disbursed more than one million dollars to fourteen
colleges, as well as to the Institute of the Black World, in order to help
launch Black studies. A Ford- sponsored conference in Aspen, Colorado,
in July 1970 dramatically illustrated the desire by Black scholars to assert control over the burgeoning fi eld and to convey this stance to white
philanthropists and scholars. Ford sponsored the Aspen conference in
order to take stock of the new programs and examine, as one Ford offi cial put it, the intellectual underpinnings of black studies. To the
Ford offi cials dismay, however, much of the discussion at Aspen focused instead on questions of control and the po liti cal and ideological
per for mance of black studies.86 The confl ict started before the conference had even begun, when Vincent Harding objected to the list of
invitees noting the absence of several key leaders in the Black studies
movement and objecting to the inclusion of white scholars as resource people. I thought the list of non- directors was a strange one,
he wrote to historian Edgar Toppin, whom Ford had asked to chair the
202 | The Counterrevolution on Campus
event. In light of the current intellectual and po liti cal mood among
black people, I did not understand why there was a need to have any
white scholars present to participate in a discussion on the future of
Black studies, Harding wrote. And it seemed very insensitive to include
two who had publicly expressed serious questions about whether black
scholars ought to control the defi nition of the black experience.87
On the fi rst day of the conference, Harding, Roscoe Brown, Andrew
Billingsley, St. Clair Drake, and others issued a statement as the Black
Caucus of the Aspen Black Studies Seminar. Of major concern to us is
the fact that Black expertise and leadership did not have the major role
in conceptualizing and or ga niz ing the conference, they wrote, calling
Fords approach reminiscent of the paternalistic ways in which White
America has habitually treated Blacks throughout American history.
Billingsley followed with his own stinging statement to the Ford offi cials,
whom he lauded for supporting Black education, but criticized in
this case for adopting American white ways of doing things. We do
not mean to impugn the motives of anybody associated with it, but
we do mean to say, as strongly as we can, that the effect was damaging. He recommended very strongly that this mistake not be repeated
again.88
Ford interpreted the professors protest as either po liti cal posturing
or a rejection of integration. James Armsey, who as Fords director of
higher education in the 1960s had barred grants to segregated universities, prompting several private southern schools, like Duke, Emory, and
Vanderbilt, to desegregate, answered with a speech defending the foundation. You spent the fi rst morning censuring the Ford Foundation in
connection with this seminar, he began. The whole point of the conference, in his view, was for Ford grantees to get together, compare notes,
swap experiences, review problems, exchange learnings and consider
plans for the future. Its success or failure, he claimed, depended on the
participants. In his view, Ford or ga nized the conference in response to
the needs and desires of Black studies directors, although he conceded
that they should have hired a Black- owned agency to or ga nize the gathering. But then Armsey switched to offense. Referring to criticism of his
opening night welcome, he said, It was inevitable, I suppose, that my
remarks would be considered either paternalistic or patronizing. . . . In
the scheme of things today, there appears to be no way in which the
conduct of a white person in my position can be considered open, above
board, and honest. He accused the Black caucus of engaging in repetitive catharsis, of going through these rituals in part to remind the
The Counterrevolution on Campus | 203
white man of his guilt. That may be a useful purpose at times, he
declared, but through overuse it can become self- defeating. By these
tactics, you are driving your real white allies into isolation and opposition. His fi nal jab was the statement that the only guilt he felt in
connection with Black studies was in relaxing the normal standards of
intellectual rigor in recommending grants.89
A program offi cer chimed in that he was deeply disturbed at the
separatist philosophy of several participants at Aspen, singling out
Harding and Billingsley. There was certainly a problem of translation
at Aspen as Ford offi cials took literally Armstead Robinsons statement that the Black studies movement represents the death of integration as a vital po liti cal imperative for Blacks in this country. Ford was
obviously not going to fund the death of integration, but Robinsons
longer comments make clear that he was referring to a redefi nition of
Black identity, not an abandonment of desegregation.90
The directors of Black studies programs at Aspen voiced support for
Hardings and Billingsleys critiques although Ford offi cials hinted that
some among the old guard, notably George Kelsey and Benjamin Quarles, had misgivings. Nevertheless, they all expressed surprise and dismay
to discover that Ford had no intention of continuing to fund collegiate
Black studies programs. Ford claimed to have always viewed its grants
to Black studies programs as temporary, but their loss had a signifi cant,
often unanticipated, impact.91 Ford believed that universities should
assume the role of funding their own academic programs, but it is also
plausible that Ford was disinclined to renew robust support in the immediate aftermath of Aspen. In any event, Ford continued to offer funding to Black students in PhD programs, which it had begun in 1969.
Fords support for Black studies resumed and expanded in the 1980s
and beyond, benefi ting not only major research universities such as
Berkeley, Cornell, Harvard, UCLA, and Madison but also the fi elds
two major professional organizations: the National Council of Black
Studies, and the Association for the Study of Afro- American Life and
History (formerly the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History). Importantly, in the 1980s, Ford also expanded fellowships for
underrepresented minorities, which have played a signifi cant part in
funding young Black scholars.92
In addition to external skepticism about the academic rigor or legitimacy of Black studies, internal debates arose about the role of political ideology and activism in Black studies. Would Black studies follow
the po liti cal inspiration and aspirations of its student found ers, or
204 | The Counterrevolution on Campus
would it move in a more traditional academic direction? Could it
meet the expectation of some of its student found ers and advance the
Black revolution? Some professors pushed back, even when they often
supported the larger thrust of the Black student struggle. A student in
one of St. Clair Drakes classes at Stanford once asked him why they
were sitting around talking about problems instead of being out there
solving them. Drake answered, There are intellectual tasks and there are
street tasks for the black revolution, and my temperament and the university environment are more suited for the intellectual tasks.93 During
a visit to the University of Illinois in Urbana, Charles Hamilton witnessed an exchange that captured the chasm between militant students
and traditionally trained scholars. A student asked, Is the purpose of
this program to help the student really change the society? Are we going
to use the technology of the society to overthrow it? Another student
chimed in: Are we going to have a program that teaches us how to
make a buck, or turn this society upside down? The Black professor
responded, We are not going to set up a separate university. After all,
we are Americans.94
Education scholar Reginald Wilson endorsed the po liti cal mission of
Black studies in a speech at Wayne State University in 1971. Black studies must be seen as a direct attack against the cultural imperialism of
white scholarship and the deliberate oppression by white educational
institutions of Black youth, he declared. Anticipating the later critique
of multiculturalism as depoliticizing, he declared, I do not, therefore,
perceive of Black studies like any other ethnic studies: that is, providing
more background information, resurrecting the history of a neglected
minority, making the educational experience more relevant to a par ticu lar subculture, and instilling pride in the members of that subculture.
All of these things are fi ne and necessary, but they are not enough. In
the end, Wilson saw the real role of Black studies as nothing less than
the revolutionizing of the American educational experience, and felt that
Black educators must see the school as the center for community action
and a resource for effecting social change.95
But as the incorporation of Black studies took root, many scholars
developed a more nuanced view of the relation between academic work
and politics and began to pull back from the intense battles between
Black nationalists, Marxists, and integrationists that had roiled many
campuses. Roscoe Brown, the fi rst director of the Institute of African
American Affairs at New York University, felt that the question of
whether Black studies should have an ideological mission had been a
The Counterrevolution on Campus | 205
major stumbling block in the development and analysis of black studies programs. He rejected the notion that Black studies could exist
outside politics, since Black studies itself had forced the recognition
that intellectual production had ideological content. He argued instead
that it should not espouse a specifi c ideology such as integration or
Black nationalism.96
Carlos Brossard at the University of Pittsburgh reported strong interpersonal warfare around ideological differences and national backgrounds of Blacks, and identifi ed the main binaries as Marxists versus
Black nationalists, reformers versus revolutionaries, or academic- focused
institution- builders versus community- oriented activist- types. In many
respects, these differences were healthy and often productive for the
growth of the discipline, but in some instances, he offered, they also
came with acrimony. Some left- leaning scholars came to see the incidence of nonpublishing cultural nationalists serving long reigns as department chairs as a sign of the intentional marginalization of the fi eld.
Yet at the same time, Nathan Hare resigned from the Black Scholar in
the mid- 1970s, complaining that the journal had been taken over by
instant Marxists and that Black nationalists were getting insuffi cient
exposure.97
These ideological confl icts intruded into the new journals and professional organizations for the fi eld. At a meeting of the African Heritage Studies Association at Wayne State in the 1970s, Gerald McWorter,
a Marxist sociologist and activist, presented a sharp polemic against
Stokely Carmichael and poet Haki Madhubuti. He remembers the session as so heated and jam- packed that other sessions at the conference
were cancelled. In the morning, McWorter debated Madhubuti, and in
the afternoon, he debated Carmichael. It was very intense, McWorter,
now Abdul Alkalimat, remembers, and kept going all day long. In his
view, the key po liti cal question was: Is the battle we face a fi ght against
racism or is the battle a fi ght against imperialism?98 Alkalimat did not
shy from ideological confrontation. A couple of years later, he or ganized a Chicago- based Illinois Council for Black Studies, and when in
1982 Illinois hosted the annual conference of the National Council of
Black Studies, and Alkalimat won election to its board, the nationalistdominated body challenged the tally and ultimately succeeded in keeping him off. To many this appeared unfair, and according to Rhett
Jones, many scholars abandoned or ga nized Black Studies entirely,
others left the national organization now viewed as nationalist
controlled and concentrated their energies at the state level or on
206 | The Counterrevolution on Campus
individual African- American Studies units.99 Many worried that instead of being enriched by this ideological fervor, the new discipline had
been weakened.
Gradually, as the demands of incorporation into the academy became felt, and as the cohort who fought for Black studies either moved
on or were pushed out, the sense that Black studies was serving broader
Black communities and remained committed to a broader po liti cal mission began to fade. This was not true everywhere, and it was an uneven
pro cess. Public universities in California experienced this shift in the
most wrenching and acute way, as student and scholar activists on
so many campuses were barred from or ga niz ing Black and Third World
studies units. An ex- student dramatized it this way: When we left,
Black studies lost its po liti cal edge. It was taken over by either poverty
pimp- type hustlers, or straight traditional academic types. Either way,
thats not what we fought for.100
Several activists came to see Black studies units as structured to quell
student militancy, with chairs caught in the cross fi re between disappointed, militant students and the administration. Armstead Robinson,
a leader of the struggle at Yale, felt the programs that were created were
the subverted products of what Black students were trying to produce
after Martin Luther King died.101 In the early 1970s, a journalist found
most black studies programs in California have settled into an uneasy
but working relationship in the academic world, but in the pro cess,
black studies lost most of its most strident supporters, many of whom
now brand the programs as meaningless. Former Howard and San
Francisco State professor Nathan Hare became a leading proponent of
the idea that Black studies had failed to fulfi ll its mission. As it is typically taught, black studies is not particularly relevant, he said. It has
to relate to everyday life, but instead its the same old abstract kind of
learning. He felt it should express the ideology, goals and thought of
the black struggle.102 An assessment of the fi eld in 1971 found that
many programs which grew out of struggles for autonomy and nationbuilding have already been sucked back fully into the dominating university structures.103
Student activist Jack Daniels had coauthored the widely circulated
Black Paper for Black Studies a seventy- page prospectus for a School
for Black Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, which advocated a
unit deeply connected to the Black community, Black liberation, and
nation building. But a few years later, after becoming a professor, he felt
that the great debate between scholarship and activism was stretch-
The Counterrevolution on Campus | 207
ing black studies internal fi bers to the breaking point. The po liti cal
origins of Black studies were necessary, Professor Daniels now declared,
but they had become an albatross and must be removed from the neck
of Black Studies. He argued that the discipline would ultimately rise or
fall based not on its activist merits or profi le but on its ability to mark
out new intellectual terrain and produce compelling scholarship. Black
studies is indeed one of the most signifi cant challenges ever presented
to American colleges and universities. The critical need was not for a
master plan, or new theories, or greater ideological warfare, but basic
research. There simply cannot be viable Black studies instruction or
viable Black studies community programs until viable basic research
furnishes the data for instruction and application. He said the shortage
of faculty was real, but that the only response was to develop more.
New trails must be blazed. . . . Intellectual and spiritual giants have
preceded us, he declared, and we must heed their legacies. He advocated abandoning the ever present reactive stance we all know the limitations of white scholarship, he said; now we must become the agenda
setters, forget Moynihan, Glazer, and the like, and make ourselves the
new experts.104
As they continued the effort to give meaning to Black studies, scholars also focused on institution building in order to ensure the fi elds
survival. Documenting the rise of the fi eld was part of this impulse. An
infl uential early effort was Nick Aaron Fords Black Studies: Threat or
Challenge, published in 1973. His attention to white and Black campuses and selection of two- year community colleges, as well as elite
four- year institutions, as case studies conveyed the breadth of the movement and its extensive national impact. He collected data on more than
two hundred programs, identifi ed seven major objectives for Black
studies, and argued that it was a threat in that it challenged racist education and scholarship. Additionally, Fords insistence on the long history of Black scholarship and his discussion of such pioneering scholars
as historian and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, historian Carter G. Woodson, sociologist Charles E. Johnson, sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, historian Benjamin Quarles, phi los o pher Alain Locke, and others helped
to raise awareness among a new generation that Black studies was
by no means new, and that it in fact rested on a few generations of
Black scholarship.105 Ford found that most instructors in Black studies
programs were without rank or tenure, but another study ten years
later found marked improvement in both indices.106 Since its creation,
there have been numerous efforts to mea sure the size of the emerging
208 | The Counterrevolution on Campus
discipline, with varying estimates of the number of Black studies centers, programs, and departments. In 1974 Black Scholar editor and historian Robert L. Allen reported that the fi ve hundred colleges that had
provided full- scale Black studies programs three years earlier had
dropped to two hundred. A survey of the fi eld conducted in 1983 found
that, at its zenith, the number of programs and departments reached no
more than 300 formally or ga nized units.107 A 1995 article declared the
existence of seven hundred ethnic studies programs in the United States.
Numerous other tabulations and surveys have been done and continue
to pour forth.
A professional structure for African American studies was emerging,
exemplifi ed by the formation of the National Council of Black Studies
(NCBS) in 1975. The NCBS originated from the efforts of faculty in
North Carolina, under the leadership of Bertha Maxwell, a rare female
leader in the early Black studies movement. They endeavored to form a
national body and had a series of or gan i za tion al meetings in Atlanta,
Boulder, Columbus, and Prince ton. Another stream of activity that ultimately fl owed into the NCBS emerged from a group of Black studies
directors who fi rst met at a conference Rossyln, Virginia, in 1972 and
subsequently formed their group into the National Africana Accreditation and Review Panel. The program for the fi rst NCBS conference in
1977 showed the preoccupation in the early years with professionalization and gaining legitimacy, rather than scholarship, which was the
focus of only one session at the weekend event. Other sessions at the
conference were titled The Case for and against the Standardization of
Black Studies, Evaluating Black Studies Programs: Establishing the
Critical Ground Rules, and Building a Black United Front: Black Studies and the Black Community. Illustrating the continuing male face of
the fi eld, the program listed seventy- two male speakers and sixteen
women. In line with an emerging consensus among scholars, the NCBS
took the offi cial position that departmental status was the preferred
structure for African American studies and urged other units to establish the long- range goal of achieving departmental status. Indeed, more
than twenty- fi ve years later, the Afro- American studies program at Yale,
which was often touted in the 1970s as a success compared to that of
Harvard, achieved departmental status.108
Refl ecting the new ethos of self- determination and racial solidarity,
this period in U.S. history saw a rapid proliferation of Black professional organizations, and academia helped lead the way. Black caucuses
formed in the traditional disciplines would play a major role in opening
The Counterrevolution on Campus | 209
up opportunities and visibility for scholars of color. The National Conference of Black Po liti cal Scientists was formed in 1969 at Southern
University, the largest public HBCU in the country. The Association of
Black Sociologists was founded in 1970 as the Caucus of Black Sociologists. The Association of Black Psychologists was founded in San Francisco in 1968 and consists of professionals rather than academics, but
its goals and ethos very much refl ect the eras fusion of Black nationalist
politics and professional commitments. The mission statement of the
Association of Black Anthropologists, formed in 1970, continues to
embody the transformative effects of Black studies movement. In 2010
the Associations Web site declared that the Association will achieve its
mission by ensuring that people studied by anthropologists are not only
objects of study but active makers and/or participants in their own history. We intend to highlight situations of exploitation, oppression and
discrimination. Further it is our objective to analyze and critique social
science theories that misrepresent the reality of exploited groups while
at the same time construct more adequate theories to interpret the dynamics of oppression. This mission expresses a strong critique of the
history of anthropology in the United States and a reformulation of its
mission.109
To be sure, the professional or ga ni za tion of Black scholars began
well before the 1960s. The Association for the Study of Negro Life and
History had been founded in 1915, and its Journal of Negro History and
annual conferences greatly enhanced the development of scholarly collaboration and networking in the new discipline. Moreover, the College
Language Association, an or ga ni za tion of Black college teachers of English and foreign languages, had been founded in 1937. A host of journals appeared in the 1970s to help anchor the fi eld, including The Black
Scholar, the Western Journal of Black Studies, and the Journal of Black
Studies. These joined older journals from the long and thriving history
of Black scholarship, such as the Journal of Negro History, Phylon, and
the Journal of Negro Education. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the
Journal of Negro Education was indispensable to documenting the
growth of Black studies and publishing a variety of perspectives on its
or ga ni za tion and mission.
In sum, as the focus shifted from Black students to Black scholars in
the making of African American studies, new styles, visions, and sensibilities took root. A cohort of Black faculty emerged after the building
takeovers and sit- ins, and they fought to create Black studies in keeping
with the vision, to some extent, of student activists. But it was not easy.
210 | The Counterrevolution on Campus
These scholars faced administrative opposition, student pressure, and
professional obligations. Unexpectedly, the seemingly never- ending battle of incorporation absorbed and drained the po liti cal energies of
Black studies faculty, distracting attention from community leadership
and other types of po liti cal engagement that Black student leaders had
once envisioned as central to the project. As the years passed, new politi cal tensions and debates emerged within the professional orbit of
Black studies as scholars sought to fi gure out the best way to ease the
battles, gain resources and personnel, and most important, win respect
and recognition.
211
The Black student and Black studies movements were enormously infl uential on American campuses, but to what extent did they affect Black
communities and the broader American society? The rhetoric of these
movements was suffused with promises to bridge the gap between town
and gown, but did their leaders follow through on these commitments?
The belief that knowledge of African and African American history and
culture would empower Black people and Black communities had
gained popularity in the late 1960s and shaped many activist initiatives.
Off- campus initiatives demonstrated the popularity of the idea that
Black- controlled education, such as tele vi sion documentaries, communitybased schooling, or radical think tanks, would transform African American life. Moreover, in spite of its image of orthodoxy, Black nationalism gave rise to a range of perspectives and forms: international and
local, class conscious, and Afrocentric.
In a remarkable project that gave ordinary Americans access to the
Black history courses beginning to be offered on college campuses, Vincent Harding, William Strickland, and John Henrik Clarke or ga nized
the production of a televised series of lectures called Black Heritage:
A History of Afro- Americans. These men personally bridged the gap
between scholarship and activism, as all were educators who became
actively involved in the Black liberation struggle. A specialist in African
American history and close coworker of Martin Luther King Jr.,
Harding chaired the history department at Spelman College in Atlanta.
Chapter 7
The Black Revolution
Off- Campus
212 | The Black Revolution Off-Campus
A self- educated intellectual and legend in Harlem, Dr. Clarke dedicated
his life to reversing racist depictions of Africa and served as the fi rst
chairman of the Department of Black and Puerto Rican Studies at
Hunter College in Manhattan. A veteran of the northern student movement, Bill Strickland later taught po liti cal science in the Department of
Afro- American Studies at the University of Massachusetts. He and
Harding were also found ers of the Institute of the Black World, in Atlanta in 1969, described later in this chapter.
A series of 108 thirty- minute lectures that ran for eigh teen weeks,
Black Heritage began with Dr. Clarke lecturing on ancient African civilizations and concluded with Dr. Harding and James Forman discussing
the relation of the African American freedom struggle to the formerly
colonized nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. A distinguished
figure 18. Legendary Harlem historian John Henrik Clarke.
The Black Revolution Off-Campus | 213
roster of scholars, including St. Clair Drake, Benjamin Quarles, Horace
Mann Bond, Sterling Stuckey, Toni Cade, Edgar Toppin, Lerone Bennett, C. Eric Lincoln, James Shenton, Robert Browne, and Gerald McWorter, offered lectures on wide- ranging aspects of Black life, labor,
culture, and politics mostly, but not exclusively, in the United States.
Mirroring a college semester, the series began on WCBS- TV in January
1969 and concluded in May, airing six days a week. The broadcast
times posed a challenge for workaday audiences in this era before the
advent of tele vi sion recording devices. Even the New York Times tele vision critic deemed the 9 a.m. slot incon ve nient and the 7:30 slot on
Saturday mornings insulting. But untold thousands of viewers managed to watch the series and loved it. In the opening telecast, Harding,
whom the Times critic described as almost hypnotic because of the
passion and commitment he brought to his subject, spoke on the importance of Negroes understanding their past if they are to cope with
their present and shape their future. For a white viewer, the critic
wrote, Professor Harding effortlessly achieved his central point. His
lecture was indeed a new perspective on history and an exciting one at
that.1 Interestingly, the programs name meant that mainstream publications such as the Times would have to print nomenclature other than
Negro on a fairly regular basis.
Hundreds of viewers sent letters or postcards expressing their feelings about the show or asking for a copy of its syllabus, the availability
of which Vincent Harding had announced. Probably owing to the
shows broadcast time, many letters came from house wives and retirees.
As early as January, an offi cial at WCBS wrote to Harding: This program has prompted quite a response such as transcript requests, favorable comments, requests for time change, etc. Some letters were
from crotchety white viewers, but most were from admirers. The president of the Black student or ga ni za tion at New York University wrote to
the universitys president asking him to purchase the entire series for use
in the classroom, and copied Vincent Harding. The boxer Archie Moore
wrote to Harding: I think youre the greatest teacher I ever heard on
Black history. Every day since you began the lecture series on Black
Heritage, wrote John Rosenthal, a teacher at Trenton Central High
School in New Jersey, we have been watching your program. We are
using it as part of our class work on Black history. The manager of a
tele vi sion station in Hartford, Connecticut, wanted to run it there. Let
me support in the strongest possible terms the broadcasting of this series in our area, he wrote, testifying to the shows high quality. The
214 | The Black Revolution Off-Campus
programs thus far have been extremely interesting, and the entire series
promises to be lively as well as informative. I am sure they will be of
considerable appeal.2
In Vincent Hardings view the programs greatest contribution was
showing these beautiful, gifted human beings to the world. Black Heritage opened up to the country, to the academy and the non- academy,
the human resources that were available for the telling of the story of
the African American community. . . . A lot of people were very moved
by this, especially in the Black community. Another benefi t was more
professional. Many leading scholars had expressed doubt that it would
be possible to establish African American studies at the graduate level,
claiming there was insuffi cient scholarly material. In Hardings view,
These folks provide testimony to the fact that this was not true.3
Nonetheless, the series quickly became enmeshed in two po liti cal
struggles, one material and the other ideological. The fi rst had to do
with behind- the- scenes personnel. This era saw the rise of Black public
affairs tele vi sion shows programs like Say Brother, Soul, Black Journal, Black Perspective, and Like It Is which surfaced nationally in the
wake of urban uprisings, the criticism of journalistic practices by the
Kerner Commission, and mandates by the Federal Communications
Commission.4 In addition to diversifying the airwaves and bringing Black
perspectives to tele vi sion content, the creators of these shows hoped they
would integrate tele vi sion workplaces as well. Harding and his colleagues wanted Black Heritage to have Black workers behind the camera, Black spectators in the screening audiences, and Black publicists
spreading the word; but as it turned out, this vision entailed a fi ght. On
January 2, Harding, Clarke, and Strickland issued a Statement of the
Black Members of the Advisory Committee of Black Heritage to Columbia University and WCBS- TV. Like the students on their campuses,
the professors issued a series of demands, including a call for a Black
cameraman for every lecture and the retention of a Black- owned public
relations fi rm, and vowed production would be halted until the demands were met. And a few days later, they were.5 Over the summer,
eighty- three CBS affi liates picked up Black Heritage, including WBBM
in Chicago, which aired it at six in the morning. The press announcement illustrated the success of the protest as it emphasized that the
show was written, presented, and produced by Black people, and listed
various behind- the- scenes positions staffed by Black talent, including
those of stage manager, producer, visual researcher, and set designer.6
The Black Revolution Off-Campus | 215
Black Heritage showcased the many intellectual and po liti cal perspectives that inspired and shaped the Black studies movement: PanAfricanist, Black nationalist, Marxist, and liberal traditionalist, among
others.7 These perspectives were deeply rooted in African American
scholarship, as, for example, the many turns in the life and letters of
W. E. B. Du Bois illustrates. But such rich and diverse perspectives were
likely new to a general American audience. The views in Black Heritage
complicated, for example, Gunnar Myrdals more optimistic portrayal
of Americas creed, found in his best- selling 1944 expose of racial in equal ity, the American Dilemma. Moreover, the series did not portray a
triumphalist narrative of race relations with seemingly inexorable progress, as the State Departments cold war cultural programs were wont
to do.8 Black Heritage emphasized instead the centrality of racism and
slavery to the United States; but even more important, it highlighted the
many forms of African American re sis tance and cultural creativity and
resilience.
Ever since the Black studies movement had begun in earnest in the
1960s, integrationist leader Roy Wilkins had resisted it, and Black
Heritage raised his ire. In a vituperative attack fi rst sent to the president
of CBS and later printed in the New York Times, Wilkins, the executive
director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People, assailed the show for trying to foist one viewpoint, that of the
so- called Black Revolution upon viewers and the nation. Decrying
the attention to the Marcus Garvey movement, which Wilkins termed
non- history intended to suit the present- day propagandists for Black
Separatism, he was especially piqued at what he felt was scant attention to the history of his own or ga ni za tion. To a degree, Wilkins was
right that scholars had often failed to acknowledge the many contributions of the NAACP, especially the branches, but still, the NAACP and
Wilkins were more regularly consulted by government leaders, and
more frequently praised in the mainstream media, than any other Black
American leaders, making his strident response and attempt to block
the distribution of the series all the more troubling. The prospect of
CBS marketing the series to schools was, in Wilkinss view, catastrophic
and appalling. If CBS participates further in what is far more of a
sinister masquerade than has been indicated in this letter, he warned
ominously, it cannot escape culpability regardless of the smoothness
of its rationalization for a share in the inevitable and highly destructive confusions and confl icts in our future national life.9
216 | The Black Revolution Off-Campus
In a response published in the New York Times, John Henrik Clarke
reminded readers that we promised to take a bold new look at the
impact of African people on world history. Clarkes tone was much
more restrained; still, he endeavored to correct what he saw as errors
and misrepre sen ta tions in Wilkinss description of Black Heritage. He
defended the programs attention to Garveyism, Malcolm X, and other
Black nationalists and highlighted the distinguished scholarship and
intellectual diversity of the many lecturers. The show was directed,
produced and coordinated by Afro- American personnel, he emphasized, wishing Wilkins had acknowledged this. It represented for the
fi rst time, black people being responsible for the content and production
of an entire tele vi sion series.10 In retrospect, Wilkinss alarmist predictions clearly come across as exaggerated. How do we make sense of
such a reaction from a prominent African American leader to such a
highly acclaimed show? As already noted, Wilkins saw the rise of Black
studies, fairly or not, as a threat to the NAACPs long support for educational integration. Additionally, perhaps the elder statesman was feeling pushed aside. One result of the domestic anticommunist movement
had been to suppress more radical Black voices and elevate the NAACP
as the exclusive po liti cal voice for Black America. This arrangement had
begun to unravel during the rise of direct- action protest in the South
and continued to unravel in the 1960s. By 1969, Wilkins was losing the
battle to maintain exclusive control over the racial narrative in the
United States, and new, younger voices in the NAACP had also emerged,
offering more supportive words to the Black student movement and its
many achievements.
Black Heritage powerfully illustrates that the quest for Black intellectual authority did not produce a monolithic Black perspective,
notwithstanding Wilkinss characterization. But this diversity did not
yet include gender or sexuality. A handful of women appeared in
the series, including Toni Cade, Barbara Ann Teer, Joanne Grant, and
Betty Shabazz, but the lecturers were overwhelmingly male. References to the experiences of Black women are included in many of the
lectures, but African American womens history, literature, and culture
as categories of their own are not. In many respects, the series illuminates the state of the fi eld on the eve of Black feminism, before many
of its insights and approaches had arisen to powerfully reshape scholarship. But to be sure, the omission also refl ects the choice of many
Black male scholars to cultivate an intellectual movement led largely
by men.
The Black Revolution Off-Campus | 217
A nice contrast emerged at Ohio State University in the 1970s, where
for several years a Black woman, Mary Ann Williams, an associate professor of theater and communications in the Black studies department,
hosted a weekly tele vi sion show called afromation, as well as a weekly
radio show, The Black Studies Broadcast Journal. Both were aired on
the campus station WOSU, and a few of the radio shows were aired by
National Public Radio. The shows featured leading Black po liti cal, intellectual, and cultural fi gures in the region and the nation, and showcased
the works of prominent Black artists and entertainers. They brought together the Black arts movement and Black studies movement, as well as
urban po liti cal struggles of the 1970s.11 Mary Ann Williams was not the
only Black studies educator to use the public airwaves to promote
broader transmission of Black thought and culture. Tuskegee airman
and Bronx Community College president Roscoe Brown ran a radio
program out of the Institute of African American Affairs at New York
University and hosted several Black public affairs tele vi sion programs in
New York over many de cades.
Other initiatives in this era also asserted and publicized Black intellectual and cultural achievements. The Black studies movement made
this possible, even necessary. In 1969, fi fty leading Black scholars, writers, and artists founded the Black Academy of Arts and Letters with a
three- year grant from the Twenty- First Century Foundation, a pioneering Black philanthropy established by the visionary economist Robert
S. Browne. They declared themselves in the tradition of the venerable
turn- of- the- century American Negro Academy. During its short, roughly
four- year life span, the offi cers and inductees of the BAAL constituted a
whos who of Black America. Found ers included Romare Bearden, John
Henrik Clarke, Ossie Davis, Duke Ellington, John Hope Franklin, Benjamin Mays, John Killens, Martin Kilson, Sidney Poitier, Frederick
ONeal, Charles Wesley, Charles White, Lawrence Reddick, Gordon
Parks, Lloyd Richards, Jean Hutson, Arna Bontemps, Lerone Bennett,
St. Clair Drake, Alex Haley, and Paul Robeson. Its fi rst president, the
historian C. Eric Lincoln, described its mission as fostering the arts
and letters of black people and securing public recognition of their
achievements by blacks and whites. Exemplifying the ideals of institution building, self- determination, and pride in Black culture, the BAAL,
according to Lincoln, is concrete evidence that black people . . .
achieve at high levels.12
In his founding address, The Excellence of Soul, Lincoln said the
BAAL exists as a symbol of the love and concern we have for our
218 | The Black Revolution Off-Campus
children. I intend no cheap and shallow ethnocentric rhetoric when I
say that we are a great people. The American public, and specifi cally
the academy, he insisted, should recognize the full range of Black contributions to the history of the United States. In the long span of Black
history in America, were there only Douglass, Washington and King?
To name a hundred chairs for Martin Luther King is to be contemptuous of the people King gave his life to have recognized. Why are there
no Charles Drew or Daniel Hale Williams chairs in medicine? Why no
E. Franklin Frazier or Charles S. Johnson chairs in sociology? When
will there be a Lewis Latimer chair in physics? When will we have
Langston Hughes fellowships? Ira Aldridge fellowships? Augusta Savage fellowships? Granville Woods fellowships?13
Beginning in 1970, the BAAL hosted annual award ceremonies that
served to promote intergenerational affi nity among Black artists and
scholars at a time when the radicalization of Black politics and culture
had raised tensions. The awards also embraced intellectual and artistic
icons who had been targets of government persecution during the McCarthy era. Prominent radicals were honored in a way that would have
been impossible even a de cade earlier. At the 1970 ceremony hosted by
Harry Belafonte at a downtown hotel, the BAAL enrolled W. E. B. Du
Bois, Carter G. Woodson, and Henry O. Tanner in its Hall of Fame.
Woodson was a Harvard- trained historian who founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (later renamed the Association for the Study of Afro- American Life and History), the Journal of
Negro History, and Black History Week. In his ac cep tance speech for
Woodson, the current president of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History announced that the name would soon be changed
from Negro to Black. Sadie Tanner Mossell, the fi rst African American
woman to earn a PhD in the United States, accepted the award in behalf
of her uncle, the renowned paint er Henry Tanner. Du Bois was the dean
of Black intellectuals, the fi rst Black recipient of a PhD from Harvard,
and a found er of the NAACP who moved to the left and was prosecuted by the U.S. government in 1950 for being an agent of a foreign
power after he circulated the Stockholm Peace Appeal. He was acquitted, but in growing disillusion he formally joined the Communist Party
and emigrated to Ghana, where he passed away in 1963.14
For their contribution to arts and letters, the BAAL gave awards to
Lena Horne and C. L. R. James, who had both suffered under McCarthyism. A Trinidadian- born journalist, novelist, historian, anticolonial
agitator, and Marxist theorist, James was deported as a foreign- born
The Black Revolution Off-Campus | 219
subversive in the 1950s. Black college students came to know him as
the author of the landmark The Black Jacobins: Toussaint LOuverture
and the San Domingo Revolution, an account of the Haitian Revolution. Many radical thinkers or activists from other countries had been
barred from entering the United States since the 1950s, but the easing
of these restrictions by the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the creation
of academic positions as a result of the emergence of Black studies programs, enabled many overseas intellectuals and activists to work and
speak in the United States. James was able to return to the United States
to teach at Northwestern and Federal City College. The BAAL also
gave an award to Paul Robeson for his outstanding contribution to
the Black experience. Robeson would pass away in 1976. At one time
he had been one of the most famous Americans in the world. A revered
athlete, actor, activist, and singer, his move to labor- based radicalism
and support for communist positions cost him his career, fame, and
fortune. Paul Robeson Jr. accepted on behalf of his father, and the press
release declared: The bestowing of the award by the Black Academy to
his father marked the lifting of the curtain of silence which had been
dropped around Robeson by major communication media following
his strong position on the Korean war and other issues facing black
people.15
Despite the BAALs attempt to overcome the legacy of the anticommunist crusade, the government did not cooperate. Shirley Graham Du
Bois had been invited to accept the award for her late spouse. She still
resided in Ghana and had become a Ghanaian citizen. The State Department actually issued her a visa, but the Justice Department blocked
it, claiming she belonged to thirty subversive organizations. The BAAL
or ga nized an all- out effort to get the visa and strategically gained the
support of prominent liberals Roy Wilkins and Charlie Rangel. They
prevailed, and Graham Du Bois was permitted to return to the United
States and accept the award for her husband. The BAAL successfully
pushed the Justice Department to reverse its stance. While she was in the
country, Graham Du Bois visited the University of Massachusetts and
spoke as a guest of the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro- American
Studies.16
In recognition of younger artists, Diana Sands and Leroi Jones were
given awards. Jones, soon to change his name to Amiri Baraka, challenged the Black academy to embrace liberation for Black people everywhere and to challenge the art for arts sake notion. In the keynote
address, Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary, Indiana, declared: When we
220 | The Black Revolution Off-Campus
say Black culture, we are not talking about a culture which is racist and
reactionary, which seals off Black society from the rest of the nation,
which glorifi es in separatism or wants to return to Africa. We are talking about a culture which encourages, develops, subsidizes and pays
attention to itself, which takes pride in its color and its past, which rids
itself of self- hate and self- doubt, which does not mirror and ape a white
society, especially the worst of it. When we struggle to liberate ourselves, we have the opportunity to liberate all America.17
The second banquet in 1971 showed the continuing growth of the
Black Academy and its ideals. More than a thousand people attended
the ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria, which was hosted by Ossie Davis
and fi lmed by a cable tele vi sion channel. Frederick Douglass, Ira Aldridge, and George Washington Williams were inducted into the Hall of
Fame. Fred Weaver, the great- grandson of Douglass, and Major Ira Aldrige, the great- grandson of Aldridge, accepted the awards. Katherine
Dunham, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Duke Ellington were honored for
their lifelong contributions to arts and letters. Four writers each won fi ve
hundred dollars, including Mari Evans, a Black- arts- movement poet and
author of the highly acclaimed book I Am a Black Woman; and the
historian Franklin Knight, for his book Slave Society in Cuba. George
Jackson, an activist prison inmate who had been slain a month earlier
in the San Quentin prison, won for distinguished nonfi ction for Soledad
Brother. His mother, Mrs. Georgia Jackson, accepted in his behalf.18
The BAAL appears to have dissolved within a couple of years, but its
efforts to formally bestow Black recognition on Black literary, artistic,
and scholarly achievement was an important sign of the broader impact
of the Black studies and Black arts movements.
A movement to create in de pen dent Black institutions, mostly primary schools, arose during the Black Power era alongside the Black
studies movement. The goal of these schools was to create Black educational in de pen dence and self- determination in an Africa- centered framework and to shape and cultivate the next generation of leaders. Many
of these educational initiatives did not survive the 1970s, but a few
continued for de cades, most notably the Institute of Positive Education/
New Concept School in Chicago, founded by Carol Lee and Haki
Madhubuti. More recently, several in de pen dent Black institutions have
become publicly funded charter schools. One remarkable project, the
Nairobi Schools, was launched in East Palo Alto, California, and
spanned from preschool to ju nior college. It was the only in de pen dent
Black school system in the United States. It enters our story because
The Black Revolution Off-Campus | 221
Nairobi included a college which was in many ways a by- product of
the Black student movement and because the whole project was sustained by the same educational milieu that inspired Black studies. The
Nairobi school system originated in local activists disaffection with
integration, and it later expanded after the expulsions of protesting
Black and Mexican American students from nearby high schools and
colleges. It embodied the Black nationalist fervor and movement energy
of the era.
We are pioneering a brand- new way for black folks, said found er
Gertrude Wilks.19 East Palo Alto was an unincorporated community
across the freeway from Palo Alto, the affl uent home of Stanford University. By the late 1960s, it had become predominantly African American, and activists sponsored a ballot referendum in 1968 to change the
towns name to Nairobi, but it failed. Still, a vibrant in de pen dent Black
schooling movement proudly carried this name of the Kenyan capital,
and East Palo Alto would become an emblem of the quest for Black
self- determination throughout the 1970s and beyond. Community activist Gertrude Wilks and educators Mary and Bob Hoover were founders of Nairobi. Wilkss daughter had encountered racial slurs and
threats of violence in a Palo Alto school, so Wilkss decision to begin an
alternative school, literally in her home, stemmed from a mothers desire to protect her child from hostility and ensure that she was nurtured
in the classroom. For the Hoovers, the impetus was more philosophical
and po liti cal. Bob Hoover was a former activist with the Student
Non- Violent Coordinating Committee who ran the College Readiness
Program at the College of San Mateo, a public two- year school. Mary
Hoover was a language specialist who developed an innovative adult
literacy curriculum, as well as culturally affi rming educational materials
for African American children. Her work would infuse the curriculum
at Nairobi.
Activists in East Palo Alto were infl uenced by the critique of integration advanced by SNCC, especially by Stokely Carmichael. In the mid1960s, Carmichael came to town and attended a meeting of education
activists who were discussing strategies to integrate the local high
schools. At the end of the meeting, Bob Hoover recalls, Stokely fi nally
spoke. I dont understand, he began, why you would be working this
hard to send your childrens minds to be educated by people who have
oppressed you for four hundred years. And It just hit me, says
Hoover, who had been operating in the civil rights mainstream: we need
to be educating our own children.20 In the aftermath, many leaders in
222 | The Black Revolution Off-Campus
East Palo Alto began to shift their focus away from integration and toward gaining in de pen dence and control of both the schools and the
local governance structures.
Founded in 1966, the Nairobi Schools evolved into an elementary
school, high school, and two- year college by 1969. Incorporating both
volunteer teachers and, eventually, a paid staff, the Nairobi Schools educated fi ve hundred students fi ve days a week for a de cade. The college
students taught high school students, and the high school students
taught the little ones in the park, Wilks remembers. In addition to the
impetus to develop Black- controlled institutions, there was a strong desire to create upper schools to educate po liti cally active youth who had
been expelled or suspended from mainstream schools. The fi rst students
in Nairobi High School were the ones catching all kinds of hell in
the regular schools. They were either going to jail, being kicked out of
school, or being harassed by teachers, administration, white students,
and everybody else. George Murray, the former Black Panther minister
of education and San Francisco State strike leader, who had entered
Stanford as a graduate student after his release from jail, was the fi rst
principal of Nairobi High School. He recruited several Stanford students
as teachers and molded that staff into one beautifully functioning unit.
There were twenty- fi ve students the fi rst year, and two graduates entered
Pitzer, one of the Claremont Colleges in California.21
Robert Hoover founded and became president of Nairobi College in
1969 after having been fi red from San Mateo Ju nior College. We had
a sit- in inside the administration building and closed it down. A number
of our kids got arrested and went to jail. They fi red me, he says, and
another professor in the College Readiness Program resigned. When
we left, most of the students left as well, becoming the basis for the
student body at Nairobi College.22 Other in de pen dent Black institutions, notably Malcolm X Liberation University in Durham, North
Carolina, and Jimmy Garretts Center for Black Education in Washington, D.C., also attracted students and teachers who had been expelled
from college because of their movement activism, or who had voluntarily left. Nairobi College began with 120 students and twenty- fi ve
faculty volunteers teaching math, En glish, history, electronics, journalism, po liti cal science, and Swahili. A mixture of the routine and the
radical, one observer noted.23
According to Hoover, the curriculum was a collective effort that
emphasized the importance of developing leadership and having control over your own destiny. Stanford graduate student and future liter-
The Black Revolution Off-Campus | 223
ary scholar Robert OMeally taught a course at Nairobi. Dr. Mary
Hoover, who later taught at Howard and advised the Oakland School
District on the use of Ebonics, created Nairobis En glish department.
To this day, Bob Hoover contends, some of the best vehicles for
teaching people to read and write were developed at Nairobi College.24 Like other Black educational institutions, Nairobi adopted rituals that celebrated both African and African American culture and history. School holidays included Nigerian In de pen dence Day on October
1, the founding of the Black Panther Party on October 17, Rosa Parkss
re sis tance to segregation on December 1, Ghanaian In de pen dence on
March 6, and Malcolm Xs birthday on May 19. Of course, Kwanzaa
was celebrated from December 25 to January 1.25
Nairobi strove to institutionalize the ethic of student involvement
and governance that animated the campus revolts. Just as the incorporation of student rights in the founding of Malcolm X College in Chicago showed, Black student activists fully shared in the generational
challenges and youth assertions of the era. According to Bob Hoover,
The students really run the school. They interviewed and hired staff
and sat on the board of directors.26 Also on the board were citizens of
East Palo Alto; and cementing the exchange, Nairobi students had
work- study jobs in the community. In this way, the college developed an
interlocking relationship with town leaders. After a couple of years as
president of Nairobi College, Hoover turned it over to Donald Smothers, a twenty- six- year- old graduate of San Francisco State, who had been
one of Hoovers students at the College of San Mateo. In fact, eight faculty or staff at Nairobi College had once been part of the College Readiness Program at the College of San Mateo, testifying to the strong
bonds Hoover had cultivated with the original cohort of Nairobi
student- founders.27
As the ideal of self- determination took root, the relationship between Black initiatives and white funding and control was increasingly
scrutinized. As we have seen, the Black studies directors conference at
Aspen, which was sponsored by the Ford Foundation, gave rise to fi erce
debates about the role of white funding for Black studies. While the
found ers of Nairobi desired autonomy from white control, they did not
necessarily reject white money as long as they could spend it as they
saw fi t. There were two sources of fi nancial support in the 1970s that
helped to enable Nairobis longevity and success: a white heiress and
the federal government. A member of the Colgate family had supported
the College Readiness Program at the College of San Mateo, and Hoover
224 | The Black Revolution Off-Campus
and his colleague Jean Wirth approached her to help launch Nairobi.
She wrote a check for $30,000 that same day and agreed to contribute
$120,000 overall for the fi rst year of operations. Thats what got us
started. A wealthy lady who wanted to help. Her contribution helped
fi nance teacher salaries. That fi rst pledge continued for the next de cade.
We got Colgate money the whole time, Hoover said, a $30,000 check
every quarter, a rather stunning example of corporate- derived wealth
redirected to Black community empowerment.28
When they were at San Mateo, Wirth and Hoover had designed a
highly successful minority student recruitment and retention program,
which they had been called upon to replicate at colleges in California
and across the country. As a result of our work, we had a lot of contact
with the Department of Education; and because of this, recalls Hoover,
we were able to get them to agree to provide fi nancial aid to Nairobi
College for the fi rst year, even though we were not accredited. Even
better, this arrangement lasted the life of the college.29 Nairobi students received a combination of federal funding, grants, and loans, including Equal Opportunity Grants, National Defense Student Loans, a
work- study program, Talent Search, and Student Special Ser vices, helping to explain the longevity of an in de pen dent Black school located in
a cash- strapped working- class community.30 In addition, the colleges
reputation and track record enabled Hoover to forge productive relationships with nearby colleges and universities. Stanford permitted Nairobi students to use its library and other campus facilities. San Jose State
College and the Irvine and Berkeley campuses of University of California agreed to accept transfer students from Nairobi. And many students
went on to study at Stanford University. We were able to get them to
agree to take our students even though we were not accredited. Nairobi administrators told the colleges not to grant credit for their fi rst
semester, to wait and see if they could do the work, and they agreed.31
In contrast to the largely Black student population at the elementary
and high schools, Nairobi college was a Third World college, refl ecting the mix of Black and Mexican American students who had attended
Hoovers College Readiness Program at San Mateo. While signaling
a genuine effort to forge unity among people of color, Third Worldism
existed in some tension with the simultaneous current of Black cultural
nationalism, and the Black and Chicano students soon went separate
ways. The few whites involved in the early years of Nairobi, mostly as
teachers, left too. In 1970, Nairobi activists opened a second campus,
designed for Chicano students, in Redwood City, called Venceremos. It
The Black Revolution Off-Campus | 225
included courses on the Mexican revolution, Latin American politics,
and peoples theater, but the college closed after four years, in part because of lower support in the Mexican American community.32 We
werent ready for it, Hoover felt. The leadership of the two communities was not together. Co ali tions between peoples of color are still important, he insisted in 1972, but the problems are not going to be
solved anytime soon. Meanwhile, we have to remember our fi rst priority [is] the [Black] community.33
Nairobi exemplifi ed the manner in which the Black consciousness
movement infused campus and community through the twin vehicles of
education and the arts. The college was located in a majority Black
community where the Black studies and Black arts movements fl owered
together. East Palo Alto in the 1960s and 1970s was the center of an
in de pen dent Black po liti cal, economic, cultural, and educational movement. Nairobi ran many summer programs involving hundreds of children, many of whom ended up going to Nairobi College and pursuing
careers in education. We had a huge impact on the community, says
Hoover. Nairobi became a magnet for Black people around the country
who shared its philosophy, which focused on developing leaders in an
Afrocentric framework. Every year while he remained in the United
States, Stokely Carmichael visited Nairobi. Stokely never got the credit
I thought he was due, remarked Hoover, who called him one of the
most brilliant people Ive ever met. The writer Alex Haley spent a month
at Nairobi, giving lectures about the pro cess of writing his novel Roots.
An African dance troupe spent six months as artists- in- residence and
performed all over California. Nairobi had an extraordinary choir. Many
guest speakers came through, and local scholars gave Nairobi special
attention. St. Clair Drake, the prominent sociologist and pioneer of African diaspora studies, was the fi rst chair of the Department of African
and African American Studies at Stanford. He spoke at Nairobi often,
and Hoover would also take groups of children to visit him on campus,
where he told incredible stories. I love St. Clair Drake, Hoover
recalls, expressing an admiration shared by many in this generation.34
Nairobi was part of a small, nationwide, in de pen dent Black schooling movement inspired by ideologies of Pan- Africanism, nation building, and African communalism. The in de pen dent educational movement
(in addition to some Black studies departments) became a leading location for the fl owering of Black cultural nationalism in the 1970s, which
articulated itself through conferences, journals, and other writings. Two
conferences in 1970 helped to defi ne the mission of in de pen dent Black
226 | The Black Revolution Off-Campus
institutions (IBIs); one took place on the West Coast, at Nairobi, and
the other on the East Coast, at Uhuru Sasa School in Brooklyn. The
conferences defi ned the mission of IBIs in three parts: The IBI should
project the concept of communalism, decolonization, humanism, harmony between the individual and his environment; second, the IBI
should try to mold an individual with a new African personality, and
third, the IBI should teach subjects that relate to Black Nation building. In a sign of how far this vision could travel from the liberal arts
world of academic Black studies, appropriate nation- building skills included plumbing, carpentry, engineering, fi rst aid, and farming. A cohort
of Black student radicals took the call for relevance in this pragmatic
direction, rejecting the liberal arts orientation of Black studies and, in
some instances, moving abroad to help build new African nation- states.
In addition, the IBI mission refl ected the impulse in Black nationalism
toward personal renewal and rejection of the oppressive frameworks of
a racist society. Yet at the same time, the search for an African personality or a Black nation gave rise, in some instances, to a mystical, patriarchal, or authoritarian turn.35
Hoover and other Nairobi leaders tended to emphasize the practical
aims of their larger ideological mission. They made a clear distinction
between the nutsand- bolts work of building self- suffi cient communities and the theoretical abstractions of nation- building in the grand design, one observer noted in 1972. A separate black country inside this
country is not a real option, said Hoover, but black communities are.
They are a reality. Explaining Nairobis approach, Hoover elaborated:
Were trying to rescue people, to give them direction, to bring back
skills and expertise to our community. All the rhetoric about revolution,
about change its no good if you dont know what youre after, and if
a lot of talk is all youve got, youre not going anywhere.36
Owing to funding challenges, Nairobi College shut its doors in 1981.
Like Black Heritage, it is a little- known but signifi cant outgrowth of the
Black student movement and helped to reshape racial identity and consciousness beyond the college campus. The Black studies movement infl uenced Black communities and American educational, po liti cal, cultural, and social life in unexpected ways. One such way was the rise of
African American intellectuals as a source of assertive, highly visible
race leadership. This was by no means new, as the de cadeslong leadership of W. E. B. Du Bois and many others attests. But intellectuals had
been somewhat eclipsed by the broad introduction of many new sources
of leadership in the long civil rights era. The creation of Black studies
The Black Revolution Off-Campus | 227
units helped give greater status and authority, as well as more employment, to Black intellectuals. Moreover, the campus movement itself
highlighted the po liti cal and public roles of scholars and academe more
generally.
A group of activist Black intellectuals in Atlanta created the Institute
of the Black World (IBW) in 1969. The IBW provided direction to the
early Black studies movement and sought to promote radical Black intellectuals as broader race leaders and po liti cal advocates. The institute
began as a series of conversations in 1967 between More house literary
scholar Stephen Henderson and Spelman historian Vincent Harding (of
Black Heritage fame) in response to student demands that Negro colleges become more Black- oriented. They imagined the prospect of a
W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Advanced Afro- American Studies, perhaps
at the Atlanta University Center, as a way to revive the activist intellectual tradition of Du Bois and strongly assert global consciousness in the
rising Black studies movement. Joining Henderson and Harding in
planning the activities and mission of the proposed institute were Gerald McWorter (later Abdul Alkalimat), A. B. Spelman, Council Taylor,
and William Strickland.
McWortera graduate student in sociology at the University of Chicago, and an activist with both the Chicago Friends of SNCC and the
Or ga ni za tion of Black American Culture had grown up around the
Negro history movement and the Communist Party movement in Chicago. One aunt, Eleanor Rye, was a leading activist in the Communist
Party, and another, Thelma Wheaton Kirkpatrick, was one of the founders of the Du Sable Museum of African American History and Culture.37
McWorter taught a course at Spelman and took part in a building takeover at More house during a meeting of the board of trustees. Black
Unity in the Atlanta University Center was the credo of student activists, and they envisioned transforming its fi ve colleges into the Martin
Luther King University. Alkalimat was later run out of Atlanta for
his role in the student protest.38
The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. devastated the Atlanta
community yet galvanized a new level of po liti cal mobilization and response. When Coretta Scott King approached Harding, a close friend
and ally of Dr. King, to participate in a proposed King Memorial Center, he suggested housing the institute there. She was enthusiastic, and
the institute began its career as part of the King Memorial Center. The
desired affi liation with the colleges of Atlanta University never happened,
and this prodded a search for a new name. According to Harding, their
228 | The Black Revolution Off-Campus
intention in choosing the name Institute of the Black World was to convey a focus on Black people globally, a rejection of individualism for
collective struggle, and a commitment to gather not just academics but
Black activists and artists as well.
The institute aspired to exert signifi cant infl uence on the development
of Black studies. It began with several assumptions: that the fi eld was
still being born, that defi ning it was a task and challenge for black
people in America and elsewhere, that it should not be bound by traditional academic disciplines, and that serious building would take years,
not weeks or months.39 As one of its fi rst events, the IBW hosted a Black
Studies Directors Seminar in November 1969, which attracted the heads
of thirty- fi ve programs from around the country. It brought together
people fi ghting the white academy from all over the country, Harding
recalls. For the participants, it was like coming home, refueling, a place
to gain understanding of the commonalities and differences of their
experiences. Lerone Bennett, whose recent article in Ebony highlighting
the racism of Abraham Lincoln sparked intense debate, led off with a
speech, The Quest for Blackness, which called upon those gathered to
abandon the partial frame of reference of our oppressors and create
new concepts which will release our reality, which is also the reality of the
overwhelming majority of men and women on the globe.40
Other speakers reinforced this call for Black intellectual selfdetermination. For Bill Strickland, Black scholars had the obligation to
present an intellectual defense of the black community and reverse
the emphasis on black pathology and failure pop u lar ized in some whiteauthored texts what he termed the diseases of Jensenism, Styronism,
Moynihanism. Armstead Robinson offered a critical appraisal of white
studies and western cultural imperialism disguised as universalism,
while Basil Matthews elaborated a multilayered defi nition of a Black
perspective, which he argued was at the heart of their intervention.41
In Hardings view, the IBWs efforts in the early years of the Black studies movement emphasized three points that shaped debates as the fi eld
emerged, that Black studies units should be interdisciplinary, approach
Black people in an international context, and connect to a broader community. He said they were constantly asking Black studies directors:
What is (your units) connection to the community?42
The IBW hosted scholars in residence who taught seminars, conducted
individual research, and participated in collective research projects of the
institute, an initiative that a hundred- thousand- dollar Ford Foundation
grant helped make possible. Ford described the IBW as a small assem-
The Black Revolution Off-Campus | 229
bly of intellectuals who seek, through research and refl ection, to defi ne,
elaborate and interpret the black experience.43 In the fall of 1969, Lerone Bennett, Sterling Stuckey, Joyce Ladner, and William Strickland
joined Harding and Henderson as research fellows. Ladner was the
lone female in an enterprise that tended to elevate male voices and leadership throughout its duration. Harding acknowledges that, before he
left in 1974, the institute did not take up the issue of Black feminism,
and that women were more often present as staff members and community allies than as scholars.44 The IBW welcomed radical, foreign- born
scholars and in some instances help them get through the McCarthy- era
immigration restrictions, which had previously made entry into the
United States diffi cult. C. L. R James, the Trinidadian scholar, and Walter Rodney, the Guyanese historian and radical or ga niz er, spent considerable time at the IBW. Jamaican historian Robert Hill, a specialist on
Marcus Garvey and the Garvey movement internationally, was a fellow
for two years and a key po liti cal theorist at the institute. The West Indian intellectuals brought a greater openness toward Marxism and
figure 19. Two giants of Black scholarship: Vincent Harding and St. Clair Drake at
a summer research symposium at the IBW in 1971.
230 | The Black Revolution Off-Campus
class analysis than was then prevalent among American- born Black intellectuals and activists. But the po liti cal crosscurrents moved in many
directions: Stokely Carmichael and Walter Rodney helped bring ideas
of Black Power, pop u lar in the United States, to the Ca rib be an and West
Indian communities in Canada. It is important to underscore that, at its
inception, the Black studies movement in the United States embraced
the study of the African diaspora, not just Black America, and embraced the insights and scholarship of Black scholars from around the
world. And importantly, at the zenith of Black nationalism, the IBW
helped to make these connections, and this worldliness, possible and
concrete.
As the institutes mission and orbit of scholars and activists became
clear, some King family members and friends expressed concern that the
project was too Black- oriented. Some among the King family and coworkers had not entered into the spirit of Black consciousness, the
Black identity movement, recalls Harding.45 Evidently, an invitation by
figure 20. William Strickland, left, who brought sharp po liti cal analysis to the work
of the IBW, and Walter Rodney, right, radical activist and author of the foundational
text How Eu rope Underdeveloped Africa.
The Black Revolution Off-Campus | 231
Harding to Stokely Carmichael to speak under IBW auspices at Morehouse in April 1970 offended members of the King Memorial Foundation Board.46 Carmichael had pop u lar ized the idea of Black Power, a
turn in the movement that Dr. King had lamented even as he remained
in conversation and solidarity with Carmichael. And, as always, there
were fund- raising concerns, which also had forestalled a formal affi liation with Atlanta University. In the summer of 1969 the board of directors of the King Memorial Center pressured the IBW to dismiss Alkalimat and Spelman from the summer project owing to their participation
in the student lock- in at More house.47
A year later, the board undertook an offi cial review of the institute
and raised three objections: that the IBW avoided the concept of nonviolence; that it focused on the Black world rather than the life of Dr.
King; and that it was committed to having only Black researchers.48
The Federal Bureau of Investigation monitored this schism through a
source who opposed the po liti cal activism of the IBW staff and Hardings approach to Black history.49 Harding had often emphasized that
our most central purpose was to work as fully as we can towards
Black control over the defi nition of the Black experience. Our vision
of America, Harding wrote in a report intended for the King Memorial
Centers board, leads us to believe that black people must be the vanguard for change if there is to be any hope for anyone. The opposition
to Harding was suffi ciently strong that the IBW left the King Memorial
Center in the summer of 1970 and became in de pen dent.50
In the early 1970s the IBW shifted its focus somewhat toward po litical analysis. According to historian Manning Marable, who also passed
through the IBW, Hundreds of black intellectuals worked at the IBW
offi ces or with its staff, from historian Mary Berry, formerly the head of
the Education division of HEW, to former Communist Party member
Harry Haywood.51 While initially associated with the ideas generated
in the Black Power upsurge of the late 1960s, the IBW came to embody
a more far- reaching and class conscious Black radicalism. In a 1969
lecture, Harding defi ned the movement from Negro to Black history as
being parallel on po liti cal lines to the movement from integration into a
call for decolonization and liberation.52 In many respects, this description captures the expansive, but decidedly internationalist and radical,
politics of the IBW. Vincent Harding left the IBW in 1974, and Howard
Dodson assumed the directorship. Dodson fi rst came to the IBW as a
graduate student from Berkeley, where he had gone after having been
inspired to study history after watching Black Heritage. Berkeley
232 | The Black Revolution Off-Campus
scholar Andrew Billingsley or ga nized a contingent of graduate students,
including Dodson, to join him for a year of research at the IBW, but
after Billingsley was offered a position at Berkeley as dean, he stayed.
Dodson nevertheless went to Atlanta, and it profoundly infl uenced his
career trajectory.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and other state and federal agencies had been subjecting Black activists and organizations to surveillance, harassment, disruption, and even assassination during the civil
rights and Black liberation movements. As we have seen, the Black student movement had become a target of cointelpro, and through the
IBW the radical Black studies movement became a target as well. Special
agents routinely sent reports on IBW activities to Washington yet never
alleged illegal behavior. One report noted that the IBW criticized the
government but advocated working within the system as opposed to
violent revolutionary means.53 Funding from the Ford Foundation during the fi rst couple of years had enabled the IBW to operate as a research
center and host visiting fellows. But according to Howard Dodson, the
FBI began to interfere and the funding came to an end.54 Funding was an
ever- present dilemma for African American activists seeking any measure of autonomy in institution building, and the loss of funds dealt a
major blow. Ironically, just as FBI repression was affecting his own or gani za tion, IBW associate Bill Strickland devoted considerable energy to
documenting and publicizing government repression of Black radicals
and the Black liberation movement as a whole.55
In 1975 the IBW faced an all- out assault. The offi ce was burglarized
three times Harding called it the Watergate type burglary of our offi ce because fi les were removed and searched.56 An anti- Castro group
claimed credit for the fi rst two burglaries.57 At that time, an IBW staff
member headed the pro- Castro Venceremos Brigade in Atlanta. Moreover, staff members were subjected to dozens of harassing and threatening phone calls and letters, both at home and work. One letter described
a twenty- fi ve- thousand- dollar contract to a Cuban exile to kill the staff
members wife, while another letter to the offi ce said, We will blow
mother fucking buildings up we mean business, You have until midApril, Niggers will not rule America. Howard Dodson requested an
FBI investigation, but they declined, saying the local police department
could handle it.58 The IBW staff suspected they had become targets of a
broader campaign: their phones were tapped and the Internal Revenue
Ser vice audited the whole staff. Dodson urged the Congressional Black
Caucus to investigate. Black people are under attack throughout the
The Black Revolution Off-Campus | 233
nation, Harding noted.59 The repression was devastating, but the dedicated group in Atlanta held on the best they could. The IBW survived
for a few more years and continued to do signifi cant educational work,
but with a much- reduced bud get and smaller staff.
In its heyday, the IBW offered a unique gathering space for a national network of Black scholars, activists, artists, and po liti cal leaders,
and a model of Black intellectual life that was rooted in local struggles
yet shaped by a global consciousness. The repression of the more radical and insurgent voices in the Black student Black studies movements,
whether through arrest, expulsion, dismissal, harassment, denial of
funding, or other means, removed or silenced many of these people and
their perspectives. In some cases this encouraged the growth of a narrower cultural nationalism, or more typically, the repression simply left
a void.
It was not only scholars and intellectuals who endeavored to carry
the campus struggle into the broader Black community. Many students
graduated (or dropped out) of college and joined the movement full
time. They emerged in the immediate post- Jim- Crow era, when antidiscrimination laws had been passed but poverty and racism continued,
and activists faced new challenges in deciding how to defi ne the continuing problem of in e qual ity, frame the struggle, and maintain the
momentum of the civil rights movement. Paradoxically, the 1970s bore
the scars of cointelpro and continuing police repression of activists,
yet gave rise to a new generation of radical organizations, which identifi ed with a broad ideological spectrum, from Pan- Africanist to MarxistLeninist. The youth who had been drawn to Malcolm X and Stokely
Carmichael and the ideas of Black Power continued on a journey that
took them in a range of ideological directions. They grappled with the
growing class stratifi cation of Black America and debated the continuing relevance and effectiveness of Black nationalism. According to
Manning Marable, Most of these early ideological debates occurred in
an open and tolerant spirit, in part because many activists were veterans of the Civil Rights movement and knew each other well. The quest
for Black unity kept ideological cleavages in check and motivated cultural nationalists and Marxist- Leninists to work together in new organizations such as the African Liberation Support Committee and the
Student Or ga ni za tion for Black Unity.60 Black students graduated and
left campus struggles behind, but they did not leave activism behind.
For many, the student movement was the critical seedtime for de cades
of activism and community and civic leadership.
234 | The Black Revolution Off-Campus
Nelson Johnson of Greensboro, North Carolina, exemplifi es this
journey. He gained renown during his college days as a community activist and student government leader at the historically Black North
Carolina A&T. But Johnson was also a leading fi gure in the broader
Greensboro community, involving himself in numerous struggles focused on housing, jobs, and education. He was at the founding convention, held at A&T in May 1969, of the Student Or ga ni za tion for Black
Unity (sobu, which became yobu, the Youth Or ga ni za tion for Black
Unity about a year later). sobus founding occurred amid widespread
discontent among Black youth in Greensboro and dramatic po liti cal
mobilization across the citys Black community. This local ferment
made a powerful impression on the students who had gathered there
from around the country, such as Edward Whitfi eld from Cornell (he
was one of the armed student leaders photographed exiting Straight
Hall after a protest in April 1969) and Mark Smith, a Harvard student
involved in setting up the Department of Afro- American Studies.
Johnson was designated the fi rst chairman of sobu, and Smith, who
had dropped out of Harvard to or ga nize in the South, served as vice
chairman. Cleveland Sellers, the former SNCC leader who had been
shot in Orangeburg in 1968, became active in sobu as he awaited trial
for inciting a riot the police riot, otherwise known as the Orangeburg
Massacre. Indeed, he was not the only sobu activist facing such a
charge. During sobus fi rst year, Johnson focused on staying out of jail,
especially since his wife, Joyce, was pregnant with their fi rst child. But
he was tried, convicted, and given a long sentence for inciting a riot
during the Dudley- A&T protests, even though the North Carolina State
Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission had just
praised the A&T students for coming to the aid of the beleaguered
Dudley students. Moreover, with blatant prejudice, the legislature hastily changed sentencing guidelines to lengthen Johnsons sentence. But
Black leaders in Greensboro pushed back and successfully appealed to
the governor for clemency, and Johnson was released after serving two
months.
sobu wanted to channel the activist energy of Black students into the
community and or ga nize on the grassroots level, as SNCC had done.
But times had changed. When the de cade of the 1970s opened, Johnson recalls, I had very little historical perspective. I thought the sixties
were normal, and that we would continue to build ever bigger mass
movements for social change.61 In Mark Smiths view, sobu adopted
the philosophy that the way to or ga nize people was in doing things
The Black Revolution Off-Campus | 235
with them, or for them, rather than the Alinsky- type model of fi nding
an enemy and mobilizing around them.62 Because de jure segregation
had been defeated, he felt, they no longer faced a clear target such as
disenfranchisement or whites- only establishments. Complicating sobus
relationship to local communities was its ideology of Pan- Africanism.
Pan- Africanism was the dominant ideology within sobu and yobu,
according to Johnson. It holds that the liberation of blacks in America
is impossible without fi rst liberating Africa, black people are a world
community without national or class differences, and the enemy is
white people all white people.63 Much of this new interest in Africa
came from supporting contemporary struggles against white settler regimes in South Africa and Zimbabwe and Portuguese colonial rule in
Angola, Guinea- Bissau, and Mozambique. sobus newspaper was called
the African World and gave extensive coverage to current events in Africa as well as solidarity efforts in the diaspora. In fact many sobu leaders played key roles in making the fi rst African Liberation Day parade
in 1972 a major success.
sobu promoted a seemingly paradoxical blend of revolutionary analysis and concrete, practical training. According to Mark Smith, PanAfricanism had a self- help component to it, which resulted in people
doing schools, clinics, and farms. Malcolm X Liberation University was
training people to repair tractors that they were going to go to Tanzania
to work on, and that kind of stuff.64 Yet sobu wanted to transform
African American students into revolutionaries. They complained that
most Black students spent too much time rapping, while our enemy
continues to build underground police stations, ship and store nerve
gas[,] . . . build detention centers, expand economic control of African
resources, manipulate and start wars (Nigerian civil war) and enslave
Africans (Southern Africa). sobu advocated the development of technical skills to help defeat Eu ro pe an colonial and imperial powers and
rebuild the African world. Pan- Africanism is not an idea to think
about, they declared. It is work that needs to be done.65
sobu focused considerable attention on supporting in de pen dent
Black schools, particularly the Center for Black Education, which
had been or ga nized by Jimmy Garrett, Federal City College students,
and former SNCC activists in Washington, D.C.; and Malcolm X Liberation University, in Greensboro, which had begun its life in Durham
as a result of efforts by former Duke students and a charismatic activist
from Milwaukee, Howard Fuller. (Fuller soon changed his name to
Owusu Sadauki.) sobu continued the effort to make Black colleges
236 | The Black Revolution Off-Campus
black in fact. And some in sobu developed a critique of Black studies
in majority white institutions as a pacifi cation plan. The goal of
Black studies, one sobu theorist argued, is to take some of the best
minds in the Black community and make them dependent and addicted to the colonizers system. In response, sobu and some others
advocated Africanization of Black people, and complete educational
autonomy.66
sobu sometimes advanced a simplistic po liti cal analysis. For example, one sobu statement declared that it was futile to distinguish between the Irish and Jews, southerners and northerners. Foxes and
wolves are kith and kin, it said. There was one world- wide Eu ro pe an
family. And on the other side, sobu declared that the goals of African
people are one and the same, even as many young African American
radicals were encountering intense divisions within anticolonial struggles.67 Moreover, the emphasis on rejecting the West and cultivating
new African value systems that pervaded Black nationalist discourse in
these years, especially in the IBI movement, sometimes expressed itself
in homophobic and patriarchal forms. Howard Fuller/Owusu Sadauki
gave the keynote speech at a sobu conference in South Carolina, where
students had spent several days studying and debating Pan- Africanism.
According to a participant, Sadauki expressed the need for students to
change their life styles, value systems and ambitions, to overcome the
drugs, the apathy, the miscegenation, womens liberation, homosexuality and the egos. Sadauki gave voice to the social conservatism and the
rejection of white women as romantic or sexual partners found in much
Black nationalist thought.68
In 1971 Sadauki went on a transformative journey in southern Africa that included a visit with the re sis tance group frelimo, of Mozambique, and returned with a new perspective on the character of imperialism. Encounters with liberation leaders and struggles in Africa, many
of which were explicitly socialist, especially in Mozambique, GuineaBissau, South Africa, and Angola, encouraged many African American
nationalists to reconsider their antipathy toward socialism. At the same
time, the Chinese Communist Partys support of Black American nationalists, most famously Robert F. Williams, as well as Fidel Castros
and the Cuban nations extensive human and material support for anticolonial struggles, caused many African Americans to reexamine the
seemingly knee- jerk rejection of socialist thought and practice as Euro pe an. Anticolonial leader and theorist Amilcar Cabral, from GuineaBissau, was particularly infl uential. On a visit to the United States,
The Black Revolution Off-Campus | 237
Cabral urged African Americans to unite with others in the United
States including progressive whites to fi ght imperialism. This was
a real challenge to us, Nelson Johnson later recalled, because we
thought white people as a whole were the enemy. Here was our hero, an
African revolutionary leader, telling us to unite with whites.69
As a result, ideological convulsion swept many Black radical organizations in the early to mid- 1970s. Several prominent Black nationalist
leaders moved to Maoism or Marxist- Leninism, most notably Amiri
Baraka, of the Congress of African Peoples, and Sadauki, a leader of the
African Liberation Support Committee. Many simply endeavored to
integrate a more systematic class analysis into their critique of racism.
Ironically, this new openness to Marxism, which had been generated
in part by interactions with African radicals, encouraged a growing
skepticism of the relevance of Pan- Africanism to the lives of poor and
working- class African Americans. sobu/yobu was deeply infl uenced by
these ideological struggles, and intense debates unfolded on the pages of
their newspaper, the African World. Our movement toward Marxism,
Nelson Johnson recalls, was really via Africa.70 It was important to
Johnson and others in sobu that their turn to the left not be understood
as an affi liation with the white working- class. Rather, it was driven by a
concern for, and identifi cation with, the Black working- class.
It turns out that sobu/yobu activists had already been fi nding it diffi cult to practice what they preached. Some of us were deeply involved
in community issues before we became Pan- Africanists, notes Mark
Smith. We soon learned to leave our Pan- Africanism at home, because
attempts to superimpose it on the real struggles of the masses met with
confusion and rejection.71 According to Nelson Johnson, One of the
early critics of pan- Africanism was Sandi Neely, a Bennett College
graduate who later married Smith. The two of them or ga nized a study
group and tried to encourage a new direction, which Johnson initially
rejected. I was still a dyed- in- the- wool black nationalist. I had trained
myself never to smile at white folks. I thought Mark and Sandi were
being taken in by whites.72 Smith remembers, What led me and a lot
of other people away from Pan- Africanism was its inability to connect
up, either an explanatory framework or an action path, with the conditions that people felt in their lives. . . . Trying to explain to people in
Jackson what We are an African people has to do with the minimum
wage gets to be real hard. Smith drove around Mississippi with Stokely
Carmichael in 1970 or 1971 visiting some of SNCCs old battlegrounds.
People turned out to see him because he was a legend, Smith recalls,
238 | The Black Revolution Off-Campus
but they were baffl ed about what all this meant. Carmichael spoke of
Nkrumah and Africa, and people were saying, I remember Stokely
and them fondly, but what does this have to do with anything? And
I remember thinking the same thing myself, and Im with the guy.73
The rise of feminism was another important ideological development
of the early 1970s, one that infl uenced veterans of the Black student
movement. The following chapter narrates this story more fully, but the
effects of the womens movement were felt in sobu/yobu. Sandi Neely
and Joyce Nelson led the struggle against womens oppression, against
the feudal traditions of pan- Africanism, and against male chauvinism,
Nelson Johnson remembers. They fought against the po liti cal belittlement of women, criticized those men who ran around on their wives or
girlfriends, and pushed for women to be promoted into leadership positions. According to Johnson, Sandi and Joyce teamed up to even
challenge me on this male stuff. And he credits Neely with getting
women into leadership positions in the or ga ni za tion.74
Many yobu members took jobs in textile mills in order to help build
pro- union sentiment and unite Black and white workers, but yobu as
an or ga ni za tion soon dissolved. Mark Smith returned to Harvard to
fi nish his undergraduate degree and eventually went to medical school.
Nelson Johnson, Sandi (Neely) Smith, and others stayed in the mill. I
had studied Marxism and was increasingly persuaded that we were
challenged to unite black and white workers, Johnson refl ects. The
principal industry in this town and in this region was the textile industry. So, a number of us who were in an all- black formation went into
the textile mill . . . to build unity between black and white workers.75
Johnson and others from yobu, as well as activists from the African
Liberation Support Committee, including Owusu Sadauki, built a new
or ga ni za tion called the Revolutionary Workers League that established
chapters in New York, Washington, Houston, and San Francisco.
About a year later, in 1975 or 1976, the league dissolved after its
leaders voted to merge with the Workers Viewpoint Or ga ni za tion
(WVO), a mostly Asian American group based in New York that was
committed to building a new Communist Party. Johnson calls this one
of the most diffi cult periods of my life. It pitted me against my close
friend and mentor, Owusu Sadauki.76 After a ten- year sojourn as a
radical or ga niz er in North Carolina, Sadauki returned to Milwaukee,
changed his name back to Howard Fuller, and began working with conservative foundations to promote the use of public funds to fi nance the
The Black Revolution Off-Campus | 239
private education of Black children. Johnson, for his part, moved fully
into multiracial labor or ga niz ing. The North Carolina WVO contingent
attracted large numbers of Black textile workers in support of the
union and began to have an impact. But a rejuvenated Ku Klux Klan
took note of their successes. There had been Klan rallies in the region
aimed at interracial working- class or ga niz ing, so the WVO decided to
hold a anti- Klan rally at a public housing project in Greensboro.
A caravan of armed Klansmen and neo- Nazis had been given the
details of the WVO demonstration by a Greensboro police offi cer, who
operated as an undercover Klansman, but the police department never
informed the WVO of these hostile, armed forces. On the day of the
rally, November 3, 1979, police were nowhere in sight as the Klansmen
and neo- Nazis opened fi re on the protesters, killing fi ve and wounding
many. Nelson Johnson was stabbed. Sandi Smith was killed. Bill Sampson, the key or ga niz er in the textile plant was also killed. Jim Waller
was killed. Cesar Cauce, who or ga nized workers at Duke University,
and Mike Nathan, a physician, were also killed that day. White juries
in both the state and federal criminal trials voted to acquit. No one was
ever convicted for the loss of life in what became known as the Greensboro Massacre. The media, moreover, blamed the communist activists
for the deaths of their comrades. In 1985 a civil jury did award several
hundred thousand dollars to some of the survivors, but the explosion of
right- wing violence and failure to win criminal convictions were traumatic for Johnson, his comrades, and the wider community.77
More than two de cades later, community leaders developed the
Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission in an effort to promote a fuller understanding of who was responsible for the killings, and
a fuller understanding of the WVO, which had renamed itself the Communist Workers Party shortly before that fateful day. The communist
label was used to demonize the victims and ultimately deny them justice. I actually am a peaceful and generous person, but somehow in
the publics mind I turned out to be a total monster, Johnson observes.
How did this happen he asks, when I was just trying to help poor
folk and unite black and white folk, and I turn out to be seen as this kind
of monster? Not long after the massacre, Johnson found solace and
solidarity in the church. I ended up going to churches because people
treated me kindly there, he notes. A good hug was very meaningful to
me then. After receiving a masters in divinity, Rev. Johnson founded the
Faith Community Church. He has continued his commitment to social
240 | The Black Revolution Off-Campus
justice activism, especially labor or ga niz ing, but expresses it in a different
register, as leader of the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro.78
In many respects, Nelson Johnsons efforts to radically transform the
racial and class hierarchies of the modern South, and his subsequent
encounter with violent repression, exemplifi es the arc of the more militant Black student movement in the region. As we have seen, protesting
students at many historically Black colleges faced police invasions resulting in considerable gunfi re, many injuries, incarcerations, and several student deaths. The regions po liti cal elites moved forcefully when
students, in their own brash and imperfect ways, tried to stake a claim
to southern institutions and reshape them in more demo cratic and inclusive ways. The violent crackdowns sent a message that further
change would come at great cost. For the Black students in the region
who entered college in the aftermath of this traumatic period, seeking
reform through mainstream professions and means must have appeared
to be the only option.
The off- campus legacies of the Black student and Black studies movements illustrate the formation and evolution of an African American
infl uenced, activist public sphere in the 1970s. This was a signifi cant
by- product of the civil rights movement, and an important precursor to
subsequent civic and educational iterations of multiculturalism. The effects of the Black freedom struggle were broad and diffuse, ranging
from a change in public- affairs tele vi sion broadcasting to communitybased educational initiatives. Yet while students involved in the various
efforts to bring the energy of the Black student and Black studies movements to the broader community whether at Nairobi, through Black
Heritage, in sobu, or at the Institute of the Black World were making
their mark and grappling with internal debates and encountering various challenges, Black studies on campus was struggling to gain permanence and acquire legitimacy.
241
After the creation of African American studies units, educators engaged
in fi erce debates about the fi elds academic mission and defi nition. The
stakes were high, since in the eyes of many, legitimacy, status, and recognition in the academy hung in the balance. Many critics, both internal and external to Black studies, criticized it on two interrelated
grounds: they claimed that it lacked curricular coherence, and that by
not having a single methodology it failed to meet the defi nition of a
discipline. As a result, many educators in the early Black studies movement pursued a two- pronged quest: for a standardized curriculum
and an original, authoritative methodology. At the same time, many
scholars in the Black studies movement questioned whether either of
these pursuits was desirable or even attainable. In other words, while
some scholars have insisted that African American studies must devise
its own unique research methodology, others contend that as a multidiscipline, or interdisciplinary discipline, its strength lies in incorporating multiple, diverse methodologies. In a similar vein, while some
have argued for a standardized curriculum, others argue that higher
education is better served by dynamism and innovation. I argue that,
in the fi nal analysis, the disciplines ac cep tance in academe, to the extent that it has gained ac cep tance, has come from the production of
infl uential scholarship and the development of new conceptual approaches that have infl uenced other disciplines. Pioneering scholarship
Chapter 8
What Happened to
Black Studies?
242 | What Happened to Black Studies?
and infl uential intellectual innovations, rather than a standardized pedagogy or methodology, have been the route to infl uence and stature in
American intellectual life.
A tension between authority and freedom animates these debates. As
late as 2000, an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education reinforced
the idea that multiple perspectives and methodologies had retarded the
progress of African American studies. The author criticizes the diverse
character of African American studies courses at different universities.
The Ohio State class is chronological with a literary bent, she writes.
Dukes take: cultural studies. The Penn course fi lters everything through
a W. E. B. Du Bois lens, and N.Y.U. combines pan- Africanism with urban
studies. Of course, this sampling refl ects the range one would fi nd in
the departments of history, sociology, or En glish at these same universities. But the author stresses disarray. Theres a reason 30 years after the
discipline developed that people still wonder whether the black- studies
curriculum represents a coherent subject or a smorgasbord, she concludes. In this view, the disciplines strengthseclectic, expansive, experimental curricula are also its weaknesses.1
James B. Stewart, a former president of the National Council of
Black Studies, shares this anxiety about disarray. In his view: We do
everything the diaspora, sex, history, language, economics, race. Yet
he seems oblivious to the fact that each of these areas has been vital terrain for research innovation. We dont have a paradigm, he laments.
That is why we dont make progress. If achieving this unifi ed paradigm is the mea sure of progress, then Stewart, judging forty years of
African American studies, must see little. Longtime Black studies educator Abdul Alkalimat shares Stewarts view that standardization means
the discipline exists.2 Arthur Lewin, a professor of Black and Hispanic
studies at Baruch College, agrees that Black studies lacks a coherently
stated rationale, a consequence, in his view, of having burst fullblown upon the academic scene a generation ago.3 Critics of African
American studies often echo this view. Stanford scholar Shelby Steele
calls African American studies a bogus concept from the beginning
because it was an idea grounded in politics, not in a par tic u lar methodology. These programs are dying of their own inertia because theyve
had 30 or 40 years to show us a serious academic program, and theyve
failed.4 This view recalls that of Harvard po liti cal scientist Martin Kilson, that African American studies did not merit departmental status
because it lacked its own unique methodology.
What Happened to Black Studies? | 243
Much of the 1970s was spent formulating ways to standardize
course content in African American studies across universities. For
some, this impulse fl owed from a view that greater cohesion in courses
would better promote the social and po liti cal mission of the fi eld. For
others, standardizing the core curriculum signifi ed professionalism and
held the promise of elevating the reputation of the fi eld. In a 1975 proposal, Consortium for the Development of Black Studies Curriculum,
Gerald McWorter (Abdul Alkalimat) noted with concern that a uniform scholarly curriculum and pedagogy have yet to emerge and be
accepted. This was particularly signifi cant because the heart of Black
Studies is its curricular and pedagogical approach to the unique problems that it faces. Moreover, the need for a model curriculum is growing because there exists considerable variation from campus to campus.5 In 1980 the National Council of Black Studies adopted a model
core curriculum, enshrining history, cultural studies, and social and behavioral studies as the three primary content areas for the fi eld, and this
tripartite approach continues to characterize the way many departments
approach hiring and curricular development.
Assisting the effort to standardize teaching especially for introductory courses was the emergence in the 1980s of two pop u lar textbooks. Abdul Alkalimat and his colleagues at the Peoples College
published Introduction to Afro- American Studies, which included extensive discussion of Marxism, Pan- Africanism, and Black nationalism,
while Ron Karengas Introduction to Black Studies projected his cultural nationalist worldview known as Kawaida as a model for Black
studies pedagogy. Many African American studies programs utilized
these textbooks in the classroom. Yet these books emerging in the
midst of the fi elds incorporation, and penned by ideological partisans
bore witness to contradictory trends: both texts emphasized ideological
positions that had waned, at least among intellectuals. Showing a fairly
rapid move away from Black nationalism as a paradigm for the fi eld, a
1980 survey of ten major Black studies programs found that only two
identifi ed Black nationalism as their ideological rubric, while the
other eight emphasized ideological diversity and rejected becoming narrowly entrenched in any ideology. In the view of these eight programs,
a vibrant faculty dialogue is seen as a major stimulus in the philosophical evolution of the fi eld.6
In addition to seeking an authoritative curriculum, some sought to
create a new methodology for the discipline. Scholars and teachers
244 | What Happened to Black Studies?
infl uenced by Afrocentrism have been among the most consistent advocates of creating a distinctive methodology. A school of thought within
the larger universe of Black studies, Afrocentrism captured signifi cant
media attention in the 1990s. A variant of a long tradition of Black intellectualism focused on marking the achievements of African civilizations prior to Eu ro pe an contact, contemporary Afrocentrism attracts
a coterie of educators who often exist in an uneasy relationship with
major scholarly developments in the discipline. Afrocentrism is most
famously associated with Temple University professor Molefi Asante.
Lamenting what he saw as the absence of a comprehensive philosophical position at the founding of African American studies, Asante developed Afrocentricity, which stresses the need to recover and center
African knowledge systems. In his view, this is the only way you can
approach African American studies.7 Interestingly, the Black student
movement was intensely engaged with contemporary struggles and
riveted by Black Power, but it was not particularly focused on ancient
Africa. There were exceptions: Askia Toure taught such a course at the
Experimental College at San Francisco State; but as a rule, the students Black nationalism was po liti cal as much as cultural, and as interested in contemporary struggles in the African diaspora as in Egyptian achievements.
In Black historiography, there is a long and rich tradition of countering the distortion of African culture and history produced by Eu ro pe an
writers, and of vindicating the achievements of African civilizations prior
to colonialism.8 The earliest Black history writing frequently held up
Egyptian and Ethiopian history to refute notions of Black inferiority,
argue against slavery, and imagine a different future for Black people in
the United States and around the world.9 By J. A. Rogers, John Henrik
Clarke, Carter G. Woodson, William Hansberry, and others, this scholarship was vital to the struggle against white supremacy and very infl uential in Black communities. In some respects the Marxist Guyanese
scholar and transnational activist Walter Rodney continued in this tradition with his landmark 1973 text, How Eu rope Underdeveloped Africa, which detailed the long economic exploitation of the continent
and offered a framework for understanding contemporary underdevelopment. For many audiences today, the term Afrocentric simply signifi es the rejection of Eurocentric approaches or paradigms, and Asante
has described his goal as the emancipation of African knowledge and
people from the hegemonic ideology of white racial domination.10 And
he sometimes asserts that what Afrocentricity entails is simply an em-
What Happened to Black Studies? | 245
phasis on African agency. But the stress on Black agency arguably characterizes all of Black studies. As noted earlier, the articulation and defense of a Black perspective defi ned the fi eld from its inception.
Rather, Asante advocates a par tic u lar version of Afrocentrism, or as he
and others variously term it, Afrocentricity, Africentricity, or Africology.
Afrocentricity, he declared in one of his many texts devoted to defi ning the term, is the ideological centerpiece of human regeneration,
systematizing our history and experience with our own culture at the
core of existence. In its epistemic dimensions it is also a methodology
for discovering the truth about intercultural communication.11
The inclination to look for insights in the African past, hoping to
escape or resolve the legacies of colonialism and enslavement, is fundamental to the approach of leading proponents of Afrocentricity. One
of Asantes students, Greg Carr, now a professor of African American
studies at Howard University, endeavors to draw upon deep Africana
thought and the traditions of classical and medieval Africa to address the needs of Black people in contemporary society. A key mission
of African American studies, Carr believes, is to reconnect narratives
of African identity to the contemporary era.12 Maulana Karenga,
found er of the us or ga ni za tion in Los Angeles, who coauthored the
Handbook of Black Studies with Asante, believes that the fundamental
point of departure for African American studies or Black studies is an
ongoing dialogue with African culture. That is, continuously asking it
questions and seeking from it answers to the fundamental questions of
humankind.13
Asante has undertaken extraordinary efforts to develop African American studies along Afrocentric lines, founding the important Journal of
Black Studies, as well as the fi rst PhD program in African American studies at Temple University, in 1988. He has been tireless in asserting and
claiming infl uence. I have written more books than any other African
American scholar, he said in 1994. I have written 36 books. As of
2009, that number had risen to seventy, and his followers often refer to
this as Asantian literature.14 Afrocentric students and educators convene at the Cheikh Anta Diop annual conferences sponsored by the
Diopian Institute for Scholarly Advancement in Philadelphia. Afrocentric thinkers have also played signifi cant roles in shaping the National
Council of Black Studies and its annual conferences.15
While Asante and others insist that Afrocentricity is the fi elds most
appropriate methodology, it has struggled to gain traction in Black studies and has inspired considerable criticism from within the discipline.
246 | What Happened to Black Studies?
Critics have offered various objections, notably that Afrocentricity reinforces troubling discourses and hierarchies, falls short as an actual research methodology, and lacks engagement with the actual history and
culture of Africa. A common concern is that it rejects the hybrid nature
of African American genealogy, culture, and identities, and ironically,
in light of its focus on agency slights the Black contribution to the
making of the New World. Scholar Tricia Rose agrees with Greg Carr
that an important African intellectual tradition preceded Eu ro pe an contact, but in her view scholars must confront the transformations
wrought by pro cesses of enslavement and colonialism. We are in the
West, in the so- called New World, she contends, and should examine
the circumstances we are in, examine the hybridities that have emerged
from it.16
As Melba Boyd puts it, In the Afrocentric haste to discard all things
Eu ro pe an or American they have also discarded that which is uniquely
Afro- American. Moreover, echoing another widely shared critique,
Boyd notes, What the Afrocentrists fail to realize, in their quest to
claim civilization, is that our struggle, fundamentally and above all else,
is for freedom for the common people. We do not desire to be the new
aristocracy. Monarchies were not democracies. We aspire to a new society that does not worship royalty, racial hierarchies, gold, corporate
power, or any other manifestation that demeans the human spirit.17
Literary scholar Joyce A. Joyce echoes this criticism. Ironically, she
observes, some Black nationalists and hardened Afrocentrists share
superiority complexes and desire for power (disguised as agency) with
the very hegemony they allegedly oppose. For Joyce, Black studies is a
creative change agent conceived as an intellectual discipline to deconstruct the injustices rooted in a disrespect for cultural differences.18
Similarly, Erskine Peters fi nds that Asantes Kemet, Afrocentricity
and Knowledge problematically asserts that all African societies fi nd
Kemet (ancient Egypt) a common source for intellectual and po liti cal
ideas. Peters objects to this imperialist logic and fi nds it dangerously like the erroneous historical paradigm which argues that Eu rope an culture brought civilization to the rest of the globe. Moreover, he
argues that Asantes theory had jumped ahead of his research, noting
that one comes away from Asante simply not having learned very
much about African values.19 Other scholars have objected to the defi –
nition of race as some kind of innate biological bond advanced in
Afrocentric writings, as well as the portrayal of culture, which, histo-
What Happened to Black Studies? | 247
rian Barbara Ransby argues, is equally erroneous. . . . Culture is not
something fi xed, static, and ahistorical but is dynamic and constantly
in fl ux. Afrocentrists who look back and romanticize a fi xed moment
in the history of ancient Egypt as the source of our salvation from our
current dilemmas, Ransby argues, fail to fully appreciate this fact.20
Likewise, Perry Hall argues that Afrocentrism promotes a static view
of culture and history. . . . For Blacks to discover who they were is important, but only part of discovering who they are, who they can be and
where they can go.21
Afrocentricity has arguably had more infl uence in community- based
pedagogy, cultural programming, and heritage tours than in the production of research. This is best exemplifi ed by the infl uence of Kawaida,
a worldview formulated by Maulana Karenga as a means of promoting
self- determination, unity, economic cooperation, and creativity in Black
American communities. Infl uential in some early Black studies programs, Kawaidas biggest infl uence by far has been its offshoot, the Afrocentric holiday Kwanzaa which, falling in the school vacation week
after Christmas, has spawned some of the most well- attended public
programming at cultural institutions around the country. Afrocentricity
has a didactic dimension that emphasizes the need to recover and
restore lost value systems, ways of knowing, and cultural traditions
more generally. The Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations an or ga ni za tion founded by Chicagoan Jacob Carruthers, a
longtime professor at the Center for Inner City Studies at Northeastern
Illinois University embraces this mission, which tends to distinguish
it from more academic African American studies. Refl ecting the mix of
education, cosmology, and ritual that characterizes many grassroots
expressions of Afrocentrism, the Association promotes spiritual development, the veneration of African ancestors, the application of ancient
Nile Valley culture in contemporary life, and holistic approaches to
healthy living.22 As a result of this more didactic and spiritual orientation and the coincident incorporation of Black studies into the academy, a wider chasm than had existed during earlier eras has developed
between Afrocentric teachers and writers and more mainstream African
American studies scholars.
Still, Afrocentricitys forceful critique of Eu ro pe an civilization, its
emphasis on Black achievement, and its mistrust of white- led education
have strong resonance. And context is crucial. The continuing assault
on Black humanity in post- Jim- Crow America is central to its appeal.
248 | What Happened to Black Studies?
Afrocentricity gained visibility in the 1990s, a time when journalists,
sociologists, and politicians promoted narratives of inner- city drug use,
rampant criminality, and family breakdown. These narratives appeared
to indict individual behaviors yet suggested a communal failure, all the
while ignoring the post- civil- rights history of urban disinvestment, regressive taxation, massive job loss, and aggressive policing targeted
particularly at young men of color.
Whether it is Afrocentricity or something else, most scholars in Black
studies reject the effort to impose a single methodology, seeing it as unrealistic and stifl ing. Rhett Jones, cofound er and longtime chair of the
Department of Africana Studies at Brown University, was an early critic
of the one size fi ts all approach to the discipline. In its early years,
Black studies wasted considerable human, intellectual, and material resources in battles over fi nding the master plan for the study of Black
people, he argues. Similarly, he feels that much energy was also
wasted on responding to the charge by Americas Eurocentric, racist
disciplines that Black studies had no methodology of its own. Neither
did the Eurocentrists. And they still dont. . . . Historians are no more
agreed on methodology or theory than are anthropologists, sociologists
or phi los o phers.23 In contrast to those who see pluralism in Black
studies as a weakness, Jones believes that this characteristic has been
vital to the development and staying power of the fi eld. Pluralism was
a credit to black studies he observes, as its found ers realized there
could be no master plan as to how the discipline should serve black
Americans.24
Historian Francille Rusan Wilson similarly resists the effort to impose
a single approach. Theres not one way to be black or to study black
people, she asserts. The discipline is quite alive, in her view, and the
differences indicate that.25 Po liti cal scientist Floyd Hayes concurs, stating, One must ask whether there should be conformity to a model
curriculum and a single theoretical or ideological orientation in African American studies. Hayes believes it is important to cultivate a
more fl exible and innovative atmosphere so that African American
studies can continue to grow and develop.26 Reacting to criticism of
the eclectic philosophies in early Black studies, phi los o pher Angela
Davis observes that it was precisely the lack of unitary theoretical
defi nition during those early years which made the fi eld so intellectually exciting. In her view, it was fruitless to imagine transcending the
very real contradictions and disagreements in the early Black studies
movement.27
What Happened to Black Studies? | 249
While the signifi cance of teaching to the rise of Black studies in the
United States cannot be minimized or discounted, ultimately it has been
the quality of research and scholarship that has fueled the development
and stature of African American studies within academia. Despite persis tent portrayals of Black studies as intellectually barren and steeped in
racial essentialism, scholars in the fi eld have produced work that has
broadly infl uenced academic scholarship. It is beyond the scope of
this book to cata logue and assess the groundbreaking works by literary theorists, sociologists, anthropologists, phi los o phers, historians,
and others in the broad fi eld of African American and diaspora studies
that were published in the 1970s and 1980s. Scholars such as Robert L.
Harris, Vincent Harding, Sterling Stuckey, Joyce Ladner, Henry Louis
Gates, Darlene Clark Hine, Mary Helen Washington, Robert Stepto,
John Blassingame, Mary Frances Berry, Andrew Billingsley, and Ronald
Walters, among scores of others, continued the long tradition of Black
scholarly innovation. However, this point needs to be stressed: a Black
scholarly tradition did not begin with the creation of Black studies programs, but these programs provided a new infrastructure and incentive
for its growth and development.
One important example of scholarly innovation in Black studies was
the rise of diaspora studies. Defi ning the scope and subject of Black
studies was a point of contestation in the early years of academic incorporation. Despite the efforts of university administrators to confi ne the
fi eld to the United States, a per sis tent desire to encompass the global
African diaspora ultimately spawned considerable conceptual innovation and scholarly productivity.28 Black studies scholars have from the
movements inception been international in their origins and much
more diverse than the Black American population as a whole, which
in the late 1960s was overwhelmingly U.S. born. Notwithstanding the
nomenclature of their university unit, many scholars in Black studies
have embraced Pan- Africanism, the Black World, or the African diaspora as a guiding paradigm for teaching and scholarship.
As illustrated in the case studies throughout this book, the Black
nationalism of this student generation was internationalist; the Black
Panther Party saw itself as part of a global upsurge. Nineteen- sixties
Black nationalism was forged amid rising critiques of the U.S. war in
Vietnam and in explicit identifi cation with, and admiration for, leaders
of African liberation struggles and new nation- states. Two leading icons
for this generation Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X exemplify this
twin thrust. Both embraced their African origins, traveled extensively
250 | What Happened to Black Studies?
on the continent, and criticized U.S. efforts to suppress Black diasporic
affi liations and anti- imperialist stances. Related to the turn toward
Black Power, or variations thereof, was the decisive break from cold
war strictures that had narrowed the terms of dissent in the United
States. Activists challenged the idea of American exceptionalism,
which had worked both to deny the centrality of racism in the United
States and to sever earlier transnational alliances and identifi cations.
This internationalist Black consciousness continued, even accelerated,
in the 1970s. The early Black studies movement coincided with major
anticolonial struggles in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea- Bissau;
struggles against white settler regimes in southern Africa; and a widening African solidarity movement among Black American radicals. According to St. Clair Drake, The country was deeply mired in the Vietnam War but many black youth were much more interested in how the
war against Portugal was going in Mozambique, Angola and GuineaBissau than in the war in Vietnam. In his view, it was critical to understand that the modern Black studies movement emerged within this
international context.29
As a result, it was fairly common to fi nd Pan- African in a programs
name or in its course offerings. At Lehman College in New York City,
remembers Charlotte Morgan- Cato, the rallying cry Portuguese wine
is African Blood was well- known among the students as we regularly
hosted African scholars, Black nationalist leaders, radical public intellectuals and local po liti cal leaders who espoused the Pan- African
cause.30 According to Drake, Newly or ga nized Black studies programs
contributed to the raising of consciousness with regard to Africa between 1970 and 1974, and to the emergence of the group that or ganized a very effective lobby, the African Liberation Support Committee.31 The committee or ga nized annual African Liberation Day demonstrations and played a leading role in planning the Sixth Pan- African
Congress in Tanzania. Many in the African Liberation Support Committee orbit, including Owusu Sadauki/Howard Fuller, Nelson Johnson,
Abdul Alkalimat, Jimmy Garrett, C. L. R. James, James Turner, Lerone
Bennett, and Haki Madhubuti were deeply connected to the Black student and Black studies movements. The strong activist commitment to
African solidarity by scholars in the early Black studies movement concretely and dramatically illustrates the fi elds international focus. The
defeat of Portugal in 1974 brought to a close one chapter in the long
career of U.S.- based Pan- Africanism. The struggles against apartheid,
What Happened to Black Studies? | 251
white rule in Zimbabwe, and the South African occupation of Namibia
continued, but the African Liberation Support Committee disbanded in
the ideological confl ict between Marxists and Black nationalists. Additionally, Morgan- Cato, at Lehman College, felt that student interest in
the movement of international liberation was also cut short in the
mid- 1970s as a result of fi scal crisis, retrenchment, and shifts in student
outlooks and priorities.32
Still, a global consciousness in Black studies was not simply a product of solidarity struggles in the postwar era. It has marked Black historical writing ever since its origins in the nineteenth century. As many
studies of Black historiography have shown, writers from the early
nineteenth century forward have been invested in rewriting the Western
distortion of African peoples and societies, as well as keenly interested
in erecting a powerful counterdiscourse to the statelessness, dispersal,
subjugation, and dehumanization of Africans in diaspora. W. E. B. Du
Bois is most famously associated with this effort, but its practitioners
are numerous.33 In addition, the most important Black community
institutions notably churches and newspapers paid attention to the
African diaspora. Until McCarthy- era repression undermined African
American anticolonial organizations and networks, major Black newspapers, especially the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier, gave
extensive coverage to developments in Africa and the Ca rib be an.34
Although the Black studies movement is often thought of as resolutely U.S.- based, many of its early scholars tried to persuade universities and funders to connect formally the study of continental Africa, the
Ca rib be an, and the United States. There was widespread agreement
that the typical American curriculum had ignored the African heritage
of African Americans, characterizing them as having begun their existence in North America as a tabula rasa blank slates to be imprinted
with Euro- American Culture. This was a diffi cult battle, in part because African studies had been programmatically established after
World War II as a result of cold war pressures to develop knowledge
about an area of the world that the United States viewed as part of Soviet strategic designs. These programs, in the words of historian Robert
L. Harris, had no real link to Black people in the New World. African
studies became wedded to a modernization theory that mea sured African societies by Western standards. African history, culture and politics
were explored more within the context of the colonial powers than with
any attention to African cultural continuities in the Western Hemi sphere.
252 | What Happened to Black Studies?
In contrast, according to Harris, Black American intellectuals had
long resisted this compartmentalization of knowledge about Black
people.35
The Black studies movement unleashed a salvo against the colonial
paradigm, but faced re sis tance from administrators and faculty in African studies. White scholars, many of whom objected to the focus on
identity and politics in Black studies, dominated African studies programs in the United States. When Afro- American studies began at Boston University, its director, Adelaide Hill, wanted to forge ties with the
already existing African studies program. The problem of the relationship of the two areas has agonized both faculties, she reported. Some
Africanists, she found, do not see a relationship between what they are
doing and the new Black American emphasis. In the end, the two units
agreed that there are common and autonomous zones between the
two areas. Similarly, Harvards Department of Afro- American Studies
sought to include African studies under its purview, but met administrative re sis tance, in part because the department was seen as too po liti cal
and too infl uenced by Black nationalism.36
American- born sociologist St. Clair Drake labored his entire academic career to promote the study of the Africa diaspora in all its scope
and complexity. He often reminded his audiences that the fi rst African
Studies programs were at Fisk and Lincoln, but these received no grants
from the foundations, in contrast to the white- run African studies programs at elite universities that were lavishly funded during the cold war
era. The push by some scholars in the Black studies movement to unify
the two fi elds produced tensions. The Africanists fear the po liti cal impulse associated with Afro- American Studies and the possibility of the
lowering of standards, Drake found, and in their effort to maintain
their own preserves sometimes shifted from undergraduate to graduate education. At Drakes Roo se velt University, however, African and
African American studies were taught together.37
Never a monolith, Black studies has given rise to varying conceptions
of diaspora. In 1969 Drake proposed a summer institute in Jamaica.
This location serves to emphasize one of the objectives of the institute,
that of teaching Negro history and culture in its cosmopolitan panAfrican and South Atlantic context, he noted. The workshop intended
to emphasize cultural continuity between Africa and the black diaspora in South, Central, and North America. The institute will be
concerned with the cultural, historical, and po liti cal connections between Africa, the United States, and the Ca rib be an, Drake wrote.38 In
What Happened to Black Studies? | 253
contrast, at a seminar of Black studies directors, the director of Princetons program advanced several rationales for a global approach, including illustrating diversity in Black life. His framework, which emphasized difference as much as commonality, shows the varied approaches
to the study of diaspora that have always marked the discipline. The
black experience varies geo graph i cally and culturally and therefore falls
within the study of comparative racial and ethnic relations, he argued.
There is a common denominator in being black, he felt, but race is a
lesser factor in the defi nition of the person in some situations. For example, in the Ca rib be an area generally, class is more defi nitive of who a
person is than race. In the United States the opposite is the case.39
The early Black studies movement was unable to immediately achieve
the goal of encompassing African studies.40 Nonetheless, courses in
Afro- American studies departments often extended beyond American
borders. A 1980 examination of ten major programs found that all of
them encompass the Diaspora in their scope, and that all address
their curricular attention in some mea sure to Africa even while putting
most emphasis on the experience of Black people in the United States.41
The Program in Afro- American Studies at Brown pioneered coursework in the African diaspora beginning in the 1970s at the initiative of
Ghanaian scholar Anani Dzidzienyo.42 In a 1977 1978 survey of Black
studies programs, Drake found that all give some attention to the implications of an African origin for Black people in the New World, and
increasingly a diaspora frame of reference focuses some attention
upon the Ca rib be an and Latin America for comparison with the United
States.43 When Roscoe Brown was appointed to direct the new Institute of African American Affairs at New York University, he announced
that the term Afro- American will include our Black brothers from the
various parts of the Ca rib be an, such as Haiti, Puerto Rico, the West
Indies, the Virgin Islands, and other Ca rib be an peoples who are of African descent. His attention to brothers and omission of sisters
certainly ironic in light of the stress on subjectivity and identity in the
Black studies movement was common in these years before feminist
assertion dramatically affected language and consciousness. Still, Brown
put resources behind this pledge, convening a yearlong seminar in 1971
1972 on the Black experience in the Ca rib be an and South America.44
The Center for African and African American Studies at the University
of Michigan at Ann Arbor was an important exception to this early failure to formally include African studies under the rubric of Black studies.
At its founding in 1970, Niara Sudarkasa, a professor of anthropology
254 | What Happened to Black Studies?
and future director of the center, ensured the new center would deal
not only with African American experience, but also with sub- Saharan
Africa itself. Godfrey Uzoigwe, an Africanist at Ann Arbor, noted,
CAAS is one of the few black studies programs in which the comparative emphasis was built into its structure from the beginning.45
Yet other avenues for forging networks and affi nities among scholars
of Africa and the diaspora emerged, most notably the African Heritage
Studies Association, which was founded in 1969 after John Henrik
Clarke and others led a protest at the annual convention of the African
Studies Association (ASA) in Montreal. Black scholars of Africa had
long felt marginalized in the ASA and had been pressing for greater
Black leadership in the or ga ni za tion and for the ASA to play a more active and progressive role in infl uencing American policy toward Africa.
In Montreal, the Black Caucus of the ASA declared the Association fundamentally invalid and illegitimate and even injurious to the welfare
of African people. It assailed the groups scholarship, leadership, and
affi liations. This or ga ni za tion which purports to study Africa has never
done so, the caucus declared, and has in fact studied the colonial heritage of Africa. They condemned the intellectual arrogance of white
people, which has perpetuated and legitimized a kind of academic colonialism and has distorted the defi nition of the nature of cultural life and
social or ga ni za tion of African peoples.46
A major point of confl ict was the demand for racial parity within
the ASA, with an equal number of board seats designated for whites and
blacks. Several radical whites, like Immanuel Wallerstein, supported the
Black Caucus, but most white Africanists objected to many or most of
their demands. As John Henrik Clarke recalled, the white Africanists
resented the projection of an African people as a world people with a
common cause and a common destiny. More than anything else they
resented the Afro- Americans being linked with the Africans in Africa.
In Clarkes view, the white Africanist scholars possessed the sense of
dominion and paternalism that had been generated by Eu ro pe an colonialism and Western imperialism more generally. Africa to them was a
kind of ethnic plantation over which they reigned and explained to the
world. The confl ict at Montreal gave rise to the African Heritage Studies Association (AHSA), which in the early 1970s, prior to the creation
of the National Council of Black Studies, served as an annual gathering
and institutional network for Black studies scholars. Dr. Clarke, its
founding president, defi ned the AHSA as committed to the preserva-
What Happened to Black Studies? | 255
tion, interpretation, and creative pre sen ta tion of the historical and cultural heritage of African people throughout the world. We interpret
African history from a Pan- Africanist perspective that defi nes all black
people as an African people, he insisted. We do not accept the arbitrary lines of geo graph i cal demarcations that were created to refl ect
colonialist spheres of infl uence.47
The meetings of the AHSA refl ected the various currents of Black
nationalism in the 1970s, as well as the continuing interest in relevance, or contemporary policy and po liti cal issues. The 1978 conference in New York illustrates these concerns and the global character of
the AHSA. Most of the presenters were university scholars, but also on
panels were the Nigerian ambassador, the African National Congress
representative to the United States, and several attorneys and fi lmmakers. Politics and culture dominated points of discussion at the conference. Session titles included U.S. Foreign Policy in Southern Africa;
Blacks in American Politics; Ca rib be an Nation Building; The Military
in Post- Independence Africa; Forum on Southern Africa; A De cade of
Assessment of Black Studies; Black Artists in America; Ca rib be an Literature; Black Men, Black Women and the Black Family; Affi rmative
Action and Social Change; Integrating Black Music into the Curriculum; and Legacy of Colonialism.48 Notwithstanding what the Associations name might convey, the conferences of the African Heritage Studies Association during the 1970s were contemporary in emphasis, and
they strongly demonstrated the interest of the Black studies community
in the United States in African liberation struggles and new nationstates. Yet, like the ASA from which it had bolted, the AHSA remained
predominantly male and seemingly oblivious to the rising tide of feminism. On this score, its Black nationalism offered a circumscribed vision
of postcolonial change, protecting male leadership prerogatives and
forgoing discussions of alternative visions of postcolonial leadership
and liberation.
Notwithstanding efforts by administrators or others to limit the scope
of African American studies to the United States, these early efforts to
formally include Africa as well as the diaspora in Black studies departments and professional organizations ultimately bore fruit. Four decades later it became increasingly common to encounter Departments
of African and African American Studies or Departments of Africana
Studies, which explicitly take Africa, the United States, the Ca rib be an,
and Latin America as their subject. Campuses as diverse as the University
256 | What Happened to Black Studies?
of Illinois, Dartmouth College, the University of Minnesota, Duke University, Harvard University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Kansas, Stanford University, the University of Texas, and Arizona State University join together African and African American studies. Of course, the limitations of bud gets and faculty size may interfere
with fully realizing the promise of interdisciplinary, truly global coverage. And to be sure, there continue to be signifi cant challenges in integrating African and African diasporic studies in the same units, as well
as tensions and divergences between Africanist and African Americanist
scholars. The pro cess of defi ning African diaspora studies, indeed of
defi ning blackness, is ongoing and the subject of lively debate. But the
crucial point is that the Black studies movement ultimately achieved
a degree of success in undoing the colonialist compartmentalization of
research and knowledge that had insisted on severing African studies
from African American studies.
In addition to diaspora, another development in the Black studies
movement that generated innovative research and helped to propel the
discipline forward in the midst of an ongoing discursive climate of crisis was the rise of Black feminism and its infl uence in both Black studies and academia more generally. Black feminist scholars insisted on the
need to move beyond a monolithic focus on the racialized subject and
take into account interconnected, and multiple, subjectivities and oppressions. They argued for the signifi cance of gender, but also brought
heightened attention to class and sexuality, an interpretive move that
infl uenced other disciplines in addition to Black studies. However, this
outcome was by no means easy or assured. Black women intellectuals
had to wage a fi ght to legitimate their perspective, and they often encountered withering criticism from male and sometimes female
scholars in their effort to cultivate a feminist revision of the Black studies movement. According to Rhett Jones, a Brown University Africana
Studies professor, Our discipline also failed to address Black womens
issues, which he feels is surprising in a fi eld claiming to take a new
perspective on scholarship.49 Many Black women have argued that
this failure fl owed from the male chauvinist, homophobic tenor of the
nationalist 1960s. The truth of it is, Toni Cade refl ects, a whole lot
of organizations back then in the sixties fl oundered, fell apart, and
wasted a lot of resources in the pro cess, due in large mea sure to male
ego, male whim, and macho theatre. That story needs to be told.50
Many scholars of modern Black feminism have characterized its
emergence as a reaction, on the one hand, to the sexism of the Black
What Happened to Black Studies? | 257
Power movement, and on the other hand, to the racism in the white
womens movement and broader U.S. society. But more recently, historians have argued that the racial identity politics of the Black Power movement were a generative infl uence for the rise of gender identity politics
in Black feminist or ga niz ing and assertion.51 Both perspectives provide
useful insight on developments in the Black student and Black studies
movements. These movements had blithely embraced male leadership
and conventional gender roles, but at the same time, they had also
encouraged not only critical consciousness, self- affi rmation, and a groupbased identity but also individual empowerment and personal agency.
And all these phenomena stimulated the rise of Black feminism(s) and,
later, Black womens studies.
The publication of the landmark text The Black Woman by Toni Cade
in 1970 opened a period of growth, questioning, and assertion in Black
womens activist, literary, cultural, and academic or ga niz ing. Notably, the
paperback appeared at a time when the major media characterized feminism as a white womans movement of little relevance or concern for
Black women, and when the majority of Black men and women readily
agreed with this assessment. In these years, white feminist activists
evinced little awareness of, or interest in, the par tic u lar experiences or
needs of women of color. Moreover, the ethos and po liti cal strategy of
the Black Power era was indisputably race fi rst. Widely recognized as a
writer and literary fi gure, Cade was also a leader in the Black studies
movement, having advised protesting students while a professor at City
College and designed an innovative plan for a Black studies department
there. The Black Woman was an eclectic volume of activist writing, and it
featured three essays by Cade. In one she denounced conventional gender
roles for what she described as their debilitating impact on the movement. Instead of trying to prove ones manhood or womanhood, she asks,
in a creative turn, why not just seek blackhood? In response to critics
who might call patriarchy a white system, she cautions that we have not
been immune to the conditioning; we are just as jammed in the rigid confi nes of those basically oppressive socially contrived roles. For if a woman
is tough, she is a rough mamma, a strident bitch, a ball breaker, a castrator. And if a man is at all sensitive, tender, spiritual, hes a faggot. The
worst part was the effect of such thinking on a liberation movement. She
called it a dangerous trend to program Sapphire out of her evil ways
into a cover- up, shut- up, lay- back- and- be- cool obedience role.52
Her essay The Pill: Genocide or Liberation? frankly explored the
tensions and debates between Black men and woman over contraception
258 | What Happened to Black Studies?
in light of the long history of reproductive abuse and theories of Black
ge ne tic inferiority, on the one hand, and patriarchy and conservative
sexual norms on the other. The Nation of Islam, for its part, denied a
womans right to control reproduction. Leader Elijah Muhammad famously said a woman is mans fi eld to produce his nation.53 Still, Cades advocacy of a Black womans right to reproductive self- determination
was resolute. Her essay exemplifi es the kinds of discussions that feminists were committed to having and the kinds of topics they insisted
were po liti cal. Yet Cade entered a po liti cal minefi eld.
A striking feature of Black studies units when they fi rst formed on
hundreds of campuses was their male character although, to be sure,
every academic discipline was overwhelmingly male in the early 1970s.
A 1968 survey of doctoral and professional degrees conferred by Black
institutions found an extraordinary gender gap: 91 percent of the degrees were awarded to Black men, and 9 percent to Black women.54
This translated into a stark gender disparity on collegiate faculties. At
the University of Pittsburgh in 1972, for example, 8 percent of the professional staff was Black, and of this group just 14 percent were women.
Among the white professionals, the presence of women was, at 17 percent, slightly higher, but this number too showed the disproportionate
male presence in academe. The distinctions were sharpest in the upper
ranks. White males fi lled half of the associate and full professor positions at the university; Black men held 31 percent of them, white females 19 percent, while Black women held just 3 percent of these higher
paying, more prestigious positions. In the University of Pittsburghs
Black studies department, only three women numbered among the seventeen faculty members.55 As one observer noted, this large differential
refl ected broader social patterns, as signifi ed dramatically in a 1971
Ebony tabulation of the nations one hundred leading Black Americans,
which listed only nine women.56
When asked in the 1990s whether women in the early Black studies
movement had been given their due, Mary Jane Hewitt, who had directed various affi rmative action programs at UCLA, responded, Well,
there werent that many opportunities, given or offered, for black women
to do much of anything. In the late sixties, she explained, there
werent that many women around, very few, and certainly not in top positions.57 To be sure, this scenario was changing, as women of all backgrounds began to enter the academic profession in greater numbers. But
the small numbers of Black women scholars and administrators in the
academy encountered marginalization, consternation, and re sis tance.
What Happened to Black Studies? | 259
Constance M. Carroll, a Black woman who later served as a college
president, wrote in 1972: Black women in higher education are isolated, underutilized, and often demoralized. Denied the same opportunities for mobility and networking, they faced numerous challenges and
obstacles. Black women have had very few models or champions to
encourage and assist them in their development, Carroll wrote. Black
women have had to develop themselves on their own, with no help
from whites or Black men, in order to make it in academic institutions.
This has taken its toll on Black women, she found, in all areas of life
and work.58
It is important to note that Black women scholars raised critical
questions about the male character of the Black studies movement from
its inception. At a 1969 conference of Black studies directors, Lillian
Anthony from the University of Minnesota remarked that some faculty
at her institution said, We dont need a woman, after her name had
been put forth by the search committee. I am very much concerned
about the Black womans role in Afro- American studies departments or
Black studies departments, she said. I think it negates much of who
we really are, and when men participate in that kind of deliberation,
they are also negating themselves.59
The passage of the Education Amendments Act in 1972, prohibiting
discrimination in federally funded institutions of higher education, and
an investigation by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare of
several hundred universities for noncompliance with federal guidelines
regarding equal treatment of minorities and women, raised expectations,
awareness, and discussion about hiring practices in academe. Universities
had to submit written affi rmative action plans in 1972 specifying their
goals and timetables for achieving equal treatment of women and minorities. Many Black women feared that unless they asserted themselves,
Black men and white women would be the prime benefi ciaries of affi rmative action policies. While some people claimed that Black women had an
advantage, as their hiring would do double duty and fulfi ll a race and
gender mandate, Black women knew the more likely outcome was their
falling through the cracks. This legal/employment/policy circumstance
encouraged Black women to defi ne the uniqueness of their status in
American life and to emphasize their commonalities as well as differences
with the positions of Black men and white women.
The early to mid- 1970s saw the appearance of courses, campus lectures, and programming devoted to Black women, including what was
reportedly the fi rst class on Black women writers, taught by Alice
260 | What Happened to Black Studies?
Walker at the University of Massachusetts in Boston in 1973.60 At the
University of California, Los Angeles, a group of Black women students,
faculty, and staff came together as the Black Womens Research Committee and launched a petition campaign demanding that the university
become more sensitive to the needs of black women on campus, and
demonstrate that sensitivity via immediate action in creating courses,
lectures, and programming focusing on the Black woman. They were
appalled at the lack of programming for black women at UCLA and
noted that there had never been any courses anywhere in the university
focusing on Black women.61 In May 1973, the Black Womens Research
Committee, in conjunction with the Center for Afro- American Studies,
held the fi rst Black Womens Spring Forum, a monthlong series of panels and lectures titled Images of Black Womanhood. The primary objective of the forum was to present an exhaustive, in- depth exploration
delineating the recurring philosophical themes contributing to the development of Black womanhood in the United States. Titles of the
panels and lectures included: Women in Africa, Women in America,
Black Women in the Media, Black Women in Theater Arts, Black Women
in Law/Politics, and Black Women at UCLA. In 1977, Toni Cade delivered the keynote address at a Black Womens Conference at the Institute of the Black World. This Atlanta- based think tank had been
founded in 1969 as a bastion of mostly male scholars, who for many
years generated complex analyses of the politics of race and class in the
United States. By de cades end, the IBW, too, was feeling the impact of
Black womens demands for a voice in Black activist and intellectual
programming.62
An outpouring of Black feminist organizations, manifestoes, cultural
production, literary anthologies, and polemical writing marked the
1970s, helping to set the stage for a new generation of academic scholarship in Black womens studies. The National Black Feminist Or ga niza tion was formed in 1973, and in 1977 the Combahee River Collective
boldly asserted the importance of a Black lesbian perspective amid the
widespread disavowal of the Black lesbian experience in the Black
liberation movement. In 1981 Bell Hooks published Aint I a Woman:
Black Women and Feminism, followed in 1982 by the landmark anthology But Some of Us Are Brave: All the Women Are White, All the
Blacks Are Men: Black Womens Studies, edited by Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith. Hull and Smiths introduction called
out the racism in the womens studies movement, and sexism and homophobia in the Black studies movement. Only a feminist, pro- woman
What Happened to Black Studies? | 261
perspective that acknowledges the reality of sexual oppression in the
lives of Black women, as well as the oppression of race and class, will
make Black Womens Studies the transformer of consciousness it needs
to be.63 The rise of Black feminism strongly infl uenced the rise of Black
womens studies, yet it is important to recall that the two are not synonymous. Not every scholar of Black women necessarily subscribes to
the radical politics of Black feminism or produces scholarship in a feminist idiom.
By the 1980s a new generation of Black women scholars, especially
in the humanities, insisted on gender as a category of analysis and began to place Black women at the center of their research. An examination of the emergence of the fi rst generation of Black women scholars
after the creation of Black studies illuminates Black studies highly
gendered landscape, as well as the various triggers for the cultivation of
Black womens studies. Historian Sharon Harley underwent a po liti cal
awakening as a student in the late 1960s: wearing an Afro, leading her
colleges small Black student or ga ni za tion, selling copies of the Black
Panther Party newspaper, reading poetry from the Black arts movement, and attending the Congress of Afrikan Peoples in Atlanta. Nothing to that point, she recalls, approximated the euphoria I experienced
at the Atlanta event. Close to three thousand participants attended sessions in Atlanta. But Black Power was complex and contradictory. Harley may or may not have attended the workshop on Black women, but
the coordinator, Amina Baraka, began by quoting the cultural nationalist activist Ron Karenga: What makes a woman appealing is femininity and she cant be feminine without being submissive. Baraka advised
women to submit to their natural roles, learn to cook better and improve their personal hygiene. Apparently, Black womens bodies needed
to be disciplined, improved, and strikingly, made cleaner.64 Still, as
Harleys story illustrates, the Black Power movement was important in
shaping the consciousness of a future feminist historian. Harley also
considered herself a leftist and studied at Antioch College with veteran
labor and civil rights activists Jack ODell and Bob Rhodes, who had
also exposed graduate students in Chicago to Marxist theories of po litical economy in Saturday classes at the Communiversity on the citys
south side.65
As part of a cohort of graduate students at Howard in the 1970s
who would publish pioneering work in Black womens history, Harley
had a vibrant and supportive graduate education but quickly encountered racial and gender exclusions in the profession. At conferences of
262 | What Happened to Black Studies?
the Association for the Study of Afro- American Life and History, the
American Historical Association, and Or ga ni za tion of American Historians, she found few sessions that focused on women. Owing to this
neglect of womens and specifi cally Black womens history, Harley and
fellow graduate student Rosalyn Terborg- Penn found a niche in the new
Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, and in the Racine Conference on Women or ga nized by the white historian Gerda Lerner. A postwar Communist, Lerner was a pioneer in both Black and white womens history and published the important documentary collection Black
Women in White America in 1972. Although Lerner was the major
force behind integrating black women into the profession and the scholarship of history, Harley still found that the fi eld at- large effectively
made black women invisible or insignifi cant. She eventually concluded
that only through the concerted agency of Black women historians
would a new scholarship emerge. This was a critically important insight.
I was part of a movement of early black women historians who understood that our effort to encourage white women historians to adopt a
more inclusive womens historical discourse was too laborious and that
we had better do something about it on our own. As graduate students,
Harley and Terborg- Penn coedited a groundbreaking volume, The AfroAmerican Woman: Struggles and Images, published in 1978, which featured essays by young scholars who would go on to be leading researchers in African American womens history.66
Rosalyn Terborg- Penns scholarship has transformed scholarly views
on Black women in the suffrage movement, but it took nearly twenty
years to get her book published, not only because of the heavier teaching load at an HBCU, but also, more signifi cantly, because of the effects
of racism and sexism in academe and the publishing world. Entering
graduate school in 1972, Terborg was the fi rst person in Howards history department to declare a dissertation topic in Black womens history. I would have an uphill struggle, she wrote, because I had to
convince the faculty that black womens experience was viable. One
professor called her topic Mickey Mouse and urged her to study something serious, such as Eleanor Roo se velt. In the professional circuit, she
encountered white women historians who challenged her fi ndings of
racial discrimination in the suffrage movement, and Black male scholars who argued that womens history was feminism and that it distracted us from the struggle to legitimize black studies. Terborg- Penn
recalls that she and several of her Black female colleagues noted this
phenomenon racism from white feminist scholars and sexism from
What Happened to Black Studies? | 263
black nationalist male scholars and we tried to develop strategies to
overcome the prejudice we discerned. In response, she and historian
Elizabeth Parker began a series of conversations among colleagues
across the country, which culminated in the formation of the Association of Black Women Historians in 1981. Terborg- Penn still struggled
to fi nd a publisher for her manuscript. One editor wanted her to give
more attention to white women in the suffrage movement, but Indiana
University Press, in a series under the direction of Darlene Clark Hine,
a pioneering scholar of Black womens history, fi nally published the
highly anticipated African American Women and the Struggle for the
Vote, 1850 1920 in 1998.67
Black women scholars had to struggle against the white male academy, as well as with condescension and opposition from within Black
studies, simply to justify research on African American women. In
writing her pathbreaking study of enslaved women, Arnt I a Woman?
Deborah Gray White faced numerous hurdles. Many white historians
criticized her for using the WPA slave narratives rather than traditional
plantation sources, which of course were authored by slaveholders. But
White was also challenging the core gender politics of Black nationalist
scholarship, and she suffered retaliation. Her chair in African American
studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, made a contemptuous remark about her work and, she later learned, failed to support her
bid for tenure. Evidently he was displeased that she had declined to
perform the role of offi cial hospitality hostess when their department
hosted a meeting of the National Council of Black Studies. As a commentator on a panel discussing a book on Black nationalism and slavery, White endured twenty minutes of an unrestrained verbal thrashing, the likes of which no scholar should have to endure, for merely
suggesting that an examination of women and gender would have enriched the analysis.68 These experiences show how the patriarchal politics of Black nationalism circumscribed the intellectual potential of the
new discipline. Deborah Gray White, Darlene Clark Hine, Rosalyn
Terborg- Penn, Sharon Harley, and many other Black women scholars
have all been instrumental not only in redefi ning the fi elds of history
and African American studies but also in doing the diffi cult and bruising breakthrough work that has helped the discipline of Black studies
come closer to achieving an inclusive counterhegemonic vision.
By the 1980s, male scholars in African American studies were feeling
the effects of Black feminism and Black womens scholarship more generally, and a few began to rethink their own research and pedagogy. At
264 | What Happened to Black Studies?
the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, John Bracey participated
in a two- year faculty seminar on the differences, similarities, and underlying assumptions between Black studies and womens studies, and he
later developed three new courses devoted to Black womens history.69
Teaching a course in Black womens history in the Black studies department at Ohio State prompted Manning Marable to publish the essay
Groundings with My Sisters: Patriarchy and the Exploitation of Black
Women in 1983. Black social history as it has been written to date
has been profoundly patriarchal, Marable concluded. The sexist critical framework of American white history has been accepted by Black
male scholars.70
In Marables view, this serious problem required that Black male intellectuals and activists engage in a rigorous retraining and rethinking.
Black male liberationists must relearn their own history, he argued,
by grounding themselves all the time in the wisdom of their sisters.
While the essays brief overview of history illustrates Black womens
oppression and re sis tance, and shows the prevalence of patriarchal gender roles in Black nationalist movements, Marable was also intent upon
emphasizing a counter- Black- male feminist tradition. He highlighted
especially the vigorous advocacy for womens suffrage and equality by
both Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois.71 Rhett Jones later argued that Black studies was miraculously rescued by Womanist scholars of both genders, various races, and not as some would have it by
those copycatting white feminists. This view perhaps spreads the credit
too thin, as par tic u lar recognition is due Black female intellectuals, but
his framing of the new scholarship as a rescue is instructive.72
The emergence of scholarship in African diaspora studies and Black
womens studies, to take just two examples, exemplifi es a critical point
about the recent history of African American studies: on balance, its
stature in the academy has rested on the production of innovative and
infl uential scholarship. The quest for curricular standardization and a
single authoritative Black studies methodology has generated interesting debates and useful materials, yet tellingly, neither ever seems to have
been achieved, and still the discipline develops and moves forward.
The early Black studies movement opened a broader space for subaltern discourses in academia than many of its found ers initially expected. The Black student movement and the rise of Black studies inspired a push by other marginalized groups for repre sen ta tion in
research and teaching, including Asian Americans, Native Americans,
Latinos and Latinas, all women, and gays and lesbians. As one scholar
What Happened to Black Studies? | 265
put it, Just as the larger Black liberation movement has catalyzed activity against various facets of oppression, Black studies has given rise
to calls by other groups Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, Asian
Americans, Native Americans, white ethnics, women and gays among
them for scholastic treatment of their experiences.73 This is an extremely important legacy of the early Black studies movement. Yet, at
the same time, Black studies has had a vexed relationship to these other
developments, and a particularly fraught relationship with ethnic studies. On the one hand, Black studies has been an inspiration and fellow
traveler to Asian American and Latino studies, yet on the other hand its
a wary coethnic and questioning ally. Since it was in the vanguard of
the campus struggle, Black studies generated an image of power and
clout in the eyes of many Latino and Asian American activists, yet Black
people, especially in the housing and employment markets and certainly
in the criminal legal system, have often felt vulnerable, even expendable, in relation to other nonwhite ethnic groups.
Ethnic studies fi rst emerged in California and New York in the late
1960s. Typically, Asian American, Mexican American, or Puerto Rican
students joined campus revolts launched by Black students, and made
their own demands for curricular inclusion. Administrators in California often sought to group Asian, Latino, and African American studies
together as ethnic studies. Sometimes this term arose following unsuccessful efforts to constitute a separate college of Third World studies.
The shift in terminology itself refl ects a pro cess of rising administrative
design and control. Sometimes, as at Los Angeles and San Diego, Black
student leaders welcomed such joint efforts, but at other campuses the
proponents of Black studies objected to unifi ed consolidation. This was
most famously true at Berkeley, where the original demand for a Third
World college was ultimately incorporated into the university as the
Department of Ethnic Studies, which Black studies faculty seceded from
in the mid- 1970s. They desired autonomy.
The scholar Alan Colon argued that grouping these diverse units together under ethnic studies while clearly providing the chance for
comparative study, would tend to make for confl icting agendas in
program content to the disadvantage of all. No racial or ethnic studies
program, he believed, should lose sight of its specifi c intellectualcognitive goals and tasks for the sake of a tenuous universal ethnic
studies program unity. He stressed the pitfalls of having to compete
for scarce resources, a view that was particularly widespread in the
cash- strapped 1970s. To introduce the element of racial- ethnic groups
266 | What Happened to Black Studies?
competing for diminishing resources under the same administrative
umbrella has no positive advantage and may be viewed in some instances as a central administrative tactic to divide and conquer in some
institutions hostile to Black studies. Yet this chronicler ended by advising that possibilities for inter- racial and inter- ethnic cooperation in
other projects on and off campus should be explored, nourished and
actualized.74 An assessment of the fi eld conducted in 1994 for the Ford
Foundation conveyed a continuing ambivalence. In the coming years,
Valerie Smith and Robert OMeally predict, The question of where
African American studies will stand in relation to ethnic studies and
revamped American studies programs will be prominent and diffi cult.
They urge supporting collaborations but caution that many in Black
studies fear losing ground unless its visibility and autonomy are preserved. In the words of a Black studies scholar, When people say ethnic
they dont usually mean Blacks.75
At most institutions, ethnic studies arose after African American
studies and has been incorporated separately into the academy. Yet, on
many other campuses, especially those with smaller student- of- color
populations, African American studies is grouped together with Asian,
Latino, and Native American units to form a single ethnic studies programs. The newer programs, such as many Asian American studies
programs established in the Midwest and East Coast in the 1990s, face
the numerous challenges of being small, understaffed, and intellectually
marginalized or misunderstood.76 Still, it seems that when the questions
of turf, existence, and administrative form are settled, the possibilities
for greater intellectual discussion and collaboration along the lines of
comparative race and diaspora can develop. A cutting- edge infrastructure for interdisciplinary, transnational ethnic studies has begun to
emerge, including journals such as Social Text, American Quarterly,
Small Axe, and Ethnic and Racial Studies, as well as numerous conferences. These collaborations and conceptual innovations have exerted a
powerful intellectual infl uence in African American studies and ethnic
studies in the twenty- fi rst century.
In the early 1970s, many skeptics of various po liti cal persuasions
had questioned whether African American studies would have longevity
in colleges and universities. Some more conservative scholars predicted
that its lack of intellectual reputation and overly po liti cal orientation
would consign it to a short life, while many Black scholars questioned
whether the academy would ever truly incorporate an intellectual insurgency led and defi ned by Black people. As we have seen, many of the
What Happened to Black Studies? | 267
more radical, expansive, community- connected visions for Black studies were defeated before they even had a chance to get off the ground.
Moreover, the United States has a diverse and localized system of higher
education, and many colleges and universities traversed this era relatively untouched by the Black studies movement. But despite numerous obstacles and challenges, African American studies has not only
survived but also grown to have international stature and presence.77
Crucially, despite ongoing rumors of its demise, African American studies continues to attract intellectuals who have produced the scholarly
innovations and breakthroughs that have helped bring longevity to the
discipline.
268
The Black liberation movement did not unravel after the murder of
Martin Luther King Jr., but grew and irrevocably changed the landscape of American higher education. The Black student and Black studies movements were forceful continuations of the overall Black freedom
struggle, yet they have been comparatively forgotten or severed from
the longer civil rights narrative. Why the amnesia? Perhaps it is not surprising that challenges to the status quo are quickly buried or discredited in pop u lar narratives. Indeed, the Black student movement grew to
encompass wide- ranging critiques of American society from militarism
to racial oppression, and it united a broad spectrum of African American, Latino, white, and Asian American liberals and radicals. Perhaps
the censorship has been internally generated as well: maybe the students
confrontational rhetoric and tactics complicated their inclusion in the
pantheon of civil rights heroes. Needless to say, vandalizing cars, planting small bombs, and calling administrators motherfuckers does not
conform to the politics of respectability. Nevertheless, a budding scholarship, as well as the widespread campus commemorations of the fortieth
anniversary of student strikes and Black studies programs, has begun to
alter our understanding of the complexity of the late 1960s and the
broad reach of the long civil rights movement.
The student activists of the late 1960s believed they could change
society. They translated Black Power theories into concrete gains, producing, arguably, the most important and lasting movement victories of
Conclusion
Refl ections on the Movement
and Its Legacy
Conclusion | 269
the late 1960s. Many of the ideas articulated by Malcolm X and Stokely
Carmichael, such as gaining control over public institutions located
in Black communities; reclaiming and revaluing Black peoples African
heritage; identifying with global anticolonial struggles; and throwing
off the psychological shackles of self- hatred and internalized racism
were all seriously and vigorously pursued by Black students and intellectuals on campuses across the country. The effects were profound.
From open admissions to affi rmative action and the rise of Black cultural centers and Black studies, the fruits of student protest permanently
changed American higher education. Moreover, demands for Latino,
Asian American, and womens studies soon followed, adding further
dimensions to the opening up of collegiate and intellectual life and culture in the United States.
An unappreciated outcome of the Black student movement is the
extent to which it enabled urban Black communities to make successful
claims on local universities. Malcolm X College in Chicago, with its
increase in Black faculty and administrators and its strong embrace of a
mission to serve the needs of working- class Black Chicagoans, is a perfect example, but it was not unique. Community or ju nior colleges in
scores of cities from Detroit to Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., underwent similar transformations and redefi ned missions, playing a vital
role in both Black access to higher education and the opening up of
professional and administrative opportunities in major urban institutions. San Francisco State, for all the harshness of the poststrike crackdown against strike leaders, became an important site of multiracial
employment and educational opportunity in the Bay Area.
The quest for open admissions or large- scale entry of Black and Latino high school graduates into publicly funded urban colleges constituted a social leveling that challenged the more traditionally hierarchical college culture. And perhaps unsurprisingly, this effort spawned a
forceful backlash, especially in New York City, with its storied history
of immigrant success at City and Brooklyn Colleges. But what has been
largely forgotten in the intense effort to overturn open admissions and
restore the competitiveness of four- year public colleges is how white
these institutions were in the late 1960s. While some may have viewed
this as an appropriate exclusivity, many Black and Latino families saw it
as blatantly exclusionary. And as city residents and taxpayers, they made
a powerful push to make these institutions better serve their needs. A
great tragedy is that open admissions got under way on the eve of the
severe municipal fi scal crisis of the early 1970s. Funding for public
270 | Conclusion
universities was slashed just as their student populations shot up, and
one by- productthe schools greater reliance upon tuition to meet
costs has subsequently made higher education much more expensive
for the contemporary working class and their children.
On the one hand, The Black Revolution on Campus is a fi tting culmination to a narrative of civil rights reform that begins with Brown. The
struggle to increase Black access to higher education is an affi rmation
of the long- standing conceptual links between education, opportunity,
citizenship, and mobility in American ideology. African American college and university attendance and graduation rates rose as a result of
this struggle. The Black student movement, in the context of the overall
Black freedom struggle, successfully pressured institutions of higher education to place much greater emphasis and importance on Black college
and university attendance and graduation. For a while at least, this appeared to become national policy, and the effects were signifi cant. The
opening up of greater educational opportunities for African Americans
contributed to the growth and reconfi guration of the Black middle class
in the 1970s and 1980s. Moreover, diversity, in these years, was more
than cosmetic: it signifi ed a redistribution of resources. It meant opening up opportunities for people heretofore excluded, and this included
not only African Americans but also other socially and eco nom ical ly
marginalized minorities, such as Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans,
and Chinese Americans. In other words, affi rmative action did not signal the pursuit of heterogeneity for the sake of heterogeneity, or diversity for the educational benefi t of the white majority. Other students
of color in these years had their own long histories of discrimination
and struggle in the United States. The Latino and Asian American students who joined the radical campus movement were not part of the
new wave of immigrants who came in enormous numbers to the
United States in the de cades following the 1965 congressional immigration reform. Rather, they were descendants of earlier histories of
American labor recruitment, westward continental expansion, and overseas colonization.
On the other hand, The Black Revolution on Campus is a narrative
of African Americans reconnecting with global struggles against imperialism and colonialism. The constricted defi nition of patriotism promulgated during the cold war had demanded a silencing of Black American
support for anticolonial and antiwar struggles. Beginning with the Truman Doctrine of 1947, domestic civil rights struggles had been forcibly
separated from broader anti- imperial struggles.1 But the uprisings of
Conclusion | 271
the late 1960s changed everything. A global perspective by African
American activists began to return as the civil rights movement intensifi ed and radicalized, and as the war in Vietnam pulled increasing numbers of African Americans and other young men into the U.S. military.
Not every Black student activist moved from campus Black Power to
solidarity work for the Angolan or Zimbabwean in de pen dence struggles. But many did, and when the antiapartheid movement arose in the
United States in the 1970s and 1980s it built on this foundation and
drew many African American students and intellectuals.2 The rise of
African diaspora studies as part of the Black studies movement refl ects
this shift from the narrow Americanist thinking of the cold war era to
a much broader and more critical global consciousness. Moreover, as
the end of legal Jim Crow served to strengthen Black American citizenship and national affi liation, African American studies came to be a
unique and generative space for debates over the meaning of national
belonging versus the long history of diaspora consciousness and activist strategies.
This study offers a fresh appraisal of Black po liti cal thought during
the Black Power era. It was a time of intense ideological fervor among
young activists. The rising currents of Black nationalism galvanized this
generation and inspired considerable grassroots or ga niz ing. Some were
drawn to cultural nationalism, while others identifi ed with a leftist
analysis. Rather than remaining frozen in time, Black radicalism grew
and evolved to incorporate new directions. Ideas in The Autobiography
of Malcolm X and Black Power: The Politics of Black Liberation greatly
inspired young people as they endeavored to redefi ne Black American
identity and reshape American colleges. They succeeded in bringing a
Black perspective to the entire pro cess of integration, forcing administrators and faculty to hear their views and accommodate their cultural
interests and aspirations. Students embraced many core tenets of Black
nationalism, yet in many instances their Black nationalism was decidedly anti- imperialist and internationalist, owing certainly but not exclusively to the infl uence of the Black Panther Party and rising critiques of
the Vietnam War. In some contexts, especially where there was a signifi cant Asian American and Latino student population, this internationalism was articulated as Third Worldist, and in other contexts as
Pan- Africanist. The students evolving consciousness was shaped by
experiences gained through alliances with Puerto Rican and Mexican
American student struggles. Sometimes it was forged in study groups,
where students read and debated a wide variety of texts. Moreover, as
272 | Conclusion
the 1960s gave way to the 1970s, Black feminism arose to dramatically
infl uence the Black studies movement and Black radicalism in general.
Black nationalism, in short, was subject to critique and reappraisal,
and out of this pro cess African American activists went in a variety of
directions, joining labor, human rights, reparations, educational, environmental, prisoner rights, antiwar, and other social justice movements.
Scholars, including historians of the civil rights and Black Power
eras, have neglected the rich history of historically Black colleges. In a
narrative that diverges from the dominant story of school integration,
African Americans strove forcefully to preserve the public Black college
system in the 1970s. While still underfunded, and in some cases in acute
crisis, HBCUs continue to serve a vital social and educational function,
especially as affi rmative action and other gains of the civil rights era
have come under attack. The students struggle put the quest for selfdetermination to test and helped to preserve important institutions that
have shaped African American life and culture in the United States since
the nineteenth century.
The Black Revolution on Campus reinforces the dialectic of reform
and repression found in many accounts of the decline of the Black freedom struggle but suggests a wider swath of repression. Black student
unions sometimes became targets of police surveillance and infi ltration.
Many campuses endured police invasions, and many experienced large
numbers of student arrests and trials. For example, twenty- seven unarmed students at a state college in California were tried on seventy
felony counts of conspiracy, assault, kidnapping, false imprisonment,
robbery, and burglary in 1968 for occupying the presidents offi ce for
four hours.3 The police violence and shooting deaths at many Black colleges in the South sent a powerful message. Student protest was met
with overwhelming state violence. Black lives were expendable, and
white offi cers could kill with impunity. Considered singly, these episodes can appear disconnected, but together they demonstrate that it
was not only Black Panthers or rioting youth who were targets of
heavy- handed law enforcement in this era; upwardly mobile college
students were, too. Still, it is important to acknowledge that the Orangeburg Massacre, in par tic u lar, helped to catalyze and give shape to
a national Black student movement, which achieved many victories.
Orangeburg may have been forgotten by many across the nation and
whitewashed by South Carolina offi cialdom, but Black college students
never forgot it and were inspired by the tragedy to intensify their own
campus struggles.
Conclusion | 273
Campus radicals of the late 1960s are often portrayed as either idealistic collegians who eventually settled down to adult lives of affl uence,
professional ambition, and retreat from radicalism, or as irresponsible,
wild- eyed youth whose brash acts inspired police crackdowns and then
the rise of the right. The fi rst scenario may be commercially appealing
and the second provides a useful scapegoat, but both are misleading
portraits of student activists, particularly Black student activists. Many
individuals suffered reprisals or repression, which permanently altered
their lives. This is especially true for those at San Francisco State, North
Carolina A&T, Brooklyn College, Southern University, and all the other
campuses where students endured police invasion, expulsion, harassment, or arrest. Fred Prejean was profoundly affected by the murders of
Denver Smith and Leonard Brown at Southern University in East Baton
Rouge. Many veterans of the San Francisco State strike have lived with
the legacy of that epochal struggle in very personal ways. Nathan Hare
never returned to academia after his dismissal by Hayakawa and had to
switch careers. George Murray, Black Panther leader and aspiring English professor, left po liti cal activism behind after the strike and has
pastored a church in Oakland ever since. SNCC activist Cleveland Sellers was shot in the back in Orangeburg and unjustly prosecuted, but
today he is president of Voorhees College in Denmark, South Carolina.
In 2002, his son Bakari T. Sellers was elected to the state legislature,
where he pursued a reckoning with the Orangeburg Massacre. Activists
Howard Fuller and Nelson Johnson went through intense ideological
passages yet remain active community leaders, in Milwaukee and Greensboro, respectively.
To be sure, for many people, the late 1960s marked the high point of
their activism, the golden years as one student leader put it. But for
many, many others, those tumultuous college years were the beginning
of a lifetime of activism, public ser vice, or po liti cal and legal advocacy.
Danny Glover, an actor and San Francisco State strike leader, exemplifi es
the enduring commitment to social justice by many of this generation.
Moreover, the range of Glovers po liti cal interests, spanning education,
labor, human rights, and especially antiracism and anti- imperialism, refl ects the expansive Black radicalism of the Bay Area.4 Other veterans of
the San Francisco State strike followed a similar trajectory, notably Hari
Dillon, whose Vanguard Public Foundation made grants to social justice
initiatives around the country for three de cades.
Many student activists went to law school. In an ironic outcome,
given the Black Power critique of civil rights lawyers, many student
274 | Conclusion
activists themselves became civil rights lawyers. But their lawyering
style and philosophy were deeply affected by the social justice movements of their youth. Northwestern graduate Victor Goode served as
director of the National Conference of Black Lawyers and joined the
faculty of the City University of New York Law School, a school designed to foster public interest lawyering. Malcolm X College graduate
Stan Willis has become a leading human rights lawyer in Chicago,
founding Black People Against Torture and fi ghting for justice for the
scores of African American survivors of a twenty- year police torture
ring in Chicago. Charles M. Powell Jr., a student leader at City College,
became a civil rights lawyer after being urged by then state senator Basil A. Paterson to go to law school. I realized my role in life was not
just about making money but about helping people survive and get
what they deserve, he remarked on the thirtieth anniversary of the occupation of south campus.5 Eva Jefferson Paterson of Northwestern
worked with the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights for de cades
before founding her own or ga ni za tion, the Equal Justice Society in San
Francisco. Howard student leader Lew Myers, who in 1969 believed
that black students were the best hope to save this country,6 graduated from Rutgers Law School and launched a career as a civil rights
lawyer in Chicago, where he has represented, among others, the national Rainbow PUSH Co ali tion and Louis Farrakhan. DArmy Bailey,
who led the Black Peoples Committee of Inquiry at Southern, served as
a public defender and a judge in Tennessee and helped found the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, which stands on the site of the
demolished Lorraine Motel.
When Ramona Tascoe entered San Francisco State College in 1967,
she intended to go to law school and become president of the United
States. A triple major, she worked her way through college in the medical offi ce of the legendary Carlton Goodlett, a physician, civil rights
activist, and newspaper publisher. One day, Goodlett and his medical
partner, who happened to head the local NAACP, asked her, Why
law? and she responded, Why not? In unison, they replied, Because
youd be one hell of a doctor. As a result, she turned down Stanford
Law School and applied to medical school. With the revolution cresting
in the Bay Area, Tascoe began to view medical school as a safe place to
hide. She was afraid to die, she said, and had begun to see that leaders
who were passionate and had a lot of capacity faced a risk of being
killed. However, the University of California, San Francisco, School of
Conclusion | 275
Medicine twice rejected her unfortunately they judged phenomena
unrelated to the practice of medicine. Her Afro was evidently too big.
We do not need anyone looking like Angela Davis coming to UCSF,
they told her. She was fi nally admitted and has practiced medicine in
Oakland for de cades; more recently, she brought medical relief to Haiti
following the earthquake of 2010.7
Many student activists entered the fi eld of education or joined the
academy, including Black studies. John Bracey and James Turner played
vital roles in both the student movement and the Black studies movement. Bracey joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst, in 1972, where he taught African American history and helped
develop a PhD program in African American studies. He and his colleagues assisted efforts to build Black studies programs at neighboring
colleges, making western Massachusetts a surprising center of the movement. Turner played a leading role in the African Heritage Studies Association and brought a Pan- Africanist philosophy to the Africana
Studies and Research Center at Cornell. Askia Davis, a Brooklyn College student leader and former Black Panther, built a career at the New
York City Board of Education, serving as se nior assistant to several
chancellors. Northwestern student activist Wayne Watson has served as
chancellor of Chicago City Colleges and president of Chicago State
University. Abdul Alkalimat has pioneered eblack studies and is committed to bringing Black studies fully into the digital era.
This book demonstrates a complex origin story of African American
studies in the academy. African American studies took root in historically Black colleges early in the twentieth century but was somewhat
eclipsed by the long fi ght for integration in the postwar era. A clamor
for it arose in the latter half of the 1960s at every type of college in the
country Black, white, public, private, two- year, four- year, and liberal
arts and at research universities. Students demanded it; on many campuses they helped to create it, and they rightly deserve credit for its
beginnings. But then the narrative gets more complicated. On some
campuses, students continued to stay vitally involved in forging the
character and mission of Black studies programs. But on others, student
activists passed the baton to administrators and professors, and as the
overall Black liberation movement declined, the po liti cal mission of Black
studies was not always embraced with the same perspective or fervor.
The sense of its po liti cal potential tended to shift from a hope for
broader social transformation and Black community empowerment to
276 | Conclusion
a narrower intellectual or academic transformation. To be sure, an intellectual transformation is no small thing, but the point is that many
student activists had envisioned a more dramatic, even revolutionary,
potential for Black studies. And as well, this view may have been a miscalculation. Indeed, many student activists graduated and went on to
medical and law school, or or ga nized in factories and Black communities, or journeyed overseas to help build new African nation- states,
and began to see the terrain of struggle as necessarily broader than the
campus.
The faculty who labored to incorporate African American studies
into permanent programs, centers, departments, and even distinct colleges had a distinguished scholarly and literary tradition upon which to
build. Frederick Douglass, St. Clair Drake, W. E. B. Du Bois, Carter G.
Woodson, Horace Cayton, Ida B. Wells, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison,
Lorraine Hansberry, Abram Harris, Ralph Bunche, Oliver Cox, and
many others could have easily wound up on a course syllabus. (Although a big problem in early Black studies courses was that much of
this material was out of print.) Moreover, important scholarship continued to be produced by historians, sociologists, anthropologists, literary scholars, po liti cal scientists, and other academics during the 1970s
and beyond. But during the fi rst de cade and beyond, Black studies programs did not always succeed in attracting research- active, professionally ambitious scholars, in large part because the fl edgling discipline
faced the challenge of winning institutional legitimacy and respect. In
addition, some Black scholars sought to steer clear of the seeming politicization of African American studies and its association with Black
nationalism.
Still, a wide- ranging group of Black artists, writers, educators, and
activists rose to the occasion and helped to create African American
studies departments, centers, and programs. And for these builders of
the fi eld, its links to the student movement, or Black radicalism or nationalism more generally, was a source of pride rather than lament. This
feeling was mostly true of the fi rst cohort of faculty hired to teach Black
studies at San Francisco State. James Turner instilled this ethos in the
Africana Center at Cornell. Michael Thelwell helped to build a department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, with a dynamic
faculty composed of activists from the Black liberation movement, including John Bracey, William Strickland, and Ernest Allen. At Harvard,
Ewart Guinier brought deep experience in labor and community or ganiz ing to his role as the chair of an embattled department. He may not
Conclusion | 277
have been an academic, and that likely put him at a disadvantage in
navigating the rarifi ed terrain of Harvard, but he did understand a politi cal fi ght and he staunchly defended the departments integrity and
mission.
In the short term, the Black studies movement fulfi lled the students
goal of bridging the gap between campus and community, but ultimately its greatest impact has been in humanities and social science
scholarship and in undergraduate, and increasingly graduate, education. Within the academy, Black studies has been judged by its contribution to scholarship and research innovation. In the early years, its
accomplishments in these areas were widely questioned indeed, answering skepticism about the scholarly legitimacy of Black studies consumed considerable energy in the disciplines fi rst twenty years. Nonetheless, Black studies has ushered in a transformation of graduate training
and knowledge production in the United States, putting categories of
race and, ultimately, gender, class, sexuality, and ethnicity at the center
of intellectual analysis across disciplines. Moreover, its emphasis on
experiential learning is now considered a normal part of higher education. And it has modeled a diasporic and transnational orientation
increasingly adopted in American studies and long a part of ethnic
studies.
The hiring and promotion of Black faculty in departments other than
African American studies, however, remains a slow pro cess. The per sistent ly low percentage of Black faculty at predominantly white universities, especially at elite ones, is the most powerful illustration of the limits
to change in the American academy. Moreover, despite the many positive
changes achieved through activism and policy reform, conservatives began or ga niz ing to reverse many of these gains almost immediately, especially open admissions and affi rmative action in admissions. That story
is beyond the scope of this study, but the conservative backlash against
taking race into account in order to achieve a diverse student body has
achieved considerable success in courts, legislatures, public opinion, and
ballot initiatives.8
Perhaps we should revisit the insights of student leaders in the late
1960s to fi nd our way out of this backlash, which, combined with soaring educational costs, has put higher education out of reach for so
many or subjected them to extraordinary indebtedness. Black student
activists and their allies insisted that higher education was a right not a
privilege. They insisted that government make higher education available and affordable to all who sought it. Thus, they argued that public
278 | Conclusion
universities should be robustly supported by tax dollars. They rejected
the market- driven approach that dominates the contemporary landscape of higher education, and viewed the discourse of merit as laden
with disguised class and race privilege a critique with continuing validity. Here, the students pushed the civil rights movement beyond a
quest for equal opportunity in the current system, into a quest for much
wider opportunity in a transformed system. And as with so many other
struggles in the civil rights era, this one offered benefi ts not only to
Black students but also to a much more diverse group of working- class
youth.
279
Introduction
1. Cecil Williams, interview transcript, n.d., and Ron Dellums, interview
transcript, n.d., Series 57, Box 13, Rec ords of the National Commission on the
Causes and Prevention of Violence, Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library,
University of Texas, Austin; student quote from Black Studies versus White
Studies: 1969 a Year of Profound Identity Crisis for American Education,
author unknown, c. 1969, Institute of the Black World Papers (hereafter IBW
Papers), Box: Black studies: Aspen conference, Schomburg Center for Research
in Black Culture, New York Public Library (hereafter Schomburg Center).
2. The few case studies of the Black student movement include Wayne
Glasker, Black Students in the Ivory Tower: African American Student Activism
at the University of Pennsylvania, 1967 1990 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002); Joy Ann Williamson, Black Power on Campus: University
of Illinois, 1965 1975 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003); and Stefan
Bradley, Harlem vs. Columbia University: Black Student Power in the Late
1960s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009). A so cio log i cal analysis of the
institutional response to crisis is Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).
3. St. Claire Drake, What Happened to Black Studies? New York University
Educational Quarterly 10, no. 3 (Spring 1979): 15.
4. Census fi gures reported in New York State Black Studies Conference,
Conference on Black Studies (Albany: New York State Education Department,
1978), 13.
Notes
280 | Notes to Chapter 1
5. There is a large scholarship on Black Power. See for example William Van
Deburg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American
Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Gerald Horne, Fire This
Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press,
1997); Robert Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar
Oakland (Prince ton, NJ: Prince ton University Press, 2004); Matthew Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); and Peniel Joseph, Waiting till the
Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York:
Henry Holt, 2007).
6. See for example Donna Murch, Living for the City: Migration, Education
and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, CA (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).
7. A third group that sought to or ga nize students was the Revolutionary Action Movement, an obscure, mostly underground network active in several
northern cities for a short time in the 1960s. Its efforts are more diffi cult to
document and verify. See an account by a former RAM leader: Muhammad
Ahmad, We Will Return in the Whirlwind: Black Radical Organizations, 1960
1975 (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2007).
8. A remarkable number of participants and observers wrote books about
the strike, including student journalists, a government commission, faculty
members, and a fi red president of the college. See chapter 2 for the citations.
For more recent accounts that differ from mine, see Rojas, From Black Power
to Black Studies; and Noliwe Rooks, White Money/Black Power: The Surprising History of African American Studies (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006).
9. Robert L. Allen, Politics of the Attack on Black Studies, Black Scholar
6 (September 1974): 2.
Chapter 1. Moving Toward Blackness
1. Bennett Johnson, interview by author, Chicago, December 12, 2005. Dr.
Du Bois made this comment at a forum or ga nized by Johnson at the University
of California, Los Angeles, c. 1955.
2. J. Anthony Lukas, The Negro Student at an Integrated College, New
York Times, June 3, 1968.
3. Richard J. Margolis, The Two Nations at Wesleyan University, New
York Times, January 18, 1970.
4. George Henderson, Race and the University: A Memoir (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 60.
5. Monteith, Coar, and Malone, quoted from 1968 + 40: The Black Student
Movement and Its Legacy, November 1, 2008, Center for African American
History, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.
6. Francie Latour, The Basis of Our Ethos, Wellesley 92, no. 3 (Spring
2008): 24.
7. Malcolm X, quoted from A Summing Up: Louis Lomax interviews Malcolm X, 1963, Teaching American History, http:// teachingamericanhistory .org
/ library/ index .asp ?document = 539, accessed October 15, 2010.
Notes to Chapter 1 | 281
8. Paul E. Wisdom and Kenneth A. Shaw, Black Challenge to Higher Education, Educational Record (American Council on Education) (Fall 1969), IBW
Papers, Box: Black studies: Aspen conference, Schomburg Center.
9. Daniel H. Perlstein, Justice, Justice: School Politics and the Eclipse of Liberalism (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), 141 142.
10. David E. Rosenbaum, Study Finds State Universities Lag in Enrollment
of Negroes, New York Times, May 18, 1969.
11. Latour, The Basis of Our Ethos, 25.
12. Ramona Tascoe, telephone interview by author, December 3, 2009.
13. Wesley Profi t, telephone interview by author, July 28, 2005.
14. Denmark and Dempsey quoted in What Happened? in the audio recording Columbia: 1968 + 40, April 25, 2008, Columbia 1968 Web site, www
.columbia1968 .com/ conference/ , accessed December 12, 2011. See also John
Kifner, Columbias Radicals Hold a Bittersweet Reunion, New York Times,
April 28, 2008.
15. Charles V. Hamilton, They Demand Relevance: Black Students Protest, 1968 1969 (unpublished manuscript, c. 1971), 15, copy in authors
possession.
16. Carol Oliver, Separatism and Black Consciousness, Emphasis: Daily
Northwestern Magazine, February 14, 1969, copy in authors possession.
17. Black Studies versus White Studies: 1969 a Year of Profound identity
Crisis for American Education, author unknown, c. 1969, IBW Papers, Box:
Black studies: Aspen conference, Schomburg Center.
18. Lukas, The Negro Student.
19. Latour, The Basis of Our Ethos, 25.
20. Nan Robertson, The Student Scene: A Feeling of Powerlessness Provokes Anger among Militants, New York Times, November 20, 1967.
21. Hamilton, They Demand Relevance, 28, 41.
22. Ibid., 19.
23. Ibid., 31 32, emphasis in the original.
24. Gael Graham, Young Activists: American High School Students in the
Age of Protest (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006), 59 61.
25. Hamilton, They Demand Relevance, 42 43.
26. For Williams, see Timothy Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams
and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1999).
27. Henderson, Race and the University, 37.
28. Black Heritage, Episode 12 100, transcript, n.d., John Henrik Clarke
Papers, Box 12, Folder 31, Schomburg Center.
29. Hamilton, They Demand Relevance, 40.
30. Ibid., 34.
31. Henderson, Race and the University, 40.
32. Graham, Young Activists, 60.
33. Ibid., 59.
34. Lukas, The Negro Student; Durward Long, Black Protest, in Protest! Student Activism in America, ed. Julian Foster and Durward Long (New
York: William Morrow, 1969), 466.
35. Darlene Clark Hine, Becoming a Black Womans Historian, in Living
Histories: Black Women Historians in the Ivory Tower, ed., Deborah Gray
White (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 47 49.
36. Deborah Gray White, My History in History, in Living Histories:
Black Women Historians in the Ivory Tower, ed. White (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2008), 88.
37. Hamilton, They Demand Relevance, 66 67, emphasis in the original.
38. Lukas, The Negro Student.
39. Hamilton, They Demand Relevance, 38 39.
40. Sally Avery Bermanzohn, Through Survivors Eyes: From the Sixties to
the Greensboro Massacre (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003), 76.
41. Long, Black Protest, 474; Denmark, quoted from audio recording
Columbia: 1968 + 40.
42. Hamilton, They Demand Relevance, 75.
43. Charles Ogletree, Brown Babies at Stanford in the Early 1970s, Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (Summer 2004): 82.
44. Hamilton, They Demand Relevance, 75.
45. Ibid., 70.
46. Darwin T. Turner, The Center for African Afro- American Studies at
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Journal of Negro
Education 39, no. 3 (Summer 1970): 221 22.
47. Hilltop (Howard University), April 26, 1968, microfi lm, Howard University Library, Washington, DC (hereafter HUL).
48. Linda Housch, quoted from Black Heritage, Episode 12 100, transcript.
49. Blair Justice, Violence in the City (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1969), 43, 50.
50. NAACP, NAACP to Defend Four Accused TSU Students, press release,
June 10, 1967, NAACP Papers, Part 28, Series B, microfi lm reel 10, Schomburg
Center.
51. John Morsell to Attorney General Ramsey Clark, May 18, 1967, NAACP
Papers, Part 28, Series B, microfi lm reel 10, Schomburg Center.
52. Justice, Violence in the City, 40 46.
53. See Jack Bass and Jack Nelson, The Orangeburg Massacre (Macon, GA:
Mercer University Press, 1970); and Cleveland Sellers, The River of No Return:
The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC (New
York: William Morrow, 1973). Twenty- fi ve years later, Sellers received an offi –
cial pardon.
54. Bermanzohn, Through Survivors Eyes, 77; Karanja Keita Carroll and
Itibari M. Zulu, Dr. William M. King Interviewed: National Council of Black
Studies Founding Member, Journal of Pan African Studies 3, no. 1 (September
2009): 24. See chapter 3 for a discussion of a mock funeral march on the west
side of Chicago protesting the massacre.
55. In loco parentis refers to the universitys legal assumption of parental
authority over students who had not yet reached the age of adulthood, which in
this period commenced at age twenty- one. Colleges imposed a vast array of
rules relating to personal freedom, notably to prevent sexual interaction among
males and females. There tended to be stricter regulation of female conduct.
282 | Notes to Chapter 1
56. Lawrence B. de Graaf, Howard: The Evolution of a Black Student Revolt, Protest! Student Activism in America, ed. Julian Foster and Durward
Long (New York: William Morrow, 1969), 321.
57. Ibid., 320 321.
58. Charles Hamilton, The Place of the Black College in the Human Rights
Struggle, Negro Digest 16, no. 11 (September 1967): 6 7, italics in the original.
59. Graaf, Howard, 326.
60. Hilltop, September 15, 1967, microfi lm, HUL.
61. Nathan Hare, interviewed by Robert Wright, November 17, 1968, transcript, 17, Ralph Bunche Civil Rights Documentation Project (hereafter Bunche
Project), Moorland- Spingarn Collection, HUL.
62. Hilltop, editorial, September 22, 1967, microfi lm, HUL.
63. Michael Harris, interviewed by Robert Martin, June 25, 1968, transcript, 11, 26, 33, Bunche Project, HUL.
64. Graaf, Howard, 332.
65. Hilltop, March 8, 1968, microfi lm, HUL.
66. Sara Slack, Howard Students Mar Charter Day, New York Amsterdam
News, March 16, 1968.
67. Courtland Cox, Marvin Holloway, and Charlie Cobb, Occupation of a
Building Brings New Dimensions Hilltop, March 29, 1968, microfi lm, HUL.
68. Hilltop, March 22 and 29, 1968, microfi lm, HUL.
69. Graaf, Howard, 235; Hilltop, March 29, 1968, microfi lm, HUL.
70. Hilltop, March 19, 1968, microfi lm, HUL.
71. Adrienne Manns, interview, August 1968, transcript, 35 37, 40, 45,
Bunche Project, HUL.
72. George Gent, TV: Negro Students Bare Resentment, New York Times,
May 7, 1968.
73. Graaf, Howard, 319; Hilltop, March 29, 1968, microfi lm, HUL.
74. Tuskegee Students Boycott Classes over Grievances, New York
Times, March 26; Tuskegee Students Lock in Trustees, New York Times,
April 8, 1968.
75. Sara Slack, The Rebellion in Our Colleges, New York Amsterdam
News, May 18, 1968, 1.
76. Ibid. Wellesley agreed to add twenty more Black students for the fall,
if they were found to be qualifi ed. We will not lower our standards, an
administrator declared.
77. For the California Master Plan for education, see Peter Shapiro and William Barlow, An End to Silence: The San Francisco State College Student Movement in the 1960s (New York: Bobbs- Merrill, 1971).
78. Harry Edwards, The Revolt of the Black Athlete (New York: Macmillan,
1969).
79. An important exception is the recent study by Donna Murch, Living for
the City: Education, Migration and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).
80. Alan Colon, Black Studies: Historical Background, Modern Origins, and
Development Priorities for the Early Twenty First Century, Western Journal of
Black Studies 27, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 150.
Notes to Chapter 1 | 283
81. Long, Black Protest, 474; Black Studies Gaining Shaky Niche on
Campus, Los Angeles Times, May 7, 1972.
82. Jack McCurdy, Afro- American Teacher Credential Approved, Los
Angeles Times, October 11, 1968, 3; Charles Hamilton, They Demand Relevance, 100 101; Soul Students Advisory Council, Position Paper on Black
Studies, n.d., IBW Papers, Survey of Black Studies Programs, Box 3, Merritt
College Folder, Schomburg Center. See also Murch, Living for the City,
111 116.
83. Murch, Living for the City, 100.
Chapter 2. A Revolution Is Beginning
1. The strike deserves a book- length, rather than chapter- length, treatment.
See the many accounts penned by participants or observers: William H. Orrick
Jr., Shut It Down! A College in Crisis: San Francisco State College, October
1968 April 1969 (Washington, DC: National Commission on the Causes and
Prevention of Violence, 1969); Robert Smith, Richard Axen, and Devere
Pentony, By Any Means Necessary: The Revolutionary Struggle at San Francisco State (San Francisco: Jossey- Bass, 1970); Dikran Karaguezian, Blow It
Up! The Black Student Revolt at San Francisco State and the Emergence of Dr.
Hayakawa (Boston: Gambit, 1971); and William Barlow and Peter Shapiro, An
End to Silence: The San Francisco State College Student Movement in the 60s
(New York: Pegasus, 1971). These recent scholarly accounts differ somewhat
from mine: Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical
Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2007); and Noliwe Rooks, White Money/Black Power: The
Surprising History of African American Studies (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006).
2. Bernard Stringer, telephone interview by author, October 22, 2009.
3. Jimmy Garrett, interview by author, Berkeley, California, August 9, 2005.
4. Jimmy Garrett, interview transcript, n.d., Rec ords of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, Series 57, Box 13, Lyndon B.
Johnson Presidential Library, University of Texas (hereafter LBJ); Garrett, interview by author.
5. Barlow and Shapiro, An End to Silence, 91.
6. George Murray, interview by author, Oakland, California, August 11, 2005.
7. Jerry Varnado, interview by author, San Francisco, August 12, 2005.
8. Karaguezian, Blow It Up! 9.
9. Hari Dillon, telephone interview by author, January 10, 2010.
10. Karaguezian, Blow It Up! 40 41; Garrett, interview, LBJ.
11. Black Studies Curriculum 1968, in Strike Collection, BSU Folder, Special Collections, San Francisco State University, San Francisco (hereafter SFSU);
Ramona Tascoe, telephone interview by author, December 3, 2009.
12. Joyce A. Joyce, Black Studies as Human Studies: Critical Essays and Interviews (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 154 157.
13. It is vital to recognize that the Black studies movement of the late 1960s
was but one phase in a long history of Black scholarship and letters, whose
roots date to abolitionism.
284 | Notes to Chapter 2
14. Barlow and Shapiro, An End to Silence, 127; Varnado, interview; Orrick, Shut It Down! 115.
15. Garrett, interview by author.
16. Ibid.; John Summerskill, President Seven (New York: World Publishing,
1971).
17. Garrett, interview, LBJ; Nathan Hare, interview transcript, n.d., Box 13,
LBJ; Barlow and Shapiro, An End to Silence, 135; see Orrick, Shut It Down!,
appendix, for a copy of Hares proposal.
18. Garrett later said that Hare always credits me or discredits me with being the found er of Black studies. And I always credit him or discredit him with
making it happen. Garrett, interview by author.
19. John Bunzel, Black Studies at San Francisco State, Public Interest 13
(Fall 1968).
20. Smith, Axen, and Pentony, By Any Means Necessary, 141.
21. Ron Dellums, interview transcript, Box 13, LBJ.
22. Lee, interview transcript, Box 13, LBJ.
23. Hare, interview, LBJ.
24. Hannibal Williams, interview transcript, Box 13, LBJ
25. Orrick, Shut It Down! 75.
26. State of California, Assembly, Select Committee on Campus Disturbances,
Report of the Select Committee on Campus Disturbances, [May 1969], 160,
Strike Collection, Folder: Select Committee on Campus Disturbances.
27. Clarence Thomas, telephone interview by author, January 18, 2010.
28. Barlow and Shapiro, An End to Silence, 112; Murray, interview; Thomas,
telephone interview; Karaguezian, Blow It Up! 36 37; Dillon, telephone
interview.
29. But the BSU, which had already persuaded the college to raise the number
of EOP slots to 427 for the fall, did not formally join the SDS/TWLF protest. To
the dismay of the BSU, however, the college fell short of its pledge, admitting
only 300 students. The student body at SFSC that fall was 76 percent white, 5.3
percent Black, 2.3 percent Mexican American, and 8 percent Oriental. Orrick,
Shut It Down! 74; Dillon, telephone interview.
30. Orrick, Shut It Down! 28.
31. Barlow and Shapiro, An End to Silence, 186.
32. SFS Footnotes, January 20, 1969, Box 12, LBJ.
33. Garrett, interview by author.
34. Karaguezian, Blow It Up! 68 83.
35. Smith, Axen, and Pentony, By Any Means Necessary, 133 135.
36. Karaguezian, Blow It Up! 83.
37. Smith, Axen, and Pentony, By Any Means Necessary, 122.
38. Tascoe, telephone interview.
39. Barlow and Shapiro, An End to Silence, 28; Karaguezian, Blow It Up! 37.
40. Black Panther, November 16, 1968, 13; Smith, Axen, and Pentony, By
Any Means Necessary, 157; Orrick, Shut It Down! 33.
41. Karaguezian, Blow It Up! 87.
42. Ibid., 35.
43. Ibid., 38 39.
Notes to Chapter 2 | 285
44. Ibid., 92.
45. Hare, interview, LBJ.
46. Nathan Hare, telephone interview by author, September 5, 2005; Orrick,
Shut It Down!, appendix; Nathan Hare, SFS BSU Demands, Black Panther,
January 25, 1969.
47. Earl Caldwell, Student Strikers on Coast Are Firm, New York Times,
December 9, 1968.
48. Stokely Carmichael, speech transcript, Box 13, LBJ. College administrators evidently taped the speech surreptitiously.
49. Bennie Stewart, speech transcript, Box 13, LBJ. College administrators
evidently taped the speech surreptitiously. See Robert Taber, The War of the
Flea: A Study of Guerrilla Warfare Theory and Practice (New York: L. Stuart,
1965).
50. Dillon, telephone interview; Tascoe, telephone interview.
51. In order to protect the central committee from a mass arrest, only
six members were allowed on campus each day, and each member had to prepare two students to take over his duties in the event of an arrest. Varnado,
interview.
52. Tascoe, telephone interview.
53. Ibid.
54. Varnado, interview.
55. Dillon, telephone interview.
56. Tascoe, telephone interview.
57. Ibid.
58. Varnado, interview.
59. Karaguezian, Blow It Up! 115 116.
60. Human Rights: Not Po liti cal Privileges, Open Pro cess, January 22,
1969, Box 12, LBJ.
61. See San Francisco Bay Area Tele vi sion Archive, San Francisco State University, www .library .sfsu .edu/ about/ collections/ sfbatv/ index .php .
62. Karaguezian, Blow It Up! 44 47; John Levin, notes from a talk, in authors possession, n.d.; John Levin, telephone interview by author, December 7,
2009.
63. Levin, notes from a talk; Levin, telephone interview.
64. Orrick, Shut It Down! 104.
65. Karaguezian, Blow It Up! 119.
66. KPIX, Eye on the Bay News, November 25, 1968, Bay Area Tele vi sion
Archive, SFSU, http:// diva .sfsu .edu/ collections/ sfbatv/ bundles/ 187260; Smith,
Axen, and Pentony, By Any Means Necessary, 97.
67. Orrick, Shut It Down! 55.
68. Joseph White, telephone interview by author, December 9, 2009.
69. Wallace Turner, Police Disperse a Campus Crowd, New York Times,
December 5, 1968; Dillon, telephone interview.
70. Daryl E. Lembke, 3 Strike Leaders at S.F. State Seized by Police, Los
Angeles Times, December 12, 1968; Smith, Axen and Pentony, By Any Means
Necessary, 224.
71. Orrick, Shut It Down! 2.
286 | Notes to Chapter 2
72. Wall Street Journal, February 13, 1969, Box 10, LBJ.
73. John James Oliver, interview transcript, Box 13, LBJ.
74. Dellums, interview.
75. Brown, interview; Tom Fleming, Hayakawa Rebuffs Community, Sun
Reporter, December 7, 1968, 3.
76. Dr. Wesley Johnson, interview transcript, Box 13, LBJ.
77. Samuel Jackson, interview transcript, Box 13, LBJ; Mediators Meet at
S.F. State, San Francisco Chronicle, December 20, 1968; Karaguezian, Blow It
Up! 180.
78. Orrick, Shut It Down! 125; Willie Brown, interview transcript, Box 13,
LBJ.
79. Williams, interview.
80. Reginald Major, interview transcript, Box 13, LBJ.
81. Orrick, Shut It Down! 56.
82. Ibid., 38; Karaguezian, Blow It Up! 113.
83. Wall Street Journal, February 13, 1969, Box 10, LBJ; Smith, Axen, and
Pentony, By Any Means Necessary, 303.
84. Tascoe, telephone interview.
85. Varnado, interview.
86. Orrick, Shut It Down! 131.
87. Jackson, interview transcript.
88. Letters, Social Protest Collection, Box 23, Folder 55, Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley; Howard Finberg, ed., Crisis at San Francisco
State, San Francisco, 1969, pamphlet, Social Protest Collection, Box 24, Folder
9, Bancroft Library.
89. San Francisco State College, Campus Communications Newsletter, January 15, 1969, Strike Collection, Don Scoble File, SFSU.
90. Wall Street Journal, February 13, 1969, Box 10, LBJ.
91. Walter Riley, interview by author, May 8, 2010, Oak Park, Illinois.
92. Gary Hawkins, Local 1352, AFT, Memorandum, November 5, 1968,
Box 23, Folder 54, Social Protest Collection, Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley; Local 1352, AFT Flyer, Box 23, Folder 54, Social Protest
Collection; The Partisan (offi cial strike bulletin), February 2, 1969, Box 23,
Folder 54, Social Protest Collection; Thomas, telephone interview.
93. For a recent study, see Jeffrey Haas, The Assassination of Fred Hampton:
How the FBI and Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2009).
94. See an account by a former FBI agent: M. Wesley Swearingen, FBI Secrets (Boston: South End Press, 1995), 82. There is considerable writing on the
Black Panther Party. For two accounts of the UCLA shootings, see Elaine
Brown, A Taste of Power: A Black Womans Story (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1993); and Scot Brown, Fighting for Us: Maulana Karenga, the us Orga ni za tion and Black Cultural Nationalism (New York: New York University
Press, 2003).
95. Mary Jane Hewitt, oral history conducted by Elston L. Carr, July 8,
1997, transcript, 65, UCLA Oral History Program, Center for African American Studies Library, UCLA; Virgil P. Roberts, oral history conducted by Elston
Notes to Chapter 2 | 287
L. Carr, August 26, 1996, transcript, 42, UCLA Oral History Program, Center
for African American Studies Library, UCLA.
96. Roberts, oral history, 42.
97. Maulana (Ron) Karenga, oral history conducted by Elston L. Carr,
1996 1999, transcript, 96, UCLA Oral History Program, Center for African
American Studies Library, UCLA.
98. Roberts, interview, 45.
99. Hewitt, interview, 81.
100. Roberts, interview, 58.
101. Daily Bruin, September 30, 1969, vertical fi le, Center for African
American Studies Library, UCLA; Scot Brown, Fighting for Us; Karenga, interview, 209.
102. Murray, interview.
103. San Francisco Chronicle, February 22, 1969, Box 10, LBJ.
104. Murray, interview.
105. Carleton Goodlett, interview transcript, Box 13, LBJ.
106. Dellums, interview.
107. Tascoe, telephone interview; White quoted in Eric Anthony Joseph,
Mandate for Diversity: A Comparative Analysis of the Black Studies Movement at San Francisco State University and the Afrikan- American Experience at
Biola University (EdD diss., Biola University, La Mirada, CA, 1994), 164, 170;
White, telephone interview.
108. Tascoe, telephone interview
109. Leroy Goodwin, quoted in Black Fire, May 3, 1969, Strike Collection,
Black Fire Folder, SFSU; Dillon, telephone interview.
110. Dillon, telephone interview; KTVU News, 1969 2007, Bay Area Televi sion Archives, SFSU, http:// diva .sfsu .edu/ collections/ sfbatv/ bundles/ 187238,
accessed April 2010.
111. Murray, interview.
112. Dillon, telephone interview.
113. Varnado, interview.
114. Remembering the Strike, SF State Magazine, www .sfsu .edu/ ~sfsumag
/ archive/ fall _08/ strike .html .
115. Barlow and Shapiro, An End to Silence, 309; Karaguezian, Blow It
Up! 194.
116. State of California, Assembly, Select Committee on Campus Disturbances, Report of the Select Committee on Campus Disturbances, 157.
117. Black Fire, November 6, 1969, Strike Collection, SFSU.
118. Willie L. Brown Jr., Minority Report, in Report of the Select Committee on Campus Disturbances, by State of California, Assembly, Select Committee on Campus Disturbances, [May 1969], 160, Strike Collection, Folder: Select
Committee on Campus Disturbances.
119. White, telephone interview; Urban Whittaker, Open Letter, On the
Record, November 10, 1969, Strike Collection, BSU Folder, SFSU.
120. Thomas, telephone interview.
121. Ibid.
288 | Notes to Chapter 2
122. Joseph, Mandate for Diversity, 184 185.
123. Hare, interview by author.
124. Daryl Lembke, SF State College Black Studies Department, Los
Angeles Times, November 9, 1969.
125. Wallace Turner, Black Issue Hits Hayakawa Again, New York Times,
December 24, 1969, 30; Daryl Lembke, SF States Black Studies Still in Grip of
Chaos, Los Angeles Times, August 10, 1970, 3.
126. Phoenix, April 30, 1970, Strike Collection, BSU folder, SFSU; Thomas,
telephone interview.
127. Black Studies Gaining Shaky Niche on Campus, Los Angeles Times,
May 7, 1972.
128. Ex- Sen. Hayakawa Dies, Los Angeles Times, February 28, 1992, 1.
129. Black Studies Gaining Shaky Niche on Campus.
130. Stringer, telephone interview.
131. Hari Dillon, We Did Not Struggle in Vain, 1988, transcript of speech,
Strike Collection, 20th Anniversary Folder, Special Collections, SFSU.
132. Murray, interview.
133. Goodlett, interview.
134. White, telephone interview.
Chapter 3. A Turbulent Era of Transition
1. Bennett Johnson, interview by author, Chicago, December 12, 2005.
2. See especially Harry Edwards, Revolt of the Black Athlete (New York:
Free Press, 1969).
3. NU 1968: An Observance of an Era, a video by Cherilyn Wright and
Barbara Parkins, May 18, 1991, copy in authors possession.
4. Sandra Hill, Sandra Malone, and Kathryn Ogletree, quoted from
1968 + 40: The Black Student Movement at Northwestern and Its Legacy,
October 31 November 1, 2008, Center for African American History, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL (hereafter 1968 + 40: The Black Student
Movement at Northwestern).
5. NU 1968.
6. Ibid.
7. Michael Smith, quoted from 1968 + 40: The Black Student Movement at
Northwestern.
8. John Bracey, interview by author, New York, July 6, 2005.
9. Ibid.
10. Black and White at Northwestern University, Integrated Education, 6,
no. 3 (May June 1968): 33 48.
11. John Bracey, quoted from 1968 + 40: The Black Student Movement at
Northwestern.
12. John Bracey, telephone interview by author, July 8, 2005.
13. Remarks at 1968 + 40: The Black Student Movement at Northwestern.
14. Eva Jefferson Paterson, letter to author, November 28, 2010.
Notes to Chapter 3 | 289
15. Bracey, telephone interview by author, July 8, 2005. The radio show
aired on WCFL, known as The Voice of Labor and owned for de cades by the
Chicago Federation of Labor.
16. Payson S. Wild, Memorandum Concerning the Black Students Seizure of the University Business Offi ce, 619 Clark Street, on the Morning of
May 3, 1968, June 30, 1987, Black Student Protest II, April May 1968
Folder, University Archives, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL (hereafter
UA, NU).
17. Lucius Gregg, remarks from 1968 + 40: The Black Student Movement
at Northwestern.
18. Bracey, interview, July 6, 2005.
19. Gregg, remarks from 1968 + 40.
20. Open Letter by Richard C. Christian, president, Northwestern University Alumni Association, September 1968, Black Student Protest II, April May
1968 Folder, UA, NU.
21. Agreement between Afro- American Student Union and FMO and a
Committee Representing the Northwestern University Administration, May 4,
1968, NAACP Papers, 1993 accession, Box 178, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
22. Helen Welker to editor, Chicago Daily News, May 7, 1968, Black Student Protest II, April May 1968 Folder, UA, NU.
23. A Sad Day for Northwestern, editorial, Chicago Tribune, May 6,
1968, Black Student Protest II, April May 1968 Folder, UA, NU. According
to John Bracey, the students were able to persuade the publisher of the Tribune,
who sat on the board of trustees of Northwestern, to issue an apology for the
inaccuracies and distortions in the editorial. Bracey, interview,
24. Change at Northwestern, editorial, Chicago Daily News, May 7,
1968, Black Student Protest II, April May 1968 Folder, UA, NU.
25. Black and White at Northwestern University, 33 48.
26. Gregg, remarks from 1968 + 40.
27. N.U. Gets $75,000 Pledge, Chicago Tribune, May 22, 1968; N.U.
Gets Funds from Five Companies, Chicago Tribune, September 1, 1968.
28. John Higginson, quoted from 1968 + 40: The Black Student Movement
at Northwestern.
29. A Turning Point, Daily Northwestern, May 3, 1988, Black Student
Protest II, April May 1968 Folder, UA, NU.
30. Black and White at Northwestern University, 44.
31. Jimmy Garrett, interview by author, Berkeley, CA, August 9, 2005.
32. The Confl ict over Black Studies, Daily Northwestern, December 1,
1972; II. The Afro- American Program, n.d., CAS/African American Studies
Department Box, General Folder, UA, NU.
33. John Higginson, Afroamerican Studies Program: Where Does It Go
from Here? Emphasis: Daily Northwestern Magazine, February 14, 1969,
copy in authors possession; Milton Gardner, Northwestern and Its Myth of
Black Studies, Daily Northwestern, January 16, 1970; To Be Presented to the
College of Arts and Sciences on Thursday, January 22, 1970, unsigned resolu290 | Notes to Chapter 3
tion, Payson Wild Papers, Series 5/1, Box 1, African American Studies Folder,
UA, NU.
34. Committee on Afro- American Studies to Dean Laurence Nobles, November 2, 1970, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Collection, African
American Studies Department Folder, UA, NU.
35. Payson Wild to Freddye L. Hill, acting chairman, Education Committee,
c. July 1971, Payson Wild Papers, Series 5/1, Box 1, African American Studies
Folder, UA, NU.
36. Sterling Stuckey, interview by author, Chicago, October 23, 2009.
37. Ibid., June 19, 2008.
38. Lerone Bennett to Lawrence Nobles, acting dean of the College of Arts
and Sciences, Northwestern University, February 17, 1972, personal papers of
Lerone Bennett; Lerone Bennett, interview by author, Chicago, September 25,
2008.
39. Rumblings Plague Afro Studies Department, Chicago Metro News,
December 23, 1972, CAS/African American Studies Department Box, General Folder, UA, NU.
40. Students in Battle over Black Studies, Chicago Defender, December 30,
1972; The Confl ict over Black Studies; Stuckey, interview; Robert Hill, telephone interview by author, April 19, 2010.
41. Robert Hill, telephone interview; Carol Rudisell, telephone interview by
author, April 7, 2010; Freddye Hill, telephone interview by author, April 6,
2010; FMO Ends Black Studies boycott, Daily Northwestern, January 9,
1974, copy in authors possession; Stuckey Urges Blacks to Unite, Daily
Northwestern, October 1, 1973, CAS, Rec ords of the Dean, Box 36, Folder 8,
UA, NU.
42. Jan Carew, African American Studies at Northwestern: A Position Paper, n.d. [circa 1973], CAS/African American Studies Department Box, General Folder, UA, NU.
43. African American Studies: A Deep NU Legacy, Daily Northwestern,
October 10, 1986.
44. Standish Willis, interview by author, Chicago, June 13, 2006; Henry English, interview by author, Chicago, August 16, 2007.
45. Willis, interview.
46. Charles Webb, Getting Ourselves Together, Phoenix, Standish Willis
personal collection, copy in authors possession.
47. En glish, interview.
48. Willis, interview; En glish, interview.
49. Willis, interview.
50. George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 166,
168. In a depressing coda to this era of activism, Black pride, and cultural fl owering, the theater was later taken over by the criminal or ga ni za tion known as
the El Rukns, and it became known as the Fort after their leader, now incarcerated, Jeff Fort. Willis, interview.
51. Willis, interview.
Notes to Chapter 3 | 291
52. Frank de la Cerna, acting chairman, Black Student Congress, to Brothers
and Sisters, October 1968, Standish Willis personal collection, copy in authors
possession.
53. Willie Calvin, What Black Students Want, Phoenix, c. 1968, Standish
Willis personal collection, copy in authors possession.
54. Willis, interview.
55. En glish, interview; Willis, interview.
56. Distributed by the Student Senate to Students of Crane College, May 8,
1968, Standish Willis personal collection.
57. Memorandum from Ad Hoc Committee on Student Demands to All
Faculty and Students, May 31, 1968, Standish Willis personal collection; English, interview.
58. Willis, interview.
59. Commission on Institutions of Higher Education of the North Central
Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, Report for Malcolm X College, May 24, 1971, 2, in Photograph Collection, Charles Hurst Folder, offi ces of the Chicago Defender, Chicago.
60. Ibid., 3.
61. Student Handbook, 1970 1971, Standish Willis personal collection.
62. En glish, interview.
63. Alex Poinsett, The Mastermind of Malcolm X College, Ebony, March
1970, 30.
64. Willis, interview.
65. Malcolm X, Jet, June 18, 1970.
66. Commission on Institutions of Higher Education of the North Central
Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, Report for Malcolm X College, 7 12.
67. Willis, interview.
68. Ibid.; Robert Rhodes, interview by author, Chicago, August 9, 2009.
69. Adam Green, Selling the Race: Culture, Community, and Black Chicago,
1940 1955 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
Chapter 4. Brooklyn College Belongs to Us
1. cuny contains the largest number of Black and Latino scholars ever to
attend a single university in the history of the United States. The importance of
cuny as a source of opportunity for non- white students and their communities
is highlighted by the fact that cuny traditionally awards the largest number of
Masters degrees to Black and Latino students of any institution in America.
Last year cuny conferred 1,011 Masters degrees to Black and Latino students,
while the State University of New York (suny) awarded only 233. Ronald B.
McGuire, The Struggle at cuny: Open Admissions and Civil Rights, 1992,
http:// slamherstory .wordpress .com/ 2009/ 09/ 28/ the -struggle -at -cuny -by -ron
-mcguire/ , accessed December 15, 2011.
2. Much has been written about open admissions; see for example David E.
Lavin et al., Right Versus Privilege: The Open Admissions Experiment at the
City University of New York (New York: Free Press, 1981). But scholars of the
292 | Notes to Chapter 4
civil rights and Black power movements have neglected or ignored it. For examples, see Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality: 1954 1992 (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1993); and Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting Till the Midnight
Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt,
2006).
3. According to professor of psychology Kenneth Clark, the idea for seek
and open admissions fi rst emerged in a series of breakfast meetings with himself;
cuny chancellor Albert Bowker; Gus Rosenberg, the president of the Board of
Higher Education, and Ray Jones, the African American leader of Tammany
Hall. Clark said the four quickly agreed upon the injustice of a policy and
practice of free tuition in the city colleges when the most eco nom ical ly deprived
groups were being denied the benefi ts of free higher education. Kenneth B.
Clark, The Advantages and Disadvantages of Open Admissions and Some
History, in Open Admissions: The Pros and Cons (Washington, DC: Council
for Basic Education, 1972), 45. In contrast, former CCNY professor and administrator Allen B. Ballard called seek my idea and reportedly wrote up the
plan for it in 1964 1965. See Ballard, Breaking Jerichos Walls (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2011), 216 217.
4. According to Conrad M. Dyer, cunys motive in authorizing open admissions was to appease an explosive urban youth population. Dyer, Protest
and the Politics of Open Admissions: The Impact of the Black and Puerto Rican
Students Community (of City College) (PhD diss., City University of New York,
1990), 193.
5. Bart Meyers, Radical Struggle for Open Admissions at cuny, Kingsman,
February 27, 1976; in 1968, 192 Black students entered as part of the new Educational Opportunity Program. Others came through seek, which by early
1969 comprised 470 students. Another new 1968 initiative was the One
Hundred Scholars program, where the top 100 graduates of each high school
were automatically admitted to college. Forty- fi ve of these students chose
Brooklyn College. Still, according to one student who entered that year, Black
enrollment in the liberal arts college was only 1 percent. Barnard Collier, Police Break Up Sit- In in Brooklyn at College Offi ce, New York Times, May 21,
1968, 1; Duncan Pardue to Franklin Williams, February 5, 1969, IBW Papers,
Box: Survey of Black Studies Programs, Folder: Brooklyn College, Schomburg
Center.
6. United States Congress, Senate Committee on Government Operations,
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders,
91st Cong. 1st sess. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Offi ce, 1969),
5193.
7. Meyers, Radical Struggle for Open Admissions at cuny.
8. Duncan Pardue to Franklin Williams, February 5, 1969.
9. Askia Davis, interview by author, New York City, July 19, 2005.
10. Orlando Pile, telephone interview by author, June 30, 2005; Davis, interview; the president said he deplored racism but procedures of academic freedom
must be maintained. Only the Board of Higher Education, he said, could take
action on specifi c evidence of racism. Meyers, Radical Struggle for Open Admissions at cuny.
Notes to Chapter 4 | 293
11. Students at City College advocated for admitting Black and Puerto Rican students in proportion to their presence in local high schools. They also
called for access for poor whites as well, and said they should constitute 20
percent of the freshmen class, refl ecting their presence in the local high school
population.
12. At City College, seek professor Fran Geteles said that the students there
were very sensitive to the issues of underpreparedness and were not asking for
indiscriminate entrance. Frances Geteles, telephone interview by author, August 29, 2007. Conrad Dyer found that many former student activists reiterated
this point in interviews. See Dyer, Protest and the Politics of Open Admissions, 103.
13. United States Congress, Senate Committee on Government Operations,
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders, 5197 5199.
14. Pile, interview.
15. Ibid.
16. Kingsman, April 23, 1969, special edition.
17. Meyers, Radical Struggle for Open Admissions at cuny.
18. Ibid; Murray Schumach, Vandals Disturb Brooklyn Campus, New
York Times, May 1, 1969.
19. United States Congress, Senate Committee on Government Operations,
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders,
5203.
20. Emanuel Perlmutter, 20 Indicted in Brooklyn College Arson, New York
Times, May 14, 1969; Kingsman, May 12, 1969, special edition; Davis, interview; Pile, interview.
21. Davis, interview.
22. New York Post, May 13, 1969, Five Demands Confl ict Collection, Box
2, University Archives and Special Collections, City College of New York (hereafter CCNY).
23. New York Daily News, May 14, 1969, Five Demands Confl ict Collection, Box 2, CCNY.
24. Perlmutter, 20 Indicted in Brooklyn College Arson; Kingsman, May
16, 1969; Davis, interview. Ironically, Dr. Matthews also went to jail in 1969
for refusing to pay federal income tax. An outspoken advocate of self- help and
Black capitalism, Matthews, the fi rst Black neurosurgeon in the United States,
said he gave his taxes to his or ga ni za tion, National Economic Growth and
Reconstruction Or ga ni za tion, rather than pay for welfare programs. President
Nixon commuted the six- month sentence after sixty- nine days. New York Times,
April 2, 1973.
25. BC 19 Get Probation, Kingsman, February 27, and Kingsman, March
6, 1970; Judge Rinaldi said the indictments would be dismissed after six months
if they behaved. Things didnt turn out as well for the prosecutor or the judge.
In 1983 Eugene Gold, who was Brooklyn district attorney from 1968 to 1981,
admitted to unlawful sexual fondling of a ten- year- old girl the daughter of
an Alabama prosecutor in a Nashville hotel room during a convention of district attorneys. And Judge Dominic Rinaldi was suspended from the bench after
294 | Notes to Chapter 4
being indicted for perjury in 1973, although a jury later acquitted him. See
Gold Gets Probation in Fondling of Child; Agrees to Treatment, New York
Times, October 21, 1983; and Dominic Rinaldi Dies: A Retired Justice, New
York Times, November 27, 1983.
26. strike! editorial, Kingsman, May 12, 1969.
27. United States Congress, Senate Committee on Government Operations,
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders,
5191.
28. Transcript of interview with Sekou Sundiata, formerly Robert Feaster,
n.d., Legacy of Struggle Collection, Box 1, CCNY.
29. Chronology of a Crisis, n.d., Legacy of Struggle Collection, Box 1,
CCNY; Sundiata, interview.
30. These statistics describe 1967. Dyer, Protest and the Politics of Open
Admissions, 64. This was the fi rst offi cial ethnic census conducted at cuny
schools.
31. Barbara Christian, City College Saga, Part 2: Dual Admissions, Inside
and Outside the Plaza, n.d., reprinted from Harlem News, June 1969, Legacy
of Struggle Collection, Box 2, CCNY.
32. Black and Puerto Rican Student Community, The Black and Puerto Rican Student Community to the Faculty and Students of City College, press release, April 26, 1969, Five Demands Confl ict Collection, Box 4, CCNY. Conrads
spouse, the writer Adrienne Rich, also taught at CCNY and was a supporter of
the student activists. Geteles, telephone interview by author.
33. Christian, City College Saga, Part 2.
34. Clark, The Advantages and Disadvantages of Open Admissions, 47.
35. Dyer, Protest and the Politics of Open Admissions, 84.
36. Ibid., 117 120.
37. The Black and Puerto Rican Student Community to the Faculty and
Students of City College.
38. Dyer, Protest and the Politics of Open Admissions, 98; Toni Cade,
Realizing the Dream of the Black University, Observation Post (City College), February 14, 1969, Martha Weisman Papers, Open Admissions Folder,
CCNY.
39. See for example Steve Estes, I Am a Man!: Race, Manhood and the
Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2005).
40. Miss Cade to Dear Bloods, n.d., Five Demands Confl ict Collection, Public Relations Folder, CCNY.
41. Cade, Realizing the Dream of the Black University.
42. Barbara Christian, City College Saga: Lesson in Democracy, Inside
and Outside the Plaza, August September 1969, Legacy of Struggle Collection,
Box 2, CCNY.
43. Alecia Edwards- Sibley, The Five Demands, The Paper, April 2002,
Martha Weisman Papers, Strike of 1969 Folder, CCNY.
44. Black and Puerto Rican Student Community, Queries and Answers on
Demands #1 and #4, May 28, 1969, Five Demands Confl ict Collection, Box 7,
CCNY.
Notes to Chapter 4 | 295
45. Rabbi Jay Kaufman, Thou Shalt Surely Rebuke Thy Neighbor, in
Black Anti- Semitism and Jewish Racism, ed. Nat Hentoff (New York: Richard
Baron, 1969), 55, 74.
46. Julius Lester, A Response, in Black Anti- Semitism and Jewish Racism,
ed. Nat Hentoff (New York: Richard Baron, 1969), 235.
47. There was some overlap Betty Rawls and Barbara Christian were in
both groups. Geteles, telephone interview.
48. See Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of
the 1960s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981).
49. Geteles, telephone interview.
50. Carlos Russell, interview by author, New York City, June 11, 2005.
51. The Stake of Whites in the Struggle, Box 16, Five Demands Confl ict,
CCNY; Floyd McKissick, cunys Quota System, New York Amsterdam
News, June 14, 1969.
52. Meyers, Radical Struggle for Open Admissions at cuny; Notes and
Comment, Talk of the Town, New Yorker, May 3, 1969, in Legacy of Struggle
Collection, Box 1, CCNY; Davis, interview.
53. For more on Columbia see Stefan Bradley, Harlem v. Columbia University: Black Student Power in the Late 1960s (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 2009).
54. WCBS transcript, Campus Disruption II, April 23, 1969, Five Demands Confl ict Collection, Public Relations Folder, CCNY.
55. New York Post, April 30, 1969, Five Demands Confl ict Collection, Box
1, CCNY.
56. Schumach, Vandals Disturb Brooklyn Campus.
57. Transcript of fi lm (unfi nished), Legacy of Struggle Collection, Box 2,
CCNY.
58. Meyers, Radical Struggle for Open Admissions at cuny.
59. New York Post, May 10, 1969, Five Confl ict Collection, Box 1, CCNY.
60. Daily News, editorial, May 10, 1969, Five Confl ict Collection, Box 1,
CCNY; New York Post, June 13, 1969, Five Confl ict Collection, Box 1, CCNY.
61. Sylvan Fox, 60 From C.C.N.Y. Quit Graduation, New York Times, June
13, 1969.
62. Dean Quitting CCNY Post Tells Why, New York Post, May 28, 1969.
63. Roy Wilkins, The Case against Separatism: Black Jim Crow, Black
Studies: Myths and Realities (New York: A. Philip Randolph Institute, 1969),
38 39.
64. Bayard Rustin, introduction to Black Studies: Myths and Realities,
6 7.
65. Louis Nunez to Board of Higher Education, May 1, 1969, Five Demands
Confl ict Collection, Public Relations Folder, CCNY.
66. Allen B. Ballard, The Education of Black Folk: The Afro- American
Struggle for Knowledge in White America (New York: Harper and Row, 1973),
127, 141.
67. Fortieth Open Admissions Anniversary, Third Rail (cuny, College of
Staten Island) (Spring 2009): 6.
296 | Notes to Chapter 4
68. Murray Kempton, Fog over City College II, New York Post, May 28,
1969.
69. Dyer, Protest and the Politics of Open Admissions, 176.
70. Urban and Ethnic Studies Dept. Created, The Campus, September 2,
1969, Martha Weisman Papers, Open Admissions Folder, CCNY.
71. A Negro Professor at C.C.N.Y. Charges Slander, New York Times,
September 20, 1969.
72. Students at Berkeley paid attention to events at CCNY because they
shared an administrator, Albert Bowker. See BSU fl yer, September 26, 1972,
Social Protest Collection, Box 18, Folder 9, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
73. Dr. Pile graduated in 1972, attended medical school at Rutgers University, and did his internship and residency at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles. Askia Davis is an administrator for the New York
public school system. He has served as special assistant to three chancellors.
74. Davis, interview; Pile, interview.
75. Russell, interview; Memorandum, n.d., Box: Information Files, #91
021; Folder: BC SchoolsSchool for Contemporary Studies, Special Collections, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, New York, University Archives; Contemporary Studies Head Seeks New Values, Kingsman, October 15, 1971.
76. Davis, interview.
77. Russell, interview; Report of the Committee to Evaluate the School for
Contemporary Studies at Brooklyn College, March 1976, Box: Information
Files, #91 021; Folder: BC SchoolsSchool for Contemporary Studies, Special Collections, Brooklyn College.
78. Ed Quinn and Leonard Kriegal, How the Dream Was Deferred, The
Nation, April 7, 1984, 412 414.
79. Albert H. Bowker, oral history conducted by Harriet Niathon, September 6, 1991, Regional Oral History Offi ce, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
80. Martha Weisman, Legacy of Student Activism at the City College,
April 21, 1989, Legacy of Struggle Collection, Box 1, CCNY.
81. Geteles, telephone interview.
82. Laird Cummings and Nanette Funk, The Closing Door of Open Admissions, Kingsman, February 20, 1976.
83. Frank Rich, quoted in Quinn and Kriegal, How the Dream Was Deferred, 412.
84. Dyer, Protest and the Politics of Open Admissions, 184.
85. Closing the Door: The Fight for a College Education, a fi lm by Ellie
Bernstein, c. 1999, CCNY; Kelechi Onwuchekwa, The Truth behind Open
Admissions, The Paper, April 2002, Martha Weisman Papers, CCNY.
86. Christian, City College Saga, Part 2.
87. See Martha Biondi, To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in
Postwar New York City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
Notes to Chapter 4 | 297
Chapter 5. Toward a Black University
1. William R. Corson, Promise or Peril: The Black College Student in America (New York: Norton, 1970), 40.
2. See John Egerton, Adams v. Richardson: Can Separate Be Equal?
Change 6, no. 10 (Winter 1974 1975): 29 39, www .jstor .org/ stable/ 40176648;
Julian B. Roebuck and Komanduri S. Murty, Historically Black Colleges and
Universities: Their Place in American Higher Education (Westport, CT: Praeger,
1993).
3. Hilltop (Howard University), October 11, 1968, microfi lm, HUL.
4. Vincent Harding, Toward the Black University, Ebony, August 1970,
156.
5. Gerald McWorter, The Nature and Needs of the Black University, Negro Digest, March 1968.
6. Vincent Harding, New Creations or Familiar Death? An Open Letter to
Black Students in the North, Negro Digest, March 1968.
7. John Oliver Killens, The Artist and the Black University, Black Scholar
1, no. 1 (November 1969): 65, 64.
8. Corson, Promise or Peril, 120.
9. Ibid., 15, 21, 31, and 169.
10. George B. Davis, The Howard University Conference, Negro Digest,
March 1969.
11. Thomas A. Johnson, Howard Students Discuss Reforms, New York
Times, November 15, 1968, www .proquest .com .turing .library .northwestern .edu
/, accessed May 12, 2006.
12. Hilltop, November 15, 1968, microfi lm, HUL.
13. St. Clair Drake, interview by Robert Martin, July 28, 1969, transcript,
Bunche Project, Moorland- Spingarn Collection, HUL.
14. Hilltop, November 22, 1968, microfi lm, HUL; Lewis Myers Jr., interview by author, Chicago, June 29, 2006.
15. Robert S. Browne, Financing the Black University (paper presented at
Howard University, November 13 17, 1968), Robert Browne Papers, Box 16,
Folder 9, Schomburg Center.
16. Hilltop, October 11, 1968, microfi lm, HUL.
17. Thomas A. Johnson, Negro Students Seek Relevance, New York Times,
November 18, 1968, www .proquest .com .turing .library .northwestern .edu/ , ac
cessed May 12, 2006.
18. Ewart Brown, The Black University, in The University and the Revolution, ed. Gary R. Weaver and James H. Weaver (New York: Prentice- Hall, 1969),
147.
19. Davis, The Howard University Conference.
20. Brown, The Black University, 147.
21. Ewart Brown, interview by Robert Martin, September 14, 1968, transcript, Bunche Project, Moorland- Spingarn Collection, HUL.
22. Myers, interview.
23. Hilltop, February 14, 1969, microfi lm, HUL.
24. Ewart Brown, telephone interview by author, July 17, 2006.
298 | Notes to Chapter 5
25. Leslie M. Rankin- Hill and Michael L. Blakey, W. Montague Cobb
(1904 1990): Physical Anthropologist, Anatomist, Activist, American Anthropologist 96 (1994): 74 96, www .aaanet .org/ gad/ history/ 084cobb .pdf, 13 14.
26. Howard Students Seize Law School, New York Times, February 19,
1969, 34.
27. Howard Students Yield, New York Times, February 20, 1969, 35; Hilltop, February 28, 1969, and Hilltop, March 14, 1969, microfi lm, HUL.
28. C. Gerald Fraser, Boycotting Students at Howard Threaten an Injunction, New York Times, May 13, 1969, 31; Students to Negotiate to End Class
Boycott, Washington Afro- American, April 26, 1969.
29. Hilltop, editorial, March 14, 1969, microfi lm, HUL.
30. Whats Behind Black Student Unrest? Washington Afro- American,
February 15, 1969.
31. Bea A. Franklin, Howard U. Closed Down after Campus Seizures,
New York Times, May 8, 1969, 43; Chaos Strikes Howard University, Washington Afro- American, May 10, 1969.
32. Babalola Cole, interview by Allen Coleman, November 20, 1970, transcript, Bunche Project, Moorland- Spingarn Collection, HUL.
33. Howard U. Closed Down after Campus Seizures.
34. C. Gerald Fraser, Howard Students Refuse to Relinquish Buildings,
New York Times, May 9, 1969, 29; C. Gerald Fraser, 20 Arrested at Howard
as Campus Siege Ends, New York Times, May 10, 1969, 14; Myers, interview.
35. In Re Anderson, 306 F. Supp. 712 (1969), United States District Court
District of Columbia, June 20, 1969.
36. Brown, interview.
37. Charles V. Flowers, Morgan States Besieged President, Baltimore Sun
Magazine, November 30, 1980, St. Clair Drake Papers (hereafter Drake Papers),
Box 5, Folder 16, Schomburg Center.
38. Negroes Besiege Carolina Campus, New York Times, April 29, 1969,
27.
39. Robert Romer 1969/1970: Protests and State Troops at Voorhees
College, www .americancenturies .mass .edu/ centapp/ oh/ story .do ?shortName
= romer1969, accessed June 10, 2010.
40. African World (Student Or ga ni za tion for Black Unity), July 23, 1972,
periodical contained in The Black Power Movement, Part I (microfi lm collection), ed. Komozi Woodard, University Publications of America, reel 7.
41. Armed Black Students, New York Post, April 30, 1969; Academic
Freedom and Tenure: Voorhees College (South Carolina), American Association of University Professors Bulletin, 60, no. 1 (March 1974), 87, www .jstor
.org/ stable/ 40224708, accessed June 10, 2010.
42. See Robert Romer 1969/1970.
43. African World, July 23, 1972; Or ga ni za tion for Black Unity (Harvard),
March 24, 1970, newsletter, Ewart Guinier Papers (hereafter Guinier Papers),
Box 45, Folder 5, Schomburg Center; Carolina Negro College, Shut in Protests, New York Times, March 2, 1970.
44. Robert Romer 1969/1970.
Notes to Chapter 5 | 299
45. Academic Freedom and Tenure, 84.
46. Ibid., 83.
47. African World, July 23, 1972.
48. Rodney Stark, Protest + Police = Riot, in Black Power and Student Rebellion, ed. James McEvoy and Abraham Miller (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth,
1969), 172 173.
49. See William H. Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North
Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1981).
50. Sally Avery Bermanzohn, Through Survivors Eyes: From the Sixties to
the Greensboro Massacre (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003),
67, 75, 90.
51. Signe Waller, Love and Revolution: A Po liti cal Memoir: Peoples History
of the Greensboro Massacre, Its Setting and Aftermath (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefi eld, 2002), 49.
52. Amy Dominello, 1969 Shooting at N.C. A & T, Greensboro NewsRecord, http:// mm .news -record .com/ legacy/ indepth/ 06/ williegrimes/ grimes .html,
accessed June 5, 2010.
53. North Carolina A&T, Village Voice (New York), May 29, 1969.
54. Ibid.; Collegians Driven Out by Gunfi re, Hartford Courant, May 24,
1969.
55. North Carolina State Advisory Committee, Trouble in Greensboro: A
Report of an Open Meeting Concerning Disturbances at Dudley High School
and North Carolina A&T State University (N.p., Advisory Committee, March
1970), 6, 14, William Chafe Oral History Collection, Duke University, available
on- line at Civil Rights Greensboro, http:// library .uncg .edu/ dp/ crg/ item .aspx ?i
= 38, accessed June 16, 2010.
56. Bermanzohn, Through Survivors Eyes, 92.
57. 7 Shot, Guard Called In Ohio State U Riot, New York Times, April 30,
1970, 1; Jerry M. Flint, New Clash Erupts at Ohio State University, New
York Times, May 1, 1970, 1.
58. Atlanta University Position Paper on Racism and Violence in the United
States, May 25, 1970, IBW Papers, Box: Black Studies Programs, Folder: Atlanta University, Schomburg Center.
59. Black College Presidents Demand Action, Integrated Education 8
(July August 1970): 13 14.
60. J. Otis Cochran, quoted from a transcript of testimony, n.d., Robert
Finch Papers, in the Richard Nixon Papers, White House Central Files, Staff
Member and Offi ce Files, Box 27, National Archives, College Park, MD.
61. James E. Cheek, Black Institutions and Black Students, Integrated Education 8 (November December 1970): 16 20.
62. Dean Kotlowski, Nixons Civil Rights: Politics, Principle and Policy
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 153 154.
63. Fred Prejean, transcript of remarks, Smith- Brown Memorial Ser vice,
Southern University, Baton Rouge, LA, November 16, 1992, in authors
possession.
300 | Notes to Chapter 5
64. Louisiana Blacks Disrupt Colleges, New York Times, November 5,
1972, 35.
65. Fred Prejean, transcript of remarks, Smith- Brown Memorial Ser vice;
Fred Prejean, telephone interview by author, June 30, 2010.
66. Louisiana Governor Orders Eviction of Students, New York Times,
November 9, 1972; Confrontation in the South, New York Times, November
12, 1972.
67. Ex- Professor Calls Slaying of SU Blacks White Plot, Chicago Defender, November 28, 1972, 20.
68. Prejean, interview.
69. Martin Waldron, Louisiana Hints Error in Killings, New York Times,
November 18, 1972, 77.
70. Louisiana, Attorney General, Report of the Attorney Generals Special
Commission of Inquiry on the Southern University Tragedy of November 16,
1972 (Baton Rouge: Attorney General, State of Louisiana, 1973).
71. Martin Waldron, 2 Die in Clash with Police on Baton Rouge Campus,
New York Times, November 17, 1972, 97; and Paul Delaney, Southern Ousts
2 Professors, New York Times, November 20, 1972, 77; Louisiana, Attorney
General, Report of the Attorney Generals Special Commission of Inquiry.
72. Waldron, 2 Die in Clash With Police on Baton Rouge Campus.
73. Black Colleges in Crisis, Daily Challenge, January 29, 1973, Guinier
Papers, Box 47, Folder 8, Schomburg Center.
74. Ibid.
75. Fired Profs Strike at Netterville, Chicago Defender, December 7,
1972, 12.
76. Louisiana Hints Error in Killings; Southern Ousts 2 Professors;
Ex- Professor Calls Slaying of SU Blacks White Plot.
77. Scattered Demonstrations Score Killing of 2 on Southern Campus, New
York Times, November 18, 1972, 22.
78. DArmy Bailey, telephone interview by author, July 1, 2010; Paul Delaney,
Southern U. Students Restive as 2 Inquiries Open, New York Times, November
28, 1972, 39.
79. Preliminary Findings of the Black Peoples Committee of Inquiry, November 29, 1972, Fred Prejean personal collection, copy in authors possession,
emphasis in the original; Bailey, interview.
80. Louisiana, Attorney General, Report of the Attorney Generals Special
Commission of Inquiry.
81. National Education Association, press release, March 14, 1973, Guinier
Papers, Box 47, Folder 8, Schomburg Center.
82. An Avoidable Tragedy, editorial, Chicago Daily Defender, November
25, 1972.
83. Mrs. Robert W. Claytor to the President, December 8, 1972, Robert
Finch Papers, in the Richard Nixon Papers, White House Central Files, Subject
Files, Human Rights, Box 37, National Archives, College Park, MD.
84. The Chaplains of Atlanta University Center, Rev. Julia McClain Walker,
and others to President Nixon, Governor Edwards, November 22, 1972, Robert
Notes to Chapter 5 | 301
Finch Papers, in the Richard Nixon Papers, White House Central Files, Subject
Files, Human Rights, Box 37, National Archives, College Park, MD.
85. Several commentators in this period also referred to student deaths at
Texas Southern, where a 1967 police assault had wounded students and killed
a police offi cer.
86. The Greater Outrage, Black Collegian, September October 1973.
87. Fred Prejean, transcript of remarks, Smith- Brown Memorial Ser vice;
Prejean, interview; Roy Reed, Two Dead It Was a Predictable Tragedy, New
York Times, November 19, 1972, E4.
88. Prejean, interview.
89. E. C. Harrison, Student Unrest on the Black College Campus, Journal
of Negro Education 41, no. 2 (Spring 1972): 114.
90. Ibid., 113.
Chapter 6. The Counterrevolution on Campus
1. St. Clair Drake, The Black Studies Movement and the Stanford Response:
Refl ections, September 1974, Drake Papers, Box 93, Stanford BSU Folder,
Schomburg Center.
2. Eugene Genovese, Black Studies: Trouble Ahead, in New Perspectives
on Black Studies, ed. John Blassingame (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1971), 107.
3. See especially Stephen G. Hall, A Faithful Account of the Race: African
American Historical Writing in Nineteenth Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).
4. Manning Marable, Beyond Black and White: Transforming African American Politics (New York: Verso, 1995), 115.
5. Larry Crouchett, The Black Perspective: From A Blacks Perspective,
October 4, 1969, Drake Papers, Box 50, Cedric X Folder, Schomburg Center.
6. Vincent Harding, Black Students and the Impossible Revolution, Ebony,
August 1969, 144.
7. Cedric C. Clark, Black Studies and the Study of Black People, October
4, 1969, pp. 1, 4, Drake Papers, Box 50, Cedric X Folder, Schomburg Center.
8. Basil Matthews, Philosophical Basis of Black Studies, unpublished paper,
n.d., Guinier Papers, Box 5, Folder 9, Schomburg Center.
9. Black Studies versus White Studies: 1969 a Year of Profound Identity
Crisis for American Education, 207- page manuscript, c. 1969, in IBW Papers,
Box: Black Studies: conference papers and essays, Aspen conference, Schomburg Center (sadly, the author of this extraordinary document is unknown. I
hypothesize that it is the late Armstead Robinson, but I am unable to confi rm
this); Preston Wilcox, The Black University: A Movement or an Institution,
IBW Papers, Black Studies Box, Aspen Binder 3, Schomburg Center; Lerone
Bennett, quoted in transcript of Black Studies Directors Seminar: Panel Presen ta tions, 7, 8, 9, November 1969, p. 197, Institute of the Black World, Atlanta,
Georgia, IBW Papers, Box: Black Studies Directors Seminar, Schomburg Center.
10. Ewart Guinier, interview by Norman Scott, July 26, 1972, transcript,
Guinier Papers, Box 18, Folder 1, Schomburg Center.
302 | Notes to Chapter 6
11. Vincent Harding, Beyond Chaos: Black History and the Search for a
New Land (1970), pamphlet, IBW Papers, Black Studies Box, Aspen Binder 3,
Schomburg Center.
12. Black Studies versus White Studies: 1969.
13. Robinson and Billingsley, quoted in transcript of Black Studies Directors Seminar.
14. Armstead Robinson, Report on the Condition of Black Studies (presented at the Black Studies Directors Seminar: Panel Pre sen ta tions, November 7 9, 1969, Institute of the Black World, Atlanta, Georgia), Drake Papers,
Box 50, Schomburg Center.
15. Joanna Schneider and Robert Zangrando, Black History in the College
Curriculum, Rocky Mountain Social Science Journal (1969), in IBW Papers,
Binder vol. 3, Black Studies Box, Schomburg Center.
16. Darwin T. Turner, A Black Teachers Thoughts on Black Studies, transcript of speech at Black Studies Directors Conference, July 1970, Aspen, CO,
IBW Papers, Binder vol. 3, Black Studies Seminar, Aspen Box, Schomburg
Center.
17. Benjamin Quarles, History and Education (speech to the Black Academy of Arts and Letters, September 19, 1970), IBW Papers, Box 9, Harding
Files, Schomburg Center.
18. Harvard University News Offi ce, Afro- American and African Studies,
press release, January 22, 1969, Guinier Papers, Box 22, Folder 6, Schomburg
Center.
19. Michael Thelwell, Black Studies: A Po liti cal Perspective, Massachusetts
Review (1970).
20. Lawrence E. Eichel, Kenneth W. Jost, Robert D. Luskin, and Richard M.
Neustadt, The Harvard Strike (New York: Houghton Miffl in, 1970).
21. Minutes, Special Meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard
University, April 17, 1969, Guinier Papers, Box 22, Folder 6; Copy of the resolution, April 22, 1969, Guinier Papers, Box 22, Folder 6, Schomburg Center.
22. Robert Reinhold, Key Aide Scores Vote at Harvard, New York Times,
April 24, 1969, www .proquest .com .turing .library .northwestern .edu/ , accessed
July 23, 2006.
23. Henry Rosovsky, quoted in Minutes, Special Meeting of the Faculty of
Arts and Sciences, Harvard University.
24. Wesley Profi t, telephone interview by author, July 28, 2005. For example, En glish professor Alan Heimart, who spoke in favor of the resolution and
was sympathetic to the students, later told a graduate student that a student
had come to the meeting with a knife. Arnold Rampersad, conversation with
author, May, 13, 2005, Stanford, California.
25. A student member of the committee, Myles Link, remembers that the
students were very engaged in the pro cess but were not of one mind. He recalls that there was a lot of tension in the meetings, in part because faculty
were not used to working with students. Myles Link, telephone interview by
author, November 15, 2010. Based on minutes of standing committee meetings,
there was a simultaneous commitment to rigor, as well as fl exibility and innovation, in the establishment of the department. Generally, the students supported
Notes to Chapter 6 | 303
more urgency and open- mindedness in hiring, while faculty hewed to timehonored criteria. For example, in one meeting, a student said, It was important
to get somebody on board soon because we are dealing with a limited quantity,
while a professor saw it as a situation in which the supply is expanding and
so would consider it unfortunate to make a premature appointment. Standing
committee meeting minutes, May 19, 1969, Myles Link personal collection,
copy in authors possession.
26. Martin Kilson, Refl ections on Structure and Content in Black Studies,
Journal of Black Studies (March 1973): 300, emphasis in the original.
27. Harvard Crimson, October 22, 1969; William Trombley, Harvard
Black Studies Face Slow Start, Los Angeles Times, September 14, 1969, Guinier
Papers, Box 22, Folder 9, Schomburg Center.
28. Fred M. Hechinger, Students to Gain a Voice in U.S. Education Policy,
New York Times, June 1, 1969, www .proquest .com .turing .library .northwestern
.edu/ , accessed May, 12, 2006.
29. Tobe Johnson, Black Studies: Their Origin, Present State, and Prospects,
(1969): 315 (journal title unclear), IBW Papers, Black Studies Box, Aspen Conference Binder, vol. 3, Schomburg Center.
30. Carlos A. Brossard, Classifying Black Studies Programs, Journal of
Negro Education 53, no. 3 (Summer 1984): 281.
31. Carlene Young, The Struggle and Dream of Black Studies, Journal of
Negro Education, 53, no. 3 (Summer 1984): 370.
32. Johnson, Black Studies, 315.
33. Academy for Educational Development, Black Studies: How It Works
at Ten Universities (New York: Academy for Educational Development,
1971).
34. Proposal for an Afro- American Institute, March 3, 1969, IBW Papers,
Box 5, Wesleyan Folder, Schomburg Center.
35. James Turner, An Approach to Black Studies: Concept and Plan of the
Africana Studies and Research Center, n.d., Black Economic Research Center
Papers (hereafter BERC Papers), Box 22, Folder 4, Schomburg Center.
36. John Blassingame, Black Studies: An Intellectual Crisis, The Black Studies Debate, ed. James M. Rosser and Jacob U. Gordon (Lawrence: University of
Kansas, Division of Continuing Education, 1974), 72 73; Eric Foner, conversation with author, November 2010.
37. Blassingame, Black Studies, 74.
38. William Seraille, conversation with author, New York City, 2005;
Blassingame, Black Studies, 74.
39. Mary Jane Hewitt, interview by Elston L. Carr, 1997 1999, transcript,
74, UCLA Oral History Project, Center for African American Studies Library,
UCLA.
40. St. Clair Drake, interview by Robert Martin, July 28, 1969, transcript,
69, Bunche Project; Black Studies Aim to Change Things, New York Times,
May 15, 1969.
41. Charles Hamilton, They Demand Relevance: Black Student Protest,
(unpublished manuscript, c. 1971), 24, in authors possession.
304 | Notes to Chapter 6
42. Pat Ryan, Black Academy Review, Spring 1970, IBW Papers, Binder
vol. 3, Schomburg Center.
43. Ford Foundation, A Survey of Black American Doctorates (New York:
Ford Foundation, 1970), in Institute of African- American Affairs Papers (hereafter IAAA Papers), Box 16, University Archives, New York University.
44. Barbara Campbell, Why Should We Celebrate the 4th of July? New
York Times, March 23, 1969; Vincent Harding, New Creation or Familiar
Death: An Open Letter to Black Students in the North, reprint from Negro
Digest, March 1969, Drake Papers, Box 49, Folder 27, Schomburg Center.
45. James Turner, Cornell: A Case Study, in bound transcript Black Studies Directors Seminar, November 7 9, 1969, Atlanta, IBW Papers, Black Studies
Directors Seminar Box, Schomburg Center.
46. John Bracey, interview by author, New York, July 6, 2005.
47. Turner, Cornell.
48. Black Studies Aim to Change Things, New York Times, May 15, 1969.
49. Ibid.
50. Hamilton, conversation with author, March 2008, Chicago; Sterling
Stuckey, interview by author, Chicago, June 19, 2008; Jim Pitts, telephone conversation with author, July 20, 2008.
51. Robert Singleton, interview by Elston L. Carr, Oral History Project,
UCLA, 1999, Library, Center for African American History, UCLA.
52. Donald B. Easum, The Call for Black Studies, Department of State,
Foreign Ser vice Institute, Summer Seminar, May 1969, IBW Papers, Aspen
material, Binder vol. 3, Schomburg Center.
53. Mark D. Naison, A White Boy in African- American Studies, Chronicle
of Higher Education, May 3, 2002.
54. Clayborne Carson, The Critical Path: A Scholar in Struggle, Souls 4,
no. 2 (Spring 2002): 33 34.
55. Blassingame, Black Studies, 73; Stuckey, interview. Armstead Robinsons portrayal of Black studies instructors was often biting: they constituted a
new category of academic pimps and hustlers, both black and white. Brothers
are trucking Black studies, he wrote, because it brought a rapid scaling up of
personal status, academic rank and professional income. See Robinson, Report on the Condition of Black Studies.
56. Thelwell, Black Studies.
57. Vincent Harding, The Relationship of Black Studies to Black Higher
Education, transcript of speech at Black Studies Directors Conference, July
1970, Aspen, CO, IBW Papers, Conferences Box, Aspen Folder, Schomburg
Center.
58. Melvin Drimmer, Teaching Black History in America: What Are the
Problems? Journal of Negro Education (1968), compiled in IBW Papers, binder
vol. 2, Black Studies Seminar, Aspen Box, Schomburg Center.
59. Turner, A Black Teachers Thoughts on Black Studies.
60. Hollis Lynch, Ewart Guinier, memorial statement, n.d., Guinier Papers,
Box 2, Folder 7, Schomburg Center.
61. Guinier, interview.
Notes to Chapter 6 | 305
62. Kilson, Refl ections on Structure and Content in Black Studies, 303.
This essay originated as a speech given in 1971.
63. Afro- Am Isolation Imminent Unless Department Integrates, Harvard
In de pen dent, January 6 12, 1972, Guinier Papers, Box 23, Folder 5, Schomburg Center.
64. Ronald Walters to Walter Leonard, December 21, 1971, BERC Papers,
Box 17, Folder 11, Schomburg Center, emphasis in the original.
65. Profi t, telephone interview; Department of Afro- American Studies, Harvard University, The First Three Years, October 16, 1972, Guinier Papers,
Box 23, Folder 11, Schomburg Center.
66. Harvard University, Report of the Committee to Review the Department
of Afro- American Studies (Cambridge, MA, October 1972), bulletin, copy in
authors possession.
67. A Statement of the Afro- American Studies Department on Tenure and
the Ephraim Isaac Case, October 29, 1975, in National Council of Black Studies Papers, Box 1, Folder 10, Schomburg Center; Profi t, telephone interview.
68. Martin Kilson, Blacks at Harvard: Solutions and Prospects, Harvard Bulletin, June 1973, 31, Guinier Papers, Box 36, Folder 1, Schomburg
Center.
69. Martin Kilson, Memorandum on Situation of Negro Students at Harvard College, January 10, 1973, Guinier Papers, Box 36, Folder 2, Schomburg
Center, emphasis in the original.
70. Derrick Bell, Why Does Kilson Do It? Harvard Bulletin, June 1973,
Guinier Papers, Box 36, Folder 4, Schomburg Center.
71. Kilson, Blacks at Harvard; and Admissions: Some Questions of Policy, Harvard Bulletin, June 1973.
72. Eddie Williams Jr., Professor Kilsons Contentions: A Reply, Harvard
Bulletin, June 1973.
73. Bell, Why Does Kilson Do It?
74. Derrick Bell, letter to Harvard Crimson, n.d., Guinier Papers, Box 45,
Folder 4, Schomburg Center.
75. Ewart Guinier, Draft Report on 1973 1974 Academic Year, Guinier
Papers, Box 24, Folder 2, Schomburg Center.
76. Harvard Crimson, October 2, 1974, Guinier Papers, Box 33, Folder 8,
Schomburg Center; Peter Kihss, Black Studies Feud Erupts at Harvard, New
York Times, March 10, 1975, 26.
77. Black Studies at Harvard, The Word, January 1976, Guinier Papers, Box
45, Folder 4, Schomburg Center.
78. Years later, Kilson blamed Bok and Rosovsky for not supporting the
Department of Afro- American Studies. The Harvard administration under
President Derek Bok in the 1970 90 era was as fi nancially indifferent as it
could possibly be to the faculty development needs of the department without appearing fully opposed to its very existence. Moreover, he later learned
from department chair Nathan Huggins that Rosovsky exerted little pressure
with the Bok administration on behalf of faculty development for Afro- American
studies. Martin Kilson, Afro- American Studies at Harvard, in A Companion
306 | Notes to Chapter 6
to African American Studies, ed. Lewis R. Gordon and Jane Anna Gordon
(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 67.
79. Joann Lublin, Black Studies Found er, Wall Street Journal, April 18,
1974, Vertical fi le, Black Studies Folder, University Archive, Wayne State University, Detroit; B. D. Colen, Once Pop u lar Black Studies, Washington Post, October 2, 1973, IAAA Papers, Box 18, University Archives, New York University.
80. Robert L. Allen, Politics of the Attack on Black Studies, Black Scholar
6 (September 1974): 5.
81. The Future of Black Studies in American Higher Education, New York
University Report, February 12, 1975, IAAA Papers, Box 18, University Archives,
New York University.
82. James McGinnis, Towards a New Beginning: Crisis and Contradiction
in Black Studies, Black World, March 1973.
83. Young, The Struggle and Dream of Black Studies, 370.
84. Farah Jasmine Griffi n, introduction [2006] to Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States; A 25th Anniversary Retrospective
of Ford Foundation Grant Making, 1982 2007 (New York: Ford Foundation,
2007), xiii.
85. Griffi n, introduction, xiv.
86. John Scanlon, Seminar on Afro- American Studies, memorandum, August 5, 1970, Ford Foundation Papers, Grant 70 188, reel 1657, Ford Foundation, New York.
87. Vincent Harding to Edgar Toppin, July 1, 1970, Ford Foundation Papers,
Grant 70 188, reel 1657.
88. Some Concerns of the Black Caucus at the Aspen Black Studies Seminar, Ford Foundation Papers, Grant 70 188, reel 1657, Ford Foundation, New
York; Comments by Dr. Andrew Billingsley, Black Studies Seminar, July 19
25, 1970, Ford Foundation Papers, Grant 70 188, reel 1657.
89. Remarks by James W. Armsey to the Seminar, Black Studies Seminar,
July 19 25, 1970, Ford Foundation Papers, Grant 70 188, reel 1657.
90. Scanlon, Seminar on Afro- American Studies.
91. Roscoe Brown reported that his department had to make do with 20 25
percent less money after the expiration of the Ford grant. NYU Report, February 12, 1975, IAAA Papers, Box 18, University Archives, New York University.
92. Farah Jasmine Griffi n, An Introduction to the Huggins Report, Inclusive Scholarship, 7 8. Scholars differ on the infl uence of the Ford Foundation
on the development of Black studies. Noliwe Rooks argues that their preference
for programs rather than departments had a decisive impact, while Fabio Rojas
notes the relatively small early fi nancial involvement of Ford, fi nding this insuffi cient to exert much long- range infl uence. See Rooks, White Money/Black
Power: The Surprising History of African American Studies (Boston: Beacon
Press, 2006); and Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical
Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).
93. St. Clair Drake, quoted in Black Is . . . for Credit, Newsweek, October
20, 1969.
Notes to Chapter 6 | 307
94. Charles Hamilton, They Demand Relevance: Black Student Protest,
(unpublished manuscript, 1968 1969), 104, in authors possession.
95. R. Wilson, Perspectives in Black Studies (speech to Second Annual
Ethnic Conference, Wayne State University, May 20, 1971), vertical fi le, Center
for Black Studies Folder, University Archives, Wayne State University, Detroit,
emphasis in the original.
96. Roscoe Brown, Black Studies, a Year Later (unpublished manuscript,
Fall 1970), IAAA Papers, Box 18, University Archives, New York University.
97. Carlos Brossard, Classifying Black Studies Programs, Journal of Negro
Education 53, no. 3 (Summer 1984): 286; Black Journals Refl ect Shift from
Racialism, New York Times, April 27, 1975.
98. Abdul Alkalimat, interview by author, Urbana, IL, March 31, 2006.
99. Rhett Jones, Dreams, Nightmares and Realities: Afro- American Studies
at Brown University, 1969 1986, in A Companion to African American Studies, ed. Jane Gordon and Lewis Gordon (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 41.
100. Center for Black Studies, University of Santa Barbara, Educational Reform and Revolutionary Struggle: The Continuing Fight for Black Studies,
1977, in Drake Papers, Box 50, Schomburg Center.
101. Armstead Robinson, Black Studies and Black Students, Black Studies
Seminar, Aspen, July 1970, Ford Foundation Papers, Grant 70 188, reel 1657,
Ford Foundation, New York.
102. Black Studies Gaining Shaky Niche on Campus, Los Angeles Times,
May 7, 1972.
103. Institute of the Black World, Notes on the Struggle for Black Higher
Education, working or position paper, June 1971, IBW Papers, Black Agenda
Box, Schomburg Center.
104. Jack L. Daniel, Black Studies at the Crossroads: What Must Be Done
and Why (speech delivered at the American Association of Behavioral and Social Studies Annual Meeting, February 1975), in IAAA Papers, Box 18, University Archives, New York University.
105. Nick Aaron Ford, Black Studies: Threat or Challenge? (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1973).
106. Alan King Colon, A Critical Review of Black Studies Programs (PhD
diss., Stanford University, 1980), 112.
107. Carlos Brossard, Classifying Black Studies Programs, Journal of Negro Education 53, no. 3 (Summer 1984): 280.
108. Joseph J. Russell, Strides toward Or ga ni za tion, n.d., National Council of Black Studies Papers, Box 1, Folder 2, Schomburg Center; Black Studies
Accreditation Council Formed, press release, January 4, 1973, Guinier Papers,
Box 20, Folder 1, Schomburg Center; Program, National Council for Black
Studies, First Annual Convention, February 16 19, 1977, Columbus Ohio,
BERC Papers, Box 17, Folder 11, Schomburg Center; Young, The Struggle and
Dream of Black Studies, 372.
109. See James E. Conyers, The Association of Black Sociologists: A Descriptive Account from an Insider, American Sociologist 23, no. 1 (Spring
1992): 49 55; and the Web site of the Association of Black Anthropologists,
www .aaanet .org/ sections/ aba/ htdocs/ About2 .html, accessed July 28, 2011.
308 | Notes to Chapter 6
Chapter 7. The Black Revolution Off- Campus
1. Jack Gould, TV: WCBS Introduces Promising Black Heritage, New
York Times, January 7, 1969.
2. Audrey Gibson, WCBS- TV, to Vincent Harding, January 17, 1969; Winston Duckett to James Hester, January 21, 1969; Archie Moore to Vincent Harding, June 12, 1969; John Rosenthal to Vincent Harding, March 25, 1969; David
Hauser, General Manager, WTIC, to Dear Sir, January 14, 1969, all in IBW
Papers, Vincent Harding material, Box 7, Schomburg Center.
3. Vincent Harding, telephone interview by author, May 12, 2010.
4. See Devorah Heitner, Black Power TV: A Cultural History of Black Public Affairs Tele vi sion (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2007).
5. Vincent Harding et al., Statement of the Black Members of the Advisory
Committee of Black Heritage, January 2, 1969; Memorandum of Understanding, January 8, 1969, both in IBW Papers, Vincent Harding material, Box
7, Schomburg Center.
6. Black Heritage Series Feature CBS WBBM, Chicago Daily Defender,
June 10, 1969, www .proquest .com .turing .library .northwestern .edu/ , accessed
May 5, 2010.
7. The series is stored at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
8. See Penny M. Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and
Anticolonialism, 1935 1957 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997).
9. Roy Wilkins, Not the Real Black Experience, New York Times, June 15,
1969, www .proquest .com .turing .library .northwestern .edu/ , accessed October
12, 2007.
10. John Henrik Clarke, We See Ourselves in New Ways, letter to the editor,
New York Times, June 15, 1969, www .proquest .com .turing .library .northwest
ern .edu/ , accessed October 12, 2007.
11. Alan King Colon, A Critical Review of Black Studies Programs (PhD
diss., Stanford University, 1980).
12. Twenty- First Century Fund, press release, March 27, 1969, and newsletter, March 1969, IBW Papers, Vincent Harding material, Box 9, Schomburg
Center.
13. C. Eric Lincoln, The Excellence of Soul, March 27, 1969, IBW Papers,
Vincent Harding material, Box 9, Schomburg Center.
14. BAAL Confi dential newsletter, May 29, 1970, IBW Papers, Vincent
Harding material, Box 9, Schomburg Center.
15. BAAL press release, September 4, 1970; First Annual Meeting of the
Black Academy of Arts and Letters, n.d., IBW Papers, Vincent Harding material, Box 9, Schomburg Center.
16. Ask Visa for Mrs. DuBois, New York Amsterdam News, May 9, 1970,
43; BAAL press release.
17. First Annual Meeting of the Black Academy of Arts and Letters.
18. Simon Anekwe, Academy Honors Black Arts, New York Amsterdam
News, September 25, 1971, A!.
19. Jack Slater, Learning Is an All- Black Thing, Ebony, September 1971, 89.
Notes to Chapter 7 | 309
20. Robert Hoover, interview by author, Palo Alto, CA, August 11, 2005.
21. Robert Hoover, Meeting Community Needs, in The Minority Student
on Campus, ed. Robert A. Altman and Patricia O. Snyder (Berkeley, CA: Center
for Research and Development, 1970), 194.
22. Hoover, interview.
23. John Egerton, Success Comes to Nairobi College, Change 4, no. 4
(May 1972): 26, www .jstor .org/ pss/ 40161453, accessed May 4, 2010.
24. Hoover, interview.
25. Fall 1970 Course Offerings, IBW Papers, Box: Black Studies Programs,
Folder: Nairobi College, Schomburg Center.
26. Hoover, Meeting Community Needs, 195.
27. Egerton, Success Comes to Nairobi College, 26.
28. Hoover, interview.
29. Ibid.
30. Egerton, Success Comes to Nairobi College, 26.
31. Hoover, interview.
32. Hoover, Meeting Community Needs, 195.
33. Egerton, Success Comes to Nairobi College, 26.
34. Hoover, interview.
35. To Set Up an In de pen dent Black School, Imani, August September
1971, IAAA Papers, Box 16, University Archives, New York University.
36. Egerton, Success Comes to Nairobi College, 27.
37. Abdul Alkalimat, interview by author, Urbana, IL, March 31, 2006.
38. Ibid.
39. Institute of the Black World: Basic Assumptions, May 1969, IBW
Papers, Box: Black Studies Programs, Folder: An Approach to Black Studies,
Schomburg Center.
40. Harding, telephone interview; Lerone Bennett, The Quest for Blackness, presented at the Black Studies Directors Seminar: Panel Pre sen ta tions,
7, 8, 9, November 1969, Institute of the Black World, Atlanta, Georgia, IBW
Papers, Box: Black Studies Directors Seminar, Schomburg Center.
41. Strickland, Robinson, and Matthews, quoted from Black Studies Directors Seminar: Panel Pre sen ta tions, 7, 8, 9 November 1969, Institute of the
Black World, Atlanta, Georgia, IBW Papers, Box: Black Studies Directors Seminar, Schomburg Center. Strickland referred to Arthur Jenson, who argued the
ge ne tic inferiority of Black people; William Styron, the white author of The
Confessions of Nat Turner, a novel about the leader of a slave uprising whose
portrait many Black nationalists disliked; and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, author
of The Negro Family: A Case for National Action, which focused on the rising
number of female- headed families. His inclusion on this list is ironic since many
Black nationalists shared his concern over the supposedly skewed gender roles
in Black America.
42. Harding, telephone interview.
43. Ford Foundation, press release, December 29, 1969, IBW Papers, Vincent Harding Material, Box 9, Schomburg Center.
44. Vincent Harding, telephone interview.
45. Ibid.
310 | Notes to Chapter 7
46. Special Agent in Charge, Atlanta, to the Director, July 23, 1970, IBW
Papers, Box: FBI File, Schomburg Center.
47. Council Taylor to John Henrik Clarke, June 2, 1969, John Henrik
Clarke Papers, Box 35, Folder 31, Schomburg Center.
48. Stephen Ward, Scholarship in the Context of Struggle: Activist Intellectuals, the Institute of the Black World (IBW), and the Contours of Black Power
Radicalism, Black Scholar 31 (2001): 50.
49. Special Agent in Charge, Atlanta, to the Director, February 12, 1970,
IBW Papers, Box: FBI File, Schomburg Center.
50. Report of the Staff of the Institute of the Black World, to Executive
Committee of the Governing Council, IBW, May 11, 1970; and Vincent Harding,
Towards a Black Agenda, May 1, 1970, both in Drake Papers, Box 49, Folder
28, Schomburg Center.
51. Manning Marable, Blackwater: Historical Studies in Race, Class Consciousness and Revolution (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1993), 102.
52. Yvette Klein, Prof. Harding Speaks in King Series, Kingsman, December
12, 1969, microfi lm, Archives and Special Collections, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, New York.
53. FBI Atlanta Offi ce, Report on IBW April 4, 1972 to April 7, 1972, IBW
Papers, Box: FBI File, Schomburg Center.
54. Howard Dodson to author, June 25, 2005, New York City.
55. See material in IBW Papers, Strickland Material, Box 11, Schomburg
Center.
56. Vincent Harding to Dear Friends, March 28, 1975, John Henrik
Clarke Papers, Box 35, Folder 31, Schomburg Center.
57. IBW, press release, April 18, 1975, IBW Papers, Box: IBW under Attack,
Schomburg Center.
58. Howard Dodson to U.S. Attorney General Edward Levi, August 8, 1975,
IBW Papers, Box: FBI File, Schomburg Center.
59. Black Research Group Target of Threats and Theft, Muhammad Speaks,
April 25, 1975, IBW Papers, Box: IBW under Attack, Schomburg Center.
60. Marable, Blackwater, 104 105.
61. Sally Avery Bermanzohn, Through Survivors Eyes: From the Sixties to the
Greensboro Massacre (Vanderbilt, TN: Nashville University Press, 2003), 100.
62. Mark Smith, interview by author, Oakland, CA, August 10, 2005.
63. Bermanzohn, Through Survivors Eyes, 105.
64. Smith, interview.
65. sobu- obu, The Role of the Black Student through Revolution, 1970,
Guinier Papers, Box 45, Folder 5, Schomburg Center, emphasis in the original.
obu was a chapter at Harvard.
66. Critique of a Colonizing Program, n.d., Guinier Papers, Box 45, Folder
5, Schomburg Center.
67. SOBU Statement on the Tenth Year Commemoration of the Sharpeville
Massacre, March 21, 1970, Guinier Papers, Box 45, Folder 5, Schomburg
Center.
68. Students Role in the Struggle, newspaper clipping, circa May 1971,
Guinier Papers, Box 45, Folder 5, Schomburg Center.
Notes to Chapter 7 | 311
69. Bermanzohn, Through Survivors Eyes, 121.
70. Signe Waller, Love and Revolution: A Po liti cal Memoir (Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefi eld, 2002), 54 55.
71. Marable, Blackwater, 109. Marable contends as well that many nationalists moved in the opposite direction, including Chicagos Haki Madhubuti,
who, he claims, redoubled his suspicion that Black leftists were white- inspired
disruptors of the movement, and that all whites were racists.
72. Bermanzohn, Through Survivors Eyes, 122.
73. Smith, interview.
74. Bermanzohn, Through Survivors Eyes, 111.
75. Nelson Johnson, interview by C. Otto Scharmer, June 3, 2009, Transforming Capitalism, http:// tc .presencing .com/ posts/ nelson -johnson -interview,
accessed June 9, 2010.
76. Bermanzohn, Through Survivors Eyes, 132.
77. See Waller, Love and Revolution; Bermanzohn, Through Survivors Eyes.
78. Johnson, interview.
Chapter 8. What Happened to Black Studies?
1. Alison Schneider, Black Studies 101: Introductory Courses Refl ect a Field
Still Defi ning Itself, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 19, 2000.
2. Ibid.
3. Arthur Lewin, Towards a Grand Theory of Black Studies: An Attempt to
Discern the Dynamics and the Direction of the Discipline, Western Journal of
Black Studies 25, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 76.
4. Chanel Lee, Black to the Future: Where Does African American Studies
Go From Here? Village Voice, Educational Supplement, Fall 2005.
5. Gerald A. McWorter, Black Studies Program, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, A Proposal, August 1975, CAS Deans Rec ords, Box 36, Folder
13, University Archive, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.
6. Abdul Alkalimat and Associates, Introduction to Afro- American Studies
(Chicago: Twenty First Century Books and Publications, 1984 2009), www .
eblackstudies .org; Maulana Karenga, Introduction to Black Studies (Los Angeles:
University of Sankore Press, 1982); Alan King Colon, A Critical Review of
Black Studies Programs (PhD diss., Stanford, 1980), 120.
7. Mary Christine Philip, Of Black Studies: Pondering Strategies for the
Future, Black Issues in Higher Education, December 29, 1994.
8. See for example the diverse work of John Henrik Clarke, Chancellor
Williams, J. A. Rogers, W. E. B. Du Bois, Frank Snowden, and William Leo
Hansberry.
9. See for example Stephen G. Hall, A Faithful Account of the Race: African
American Historical Writing in Nineteenth Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); and Maghan Keita, Race and the Writing of History: Riddling the Sphinx (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
10. Molefi Asante, A Discourse on Black Studies: Liberating the Study
of African People in the Western Academy, Journal of Black Studies, 36, no. 5
(May 2006): 646 662.
312 | Notes to Chapter 8
11. Molefi Asante, The Ideological Signifi cance of Afrocentricity in Intercultural Communication, Journal of Black Studies 14, no. 1 (September 1983):
7, www .jstor .org/ stable/ 2784027 .
12. Carr, quoted from 40th Anniversary of African American Studies in
Academia, The Tavis Smiley Show, original air date, September 18, 2009, Public Radio International, http:// thetavissmileyshow .com/ 100108 _index .html .
13. Maulana Karenga, Black Studies: A Critical Reassessment, Race and
Reason 4 (1997 1998): 41.
14. Mary- Christine Phillip, Of Black Studies: Pondering Strategies for the
Future, Black Issues in Higher Education, December 29, 1994, 15; Ronald
Roach, Despite Struggles, Pioneering Black Studies Department Presses Forward, Diverse Issues in Higher Education, December 10, 2009, http:// diverse
education .com/ article/ 13259/ .
15. Roach, Despite Struggles Pioneering Black Studies Department Presses
Forward.
16. Rose, quoted from 40th Anniversary of African American Studies in
Academia, The Tavis Smiley Show.
17. Melba Joyce Boyd, Afrocentrics, Afro- Elitists and Afro- Eccentrics:
The Polarization of Black Studies since the Student Struggles of the Sixties, in
Dispatches from the Ivory Tower, ed. Manning Marable (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 207.
18. Joyce A. Joyce, Black Studies as Human Studies (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 2005), 11, 9.
19. Erskine Peters, Afrocentricity: Problems of Method and Nomenclature,
The African American Studies Reader, ed. Nathaniel Norment Jr. (Durham, NC:
Carolina Academic Press, 2001), 567, 568.
20. Barbara Ransby, Afrocentrism and Cultural Nationalism, in Dispatches
from the Ivory Tower, ed. Manning Marable (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2000), 219.
21. Perry A. Hall, Beyond Afrocentrism: Alternatives for African American
Studies, Africana Studies: Philosophical Perspectives and Theoretical Paradigms, ed. Dolores P. Aldridge and E. Lincoln James (Pullman: Washington State
University Press, 2007), 236.
22. Renewing the Speeches of Those Who Heard: Intergenerational Exchanges, Good Speech, and Intellectual Warfare for the African Mind, Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations, Program, March 4 6, 2010,
Columbia, SC. See http:// ascac .org/ blog/ conferences -events/for subsequent
programs and events; accessed December 15, 2011.
23. Rhett Jones, Black Studies Failures and First Negroes, Black Issues in
Higher Education, October 20, 1994, 16.
24. Rhett Jones, The Lasting Contributions of African American Studies,
Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 6 (Winter 1994 1995): 92.
25. Alison Schneider, Black Studies 101: Introductory Courses Refl ect a
Field Still Defi ning Itself, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 19, 2000.
26. Floyd V. Hayes, Preface to Instructors, in Turbulent Voyage: Readings
in African American Studies, ed. Hayes (San Diego: Collegiate Press, 2000),
xxxvi.
Notes to Chapter 8 | 313
27. Angela Davis, speech at the Center for African American Studies, UCLA,
March 24, 1995, printed in CAAS Report, vol. 16 (November 1, 2000), CAAS:
25th anniversary Folder, ephemera, University Archives, University of California, Los Angeles.
28. A global focus had long characterized Black history writing in the United
States. See Robin Kelleys But a Local Phase of a World Problem: Black Historys Global Vision, 1883 1950, Journal of American History 86, no. 3 (December 1999): 3.
29. St. Clair Drake, Black Studies and Global Perspectives: An Essay,
Journal of Negro Education, 53, no. 3 (Summer 1984): 231, emphasis in the
original.
30. Charlotte Morgan- Cato, A Retrospective View, in A Companion to
African American Studies, ed. Lewis R. Gordon and Jane Anna Gordon (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 56.
31. Drake, Black Studies and Global Perspectives, 231.
32. For the African Liberation Support Committee and ideological confl icts
within the Black liberation movement, see Ronald Walters, Pan- Africanism in
the African Diaspora: An Analysis of Modern Afrocentric Po liti cal Movements
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997); and Fanon Che- Wilkins, In the
Belly of the Beast: Black Power, Anti- imperialism, and the African Liberation
Support Committee, 1968 1975 (PhD diss., New York University, 2001);
Morgan- Cato, A Retrospective View, 56.
33. See Kelley, But a Local Phase of a World Problem.
34. See especially Penny M. Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1935 1957 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1997).
35. Robert L. Harris, The Intellectual and Institutional Development of
Africana Studies, in Three Essays: Black Studies in the United States (New
York: Ford Foundation, 1990), reprinted in Inclusive Scholarship: Developing
Black Studies in the United States; A 25th Anniversary Retrospective of Ford
Foundation Grant Making, 1982 2007 (New York: Ford Foundation, 2007),
95, 94.
36. Sylvester Whittaker, Role of and Relationship between African, Ca ribbe an, and Afro- American Studies, transcript, July 22, 1970, Black Studies
Seminar, Aspen, Ford Foundation Papers, Grant 70 188, reel 1657.
37. Ibid.
38. St. Clair Drake, Roo se velt University, IBW Papers, Box 3, Black Studies Survey Folder, Schomburg Center.
39. Whittaker, Role of and Relationship between African, Ca rib be an, and
Afro- American Studies.
40. One exception was the creation of Africana studies at Cornell, which
included the study of Africa and the diaspora.
41. Colon, A Critical Review of Black Studies Programs, 121, 96.
42. Rhett Jones, Dreams, Nightmares and Realities: Afro- American Studies
at Brown University, 1969 1986, in A Companion to African American Studies, ed. Lewis R. Gordon and Jane Anna Gordon (Malden, MA: Blackwell,
2006), 48.
314 | Notes to Chapter 8
43. St. Clair Drake, What Happened to Black Studies? New York University Education Quarterly 3 (Spring 1979).
44. Roscoe Brown, Background Information on the IAAA, October 1969,
IAAA Papers, Box 15, University Archives, New York University.
45. James Tobin, When Doors Were Chained on State Street, LSA Magazine, Fall 2010, 7.
46. Background: The African Heritage Studies Association, Black World
(July 1970): 21.
47. John Henrik Clarke, The African Heritage Studies Association: Some
Notes on the Confl ict with the African Studies Association and the Fight to
Reclaim African History, Issue: A Quarterly Journal of Africanist Opinion 6
(Fall 1976): 8, 11.
48. African Heritage Association, Annual Conference, New York, April
20 23, 1978, Preliminary Program, BERC Papers, Box 13, Folder 9, Schomburg
Center.
49. Jones, Black Studies Failures and First Negroes, 16.
50. Toni Cade Bambara and Claudia Tate, eds., Black Women Writers at
Work (New York: Continuum, 1983), 37.
51. For scholarship along these lines, see Stephen Ward, Third World Womens Alliance: Black Feminist Radicalism and Black Power Politics, in Black
Power Movement, ed. Peniel Joseph (New York: Routledge, 2006); and Jennifer
Nelson, Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement (New York:
New York University Press, 2003).
52. Toni Cade Bambara, On the Issue of Roles, in The Black Woman, ed.
Cade (New York: Washington Square Press, 1970), 123 135.
53. Manning Marable, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America
(1983; reprint, Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000), 84.
54. Constance M. Carroll, Threes a Crowd: The Dilemma of the Black
Woman in Higher Education, in But Some of Us Are Brave, ed. Gloria T. Hull,
Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith (New York: Feminist Press at the City
University of New York, 1982), 116.
55. Ibid., 117, 118.
56. Ibid., 117.
57. Mary Jane Hewitt, interview by Elston L. Carr, July 8, 1997, transcript,
76, UCLA Oral History Program, Center for African American Studies Library,
UCLA.
58. Carroll, Threes a Crowd, 115, 119.
59. Lillian Anthony, quoted in transcript of the Black Studies Directors
Seminar: Panel Pre sen ta tions, 7, 8, 9, November 1969, Institute of the Black
World, Atlanta, Georgia, IBW Papers, Box: Black Studies Directors Seminar,
Schomburg Center.
60. Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds. But Some of
Us Are Brave (New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York,
1982), 376.
61. Petition Circulated by the Black Womens Research Committee, n.d.
[most likely 1973], Center for African American Studies Papers, Box 17, University Archives, University of California at Los Angeles.
Notes to Chapter 8 | 315
62. Flyer, IBW Papers, Conferences Box, Womens Conference Folder,
Schomburg Center.
63. Gloria T. Hull and Barbara Smith, The Politics of Black Womans Studies, in But Some of Us Are Brave, ed. Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and
Barbara Smith (New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York,
1982), xxi.
64. Sharon Harley, The Politics of Memory and Place, in Living Histories:
Black Women Historians in the Ivory Tower, ed. Deborah Gray White (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 104; Marable, How Capitalism
Underdeveloped Black America, 97.
65. Harley, The Politics of Memory and Place, 103 104.
66. Ibid., 107 108.
67. Rosalyn Terborg- Penn, Being and Thinking Outside of the Box: A Black
Womans Experience in Academia, in Living Histories: Black Women Historians in the Ivory Tower, ed. Deborah Gray White (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2008), 76 83.
68. Deborah Gray White, My History in History, in Living Histories:
Black Women Historians in the Ivory Tower, ed. White (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2008), 94 96.
69. John H. Bracey Jr., Afro- American Women: A Brief Guide to Writing
from Historical and Feminist Perspectives, Contributions in Black Studies 8,
no. 1 (1996): 106. Available at http:// scholarworks .umass .edu/ cbs/ vol8/ iss1/ 9 .
70. Manning Marable, Groundings with My Sisters: Patriarchy and the Exploitation of Black Women, in How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America
(1983; reprint, Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000), 70.
71. See ibid., 71, 82.
72. Jones, Black Studies Failures and First Negroes.
73. Colon, A Critical Review of Black Studies Programs, 167 168.
74. Ibid., 146 147.
75. Robert G. OMeally and Valerie Smith, Evaluation of Ford- Funded African American Studies Departments, Centers and Institutes (1994), in Inclusive
Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States; A 25th Anniversary
Retrospective of Ford Foundation Grant Making, 1982 2007 (New York: Ford
Foundation, 2007), 140.
76. Evelyn Hu- DeHart, The Undermining of Ethnic Studies, Chronicle of
Higher Education, October 20, 1995.
77. See for example the European- based Collegium for African American
Research.
Conclusion
1. See Penny M. Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and
Anticolonialism, 1935 1957 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997).
2. La TaSha Levy, Remembering Sixth- PAC: Interviews with Sylvia Hill and
Judy Claude, Black Scholar 37 (2008); Francis Nesbitt, Race for Sanctions:
The Movement against Apartheid, 1946 1994 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004); Ronald W. Walters, Pan Africanism in the African Diaspora:
316 | Notes to Conclusion
An Analysis of Modern Afrocentric Po liti cal Movements (Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 1993).
3. Martha Biondi, Student Protest, Law and Order and the Rise of African
American Studies in California, Contested Democracy: Freedom, Race and
Power in American History, ed. Manisha Sinha and Penny M. Von Eschen (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
4. San Francisco State awarded Glover a Presidential Medal in 1999 at a
ceremony honoring the thirtieth anniversary of the Educational Opportunity
Program, www .sfsu .edu/ ~news/ prsrelea/ fy98/ 069 .htm .
5. Returning to City College to Revisit a 1969 Struggle, New York Times,
October 29, 1999.
6. The Hilltop (Howard University), March 28, 1969, microfi lm, HUL.
7. Ramona Tascoe, telephone interview by author, December 3, 2009.
8. The literature here is voluminous. See for example Stephen Steinberg,
Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995).
Notes to Conclusion | 317
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319
Archival Collections
Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, Texas; Rec ords of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence
San Francisco State University, San Francisco; Strike Collection; San Francisco
Bay Area Tele vi sion Archive; www .library .sfsu .edu/ about/ collections/ sfbatv
/ index .php
University of California, Berkeley; Social Protest Collection
University of California, Los Angeles; Center for African American Studies,
Oral History Collection
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois; University Archives
Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, New York; University Archives
City College, New York; Legacy of Struggle Collection; Five Demands
Collection
Howard University, Washington, DC; Moorland- Spingarn Library; Ralph
Bunche Civil Rights Documentation Project, Moorland- Spingarn Collection
National Archives, College Park, MD, Robert Finch Papers, in the Richard
Nixon Papers, White House Central Files, Subject Files, Human Rights
New York University; University Archives, Institute of African- American Affairs
Papers
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library
Ewart Guinier Papers
St. Clair Drake Papers
John Henrik Clarke Papers
Black Academy of Arts and Letters Collection
Institute of the Black World Papers
Black Economic Research Center Collection
National Council of Black Studies Papers
Selected Bibliography
320 | Selected Bibliography
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers, microfi lm
Ford Foundation, New York; Ford Foundation Papers
Journals
Black Issues in Higher Education
Black Scholar
Black World
Integrated Education
Journal of African American History (formerly Journal of Negro History)
Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
Journal of Black Studies
Journal of Negro Education
Negro Digest
Newspapers
Chicago Defender
Chicago Tribune
Daily Northwestern
Hilltop
Muhammad Speaks
New York Amsterdam News
New York Times
Sun- Reporter
Group Public Remembrances
Columbia: 1968 + 40, April 25, 2008, Columbia 1968 Web site, www .colum
bia1968 .com/ conference .
1968 + 40: The Black Student Movement and Its Legacy, November 1, 2008,
Center for African American History, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.
Publications
Ahmad, Muhammad. We Will Return in the Whirlwind: Black Radical Organizations, 1960 1975. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2007.
Aldridge, Dolores P., and E. Lincoln James, eds. Africana Studies: Philosophical
Perspectives and Theoretical Paradigms. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 2007.
Anderson, James D. The Education of Blacks in the South: 1860 1935. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.
Ballard, Allen B. Breaking Jerichos Walls. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 2011.
. The Education of Black Folk: The Afro- American Struggle for Knowledge in White America. New York: Harper and Row, 1973.
Selected Bibliography | 321
Barlow, William, and Peter Shapiro. An End to Silence: The San Francisco State
College Student Movement in the 60s. New York: Pegasus, 1971.
Bass, Jack, and Jack Nelson. The Orangeburg Massacre. Macon, GA: Mercer
University Press, 1970.
Bermanzohn, Sally Avery. Through Survivors Eyes: From the Sixties to the
Greensboro Massacre. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003.
Blassingame, John, ed. New Perspectives on Black Studies. Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1971.
Bradley, Stefan. Harlem vs. Columbia University: Black Student Power in the
Late 1960s. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009.
Brown, Elaine. A Taste of Power: A Black Womans Story. New York: Pantheon
Books, 1993.
Brown, Scot. Fighting for Us: Maulana Karenga, the us Or ga ni za tion and Black
Cultural Nationalism. New York: New York University Press, 2003.
Carmichael, Stokely, with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell. Ready for Revolution:
The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture). New York:
Scribner, 2003.
Chafe, William H. Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and
the Black Struggle for Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
Corson, William R. Promise or Peril: The Black College Student in America.
New York: Norton, 1970.
Countryman, Matthew. Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
Edwards, Harry. The Revolt of the Black Athlete. New York: Macmillan, 1969.
Estes, Steve. I am a Man! Race, Manhood and the Civil Rights Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
Fergus, Devin. Liberalism, Black Power and the Making of American Politics,
1965 1980. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009.
Ford, Nick Aaron. Black Studies: Threat or Challenge? Port Washington, NY:
Kennikat Press, 1973.
Foster, Julian, and Durward Long, eds. Protest! Student Activism in America.
New York: William Morrow, 1969.
Glasker, Wayne. Black Students in the Ivory Tower: African American Student
Activism at the University of Pennsylvania, 1967 1990. Amherst: University
of Massachusetts Press, 2002.
Gordon, Lewis R., and Jane Anna Gordon, eds. A Companion to African American Studies. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.
Graham, Gael. Young Activists: American High School Students in the Age of
Protest. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006.
Green, Adam. Selling the Race: Culture, Community, and Black Chicago, 1940
1955. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Haas, Jeffrey. The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and Chicago
Police Murdered a Black Panther. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2009.
Hall, Stephen G. A Faithful Account of the Race: African American Historical
Writing in Nineteenth Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2009.
322 | Selected Bibliography
Hayes, Floyd, ed. Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African American Studies. San
Diego: Collegiate Press, 2000.
Henderson, George. Race and the University: A Memoir. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 2010.
Hentoff, Nat, ed. Black Anti- Semitism and Jewish Racism. New York: Richard
Baron, 1969.
Horne, Gerald. Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s. Cambridge,
MA: Da Capo Press, 1997.
Hull, Gloria T., Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds. But Some of Us Are
Brave: All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men: Black Womens
Studies. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1982.
Joseph, Peniel. Waiting till the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black
Power in America. New York: Henry Holt, 2007.
Joyce, Joyce A. Black Studies as Human Studies: Critical Essays and Interviews.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005.
Justice, Blair. Violence in the City. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press,
1969.
Karaguezian, Dikran. Blow It Up! The Black Student Revolt at San Francisco
State and the Emergence of Dr. Hayakawa. Boston: Gambit, 1971.
Keita, Maghan. Race and the Writing of History: Riddling the Sphinx. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000.
Kotlowski, Dean. Nixons Civil Rights: Politics, Principle and Policy. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
Lavin, David E., ed. Right Versus Privilege: The Open Admissions Experiment
at the City University of New York. New York: Free Press, 1981.
Lewis, George E. A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Marable, Manning. Blackwater: Historical Studies in Race, Class Consciousness
and Revolution. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1993.
, ed. Dispatches from the Ivory Tower. New York: Columbia University
Press, 2000.
. How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America. 1983. Reprint, Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000.
McEvoy, James, and Abraham Miller, eds. Black Power and Student Rebellion.
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1969.
Murch, Donna. Living for the City: Migration, Education and the Rise of the
Black Panther Party in Oakland, CA. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
Norment, Nathaniel, ed. The African American Studies Reader. Durham, NC:
Carolina Academic Press, 2001.
Ogbar, Jeffrey O. G. Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
Orrick, William H., Jr. Shut It Down! A College in Crisis: San Francisco State
College, October 1968 April 1969. Washington, DC: National Commission
on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, 1969.
Perlstein, Daniel H. Justice, Justice: School Politics and the Eclipse of Liberalism. New York: Peter Lang, 2004.
Selected Bibliography | 323
Roebuck, Julian B., and Komanduri S. Murty. Historically Black Colleges and
Universities: Their Place in American Higher Education. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993.
Rojas, Fabio. From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
Rooks, Noliwe. White Money/Black Power: The Surprising History of African
American Studies. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006.
Rosser, James M., and Jacob U. Gordon, eds. The Black Studies Debate. Lawrence: University of Kansas, Division of Continuing Education, 1974.
Self, Robert. American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland.
Prince ton, NJ: Prince ton University Press, 2004.
Sellers, Cleveland. The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC. New York: William Morrow, 1973.
Sitkoff, Harvard. The Struggle for Black Equality: 1954 1992. New York: Hill
and Wang, 1993.
Smith, Robert, Richard Axen, and Devere Pentony. By Any Means Necessary:
The Revolutionary Struggle at San Francisco State. San Francisco: JosseyBass, 1970.
Summerskill, John. President Seven. New York: World Publishing, 1971.
Swearingen, M. Wesley. FBI Secrets. Boston: South End Press, 1995.
Taber, Robert. The War of the Flea: A Study of Guerrilla Warfare Theory and
Practice. New York: L. Stuart, 1965.
Tyson, Timothy. Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black
Power. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
Van Deburg, William. New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and
American Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Von Eschen, Penny M. Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1935 1957. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.
Waller, Signe. Love and Revolution: A Po liti cal Memoir: Peoples History of the
Greensboro Massacre, Its Setting and Aftermath. Lanham, MD: Rowman
and Littlefi eld, 2002.
Walters, Ronald. Pan- Africanism in the African Diaspora: An Analysis of Modern Afrocentric Po liti cal Movements. Detroit: Wayne State University Press,
1997.
White, Deborah Gray, ed. Living Histories: Black Women Historians in the
Ivory Tower. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
Williamson, Joy Ann. Black Power on Campus: University of Illinois, 1965
1975. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003.
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Like many revolutions, The Black Revolution on Campus took a long time to
gestate before it fi nally burst on the scene. I have so many people to thank,
more than I will likely remember, so please forgive me if I fail to include your
name. Being part of a profession that you are writing about means that you are
infl uenced by dinner party conversations, hallway conversations, conference
conversations, and even chance encounters in the archive. I have learned to always have a pen handy. I have been more enriched and moved by this journey
than I can adequately convey. I am honored to be part of such a challenging,
engaging, and vital intellectual tradition and a brilliant community of scholars.
I am indebted fi rst of all to the scholars and former student activists who
shared their memories with me. From San Francisco to New York, their lives and
struggles, and then, crucially, their willingness to share them, made this book
possible. I am forever thankful. I also thank the many archivists and librarians
who assisted me in locating materials, especially at City College, Northwestern,
San Francisco State, and Howard. The staff at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, a division of the New York Public Library,
always deserves special thanks. I fi rst imagined this book many, many years ago
after the late Andre Elizee introduced me to the papers of Ewart Guinier. Howard Dodson, the retired chief of the Schomburg, offered support and encouragement, in addition to great stories. Sharon Howard always pointed me in the
right direction.
When Charles Hamilton handed me a plain brown envelope, I had no idea
that it contained his unpublished manuscript on Black students from 1969. His
on- the- ground interviews from de cades ago, and then his extraordinary generosity in sharing them with me, greatly enhanced chapter 1. Michael Martin was
enormously helpful and generous in sharing not only his recollections but also
his many journals and other printed material from the early 1970s. John Bracey
was likewise extremely generous in sharing both his memories and his personal
Ac know ledg ments
326 | Acknowledgments
archive. His contributions and support made this a much stronger book. Sterling Stuckey and Lerone Bennett also offered documents from their personal
collections in addition to their recollections, and I am very grateful. Sterling
spent considerable time and energy gathering material and sharing his refl ections, and I am ever so thankful. I am indebted to Stan Willis, who opened his
fi les to me, affording me a rich window on Chicago activism in the late 1960s.
Eric Foner, as always, was very generous with his memories and sage advice.
Fred Prejean graciously shared documents and diffi cult memories. Thanks to
Myles Link, who very generously shared memories and materials from his student days at Harvard. I am grateful to Lani Guinier for putting me in touch
with many people from Harvard. The participation of veterans of the San Francisco State strike was indispensable to this project. I cannot thank Hari Dillon
enough. Because the photo archive at San Francisco State had closed, he worked
very, very hard to track down photographs and photographers. Moreover, he
was generous and gracious in sharing many memories and insights.
A fellowship from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars
and Writers at the New York Public Library enabled me to accomplish a great
deal of research and writing. I am particularly thankful to fellow fellows Hilary
Ballon and Elizabeth Kendall. I am also indebted to the Northwestern University Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, especially former Dean Aldon Morris, for affording me the time to complete the manuscript. Additionally, the Alice Berline Kaplan Institute for the Humanities at Northwestern awarded me a
course reduction that helped make The Black Revolution possible. The American
Bar Foundation provided the space and collegiality for a very productive year of
writing. I am grateful in par tic u lar to Robert Nelson, Christopher Schmidt,
Dylan Penningroth, Bernadette Atuahene, and Susan Shapiro.
Thanks to a stimulating writing group at the University of Chicago with
Cathy Cohen, Michael Dawson, Celeste Watkins- Hayes, and Mario Smalls,
whose comments and camaraderie were very helpful at an important juncture.
I was fortunate to or ga nize a fortieth anniversary conference commemorating
the Black student movement at Northwestern, thanks to the generous support
of many, especially the Center for African American History and the always
supportive and savvy Darlene Clark Hine. I thank Victor Goode for being persis tent in his belief that it should happen. His support and leadership were instrumental to the event and my understanding of the dynamics of 1968. Thank
you, Victor! The returning alumni offered deeply affecting commentary about
their experiences in 1968, and the conference contributed im mensely to this
book.
I thank my wonderful literary agent, Jill Marr, of the Sandra Dykstra Agency,
and a big thank- you to my outstanding editor, Niels Hooper. I likewise thank all
the wonderful people at the University of California Press, especially Kim Hogeland, Suzanne Knott, and everyone else who participated in the production of
this book; Bonita Hurd for her splendid and careful copyediting; and Barbara
Roos for her expert index. I am enormously grateful. I offer a special note of gratitude to two anonymous reviewers whose comments were astute, comprehensive,
and extraordinarily helpful.
Acknowledgments | 327
I am grateful for the support and encouragement of all my wonderful colleagues in the Department of African American Studies at Northwestern, especially Darlene Clark Hine, who was so generous in sharing materials and
memories, and Sandra Richards, Mary Pattillo, Celeste Watkins- Hayes, E. Patrick
Johnson, Dwight McBride, Michelle Wright, Tracy Vaughn, and Nitasha Sharma
for important feedback and suggestions along the way. Nancy MacLean, we miss
you in Evanston. Thanks for your great sense of humor and sharp thinking over
the years. Thanks to Erik Gellman, whose insistence kept Roo se velt in the book,
if only briefl y! Thanks to all of my students, especially La TaSha Levy, Keeanga
Taylor, DWeston Haywood, Tera Agyepong, Andrew Baer, and Dwayne Nash,
for keeping my brain running and inspiring me with your brilliance and passion
for learning. Thanks to all the undergraduate students who read the manuscript
in seminar and offered sharp and very helpful comments. Thanks as well to all the
students in the Living Wage Campaign at Northwestern, especially Adam, Vicky,
Kellyn, Chenault, Will, Jordan, Maggie, and Mike (and so many others) for inspiring me with your dedication and commitment.
I am sustained by the love and support, not to mention incisive po liti cal
analysis, of my Chicago people: Lynette Jackson, Barbara Ransby, Adam Green,
Alice Kim, Peter Sporn, Tessie Liu, Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Harishi Patel,
Prexy Nesbitt, Lisa Lee, and the chief ideologist, James Thindwa. Thank you
for your brilliant suggestions and sage advice through this long pro cess! Thanks
to everyone in ARC 09 and Ellass Daughters, and to my many friends and allies in the wider social justice movement in Chicago, whose work I admire
enormously and whose thinking has shaped me. Thanks to Elaine Charnov and
Bruce Stutz for being my New York family. I send big hugs and appreciation to
my parents, Ann Matteis and James Biondi, for their love, support, and encouragement. And love and thanks as well to my entire family, from Albuquerque to
Malawi.
Finally, I am very fortunate to share my life with James Thindwa. As Bill
Moyers knows, James is a dedicated and brilliant or ga niz er. His solidarity, sharp
thinking, great record collection, delicious cooking, and steadfast love enrich my
life. And he was very tolerant as the guts of my book spread around the house.
Thank you! Its done.
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329
Figures 1, 3, 8, 11, 13, and 16 are from the Archives of the Chicago Defender.
Figures 2, 14, and 15 are from Archives, The City College of New York, CUNY.
Figure 4 is by Gerald Grow, Courtesy Labor Archives and Research Center, San
Francisco State University Press.
Figure 5 is reproduced by permission of Tony Rogers, photographer. Digital
copy courtesy of Chris Carlsson.
Figure 6 is reproduced by permission of Terry Schmitt, photographer. Digital
copy courtesy of Chris Carlsson.
Figures 7, 9, and 10 are from the James S. Sweet Collection, Northwestern University Archives.
Figures 12 and 17 are from the Ewart Guinier Photograph Collection, Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture,
New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
Figure 18 is reproduced by permission of Anthony Barboza, photographer.
Figures 19 and 20 are from the Institute of the Black World Photograph Collection, Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
Photo Credits
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331
A&T State University, North Carolina, 30,
33, 157 60, 192, 234, 273
AASU (Afro- American Student Union),
Northwestern, 83, 84, 89 91
activism, 236 39; students across U.S., 2 3,
6, 151. See also Black Power; Black
student activism; civil rights movement;
internationalism; militancy; sit- ins;
strikes; Third Worldism
Adams, Carol, 107, 113
Adams, Russell, 153
Adams v. Richardson, 143
admissions criteria, 51 52, 114, 116, 269,
277 78; cuny, 114 17, 124, 125,
133 40, 200, 269; Harvard, 196 97;
Malcolm X College, 109; SFSC, 43, 48,
51 52, 56, 72; standardized tests, 140.
See also affi rmative action; Black
student enrollment; tests
affi rmative action, 3, 51 52, 73, 170, 269;
Harvard, 196; Northwestern, 80;
opposition to, 78, 115, 196, 272, 277;
professionalization of, 75; seek,
115 16, 124 29, 134, 139, 140; UCLA,
258; for women, 259
Affro- Arts Theater, Chicago, 104 5
Africa: ASA, 254; Black Power and, 4; Black
studies, 244, 245, 246, 247, 251;
Carmichael, 22, 146, 237 38; Communiversity studies, 112; enslavement, 245,
246; Marxism, 237; Sadaukis trip to,
236; socialism, 236 37. See also African
diaspora; African liberation struggles;
Afrocentricism; colonialism in Africa;
Ghana; Pan- Africanism; South Africa
African American studies. See Black studies
African American Women and the Struggle
for the Vote, 1850 1920 (Terborg- Penn),
263
Africana Studies and Research Center,
Cornell, 110, 186, 188, 203, 275, 276
African diaspora, 10, 250; Black studies,
10 11, 101, 178, 230, 244, 249,
251 56, 264, 271; sobu and solidarity
efforts in, 235. See also Africa;
Pan- Africanism
African Heritage Ensemble, 109
African Heritage Studies Association
(AHSA), 205, 254 55, 275
Africanization, of Blacks, 236
African Liberation Day, 235, 250
African liberation struggles, 235 38, 251,
271; African Liberation Support
Committee, 233, 237, 238, 250 51;
Black nationalism and, 249, 251, 255;
Black studies and, 255; Cuban support,
23; new nation- states, 10, 249, 255, 276;
Pan- Africanism, 235, 237, 238, 250
Index
332 | Index
African National Congress, 255
African Studies Association (ASA), 205, 254
African World, 235, 237
Afro- American Association, 41
Afro- American History Club, Crane,
102, 104
Afro- American Patrolmans League, 104
Afro- American Student Union (AASU),
Northwestern, 83, 84, 89 91
Afrocentricism, 6, 137, 225, 244 48
Afro- Latin Alliance, 27
afromation, 217
agency, Black, 245
Agnew, Spiro, 161, 162
AHSA (African Heritage Studies Association), 205, 254 55, 275
Aint I a Woman: Black Women and
Feminism (Hooks), 260
Alabama: Birminghams Dynamite Hill,
15; Tuskegee, 39 40, 107, 217
Aldridge, Ira, 220
Alexis, Jack, 62, 74
Algerians, vs. French colonialism, 56
Alinsky, Saul, 23, 235
Alioto, Joseph, 62, 65
Alkalimat, Abdul. See McWorter, Gerald/
Abdul Alkalimat
Allen, Ernest, 276
Allen, Robert L., 200, 208
Alvarado, Roger, 59 60, 62, 63fi g
Al- Wadi, Maryum, 46
American Association of University
Professors, 154, 156
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),
36, 106, 156
American Dilemma (Myrdal), 215
American Federation of Teachers, 67
American Historical Association, 262
American Indians. See Native Americans
American Negro Academy, 217
American Public Health Association, 111
Amiss, Al, 164, 167, 169
Amistad Society, 98
Amsterdam News, 36 37, 40
Anderson, Robert, 37
Angola: anticolonial struggles, 235, 250,
271; socialism, 236
Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, 6,
253 54
Antioch College, 261
anti- Semitism, 124, 128
apartheid, 45, 250 51, 271
Aptheker, Herbert, 189
Arce, Henry, 125
armed self- defense: vs. African colonizers,
24; BPP, 24, 56, 106; Carmichael, 146;
Cornell, 131, 153, 183, 234; Crane rifl e
club, 106; Harvard, 183 84; Malcolm
X, 24, 106; North Carolina A&T, 159,
160; SFSC, 56, 58, 60; UCLA, 70 71;
Voorhees, 153 54; Robert F. Williams,
23
Armsey, James, 202 3
Arnt I a Woman? (White), 263
arrests/trials/sentences/imprisonment, 272;
Brooklyn College students, 121 23,
130 31; Columbia University, 131;
Greensboro Massacre, 239; Hare, 76;
Howard, 152; Nelson Johnson, 234;
New York Panther 21, 121; North
Carolina A&T, 158, 159; San Fernando
Valley State College mass felony arrest,
55; SFSC, 52 54, 58, 61 64, 64fi g, 66,
71 74, 272; Southern University,
166 67, 172 73; Voorhees, 154, 155
arts. See Black arts movement
ASA (African Studies Association), 205, 254
Asante, Molefi , 244 45, 246
Asian Americans: Black activists inspiring,
2, 264, 265, 269, 270; Black alliances
with, 115; CCNY, 127; educational
grade level, 60; San Francisco, 53; SFSC,
53; TWLF, 53, 60; University of
California, 52; WFO, 238 39
Aspen conference (July 1970), Ford
Foundation- sponsored, 9, 201 3, 223
assassinations, 9, 32; of BPP, 68, 71; by FBI,
68, 71, 232; of Hampton, 106, 109; by
us, 68, 70 71. See also Kings
assassination
assimilation, 17; automatic, 14 15; Black
students critique of, 19 22; Hayakawa
and, 77; Jews and, 128; Tascoe, 18
Associated Press, 183
Association for the Advancement of
Creative Musicians (AACM), 105, 109
Association for the Study of Afro- American
Life and History, 194fi g, 203, 218, 262
Association for the Study of Classical
African Civilizations, 247
Association for the Study of Negro Life and
History, 203, 209, 218
Association of African and Afro- American
Students at Harvard and Radcliffe
(afro), 181 84
Association of Black Anthropologists, 209
Association of Black Psychologists, 209
Association of Black Sociologists, 209
Index | 333
Association of Black Women Historians,
263
athletes, Black collegiate, 4, 41, 81
athletics, Black students barred from,
124 25
Atlanta: Congress of Afrikan Peoples, 261;
IBW, 10, 201, 212, 227 33, 229fi g, 260;
Barbara King, 108; More house, 185,
227, 231; Venceremos Brigade, 232.
See also Spelman College
Atlanta University, 161, 231
Atlanta University Center, 30, 31, 171, 227
Augusta, Georgia, police violence, 161
Autobiography of Malcolm X, 2, 22, 26,
117, 271
award ceremonies, BAAL, 218 20
BAAL (Black Academy of Arts and Letters),
217 20
Bailey, DArmy, 169, 170, 274
Bailey, Walter Lee, 169
Baird, Keith, 17
Baker, George, 168, 169, 170
Baldwin, James, 26
Ballard, Allen, 115, 134, 140
Banks, Frank, 107
Baraka, Amiri/Leroi Jones, 47, 105, 146,
219, 237, 261
Baruch College, Black and Hispanic studies,
242
Bashful, Emmett W., 166
Baton Rouge, Southern University, 9,
163 73, 273
Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo), 23, 56,
84 85
Bay Area, 78; Black communities, 7, 49 51,
65, 72; BPP, 41; East Palo Alto Nairobi
Schools, 10, 220 26; expansive Black
radicalism, 273; San Jose State College
Black studies, 137; San Mateo colleges,
221, 222, 223 24; and SFSC strike, 7,
71 72. See also Berkeley (University of
California); Oakland; San Francisco;
Stanford University
Bearden, Romare, 217
Beckham, Edgar W., 14
Before the Mayfl ower: A History of Black
America, 1619 1962 (Bennett), 95, 96fi g
Belafonte, Harry, 218
Bell, Craig, 119
Bell, Derrick, 198
Bell, Murphy, 169
Beloved Community Center, Greensboro,
240
Bennett, Lerone, 194fi g; BAAL, 217; Before
the Mayfl ower: A History of Black
America, 1619 1962, 95, 96fi g; Black
Heritage, 213; Black studies, 250;
Challenge of Blackness, 178; Crane,
102; Ebony, 95, 96fi g, 228; IBW, 228,
229; Northwestern, 7, 94, 95, 96fi g,
98 100; The Quest for Blackness, 228
Berger, Leslie, 140
Berger, Peter, 177
Berkeley (University of California), 114; as
Afro- American, 145; Billingsley, 231 32;
Blackness at, 20; Black studies, 179,
203, 265; Cleaver, 55; Dodson, 231;
ethnic studies department, 191, 265;
Goodlett, 64; New Left, 6; PhDs to
Blacks, 64
Berkshire Conference of Women Historians,
262
Berry, Marion, 151
Berry, Mary Frances, 231, 249
Bevel, James, 105
Beyond the Melting Pot (Glazer and
Moynihan), 195
Billingsley, Andrew, 153, 179, 202, 203,
231 32, 249
Birmingham, Alabama, Dynamite Hill, 15
blac (Black League of Afro- American
Collegians), 117 22
Black, Tim, 80
Black word, 25 26
Black Academy of Arts and Letters (BAAL),
217 20
Black agency, 245
Black American Law Students Association,
162
Black Anglo- Saxons (Hare), 125
Black arts movement: BAAL, 217 20; Black
Arts and Culture series at SFSC
Experimental College, 47; Black Power
and, 23; Black studies and, 75; Chicago,
104 5; Howard sit- in, 37; Nairobi
Schools, 225; and student movement,
146 47; Mary Ann Williams tele vi sion
and radio shows, 217
Black capitalism, 109
Black Caucus of the Aspen Black Studies
Seminar, Aspen conference, 202
Black colleges. See historically Black
colleges and universities (HBCUs)
Black Collegian, 171
Black communities, 2, 211 40, 269; and
African diaspora, 251; Bay Area, 7,
49 51, 65, 72; and Black nationalism,
334 | Index
Black communities (continued)
103, 211; Black studies movement and,
47, 49, 100, 119, 211, 228, 275 76,
277; Black university and, 22, 144;
Chicago, 83, 104, 109, 111; emphasis
on higher education, 14; Greensboro,
157, 234 35; Harvard, 198; Houston,
31; Howard, 34, 151, 153; institution
building, 112, 207 40; integrationist old
guard, 133; Kawaida worldview, 247;
Los Angeles, 68 70; Nairobi Schools,
225; New York City, 114, 119, 122, 124,
125, 127 28, 130, 133 34; Northwestern, 100; SFSC strike, 56, 57, 65 66, 67,
72; Voorhees, 155. See also Black arts
movement; NAACP
Black Economic Research Center, Harlem,
148
Black Excellence Unlimited, 109
The Black Experience at Harvard
(Kilson), 198
Black faculty: Black student demand for, 3,
48, 186 92; cohort fi ghting for Black
studies, 209 10; departments other than
Black studies, 277; hiring issues, 74,
186 93, 199, 276; predominantly white
universities, 277
Black female leadership: Crane/Malcolm X
College, 102, 108; cuny, 117, 125 26;
FMO, 83; heads of families, 26; IBW,
229; NCBS, 208; Ohio State, 217;
sexism by Black men toward, 27, 46,
58 59, 256 57; SFSC, 18, 46; sobu/
yobu, 238; University of Chicago, 111;
Vassar, 22. See also Black women and
Black male leadership; feminism
Black Fire, BSU, 75
Black Heritage: A History of Afro- Americans,
10, 25, 211, 212 16, 227, 231
Black history, 180, 244; BAAL and, 218;
Black Heritage: A History of AfroAmericans, 10, 25, 211, 212 16, 227,
231; Clarke, 10, 17, 211 12, 212fi g,
214, 244; Columbia study groups, 19;
Harding, 10, 178, 211 13, 231; HBCUs
turning away from, 30 31; internationalist, 251; Merritt College, 41; SFSC,
48; UCLA, 191; women and, 26,
257 64; written and taught by Blacks,
10, 17, 178
Black History Week, 218
The Black Image in the White Mind: The
Debate on Afro- American Character
and Destiny (Frederickson), 83
Black institution building, 112, 207 40
Black Institutions and Black Students
(Cheek), 163
Black intelligentsia: Black studies employment, 227; Black university and, 35;
Ca rib be an, 127, 229 30; Du Bois, 218;
IBW and, 227, 231; and Marxism,
229 30; threatened by student demands
of Black faculty, 186; women, 127,
258 59, 261 63, 264. See also Black
faculty
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint LOuverture
and the San Domingo Revolution
(James), 94, 219
Black lesbians, 260
Black Liberation: A Comparative History
of Black Ideologies in the United States
and South Africa (Frederickson), 83
Black liberation movement: BAAL and,
219 20; Brooklyn College, 123;
catalyzing activity against various facets
of oppression, 264 65; Crane, 102;
decline, 275; gender and, 26, 125, 257;
government repression, 232; historians,
211; after Kings assassination, 268;
lesbians, 260; Pan- Africanism and, 235,
237. See also African liberation
struggles; Black student activism
Black male leadership: AHSA, 255; Black
Heritage lecturers, 216; IBW, 229, 260;
NCBS conference, 208, 263; student,
26 28, 46, 58 59, 102, 115, 117 18,
125, 257. See also Black women and
Black male leadership; patriarchy
Black men: Black studies dominated by,
258; images, 26, 103; one hundred
leading Black Americans, 258;
University of Pittsburgh associate and
full professor positions, 258; with white
women, 81, 187, 236. See also Black
male leadership
Black Metropolis (Drake and Cayton), 112
Black Muslim, 27
Black nationalism, 34, 115, 233, 271 72;
and African liberation struggles, 249,
251, 255; Black- brown alliances, 27,
115, 123; Black communities and, 103,
211; Black Heritage and, 215, 216;
Black studies, 16 17, 46 47, 48, 95,
174 75, 189, 205 6, 243, 244, 246,
252, 255, 276; BPP, 44; CCNY, 129;
Chinese communists supporting, 236;
Crane, 103, 107; gender issues, 26, 46,
83, 226, 262 63; Hare, 48; Howard
Index | 335
and, 148 49; IBIs, 225 26, 236; IBW
and, 230; integrationist old guard vs.,
133; internationalist, 249 50, 271; vs.
interracial dating, 28; Moynihan report
and, 26; Nairobi Schools and, 221, 226;
nonviolence and, 25; Northwestern and,
95; self- determination, 57; SFSC, 49;
SNCC, 44; and Third Worldism, 59,
123, 224 25; James Turner, 188; UCLA,
69; Ujamma (Howard or ga ni za tion), 36;
urban, 16 17; white activists and,
44 45, 237; and white funding sources,
10. See also cultural nationalists;
Malcolm X
Blackness: of Black studies faculty, 186;
IBW seminar and, 228; meaning of,
177, 178, 197 98; reframing, 20
Black Panther Newspaper, 75
Black Panther Party (BPP), 4 5; armed
self- defense, 24, 56, 106; California
student activism, 7, 41, 43, 44, 45, 55;
Chicago, 104, 106, 109, 161; cuny, 10,
123, 125; Askia Davis, 121, 275; FBI
vs., 68, 71; founding day, 223;
internationalist, 249, 271; Los Angeles,
68, 69, 70 71, 190; Malcolm X College,
8; Murray, 45, 68, 222, 273; Newton, 4,
41, 45, 55, 56; New York Panther 21,
121; and police violence, 4 5, 161, 162;
Seale, 4, 41, 45, 71; slogans, 56; Ten
Point Platform, 106; us, 68, 70 71
Black Paper for Black Studies, 206 7
Black People Against Torture, 274
Black Peoples Committee of Inquiry,
Southern, 169 71, 274
Black perspective, 271; The Black
Perspective: From A Blacks Perspective
(Crouchett), 176; Black studies, 5 6, 9,
175 80, 245; diversity in, 216, 243
Black Power, 271; Black feminism and, 257;
Black primary schools, 220 21; Black
student activism, 4, 10, 13 42, 52, 53,
79, 91, 172, 233, 244, 268 69; Black
studies and, 79; Ca rib be an and West
Indian communities in Canada, 230;
Carmichael and, 20 21, 21fi g, 22, 125,
230, 231; Chicago, 113; civil rights
lawyers critiqued by, 273 74; civil rights
movement and, 4, 24, 129; cold war
and, 250; for ghetto dwellers, 3;
Greensboro, 157; Harvard, 198; HBCU
preservation, 172, 173; Houston, 31 32;
Howard, 34, 149 50, 152; IBW and,
230 31; and integration, 33, 36, 103,
157, 163; Martin Luther King vs., 231;
mass movement, 46; New York Jews
and, 128 29; rhetoric, 3; slogans, 2,
46, 129; Third Worldism and, 59; twin
targets (white control and integrationist
Negro leadership), 33; U.S. criticized by,
103; and women, 261
Black Power: The Politics of Liberation
(Carmichael and Hamilton), 20 21,
21fi g, 22, 125, 271
Black primary schools, 220 21
Black revolution, 14; Black Heritage and,
215; Black studies and, 76, 135, 204;
Ebony article, 12; Howard, 145 46;
George Murrays Necessity of a Black
Revolution, 55; off campus, 211 40
Black Scholar, 75, 176, 200, 205, 208, 209
Black schooling movement, 5, 220 21, 225.
See also Black studies; historically Black
colleges and universities (HBCUs)
Black Sociologists, Caucus, 209
Black student activism, 1 12, 45, 114,
184 85, 233, 268 78; Black Power, 4,
10, 13 42, 52, 53, 79, 91, 172, 233,
244, 268 69; California, 43 78;
Chicago, 7 8, 79 113; community
colleges, 101 2; Cornell, 131, 153, 183,
234; Crane/Malcolm X College, 102 8,
223; elite private historically white
universities (general), 7, 80; Harvard,
181 84, 197, 199; HBCUs, 6, 8 9, 14,
29 33, 78, 114, 142 73; and institution
building, 220 21, 222, 223, 226 27,
240; NAACP and, 216; national
movement, 31, 32 33, 40; New York
City, 8, 13, 113, 114 41; Northwestern,
7, 23, 82, 84 94, 86fi g, 90fi g, 91fi g;
white support, 60 61, 90fi g, 115,
119 23, 129 30; women, 26 28, 46,
261. See also Black student leadership;
Black studies
Black student athletes, 4, 41, 81
Black student backgrounds: disadvantaged,
197; middle- class, 4, 29, 197; public
school, 29; working- class, 29, 53, 104.
See also parents
Black Student Congress, 105 6
Black student enrollment, at HBCUs, 3,
12, 143
Black student enrollment at majority white
campuses (1960s 1970s), 4, 17, 29,
269 70; Afro- Latin Alliance and, 27;
civil rights movement enabling, 142;
decline at California state colleges, 51;
336 | Index
Black student enrollment at majority white
campuses (1960s 1970s) (continued)
Merritt College, 41; Northwestern, 81, 82,
85, 89 91; Ohio State, 160 61; SFSC,
44, 51, 56, 73. See also admissions
criteria
Black student leadership, 5, 27, 48; CCNY,
125; female, 18, 46; male, 26 28, 46,
58 59, 102, 115, 117 18, 125, 257
Black student organizations, 25 26. See also
Black student unions; individual
organizations
Black student unions, 20, 25 26, 272; New
York City, 8; Northwesterns AASU, 83,
84, 89 91; UCLA, 68 69, 191;
University of Oklahoma Afro- American
Student Union, 23; Western Regional
Alliance of Black Student Unions, 54.
See also BSU (Black Student Union),
SFSC
Black studies, 3, 6 8, 9 11, 33, 77 78,
174 210, 226 27, 240 69, 275 77;
beyond academic life, 10; African
diaspora, 10 11, 101, 178, 230, 244,
249, 251 56, 264, 271; Afrocentricism,
6, 137, 225, 244 48; authority and
freedom, 242; Billingsley, 153, 179;
Black communities and, 47, 49, 100,
119, 211, 228, 275 76, 277; Black
faculty hiring issues, 48, 74, 186 93,
199, 276; Black Heritage and, 215, 216;
Black nationalist, 16 17, 46 47, 48, 95,
144, 174 75, 189, 205 6, 243, 246,
252, 255, 276; Black perspective, 5 6, 9,
175 80, 245; Black Power and, 79;
Black student activists careers, 188,
189, 275; Black university and, 144 45;
BPP for, 5; California movement, 41;
California State University in Long
Beach, 71; competing views on mission
and defi nition of, 5 6, 68 69, 174 75,
203 7, 241; Crane/Malcolm X and, 107,
111; cuny, 125 28, 135 37; ethnic
studies relationship, 204, 265 66; FBI
and, 232; Federal City College, 54;
Harvard, 9 10, 174, 181 84, 185, 188,
191, 193 200, 203, 208, 234, 242, 252,
276 77; HBCUs, 3, 8 9, 30 31, 34,
143, 151, 153, 154, 192, 209, 245, 275;
high school, 16 17, 48; IBW and, 227,
228; innovative and infl uential
scholarship, 241 42, 249, 256, 264,
266, 267; integrationist old guard and,
133; interdisciplinary, 69, 93 94, 98,
175, 184, 228, 241, 256; Merritt
College, 41 42, 73, 102, 189; methodology quest, 241 42, 243 48, 264;
Nairobi Schools, 225, 226; Northwestern, 7, 80, 83, 91 92, 93 101, 96fi g,
99fi g, 190, 192; Ohio State, 160 61,
217, 242; pluralism, 248; quality of
scholarship, 241 42, 249; Roo se velt
University and, 80 81, 252; San Jose
State College, 137; SFSC, 18, 44, 46 51,
50fi g, 54 57, 69, 73 78, 186 87, 276;
sobu and, 236; standardized curriculum
quest, 241 43, 264; Stanford, 186, 188,
191; textbooks, 243, 245; UCLA, 68 70,
185, 187, 190, 191, 203; University of
North Carolina in Charlotte, 33; urban
public colleges and universities, 7 8;
whites roles in, 49, 254; Mary Ann
Williams tele vi sion and radio shows,
217; women and, 6, 11, 26, 256 65,
272; Yale, 179 80, 201, 206, 208. See
also African American studies; Black
history; departmental status, Black
studies; National Council of Black
Studies (NCBS)
The Black Studies Broadcast Journal, radio
show, 217
Black Studies Directors Seminar, IBW, 228
Black Studies: Threat or Challenge (Ford),
207
Black United Front, 151
Black university, 142 73; Cade concept,
127; Hamilton concept, 21fi g, 34 35;
Howard, 34, 35, 36 38, 38fi g, 143 44,
146 49, 152; whites included, 149
The Black Woman: An Anthology (Cade),
125, 257 58
Black women, 115, 256 62; BAAL awards,
220; Black Heritage and, 216; and Black
studies, 6, 11, 26, 256 65, 272; CCNY
faculty, 125 27; from colored girls to
black women, 18; feminist, 11, 26, 46,
88fi g, 216, 229, 238, 256 64, 272;
IBW, 229, 260; and marriages of Black
men to white women, 187; McWorters
family, 227; Northwestern, 15, 28,
82; one hundred leading Black
Americans, 258; PhDs, 218; scholars
and administrators, 127, 258 59,
261 63; student activism, 26 28, 46,
261; white womens racism toward,
257, 260, 262 63. See also Black female
leadership; Black women and Black
male leadership
Index | 337
Black women and Black male leadership,
26 27; Crane, 102; cuny, 115, 117;
IBW, 129; sexism by men, 27, 46,
58 59, 256 57, 261, 262 63
Black Women in White America, 262
Black Womens Conference, IBW, 260
Black World, 249. See also African diaspora;
Institute of the Black World (IBW);
Pan- Africanism
Black World (previously Negro Digest), 34
Blassingame, John, 186, 187, 191, 199, 249
Bok, Derek, 199
Bond, Horace Mann, 213
Bontemps, Arna, 217
Boston University, 40, 252
Bowker, Albert H., 139
Boyd, Melba, 246
BPP. See Black Panther Party (BPP)
Bracey, John: Amistad Society, 98; hired as
Black studies faculty, 188, 189, 275, 276;
Northwestern, 81 85, 89, 94, 98, 188
Bracey, John Jr., 264
Brimmer, Andrew, 199
Bronx: Bronx Community College, 217;
Fordham University, 190 91; Lehman
College, 187, 250; Morgan- Cato, 251
Brooklyn, Uhuru Sasa School, 226
Brooklyn College, 8, 114 23, 128;
admissions programs, 116 17, 137, 138,
139, 269; arrests, 121 23, 130 31; BC
19, 123; Black student leadership, 117;
Askia Davis, 117 18, 120, 121, 123,
130 31, 137, 138, 275; demands by
Black students, 118 20, 123; Jewish
faculty and students, 124; Kingsman,
122 23; Midwood, 138; Pile, 117, 118,
119, 121, 137; Puerto Rican Alliance,
117, 120; School for Contemporary
Studies (SCS), 119, 137 38; SDS, 117,
119 22; white percentage, 116
Brooks, Gwendolyn, 105, 193, 220
Brossard, Carlos, 185, 205
Brousard, Stephen, 86fi g
Brown, Claude, 26
Brown, Ewart, 37, 149, 150, 151, 152 53
Brown, Frank London, 80
Brown, Leonard D., 163 64, 167 72, 273
Brown, Oscar Brown Jr., 95
Brown, Roscoe, 202, 204 5, 217, 253
Brown, Sterling, 34, 36, 98
Brown, Willie, 54, 58, 65, 75
Browne, Robert S., 10, 148, 213, 217
Brown University, Black studies, 248, 253,
256
Brown v. Board of Education, 2, 14, 38,
117, 270
BSU (Black Student Union), SFSC, 7, 43,
45 66, 50fi g, 61fi g, 71 76; admissions
programs, 52, 56, 72; Alexis, 74;
autonomy quest, 48; Black Arts and
Culture series, 47; Black Fire, 75; Black
high school graduates, 48; Black studies
department, 48 49, 56 57, 73, 75 77;
Dillon, 46, 53; Garrett, 47, 48, 52, 54;
gender roles, 58 59; Glover, 52, 74;
Hare and, 48, 50fi g, 54, 76; march
across campus, 56; Murray, 52, 55 57,
67, 71, 73; Ben Stewart, 45 46, 52, 57;
Tascoe, 18, 47, 55, 58 59, 66, 72;
Thomas, 52, 67, 75; twelve- member
central committee, 58; and TWLF,
59 61, 72 73; Varnado, 45, 52, 56 57,
59. See also SFSC strike
Bunche, Ralph, 30, 276
Bundy, McGeorge, 201
Bunzel, John, 49
Burns, Haywood, 169, 170
Burroughs, Charles, 112
Burroughs, Margaret, 98, 112
But Some of Us Are Brave: All the Women
Are White, All the Blacks Are Men:
Black Womens Studies (Hull, Scott,
and Smith), 260
Cabral, Amilcar, 83, 236 37
Cade, Toni, 125 27, 213, 216, 256,
257 58
California: Black student activism, 41, 55,
78; Black studies (early 1970s), 206;
Claremont Colleges, 222; Department of
Education, 224; ethnic studies, 265;
Governor Reagan, 7, 43, 55, 62, 67, 73,
132; Master Plan for Education, 51;
Nairobi Schools, 10, 220 26; TWLF,
59. See also Bay Area; Los Angeles;
University of California
California State University, Long Beach,
71
Calvin, Willie, 106
Cambodia, U.S. invasion, 160
Cannon, Alfred, 69
capitalism, Black, 109
Carew, Jan, 100 101
Ca rib be an: Black newspaper coverage, 251;
Black studies, 251, 252 53; communities in Canada, 230; intellectuals, 127,
229 30; Arthur Lewis, 201. See also
Cuba; Haiti
338 | Index
Carmichael, Stokely, 2, 14, 147fi g, 233, 269;
Affro- Arts Theater, 105; Africa, 22, 146,
237 38; AHSA, 205; Black Marxism vs.,
205; Black Power: The Politics of
Liberation (with Hamilton), 20 21,
21fi g, 22, 125, 271; and Ca rib be an
communities in Canada, 230; Howard,
5, 34, 146; IBW, 230 31; Nairobi
Schools, 221, 225; pledge of undying
love for Blacks, 106; SFSC strike, 57,
146; SNCC, 5, 22, 37, 147fi g, 221, 237
Carr, Greg, 245, 246
Carroll, Constance M., 259
Carruthers, Jacob, 247
Carson, Clayborne, 191
Carter, Alprentice Bunchy, 68, 69, 70
Cartey, Wilfred, 127, 130, 135 36
Castro, Fidel, 23, 232, 236
Cauce, Cesar, 239
caucuses, Black, 67, 202, 208 9, 232 33, 254
Cayton, Horace, 112, 276
CBS, 214, 215; WCBS- TV, 25, 213, 214
Center for Afro- American Studies, UCLA,
68 70, 187, 190, 191, 203
Center for Black Education, Washington,
D.C., 222, 235
Center for Inner City Studies, Northeastern
Illinois University, 112, 247
Central YMCA College, 80
Challenge of Blackness (Bennett), 178
charter schools, 220
Cheek, James E., 163
Cheikh Anta Diop annual conferences, 245
Cheyney State College, Pennsylvania, 40
Chicago, 7 8, 79 113; Alinsky, 23; Black
nationalism, 103; Black public affairs
tele vi sion show, 95; BPP, 104, 106, 109,
161; Carruthers, 247; Chicago Eight,
162; communists, 111, 227; Communiversity, 111 12, 145, 261; Demo cratic
convention, 87; Du Sable Museum of
African American History and Culture,
98, 112, 113, 227; fi rst Black college
president, 108, 135; Institute of Positive
Education/New Concept School, 112,
220; institution building, 112, 220;
police torture ring, 274; University of
Chicago, 104, 109, 111, 193, 227;
University of Illinois, 104, 106; urban
unrest, 83 84, 104; WBBM, 214. See
also Chicago City Colleges; Northwestern University; Roo se velt University
Chicago City Colleges, 85, 102, 104, 106,
108, 275. See also Crane Ju nior College
Chicago Daily News, 92
Chicago Defender, 171, 251
Chicago Freedom Movement, 105
Chicago State University, 275
Chicago Tribune, 92 93, 95
Chinese Americans, 60, 270
Chinese communists, 236. See also Maoism
Chisholm, Shirley, 122
Chrisman, Robert, 75
Christian, Barbara, 127, 135, 140
Chronicle of Higher Education, 242
citizenship, education as right of, 106
City College Commune, 129
City College of New York (CCNY), 8, 13,
114, 120, 123 37; admissions criteria,
124, 125, 133 35, 136fi g, 137, 139;
Ballard, 115, 134; Black and Hispanic
studies center, 126 27; Black and Puerto
Rican Faculty, 129; Black and Puerto
Rican percentage, 124; Black and Puerto
Rican Student Community (BPRSC),
125, 127, 129, 133 34, 135; Black and
Puerto Rican Studies, 125 26, 128, 212;
Black studies, 136 37; Cade, 125 27,
257; Committee of Ten, 125;
Copeland, 132, 135 36; counterrevolution, 135; demands by Black students,
119, 123 24, 127 28, 130fi g, 133 34;
End Racism at CCNY petition,
123 24; Faculty for Action, 129;
founding principles, 124; Harlem
location, 8, 13, 114, 123 25, 130,
130fi g; Jewish faculty and students, 124;
Onyx Society, 125; Powells, 125, 274;
seek, 124 25, 127 28, 129, 134, 139,
140; Third World studies, 127, 135;
University of Harlem, 123, 125,
130fi g; Urban and Ethnic Studies
department, 135; Urban and Third
World Studies, 127
City Colleges. See Chicago City Colleges;
City University of New York (cuny);
community colleges; Federal City College
City University of New York (cuny), 8,
114 23, 127, 131 32; admissions
criteria, 114 17, 124, 125, 133 40, 200,
269; Black studies, 125 28, 135 37;
fi scal crisis (1970s), 139; Hunter College
in Manhattan, 212; Law School, 274;
Medgar Evers College, 135; seek,
115 16, 124 29, 134, 139, 140; urban
and ethnic studies departments, 135. See
also Brooklyn College; City College of
New York (CCNY); seek
Index | 339
Civil Rights Act, 32, 91
civil rights lawyers, 273 74
civil rights movement, 15, 21, 115, 163,
270; afterward, 240, 248, 272; Black
enrollment jump at white campuses
(1967 and 1968), 4; Black Power
movement and, 4, 24, 129; Black
student backgrounds, 29, 34, 43, 83,
164, 233; Black students redefi nition
of, 2, 233, 268 69, 271, 278; Carson as
scholar of, 191; Chicago, 81; cuny, 8,
114, 128; freedom rides, 2, 44; HBCUs
and, 8 9, 34, 142, 157, 163 64, 165 66;
Hoover, 221; Frank M. Johnson, 40;
leadership, 226 27; Nixon and, 163;
nonviolence, 13, 24, 162; SFSC students
and, 43, 44, 46, 51, 59; Stuckey, 98.
See also Black student activism; King,
Martin Luther Jr.
Clair, Joseph, 150
Claremont Colleges, California, 222
Clark, Cedric, 177
Clark, Kenneth, 38, 115, 124
Clarke, John Henrik: AHSA, 254 55; ASA,
254; BAAL, 217; Black Heritage, 10,
211 12, 214, 216; Black history, 10,
17, 211 12, 212fi g, 214, 216, 244;
Statement of the Black Members of the
Advisory Committee of Black Heritage
(with Harding and Strickland), 214
Clay, Lucius, 40
Clay, Robert, 104, 106
Cleaver, Eldridge, 55
Cleaver, Kathleen, 125
Co ali tion of Black Trade Unionists, 111
Coar, Madelyn, 15
Cobb, Charlie, 37, 44
Cobb, Montague, 150
Cochran, J. Otis, 162
Cohran, Phil, 105, 109
COINTELPRO, FBI, 8, 9, 68, 71, 162,
232, 233
cold war, 16; African studies, 251;
Americanist thinking, 270 71; and
Black Power, 250; cultural programs,
215; liberalism, 16, 145
Cole, Babalola, 152
Coleman, Kermit, 106
Colgate family, 223 24
College Language Association, 209
College Readiness Program, College of San
Mateo, 221, 222, 223 24
Collins, John, 158 59
Colon, Alan, 265
colonialism, 16, 270 71; Black university
and, 144; IBIs promoting decolonization, 226, 231. See also colonialism in
Africa; imperialism
colonialism in Africa, 251, 270; African
American freedom struggle and,
212 13; Afrocentricity and, 245, 246;
Algeria, 56; Angola, 235, 250; armed
self- defense, 24; ASA, 254; Black studies
and, 251 52, 254 55, 256; GuineaBissau, 235, 250; Mozambique, 235,
250. See also African liberation struggles
Color Us Black, 39
Colson, Steve, 85, 105
Colter, Cyrus, 101
Coltrane, John, 27
Columbia University: Black history, 186;
Black students, 19, 29; CCNY faculty
Black women affi liated with, 127;
Hamilton, 190; New Left, 6; police
violence, 7, 81, 87, 131; Statement of
the Black Members of the Advisory
Committee of Black Heritage (Harding,
Clarke, and Strickland), 214
Combahee River Collective, 260
Commission for Black Education, 192
communalism, African, 225, 226
communists: Aptheker, 189; BAAL and,
219; Brooklyn College activism, 122;
CCNY activism, 132; Chicago, 111,
227; Chinese, 236; Crane faculty, 107;
Du Bois, 47, 189, 218; Greensboro
Massacre blamed on, 239; Haywood,
231; Howard and, 145; Lerner, 262;
McCarthy era, 35, 94, 218 19, 229,
251; NAACP and, 216; Robeson, 98,
111, 219; SFSC and, 45, 47; Vietnam
war and, 24; WVO, 238 39. See also
Maoism; Marxism; Marxist- Leninism
Communist Workers Party, 239
communities: Chinese, 60; Community
Advisory Board, UCLA, 68 70;
community- control- of- public- schools
movement, 114; SFSC strike supporters,
61, 67, 72; TWLF, 59 60. See also Black
communities
community colleges: admissions criteria
and, 51; Black administrative leadership,
41; Black student activism, 101 2. See
also City Colleges
Communiversity, 111 12, 145, 261
compulsory military training courses/ROTC,
protest vs., 8, 35, 36, 39, 152, 182
Congress for the Unity of Black Students, 26
340 | Index
Congressional Black Caucus, 232 33
Congress of Afrikan Peoples, Atlanta, 261
Congress of Racial Equality, 98
Conrad, Alfred, 124
conservatism, 16, 115; admissions criteria,
277; Black perspective and, 175; and
Black studies, 11, 266; California state
leadership, 7, 43, 53, 132; CCNY
activism and, 131; vs. EOP, 75; Ford
Foundation, 201; HBCU, 6, 29, 33,
148 49, 152, 164, 173; Howard,
148 49, 152; vs. Northwestern student
activism, 92; sexual norms, 236, 258;
and SFSC, 51, 67, 132; Tascoe family,
58; Wellesley, 15
Consortium for the Development of Black
Studies Curriculum (McWorter/
Alkalimat), 243
contraception, 257 58
Cooper, Elmer, 74
Copeland, Joseph, 132, 135 36
Cornell University, 114; Africana Studies
and Research Center, 110, 186, 188,
203, 275, 276; armed Black students,
131, 153, 183, 234; Black faculty hiring,
188 89; Whitfi eld, 234
Corson, Robert, 145 46
counterrevolution, 135, 146, 174
Cox, Arthur J., 151
Cox, Courtland, 37
Cox, Oliver, 276
Crane Ju nior College, 79 80, 102 11;
becoming Malcolm X College, 8, 80,
102, 107, 108 11, 223; demands by
students, 107 8; Negro History Club/
Afro- American History Club, 7 8, 102,
104; Phoenix, 103, 104
Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (Cruse),
125, 147
Crouchett, Lawrence, 176
Cruse, Harold, 23, 125, 146, 147 48
Crutchfi eld, Nesbit, 61fi g, 62, 74, 75
Cuba, 23, 57; Castro, 23, 232, 236; Murray,
55; Robert F. Williams, 23
cultural imperialism, Western, 178 80, 204,
228, 254
cultural nationalists, 225 26, 233, 271;
Black studies, 205, 243; vs. BPP, 68;
Communiversity, 112; Third Worldism
and, 224 25
cuny. See City University of New York
Daley, Richard M., 79, 106
Daniels, Jack, 206 7
Davis, Angela, 248, 275
Davis, David Brion, 201
Davis, Leroy (Askia): BPP, 121, 275;
Brooklyn College, 117 18, 120, 121,
123, 130 31, 137, 138, 275; New York
City Board of Education, 275
Davis, Miles, 27
Davis, Ossie, 146, 217, 220
deindustrialization, 5, 140
Dellums, Ron, 49, 65, 72
Dempsey, Al, 19
Denmark, Leon, 19, 29
departmental status, Black studies, 101,
208; Harvard, 181 83, 193 96,
199 200, 234, 242, 252; Howard, 153;
Hunter College in Manhattan, 212;
Northwestern, 93 94, 95 101; as
separatism, 201; SFSC, 48 49, 56 57,
73, 75 77; University of Massachusetts,
181 82, 189, 212, 219; Yale, 208
desegregation: Black Power movement
changing terms of, 4; of college
curricula, 3, 30; Ford Foundation and,
202, 203; Higher Education Act (1965),
29; higher education institutions in
North and West, 4; saving HBCUs
during, 8 9, 33, 143, 272. See also
integration; segregation
Detroit, urban unrest, 22, 82
Dillon, Hari, 46; arrest/trial/jail, 53, 62, 73,
74; and EOP, 78; nationalism aimed at
white racism not white people, 60; SFSC
strike, 53, 63, 63fi g, 73, 273; TWLF, 53
Dingle, Bernie, 154, 156
Diopian Institute for Scholarly Advancement in Philadelphia, 245
discrimination, racial, 270; Black faculty
hiring, 186; Education Amendments Act
vs., 259; faculty hiring, 186; Harvard,
18 19; Howard, 149; North, 15 20;
Roo se velt University, 80; suffrage
movement, 262. See also rights;
segregation
diversity: in Black perspective, 216, 243;
educational opportunities furthering
(1970s and 1980s), 270
Dodson, Howard, 231 32
Dooley, Ebon, 112
dormitories. See housing
Douglass, Frederick, 220, 264, 276
Downing, Mike, 69
draft, military, 35, 44
Drake, St. Clair, 174; African diaspora,
252 53; Aspen conference, 202; BAAL,
Index | 341
217; and Black faculty hiring, 187 88,
189; Black Heritage, 10, 213; Black
Metropolis (with Cayton), 112; Black
studies, 252 53, 276; and Carmichael
promoting violence, 146; IBW, 229fi g;
interracial marriage, 187 88; Malcolm
X College and, 108; Pan- Africanism,
250; Roo se velt University, 80, 252;
Stanford, 188, 193, 204, 225
Drimmer, Melvin, 192
Du Bois, W. E. B., 14, 215, 218, 226; BAAL
Hall of Fame, 218, 219; Black Power
and, 23; Black studies, 207, 251, 276;
communist, 47, 189, 218; Ghana, 218,
219; Harvard, 218; at HBCUs, 30;
papers at University of Massachusetts,
189; Stockholm Peace Appeal, 218;
talented tenth, 35; for womens
suffrage and equality, 264
Du Bois Club, New York City, 117, 123 24,
129
Du Bois Institute for Advanced AfroAmerican Studies, 227
Du Bois Institute for Afro- American
Research, 196, 199; Student Co ali tion,
199
Dudley High School, A&T students and,
158, 160, 234
Duke University: Black studies, 242, 256;
Cauce or ga niz ing workers at, 239;
desegregation, 202; Malcolm X
Liberation University, 235
Dunbar, Leslie, 169
Dunham, Katherine, 220
Durham: Malcolm X Liberation University,
222, 235. See also Duke University
Du Sable Museum of African American
History and Culture, Chicago, 98, 112,
113, 227
Dyer, Conrad, 135
Dzidzienyo, Anani, 253
Eames, R. Judge, 169
East Palo Alto, California, Nairobi Schools,
10, 220 26
Ebonics, Oakland School District, 223
Ebony: Bennett, 95, 96fi g, 228; The Black
Revolution, 12; one hundred leading
Black Americans, 258
economics. See funding; socioeconomics
Educational Opportunity Program (EOP),
53, 66, 70, 75, 78; Brooklyn College,
139; California law, 73; Hayakawa and,
74; University of California, 51 52
Education Amendments Act (1972), 259
Edwards, Edwin, 164, 166, 168 69, 170,
171
Edwards, Harry, 41
Egypt, 112, 244, 246, 247
Eleanor Roo se velt Leadership Fellowship,
164
Elijah Muhammad, 258
Ellington, Duke, 217, 220
Ellison, Ralph, 26 27, 193, 276
Elmhurst College, 112
Emergency Civil Liberties Commission,
New York City, 120
Emergency Land Fund, 148
Emory, desegregation, 202
employment: Black faculty hiring issues, 74,
186 93, 199, 276; student, 67, 91. See
also labor unions; working class
En glish, Henry, 102 4, 106, 107, 108, 109,
113
enrollment. See admissions criteria; Black
student enrollment
Equal Justice Society, San Francisco, 274
ethnic studies, 265 66; Berkeley (University
of California), 191, 265; Black studies
relationship, 204, 265 66; cuny, 135;
interdisciplinary, 69, 266; Mills, 77;
positionality and, 176; SFSC, 59, 73;
UCLA, 69; in U.S. (1995), 208. See also
Black studies; Third Worldism
Eurocentrism: Afrocentricism and, 244, 246,
247 48; American college curricula,
175; HBCU curriculum, 30 31
Evans, Alvin, 155, 156
Evans, Elliot, 107
Evans, Mari, 100, 220
Evanston, Illinois: Black community, 15,
100; NAACP, 15. See also Northwestern
University
The Excellence of Soul (C. Eric Lincoln),
217 18
exceptionalism, American, 11, 103, 250
Experimental College, SFSC, 18, 46 48, 73,
244
faculty. See Black faculty
Faith Community Church, Greensboro,
239 40
Fall, Bernard, 145
Fanon, Frantz, 23 24, 25, 83, 125, 144
Farrakhan, Louis, 274
Fascism, 30
FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation):
assassinations by, 68, 71, 232;
342 | Index
FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
(continued)
Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), 8, 9, 68, 71, 162, 232, 233; and
IBW, 231, 232; and Murray, 45; North
Carolina A&T, 158; and Sanchez, 47
Feaster, Robert/Sekou Sundiata, 123, 124
Federal City College: Black studies, 54, 95;
Center for Black Education, 235;
Garrett, 54, 95, 151; James, 219
Federal Communications Commission, 214
feminism: AHSA and, 255; Black, 11, 26,
46, 88fi g, 216, 229, 238, 256 64, 272;
and Black studies, 6, 11, 256 61; sobu/
yobu and, 238; white racism within,
257, 260, 262 63. See also gender
Field Foundation, 169
Fields, Barbara J., 101
fi nancial aid, to students, 3, 29, 53, 91 92
Financing the Black University (Browne),
148
The First Three Years (Guinier, Rushing,
and Profi t), 195
Fisk University, Nashville, 145, 252
Fitzhugh, Robert, 118
Flory, Ishmael, 111
FMO (For Members Only), Northwestern,
25, 83, 84, 89 91, 97, 99 100
Foner, Eric, 186
Ford, Nick Aaron, 207
Ford Foundation, 9 10, 200 203; Aspen
conference (July 1970), 9, 201 3, 223;
Eleanor Roo se velt Leadership
Fellowship, 164; ethnic studies survey,
265; fellowships for underrepresented
minorities, 203; IBW programs,
228 29, 232
Fordham University, Bronx, 190 91
Forman, James, 125, 212
For Members Only (FMO), Northwestern,
25, 83, 84, 89 91, 97, 99 100
Forrest, Leon, 101
Franklin, John Hope, 108, 111, 193,
217
fraternities: Black, 19; white, 91 92
Frazier, Arthur, 69
Frazier, E. Franklin, 23, 30, 207
Frederickson, George, 83, 97
freedom rides, 2, 44
freedom schools, church- based, 17
frelimo, 236
Frey, John, 55
Fuller, Howard/Owusu Sadauki, 28, 169,
235 39, 250, 273
funding: Black Peoples Committee of Inquiry,
169; Black student, 29; Black studies,
200 201, 203, 252; California state
colleges, 53; cuny, 139; Eleanor
Roo se velt Leadership Fellowship, 164;
federal aid to universities, 82, 163;
fi nancial aid to students, 3, 29, 53, 91;
HBCU, 33, 34, 143, 149, 163, 164, 172;
IBW, 10, 228 29, 231, 232 33; and
institution building, 232; Nairobi Schools,
223 24, 226; Northwestern, 93; overseas
student travel, 100; public universities,
53, 269 70, 277 78; scholarships, 29;
seek, 127 28; War on Poverty, 157; white
sources, 9 10, 34, 148, 202 3, 223 24,
252. See also Ford Foundation
The Future of Black Studies (1975
conference), 200
Gallagher, Buell G., 123 24, 130, 131, 132
Garrett, Jimmy, 44 45; arrested, 53, 54;
Black studies, 48 49, 222, 235, 250;
Center for Black Education, 222, 235;
course The Mis- education of the Negro,
47; Federal City College, 54, 95, 151;
male chauvinism, 46; SFSC admissions,
52; SFSC BSU, 47, 48, 52, 54; TWLF, 59
Garvey, Marcus: in Black studies, 47;
scholars and followers of, 17, 100, 102,
215, 216, 229
Gater, SFSC, 52 53, 54, 71
Gates, Henry Louis, 249
gays and lesbians: Black activists inspiring,
264 65; Black lesbians, 260; homophobia vs., 176, 256, 260
gender: Black students roles, 26 28, 46,
58 59, 257. See also feminism; men;
women
Genovese, Eugene, 175
Georgia: Augusta police violence, 161.
See also Atlanta
Geteles, Fran, 129, 139
Ghana: Du Bois and wife, 218, 219;
Dzidzienyo, 253; Ghanaian In de pendence Day, 223
ghetto dwellers: for Black Power, 3; Black
student activism for, 65 66
GI Bill, 14
Gittens, Anthony, 36
Giuliani, Rudolph, 140
Glazer, Nathan, 195
Glover, Danny, 45, 52, 74, 77, 273
Gold, Eugene, 122
Goode, Victor, 85, 274
Index | 343
Goodlett, Carleton, 64, 65, 72, 78, 274
Goodwin, Leroy, 72 73
Graham Du Bois, Shirley, 219
Grant, Joanne, 216
grassroots or ga niz ing, 271; admissions
programs, 52; Black Power social
movement, 2, 157; Black studies
program, 47 48; civil rights movement,
129, 157; Greensboro Black community,
234 35; Nairobi Schools, 10
Gray, Hanna, 100
Gray, James, 173
Green, Adam, 112
Greensboro, 157 58, 160, 234 35, 273;
Beloved Community Center, 240;
Greensboro Massacre, 160, 239; Ku Klux
Klan, 239; Malcolm X Liberation
University, 235; North Carolina A&T
State University, 30, 33, 157 60, 192,
234, 273; Trouble in Greensboro, 160;
Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
239
Gregg, Lucius, 87 89, 93
Gregory, Dick, 104, 109
Griffi n, Farah, 201
Griffi n, Skip, 184
Grimes, Willie, 158 59, 160
Groundings with My Sisters: Patriarchy
and the Exploitation of Black Women
(Marable), 264
guerilla tactics, SFSC strike and, 57
Guinea, Carmichael moving to, 146
Guinea- Bissau: anticolonial struggles, 235,
250; socialism, 236 37
Guinier, Ewart, 178, 193 96, 194fi g, 199,
276 77
Guyanese, 100, 229, 244
H20 Gate Blues (Scott- Heron), 172
Haiti: earthquake relief, 275; Revolution,
94, 219
Haley, Alex, 217, 225
Hall, Perry, 247
Hamilton, Charles, 23, 25; Black faculty
hiring, 188, 190; Black Power: The
Politics of Liberation (with Carmichael),
20 21, 21fi g, 22, 125, 271; Black
scholarship vs. militancy, 204; Black
students gender roles, 27, 28; Black
students religion, 29; Black students
scholarships, 29; Black students in
South, 30; Black university, 21fi g,
34 35; Guinier seeking help from, 193;
Malcolm X College, 108; Merritt
College, 41; The Place of the Black
College in the Human Rights Struggle,
34; Roo se velt University, 80, 81
Hammond, Samuel, 32
Hampton, Francis, 109
Hampton, Fred, 106, 109
Handbook of Black Studies (Karenga and
Asante), 245
Handy, John, 75
Hansberry, Lorraine, 276
Hansberry, William, 244
Harbert, Hattie, 31
Harding, Vincent, 188, 249; Aspen
conference, 201 2, 203; Black Heritage,
10, 25, 211, 212 14, 227; Black history,
10, 178, 211 13, 231; on Blackness,
177; Black university, 144 45; Commission for Black Education, 192; IBW,
212, 227 28, 229, 229fi g, 230 31,
232 33; Spelman College, 144, 188,
211, 227; Statement of the Black
Members of the Advisory Committee
of Black Heritage (with Clarke and
Strickland), 214
Hare, Nathan, 23; Black Anglo- Saxons, 125;
The Black Scholar, 75, 205; on Black
studies programs, 77, 201, 206; Howard,
34, 35, 38, 48, 146, 206; SFSC, 35,
48 49, 50fi g, 54, 56, 73, 76, 206, 273
Harlem: Black Economic Research Center,
148; CCNYs location in, 8, 13, 114,
123 25, 130, 130fi g; Clarke as historian
of, 17, 212, 212fi g; Columbia police
violence and, 131; University of
Harlem, 123, 125, 130fi g
Harley, Sharon, 261 62, 263
Harris, Abram, 276
Harris, Jocklyn, 86fi g
Harris, Leslie, 82
Harris, Michael, 36
Harris, Patricia Roberts, 150
Harris, Robert L., 249, 251 52
Harris Bank, Chicago, 93
Harvard Bulletin, 197
Harvard University, 114, 124, 193 200;
Association of African and AfroAmerican Students at Harvard and
Radcliffe (afro), 181 84; Black studies,
9 10, 174, 181 84, 185, 188, 191,
193 200, 203, 208, 234, 242, 252,
276 77; Crimson, 183 84; discrimination vs. Black students, 18 19; Du Bois
as fi rst Black recipient of PhD from,
218; Guinier, 178, 193 96, 194fi g, 199,
344 | Index
Harvard University (continued)
276 77; Kilson critiques, 184, 194 200,
242; Rosovsky, 181, 182, 183, 199, 201;
Mark Smith, 234, 238
Hatcher, Richard, 219 20
Hawkins, Donald, 70
Hayakawa, S. I.: SFSC, 7, 62 67, 71 78,
132, 273; U.S. Senate, 74, 77
Hayes, Floyd, 69, 248
Haywood, Harry, 231
HBCUs. See historically Black colleges and
universities (HBCUs)
health clinics, free, BPP for, 5
Health, Education, and Welfare Department
(HEW), 91, 231
Heard, Alexander, 163
Hearn, Etta Kay, 169
Henderson, George, 15, 23 24, 25
Henderson, Stephen, 227, 229
Hershey, Lewis B., 35
Herskovits, Melville, 23
HEW (Department of Health, Education,
and Welfare), 91, 231, 259
Hewitt, Mary Jane, 68 69, 70, 187, 258
Higginson, John, 83, 93, 95
Higher Education Act (1965), 29, 82
high schools: Black studies, 16 17, 48;
Dudley, 158, 160, 234; Nairobi, 222
Hill, Adelaide, 252
Hill, Freddye, 98
Hill, Robert, 100, 229
Hill, Sandra, 82
Hilltop, 35
Hine, Darlene Clark, 26 27, 81, 249, 263
historically Black colleges and universities
(HBCUs), 1 2, 142 73, 272; Black
faculty brain drain, 188; Black history
teaching, 30 31; Black student activism,
6, 8 9, 14, 29 39, 78, 114, 142 73;
Black students parents, 28 29, 37;
Black studies, 3, 8 9, 30 31, 34, 143,
151, 153, 154, 192, 209, 245, 275;
enrollment jump (1970s), 3, 143; federal
aid to, 163; funding, 33, 34, 143, 149,
163, 164; gender gap in degrees granted,
258; heavier teaching load, 262; North
Carolina A&T State University, 30, 33,
157 60, 192, 234; percentage of Black
collegiates, 142; police violence, 3, 6, 9,
31 32, 38 40, 142 43, 153 73, 272,
273; saving, 8 9, 33, 143, 272. See
also Black university; Howard
University
history, Black. See Black history
homophobia, 176, 256, 260. See also gays
and lesbians
Hook, Sidney, 175
Hooks, Bell, 260
Hoover, Mary, 221, 223
Hoover, Robert/Bob, 221 26
Horne, Lena, 218
House Internal Security Committee, 132, 168
housing: Northwestern, 15, 82, 91 92; San
Francisco poor Blacks, 65; TSU police
violence, 31; Wellesley, 17 18; Wesleyan,
17
Houston: Black Power, 31 32; Revolutionary
Workers League, 238; Texas Southern
University (TSU), 6, 31 32, 157
Howard, Jeff, 182
Howard University, 35 39, 143 53; black
agenda, 144; Black nationalist
or ga ni za tion (Ujamma), 36; Black
Power Committee, 34; Black student
activism, 6, 34, 35 39, 38fi g, 114,
143 53; Black studies, 34, 143, 151,
153, 245; Black university, 34, 35,
36 38, 38fi g, 143 44, 146 49, 152;
Carmichael, 5, 34, 146; Center for Sickle
Cell Disease, 153; demands by students,
36 38, 38fi g; Hare, 34, 35, 38, 48, 146,
206; Harley, 261 62; Hilltop, 35; Mary
Hoover, 223; hospital, 153; Hurst, 108;
Institute for Urban Affairs and Research,
153; Law School boycott, 150; medical
school, 150, 153; Myers, 144, 148, 149,
274; Orangeburg Ultimatum, 36;
pioneers in Black scholarship, 30; and
police violence, 38, 39, 157; President
Nabrit, 34, 36, 37, 150, 152, 163;
School of Social Work boycott, 151;
Sterling Brown University, 36;
Students for an Educational Institution,
148; Terborg- Penn, 262; Toward A
Black University (tabu), 146 49;
University Without Walls Program, 153;
University Year for Action, 153
How Eu rope Underdeveloped Africa
(Rodney), 230fi g, 244
Hubert, Claude, 70
Hudson, Michael, 86fi g
Huggins, John, 68, 69, 70
Huggins, Nathan, 186
Hull, Gloria T., 260
Hunter College, Manhattan, 212
Hurley, Mark, 65
Hurst, Charles, 108, 109, 110fi g, 135
Hutson, Jean, 217
Index | 345
I Am a Black Woman (Mari Evans), 220
IBIs. See in de pen dent Black institutions
IBW (Institute of the Black World), 10, 201,
212, 227 33, 229fi g
identity politics, 115, 133, 257
Illinois: Illinois Council for Black Studies,
205; Northeastern Illinois University
Center for Inner City Studies, 112, 247;
University of Illinois, 104, 106, 204. See
also Chicago; Evanston
imperialism, 270 71; African American and
African ties vs., 236 37; Afrocentric,
246; Black nationalism vs., 271; Western
cultural, 178 80, 204, 228, 254. See also
colonialism
in de pen dent Black institutions (IBIs), 10,
225 26, 236. See also Black schooling
movement; institution building
India, Dillons background, 46
Indiana University Press, 263
Indians, American. See Native Americans
Institute for Urban Affairs and Research,
Howard University, 153
Institute of African American Affairs, NYU,
204 5, 217, 253
Institute of Positive Education/New Concept
School, 112, 220
Institute of the Black World (IBW), 10, 201,
212, 227 33, 229fi g, 260
institution building: Black, 10, 112, 207 40.
See also Black schooling movement
integration, 14, 116; and assimilation,
19 21; Black Heritage and, 215, 216;
Black perspective, 271; Black Power
and, 33, 36, 103, 157, 163; Black studies
movement and, 133, 203; Black
university vs., 144 45; Black women
historians, 262; Kenneth Clark
advocating, 38; cuny, 114; Ford
Foundation and, 202, 203; HBCUs and,
34, 142, 145 46, 272; Malcolm X
critique, 16; militancy inspired by, 42;
as multiculturalism, 19 20; Nairobi
Schools and, 221 22; Northwestern, 81,
82; self- determination vs., 44 45, 49,
142; separatism vs., 19 20, 133; SFSC,
45. See also assimilation; desegregation
Internal Revenue Ser vice, vs. IBW, 232
internationalism, 270 71; Black nationalism, 249 50, 271; Black Power, 24;
Black studies, 11, 228, 250 51; BPP, 45;
consciousness as African descendants, 4;
IBW, 228, 231. See also Pan- Africanism;
Third Worldism
International Longshore and Ware house
Union, 67
interracial marriage and dating, 28, 81, 105,
187 88, 236
interracial working- class or ga niz ing,
238 39
Introduction to Afro- American Studies
(Alkalimat et al), 243
Introduction to Black Studies (Karenga),
243
Invisible Man (Ellison), 26 27
Islam. See Muslims
Issac, Ephraim, 196
Jackson, Don, 81
Jackson, George, 220
Jackson, Georgia, 220
Jackson, Jesse, 104, 110fi g
Jackson, QT, 144
Jackson- Kent Blues (Steve Miller Band),
172
Jackson State College, Mississippi, 157, 161,
171, 172
Jamaica, summer institute, 252 53
James, C. L. R., 7, 94, 218 19, 229, 250
Jarrett, Vernon D., 95
Jeffries, Leonard, 137
Jews: anti- Semitism toward, 124, 128; New
York, 124, 128 29
Jim Crow: Black colleges, 142, 164; and
Black male white female intimacy, 81;
Black studies and, 133; end of, 271;
hotel discrimination, 15; politics of
respectability, 33 34. See also
segregation
Joans, Ted, 147
Johnson, Bennett, 80
Johnson, Charles E., 207
Johnson, Christine C., 103
Johnson, Frank M., 40
Johnson, Joseph, 168
Johnson, Joyce, 234
Johnson, Lyndon B., 57, 65, 82
Johnson, Nelson, 28, 33, 157 60, 234 40,
250, 273
Johnson, Tobe, 185
Jones, Leroi/Amiri Baraka, 47, 105, 146,
219, 237, 261
Jones, Lucille, 75, 76
Jones, Rhett, 205, 248, 256, 264
Jones, William A., 122
Jones, Woodrow, 75
Journal of Black Studies, 69, 176, 209, 245
Journal of Negro Education, 176, 209
346 | Index
Journal of Negro History, 209, 218
Joyce, Joyce A., 246
Julian, Percy, 38
ju nior colleges. See community colleges
Justice Department, vs. Shirley Graham Du
Bois visa, 219
Kamen, Jeff, 87
Karenga, Maulana/Ron: Black studies, 201,
243, 245; Handbook of Black Studies
(with Asante), 245; vs. interracial dating/
marriage, 187; Introduction to Black
Studies, 243; Kawaida worldview, 243,
247; tabu, 146; us, 68, 69, 70 71
Kawaida worldview, 243, 247
Kelsey, George, 203
Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge
(Asante), 246
Kempton, Murray, 134
Kennedy- King College, 112
Kent State, Ohio, 157, 161, 171 72
Kerner commission, 92, 157, 214
Killens, John Oliver, 98, 145, 217
Kilson, Martin, 184, 194 201, 217, 242
King, Barbara Lewis, 107, 108
King, Coretta Scott, 227
King, Martin Luther Jr.: vs. Black Power,
231; Harding close with, 211;
nonviolence, 24, 40, 162; Rustin, 133.
See also Kings assassination
King, Martin Luther Jr. family: and IBW,
230 31; wife, 227
King Memorial Center, 227 28, 231
King Memorial Foundation Board, 230 31
Kings assassination: Atlanta community
and, 227; Black faculty demand after,
188; Black liberation movement after,
268; Black student activism after, 2, 7,
14, 40, 81, 83 84, 123; Black student
unrest prior to, 39; Black studies and,
181, 206; Crane memorial, 106; EOP
quota after, 52; Ohio State and, 160
Kirby, Larry, 158 59
Kirkpatrick, Thelma Wheaton, 227
Knight, Franklin, 220
Kofsky, Frank, 75
Kotlowski, Dean, 163
KQED, 63
Kreml, Franklin, 87 89
Ku Klux Klan: bombings of Black homes,
15; CCNY activism and, 132; Nation of
Islam and, 52; Robert F. Williams vs.,
23; vs. WVO, 239
Kwanzaa, 71, 223, 247
Labor Department, U.S., 26
labor unions: Chicago, 104; Co ali tion of
Black Trade Unionists, 111; International Longshore and Ware house Union,
67; Transport Workers Union, 67; WVO,
239 40
LaBrie, Aubrey, 47
Ladner, Joyce, 229, 249
Latinos: Black activists inspiring, 2, 264,
265, 269; Black alliances with, 27, 115,
123; San Francisco, 53. See also
Mexican Americans; Puerto Ricans
lawyers, civil rights, 273 74
Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, 274
leadership: Black activist (non- student), 26,
108, 226 27. See also Black female
leadership; Black male leadership; Black
student leadership; civil rights
movement
Leahy, Margaret, 61
Lee, Carol, 220
leftism. See communists; Marxism; New
Left; socialism
Lehman College, Bronx, 187, 250
Leninism, Marxist- Leninism, 233, 237
Lerner, Gerda, 262
lesbians. See gays and lesbians
Leslie, Joshua, 97, 98 99, 100
Lester, Julius, 129
Levin, John, 60, 61, 62, 74
Lewin, Arthur, 242
Lewis, Arthur, 201
Lewis, John, 169
liberalism: Black Heritage and, 215; Black
Power as critique of, 37; cold war, 16,
145; elite private historically white
universities, 7; Sen. Hayakawa vs., 77;
Northwestern, 82; postwar, 14; SFSC,
43, 45, 51
liberation movements. See African liberation
struggles; Black liberation movement;
feminism
liberation school, Watts, 44
Lincoln, Abby, 147
Lincoln, Abraham, 228
Lincoln, C. Eric, 213, 217
Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, 252
Lindsay, Clyde, 183
Lindsay, John, 130, 131
Locke, Alain, 30, 207
Logan, Rayford, 30
Lorraine Motel, Memphis, 274
Los Angeles: BPP, 68, 69, 70 71, 190; us,
68, 70 71, 245. See also UCLA; Watts
Index | 347
Louisiana: Louisiana State University (LSU),
164, 173. See also Southern University
Lumpkin, Beatrice, 107
Lumpkin, Frank, 107
Lundberg, Ferdinand, 47
Lynch, Hollis, 80, 193
Madhubuti, Haki, 105, 112, 205, 220, 250
Madhubuti, Safi sha, 112
Madison (University of Wisconsin): Black
studies, 203; militant Black students
disrupting classes, 13
Major, Reginald, 66, 74
Malcolm X, 23, 233, 269; and Africa,
249 50; armed self- defense, 24, 106;
Autobiography of Malcolm X, 2, 22,
26, 117, 271; birthday celebrated, 223;
Black Heritage and, 216; Carmichael
and, 22; CCNY activism and, 125;
Askia Davis and, 117; Greensboro
activism and, 157; integration critique,
16; Malcolms children, 2; Voorhees
College and, 154; word Black, 25 26
Malcolm X College, 110fi g, 113, 269;
Crane becoming, 8, 80, 102, 107,
108 11, 223; school song, 109; Willis,
102 9, 111, 112, 113, 274
Malcolm X Liberation University, Durham,
North Carolina, 222, 235
Malone, Sandra, 15
Manchild in the Promised Land (Brown),
26
Manns, Adrienne, 38 39
The Man Who Cried I Am (John A.
Williams), 26
Maoism, 237; Maoist Progressive Labor
Party, 60
Marable, Manning, 176, 231, 233, 264
Marchi, John J., 131
marriage and dating, interracial, 28, 105,
187 88, 236
Marx, Karl, 23, 83
Marxism: African Liberation Support
Committee, 251; African radicals, 237;
Black Heritage and, 215; Black studies,
6, 205, 243; Communiversity, 261;
Howard, 145; lumpenproletariat, 5;
Marxist- Leninism, 233, 237; Messenger,
137; Rodney, 244; sobu/yobu, 237 38;
University of Chicago, 111; West Indian
intellectuals and, 229 30. See also
communists
Massachusetts: abolitionists, 15; Black
studies movement, 275; Boston
University, 40, 252; Wellesley College,
15, 17 18, 20, 40. See also University of
Massachusetts
Matthew, Thomas W., 122
Matthews, Basil, 177, 228
Maxwell, Bertha, 208
Mays, Benjamin, 217
McAllister, Don, 64fi g
McCarthy era, 35, 94, 218 19, 229, 251
McCree, Wade Jr., 195, 199
McLaurin, George, 15
McNair, Robert E., 154
McWorter, Gerald/Abdul Alkalimat: Black
Heritage, 213; Black studies, 201, 205,
242, 243, 250, 275; Black university,
144; Consortium for the Development
of Black Studies Curriculum, 243;
eblack studies, 275; IBW, 231;
Introduction to Afro- American Studies,
243; Spelman College, 227
Medgar Evers College, 135
media, 32; Black mens images, 26; Black
newspaper coverage to Africa and
Ca rib be an, 251; Black Peoples
Committee of Inquiry, 170; Black
studies, 200; Brooklyn College student
activism, 122; Carmichael, 22; CCNY
activism, 132; Greensboro Massacre,
239; HBCU student activism, 14;
Howard sit- in, 37, 39; Northwestern
Black student protest, 87, 91fi g, 92 93;
Robeson, 219; SFSC, 7, 43, 53, 55, 60,
62, 66 67; students armed self- defense,
24, 183 84; TSU riot, 32. See also
individual print and electronic media
Memorandum on Direction of Reforms in
Afro- American Studies Curriculum at
Harvard University (Kilson), 194 95
Memphis: Lorraine Motel, 274; National
Civil Rights Museum, 274
men: dominant in academia, 258. See also
Black men; patriarchy
Meredith March, Mississippi, 46
Merritt College, Oakland, 41 42, 49, 73,
102, 189
Merton, Robert, 177
Messenger, Eli, 137
Metcalf, Lee, 121
Mexican Americans, 271; Black activists
inspiring, 265, 270; Nairobi Schools
and, 221, 224 25; SFSC, 53; TWLF, 53;
University of California, 52; Venceremos, 224 25. See also Latinos
Meyers, Bart, 119
348 | Index
Michigan: Detroit urban unrest, 22, 82;
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor,
6, 253 54
middle class: admissions criteria and, 115,
139 40; Black student backgrounds, 4,
29, 197; growth and reconfi guration of
Black middle class, 270; vs. student
protest, 92
Middleton, Delano, 32
migrants, southern Black, 4, 41, 43
militancy, 22 26, 28 29; arc, 240; BBP
image, 55; Black studies structured to
quell, 206; Black university, 35;
Brooklyn College students, 119 20;
Howard students, 38, 39; integration
inspiring, 42; Kilson critique of Harvard
Blacks, 184, 196, 198; Kings assassination and, 40; Madison, 13; Northwestern, 82; SFSC, 7; Ben Stewart look,
45 46; Third World students, 60;
traditional scholarship vs., 204. See
also armed self- defense; police;
revolution
military draft, 35, 44
military training courses/ROTC, compulsory,
8, 35, 36, 39, 152, 182
Miller, J. Roscoe, 87, 93
Mills College, 77
Milwaukee: Fuller, 273; University of
Wisconsin, 263
Miranda, Tony, 62
Mississippi: Jackson State College, 157,
161, 171, 172; Meredith March, 46;
University of Mississippi, 16
Mitchell- Kernan, Claudia, 187
Monteith, Frank, 15
Moore, Archie, 213
More house, 185, 227, 231
Morgan- Cato, Charlotte, 250, 251
Morris, J. Kenneth, 154 55
Moses, Bob, 44
Mossell, Sadie Tanner, 218
Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 26, 195
Mozambique: anticolonial struggles, 250;
frelimo, 235, 236, 250; socialism, 236
Muhammad Ali, 52, 104, 249 50
Mullery, Serge, 125
Mullins, Leith, 112
multiculturalism, 19 20, 204, 240
Murch, Donna, 42
Murray, George: BPP, 45, 68, 222, 273;
church, 73 74, 273; jail, 73; Nairobi
High School principal, 222; The
Necessity of a Black Revolution, 55;
price paid for being agents of change,
78; SFSC, 52, 55 57, 67, 71, 73, 222
Murray, Linda, 111, 112
Musgrave, Richard, 183, 184
Muslims: Black, 27; Nation of Islam, 27,
52, 103, 258
Myers, Lewis, 144, 148, 149, 274
Myrdal, Gunnar, 215
NAACP: Cobb, 150; Du Bois, 218;
Evanston, 15; Houston, 31; Legal
Defense Fund, 143; North Carolina,
23; San Francisco, 274; South Carolina,
15, 155; Varnado, 45; Roy Wilkins,
133, 215
Nabrit, James M. Jr., 34, 36, 37, 150, 152,
163
Nairobi Schools, East Palo Alto, California,
10, 220 26
Naison, Mark, 190 91
Namibia, 251
Nash, Gary, 191
Nashville, Fisk University, 145, 252
Nathan, Mike, 239
National Africana Accreditation and Review
Panel, 208
National Association of Black Journalists,
95
National Black Feminist Or ga ni za tion, 260
National Black United Fund, 113
National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis,
274
National Commission on the Causes and
Prevention of Violence, 65, 157
National Conference of Black Lawyers, 85,
169, 274
National Conference of Black Po liti cal
Scientists, 209
National Council of Black Studies (NCBS),
208, 254; Afrocentricism, 245;
Alkalimat, 205; Black male sexism, 263;
Ford Foundation support, 203; model
core curriculum, 243; James B. Stewart,
242
National Economic Growth and Reconstruction Or ga ni za tion, 122
National Education Association (NEA),
168, 171
nationalism. See Black nationalism; cultural
nationalists
National Public Radio, 217
Nation of Islam, 27, 52, 103, 258
Native Americans: Black activists inspiring,
264, 265; University of California, 52
Index | 349
Native Son (Wright), 26
Navarra, Tricia, 46
NCBS. See National Council of Black
Studies
Neal, J., 107
The Necessity of a Black Revolution
(Murray), 55
Neely Smith, Sandi, 237, 238, 239
Negro Digest, 34
Negroes with Guns (Robert F. Williams),
23
Negro History Club, Crane, 7 8, 102
Negro Newsfront, 95
Nelson, Joyce, 238
neo- Nazis, 239
Netterville, G. Leon, 165, 166, 167,
168 69, 171
Newark, urban unrest, 22, 82
New Left, 2 3, 6. See also Students for a
Demo cratic Society (SDS)
New Orleans, Southern University, 164,
165, 166, 168
Newton, Huey, 4, 41, 45, 55, 56, 189
New York Amsterdam News, 36 37, 40
New York City: AHSA conference (1978),
255; Black public affairs tele vi sion
shows, 217; Black student activism, 8,
13, 113, 114 41; Black studies, 16 17;
Board of Education, 275; ethnic studies,
265; fi scal crisis (1970s), 139; freedom
schools, 17; Revolutionary Workers
League, 238; WNET, 39; WVO, 238 39.
See also Bronx; Brooklyn; City
University of New York (cuny);
Columbia University; Harlem; New
York University (NYU)
New York Civil Liberties Union, 120
New York Daily News, 122, 132
New York Post, 122, 134
New York Times, 57, 213, 215, 216
New York Times Magazine, 198 99
New York University (NYU): Black student
or ga ni za tion, 213; Black studies, 242;
Institute of African American Affairs,
204 5, 217, 253
Nigerian ambassador, 255
Nigerian In de pen dence Day, 223
Nixon, Richard, 109, 161 62, 171
nonviolence, 24 25, 26; civil rights
movement, 13, 24, 40, 162; IBW and,
231; SFSC students, 66; Southern
University, 166. See also Student
Non- Violent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC)
North: segregation, 15 20, 81. See also
individual locations
North Carolina: Agricultural and Technical
State University (A&T), 30, 33, 157 60,
192, 234, 273; NAACP, 23; NCBS, 208;
sobu, 10, 156, 158, 233, 234 38; State
Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil
Rights Commission, 159 60, 234;
University of North Carolina in
Charlotte, 33. See also Durham;
Greensboro
Northeastern Illinois University, Center
for Inner City Studies, 112, 247
Northwestern University, 15, 79 80,
81 101; AASU, 83, 84, 89 91;
affi rmative action, 80; Associated
Student Government, 87; Black student
activism, 7, 23, 82, 84 94, 86fi g, 90fi g,
91fi g; Black student enrollment, 81, 82,
85, 89 91; Black studies, 7, 80, 83,
91 92, 93 101, 96fi g, 99fi g, 190, 192;
Black women, 15, 28, 82; Bracey, 81 85,
89, 94, 98, 188; Chicago Action Project,
82 83; Committee on Afro- American
Studies, 97, 98 99, 100; First Plan of
the Seventies, 93; FMO, 25, 83, 84,
89 91, 97, 99 100; Goode, 85, 274;
housing, 15, 82, 91 92; James, 7, 94,
219; May 4th agreement, 91 94; Eva
Jefferson Paterson, 86 87, 88fi g, 274;
Pitts, 83, 190; Stuckey, 83, 95, 97 100,
99fi g, 190, 192; James Turner, 109 10,
188; Watson, 85, 275
Notes of a Native Son (Baldwin), 26
Nunez, Louis, 133 34
NYU. See New York University (NYU)
Oakland: BPP, 5, 45, 55; Ebonics at Oakland
School District, 223; Merritt College,
41 42, 49, 73, 102, 189; Murray
church, 73 74, 273; Tascoe, 275
ODell, Jack, 261
Ogletree, Charles, 29
Ogletree, Kathryn, 82, 83, 84
Ohio: Kent State, 157, 161, 171 72; Ohio
State University, 40, 160 61, 217,
242, 264
Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma, 14,
23 24, 25
Olive- Harvey College, Chicago, 111
OMeally, Robert, 223, 265
Omega Psi Phi (Black fraternity), 19
ONeal, Frederick, 217
Operation Breadbasket, 110fi g
350 | Index
Orangeburg Massacre, South Carolina State
University, 6, 32 33, 272; armed
self- defense and, 153, 154; Crane and,
104; Greensboro funeral pro cession,
158; Howard and, 36, 39; Sellers, 32,
157, 234, 273; Southern University and,
171
Or ga ni za tion of American Historians, 262
Or ga ni za tion of Black American Culture,
105, 227
organizations. See Black student organizations; fraternities; professional
organizations; sororities; individual
organizations
Paige, Miles, 37 38
Palmer, Edward L. Buzz, 104
Pan- Africanism, 4, 271; and African
liberation struggles, 235, 237, 238, 250;
Al- Wadi, 46; Black studies, 215, 242,
243, 249, 250, 254 55, 275; feminism
vs., 238; Fuller, 28; in de pen dent Black
institutions, 10, 225; Sixth Pan- African
Congress in Tanzania, 250; sobu and,
235, 237, 238. See also African diaspora
Panthers. See Black Panther Party (BPP)
parents, Black student: college- educated, 4,
28 29; Howard, 37; Northwestern,
86 87, 88; SFSC, 43; Tascoe, 58. See
also Black student backgrounds
Parker, Elizabeth, 262
Parks, Gordon, 217
Parks, Rosa, 223
Paster, George, 133
Paterson, Basil A., 274
Paterson, Eva Jefferson, 86 87, 88fi g, 274
patriarchy, 176; Black feminism and, 11,
257 58, 264; Black nationalist, 26, 226,
263; Black Power, 26 28; Marables
Groundings with My Sisters: Patriarchy
and the Exploitation of Black Women,
264. See also Black male leadership;
Black men; Black nationalism
Patterson, Orlando, 196
Peck, George A., 116 17, 120 21
Peebles, Tim, 66
Pennsylvania: Black studies, 242, 252;
Cheyney State College, 40; Diopian
Institute for Scholarly Advancement in
Philadelphia, 245; Lincoln University,
252
Peoples College, 243
Perkins, Eric, 83, 85
Perry, Matthew, 156
perspective. See Black perspective
Peters, Erskine, 246
PhDs: Black, 64, 188, 201, 203, 218, 245;
Black studies, 275
Phoenix, Crane, 103, 104
Phylon, 209
Pile, Blanche, 121
Pile, Orlando, 117, 118, 119, 121, 137
The Pill: Genocide or Liberation? (Cade),
257 58
Pitts, James, 83, 190
Pittsburgh Courier, 251
Pitzer, 222
pluralism: Black perspective, 176; Black
Power, 4; Black studies, 248; educational
system, 143; Harvard Blacks, 198
Poitier, Sidney, 217
police, 233, 272; Affro- Arts Theater, 105;
vs. arsonists, 106; Brooklyn College,
120, 121 23; CCNY, 130, 131 32;
Greensboro, 158 60, 239; Hampton,
106; Northwestern and, 7, 85, 87 88,
92; SFSC, 7, 13, 52 53, 54, 58, 61 64,
64fi g, 66, 71 72, 73; Southern
University, 165 67; UCLA, 190. See also
arrests/trials/sentences/imprisonment;
police violence
police violence, 160 72, 240, 272, 273;
Augusta, Georgia, 161; BPP and, 4 5,
161, 162; Brooklyn College, 121 23;
Columbia University, 7, 81, 87, 131;
Edwin Edwards on, 168; genocide,
161 62; Greensboro, 158 60; HBCUs,
3, 6, 9, 31 32, 38 40, 142 43, 153 73,
272, 273; Jackson State, 157, 161, 171,
172; Kent State, 157, 161, 171 72; Ohio
State, 160 61; Poor Peoples Campaigns
encampment (Resurrection City), 36;
SFSC, 7, 13, 52 53, 54, 62 64, 64fi g,
71 72; torture ring in Chicago, 274;
urban unrest, 32. See also Orangeburg
Massacre
Politics of the Attack on Black Studies
(Allen), 200
Pontecorvo, Gillo, 23; Battle of Algiers,
23, 56, 84 85
Poor Peoples Campaigns encampment
(Resurrection City), 36
Porter, John, 105
Portuguese colonies, 235, 250
Potts, John, 154
Powell, Adam Clayton Jr., 125
Powell, Charles, 125
Powell, Charles M. Jr., 274
Index | 351
Prejean, Fred, 164 67, 168 69, 172 73, 273
Preliminary Findings of the Black Peoples
Committee of Inquiry, 170
Presidential Commission on Campus
Unrest, 161, 171
primary schools, Black, 220 21
Prince ton, Black studies, 252 53
prison. See arrests/trials/sentences/
imprisonment
Procaccino, Mario, 132
professional organizations: Black, 208 9.
See also individual organizations
Profi t, Wesley, 18 19, 182, 183 84, 195
Progressive Labor Party, 60
Puerto Ricans, 271; Black activists inspiring,
265, 270; cuny Black and Puerto Rican
Studies, 125 26, 128, 212; cuny
students, 115, 117 21, 123 40; New
York City community, 128, 129,
133 34; New York State legislators, 115
Pulliam, William, 66
Quarles, Benjamin, 180, 203, 207, 213
racial discrimination. See discrimination,
racial
Racine Conference on Women, 262
Racism: A Short History (Frederickson), 83
Radcliffe: Association of African and
Afro- American Students at Harvard
and Radcliffe (afro), 181 84; Kilson
critique of Black students, 197
radio: The Black Studies Broadcast Journal,
217; Roscoe Brown programs, 217;
CCNY activism, 131; Chicago, 87;
Harvard, 184; Howard activism on
WWDC, 149; National Public Radio,
217; Negro Newsfront, 95; Radio Free
Dixie, 23
Rafferty, Max, 55
Rainbow PUSH Co ali tion, 274
Randle, Bridges, 61fi g, 62, 63fi g, 74
Rangel, Charlie, 219
Ransby, Barbara, 246 47
Rawls, Betty, 127
Reagan, Ronald, 7, 43, 55, 62, 67, 73, 132
Reddick, Lawrence, 217
Redwood City, Venceremos, 224 25
Reed, Christopher, 81
Reed, Rick, 125
religion: Black students, 29. See also
Muslims
repression: and Black history in HBCUs, 30;
Black liberation movement, 232; Black
student activism, 272, 273. See also Ku
Klux Klan; police; violence
Republican Party: Reagan, 7, 43, 55, 62, 67,
73, 132; and SFSC, 7, 52, 53
Reserve Offi cer Training Corps (ROTC), 8,
35, 36, 39, 152, 182
Review of Black Po liti cal Economy, 148
revolution, 11 12; Black Student Congress,
105 6; BPP for, 5; counterrevolution,
135, 146, 174; nonviolence and, 25;
SFSC students and, 42, 58, 76; sobu,
235. See also Black revolution;
militancy
Revolutionary Action Movement, 23
Revolutionary Workers League, 238
Rhodes, Robert, 111, 112, 261
Richards, Lloyd, 217
The Rich and the Super- Rich (Lundberg), 47
Ricks, Tim, 69
rights, 184 85; civil rights lawyers, 273 74;
consciousness, 3; education as, 106, 116,
277; Willis and, 113. See also activism;
civil rights movement; feminism; voting
rights
Riley, Walter, 6
Rinaldi, Dominic, 122
Rivera, Luis Reyes, 125
Roach, Max, 147
Roberts, Virgil, 69 70, 71
Robeson, Paul, 47, 98, 111, 217, 219
Robeson, Paul Jr., 219
Robinson, Armstead, 179 80, 203, 206, 228
Robinson, Renault, 104
Rocke fel ler, Nelson B., 127
Rodney, Walter, 229, 230, 230fi g, 244
Rogers, Harold, 111, 112
Rogers, J. A., 244
Rogers, Nahaz, 102
Romer, Robert, 155
Roo se velt University, 13; Black arts
movement, 104; Black Student
Association, 105, 187; Black studies,
80 81, 252; BPP, 106; Drake, 80, 252;
Hamilton, 80, 81; Hine, 26, 81
Roots (Haley), 225
Rose, Tricia, 246
Rosen, Sumner, 137
Rosenthal, John, 213
Rosovsky, Henry, 181, 182, 183, 199, 201
Rosovsky Committee, 181, 184, 194
Rosovsky Report, 181, 182, 184
ROTC (Reserve Offi cer Training Corps), 8,
35, 36, 39, 152, 182
Rush, Bobby, 106, 109
352 | Index
Rushing, Andrea, 195
Russell, Carlos, 138
Rustin, Bayard, 133
Rutgers University, 114
Rye, Eleanor, 227
Sadauki, Owusu/Howard Fuller, 28, 169,
235 39, 250, 273
Sampson, Bill, 239
Sanchez, Sonia, 47
Sanders, Pharoah, 27
Sands, Diana, 219
San Fernando Valley State College,
Northridge, 55
San Francisco: Association of Black
Psychologists, 209; Committee of
Concerned Citizens, 65; Equal Justice
Society, 274; and police violence at
SFSC, 7, 13, 52 53, 54, 62 64, 64fi g,
71 72; racial demographics, 53;
redevelopment in Black community, 65;
Revolutionary Workers League, 238;
University of California School of
Medicine, 274 75; Western Addition
Community Or ga ni za tion, 65
San Francisco Examiner, 55
San Francisco State College (SFSC), 11, 42,
43 68, 269; admissions criteria, 43, 48,
51 52, 56, 72; Black student enrollment,
51, 56, 73; Black Students Association,
46; Black studies, 18, 44, 46 51, 50fi g,
54 57, 69, 73 78, 186 87, 276; Black
studies department, 48 49, 56 57, 73,
75 77; College of Ethnic Studies, 73;
employed students, 67; Experimental
College, 18, 46 48, 73, 244; Gater,
52 53, 54, 71; Hare, 35, 48 49, 50fi g,
54, 56, 73, 76, 206, 273; Hayakawa, 7,
62 67, 71 78, 132, 273; Negro Students
Association, 46; New York student
activism and, 116, 122, 132; police
violence, 7, 13, 52 53, 54, 62 64, 64fi g,
71 72; School of Ethnic Studies, 59, 73;
Smothers, 223; Tascoe, 18, 47, 55,
58 59, 66, 72, 274. See also BSU; SFSC
strike
San Jose State College, Black studies, 137
San Mateo college, California, 221, 222,
223 24
Santa Barbara (University of California),
13, 55
SAT: California, 43; Harvard, 197; New
York, 134
Savage, Gus, 80
scholarships, Black student, 29
schooling movement. See Black schooling
movement
Scott, Osborne E., 135
Scott, Patricia Bell, 260
Scott- Heron, Gil, 172
Scranton, William, 161
Scranton Commission, 161, 162, 163
SDS. See Students for a Demo cratic Society
(SDS)
Seale, Bobby, 4, 41, 45, 71
seek (Search for Education, Elevation and
Knowledge), 115 16, 124 29, 134, 139,
140
segregation, 116; North, 15 20, 81; sobu
and, 235; Supreme Court and, 14, 16.
See also desegregation; discrimination;
Jim Crow
self- determination, 272; Black studies
movement and, 49 51, 76, 200 201,
208 9, 228; Brooklyn College, 119;
institution building and, 112, 221,
223 24; vs. integration, 44 45, 49, 142;
Northwestern students and, 87; SFSC
strike and, 57; womens rights, 258
Sellers, Bakari T., 273
Sellers, Cleveland, 32, 157, 234, 273
separatism, 54; Aspen conference, 203;
Black Heritage and, 215; departmental
status of Black studies, 201; vs.
integration, 19 20, 133; Kilson critique
of Harvard Blacks, 196, 198
Separatism and Black Consciousness,
19 20
Seraille, William, 187
sexism, 257; by Black men toward Black
women, 27, 46, 58 59, 256 57, 261,
262 63. See also gender
SFSC. See San Francisco State College (SFSC)
SFSC strike, 7, 43 68, 71 78, 269; arrests,
52 54, 58, 61 64, 64fi g, 66, 71 74,
272; bail campaign, 61; Bloody
Tuesday, 62; BSU, 7, 50fi g, 56 66,
61fi g, 72 76; Carmichael, 57, 146;
Committee of Concerned Citizens, 65;
December days, 62, 63fi g; Dillon, 273;
end, 72 73; Glover, 52, 74, 273; guerilla
tactics, 57; Murray, 52, 55 57, 67, 71,
73, 222; on strike, shut it down, 57;
police violence, 7, 13, 62 64, 64fi g,
71 72; student violence, 66; white
student and faculty support, 61
Shabazz, Betty, 110fi g, 125, 216
Shenton, James, 213
Index | 353
Simbas, 70 71
Simkins, Modjeska, 15
Simmons, Ira, 169
Simon, Carlotta, 63fi g
Singleton, Robert, 190
sit- ins, 2, 3 4, 13; CCNY, 8, 127 28, 131;
Garrett, 44; Harvard, 199; Howard,
37 39; Northwestern, 85 92, 86fi g,
90fi g, 91fi g; San Mateo Ju nior College,
222
slavery/abolitionism, 15, 245, 246
Slave Society in Cuba (Knight), 220
Slutsky, Irving, 108
Smith, Barbara, 260
Smith, Denver A., 163 64, 167, 169 72,
273
Smith, Henry, 32
Smith, Josephine, 167
Smith, Mark, 234 35, 237 38
Smith, Michael, 83, 85
Smith, Norvel, 189 90
Smith, Robert, 54 56, 62 63
Smith, Valerie, 265
Smothers, Don, 61fi g, 63fi g, 223
SNCC. See Student Non- Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Snellings, Roland, 48
Snowden, Frank, 37
sobu (Student Or ga ni za tion for Black
Unity), 10, 156, 158, 233 38
socialism, 236 37
social justice movements, 35, 148, 163,
238 40, 273 74. See also labor unions;
rights
socioeconomics, 115; fi nancial aid to
students, 3, 29, 53, 91 92; Northwestern Black student protest and, 88 89,
91, 93; urban unrest and, 91. See also
employment; funding; ghetto dwellers;
middle class; working class
sociologists, Black, 209
Soledad Brother (George Jackson), 220
sororities: Black, 45; white, 91 92
Soul Students Advisory Council, Merritt
College, 41
South: Black Power Black Consciousness
movement, 30; Emergency Land Fund,
148; HBCUs, 3, 30. See also individual
locations
South Africa: apartheid, 45; Namibia, 251;
socialism, 236; white settler regime, 235
South Carolina: NAACP, 15, 155; Voorhees
College, 153 57, 273. See also
Orangeburg Massacre
Southern, Eileen, 196
Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
105
Southern University, 209; Baton Rouge, 9,
163 73, 273; Black Peoples Committee
of Inquiry, 169 71, 274; New Orleans,
164, 165, 166, 168; Special Commission
of Inquiry on the Southern University
Tragedy, 171; Students United, 165, 166
South Side Community Arts Center, 112
Spelman, A. B., 227, 231
Spelman College, 30 31; Harding, 144, 188,
211, 227; McWorter, 227
Stanford University: Afro- American studies,
186, 188, 191; Black students, 29; Drake,
188, 193, 204, 225; Nairobi Schools and,
221, 222 23, 224; Steele, 242
State Department: cold war cultural
programs, 215; Shirley Graham Du Bois
visa, 219
Statement of the Black Members of the
Advisory Committee of Black Heritage
(Harding, Clarke, and Strickland), 214
Stateville prison, Malcolm X coursework,
109
Steele, Shelby, 242
Stein, Jack, 184
Stepto, Robert, 249
Steve Miller Band, 172
Stewart, Ben, 45 46, 52, 57
Stewart, James B., 242
Stiner, George, 70 71
Stiner, Larry, 70 71
Strickland, William: Black Heritage,
211 12, 214; IBW, 227, 228, 229,
230fi g, 232; Statement of the Black
Members of the Advisory Committee of
Black Heritage (with Harding and
Clarke), 214; University of Massachusetts Amherst, 212, 276
strikes, 3 4; A&T cafeteria workers, 158;
American Federation of Teachers, 67;
Brooklyn College, 123; Cambodian
invasion protested, 160; Chicago Black
bus drivers, 104; Harvard, 182. See also
SFSC strike; sit- ins
Stringer, Bernard, 77 78
Strotz, Robert, 93
Stuckey, Sterling, 249; Black Heritage, 213;
Guinier seeking help from, 193; IBW,
229; Northwestern, 83, 95, 97 100,
99fi g, 190, 192
student activism. See activism; Black student
activism
354 | Index
Student Afro- American Society, 25
Student Non- Violent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC), 2, 5, 105; Berry,
151; Carmichael, 5, 22, 37, 147fi g, 221,
237; Center for Black Education, 235;
Chicago Friends of, 227; Cobb, 37, 44;
Cox, 37; Crane, 103; grassroots
or ga niz ing, 234; Bob Hoover, 221;
Howard, 37, 39; Lester, 129; position
paper on Black Power, 48; Reed, 125;
Sellers, 32, 234, 273; SFSC, 44, 45;
Statement on Freedom Schools, 44
Student Or ga ni za tion for Black Unity
(sobu), North Carolina, 10, 156, 158,
233 38
Students for a Demo cratic Society (SDS):
Brooklyn College, 117, 119 22; CCNY,
129; Harvard, 182; SFSC, 44, 45, 53,
60, 67
study groups: Black consciousness, 41;
Black history, 19, 41; Black Power, 23,
24; internationalist, 271; Marxism, 111;
vs. Pan- Africanism, 237
Sudarkasa, Niara, 253 54
suffrage. See voting rights
Summerskill, John, 52 53, 54
Sundiata, Sekou/Robert Feaster, 123, 124
Sun- Reporter, 64
Supreme Court, 14, 16; Brown v. Board of
Education, 2, 14, 38, 117, 270; CCNY
activism, 132
Taber, Robert, 57
tabu (Toward A Black University),
Howard, 146 49
Takaki, Ronald, 191
talented tenth, Du Bois idea, 35
Tanner, Henry O., 218
Tascoe, Ramona: medical career, 274 75;
SFSC, 18, 47, 55, 58 59, 66, 72, 274
Taylor, Council, 227
Teer, Barbara Ann, 216
tele vi sion, 13; afromation, 217; Black
Heritage: A History of Afro- Americans,
10, 25, 211, 212 16, 227, 231; Black
public affairs shows, 95, 214, 217, 240;
Jarrett show, 95; police violence at
Southern University, 167, 168; Nahaz
Rogers show, 102; SFSC strike, 60, 62,
63, 66; violence by whites on nonviolent
protesters in the South, 13, 24; WBBM,
214; WCBS, 25, 213, 214
Temple University, Black studies, 244, 245
Terborg- Penn, Rosalyn, 262 63
tests, college entrance, 43, 51, 134, 197
Texas Southern University (TSU), Houston,
6, 31 32, 157
Thelwell, Michael, 181 82, 192, 276
Third Worldism, 4, 59 61, 123, 224 25,
265, 271
Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), 59;
SFSC, 53, 59 61, 72 73
Third World Press, 112
Thomas, Charles, 69 70
Thomas, Clarence, 52, 67, 75 76, 77
Thomas, Judith, 75
Thompson, Anderson, 112
Thompson, Robert Ferris, 201
Toppin, Edgar, 201 2, 213
Toure, Askia, 48, 244
traditionalism. See conservatism
Transport Workers Union, Black caucus, 67
Travis, Dempsey, 80
Trent, Richard, 135
Trouble in Greensboro, 160
Truman, Harry S., 117
Truman Doctrine (1947), 270
TSU. See Texas Southern University
Turner, Darwin T., 30, 180, 192 93
Turner, James, 275; Black studies, 186, 188,
189, 250, 275, 276; Cornell, 186, 276;
Northwestern, 83, 84, 91fi g,
109 10, 188
Turner, Lorenzo Dow, 80
Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, 39 40, 107,
217
Twenty- First Century Foundation, 148, 217
TWLF (Third World Liberation Front), 53,
59 61, 72 73
UCLA: affi rmative action, 258; Black
Student Union, 68 69, 191; Center for
Afro- American Studies, 68 70, 185,
187, 190, 191, 203; Community
Advisory Board, 68 70; Hewitt, 187;
High Potential Program, 69, 70;
shootings, 68, 70 71, 190;
Singleton, 190
Uhuru Sasa School, Brooklyn, 226
Ujamma, Howard Black nationalist
or ga ni za tion, 36
universalism: Black perspective as search
for, 178 79; ethnic studies, 265 66;
Eurocentrist claim to, 175; Western
social theory assumed to be, 177
universities. See Black university; historically Black colleges and universities
(HBCUs); individual universities
Index | 355
University of Bridgeport, 28
University of California: Educational
Opportunity Program (EOP), 51 52;
ethnic studies, 265; San Francisco
School of Medicine, 274 75; Santa
Barbara, 13, 55. See also Berkeley
(University of California); UCLA
University of Chicago, 104, 109, 111,
193, 227
University of Illinois: Chicago, 104, 106;
Urbana, 204
University of Islam, Chicago, 103
University of Massachusetts: Amherst, 264,
275, 276; Black studies, 181 82, 189,
212, 219, 264, 275, 276; Du Bois
papers, 189, 219; Shirley Graham Du
Bois visit, 219
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 6,
253 54
University of Mississippi, 16
University of North Carolina, Charlotte, 33
University of Oklahoma, 14, 23 24, 25
University of Pittsburgh, 205, 206, 258
University of the District of Columbia, 54
University of Wisconsin: Milwaukee, 263.
See also Madison
Urbana, University of Illinois, 204
urban unrest, 22, 24, 82; admissions criteria
and, 116; Black public affairs shows
and, 214; Chicago, 83 84, 104;
National Commission on the Causes
and Prevention of Violence, 65, 157;
police violence, 32; socioeconomic
conditions and, 91; Watts rebellion,
18, 32
us, 68, 69, 70 71, 245
Uzoigwe, Godfrey, 254
Vanderbilt, desegregation, 202
Vanguard Public Foundation, 273
Varnado, Jerry, at SFSC, 45; admissions
programs, 52; arrested, 62, 66, 74;
Experimental College, 47; strike, 45,
56 57, 59, 66; and TWLF, 59; on
women in BSU, 59
Vassar, Black female students, 22
Vazcko, Jim, 52
Venceremos, Redwood City, 224 25
Venceremos Brigade, Atlanta, 232
Vietnam war, 24, 57, 250, 271; Black
nationalism and, 249, 271; BPP vs., 5;
Murray and, 55; opposition to, 2 3, 35,
46, 87, 148, 161, 182; SFSC strike and,
60
violence, 24 25, 162; Brooklyn College
students, 120; Carmichael on, 146;
Howard, 37, 152; North Carolina A&T,
158 59; SFSC strike students, 66,
76 77; Southern University, 166; UCLA,
68, 70 71; U.S. government as purveyor
of, 24; by whites on nonviolent
protesters in South, 13, 24. See also
armed self- defense; assassinations;
militancy; police violence; urban
unrest
Voorhees College, Denmark, South
Carolina, 153 57, 273
voting rights: Black women and, 262, 263;
Du Bois and, 264; in U.S. Department of
Education, 184
Waddell, Charles, 165
Wade, George, 122
Walker, Alice, 259 60
Waller, Jim, 239
Wallerstein, Immanuel, 254
Walls, Rufus Chaka, 106
Wall Street Journal, 200
Walters, Ron, 195, 249
War of the Flea (Taber), 57
Washington, D.C.: Center for Black
Education, 222, 235; Garrett, 54, 95,
151; Poor Peoples Campaigns
encampment (Resurrection City), 36;
Revolutionary Workers League, 238;
University of the District of Columbia,
54, 95. See also Federal City College;
Howard University
Washington, Booker T., 39, 108, 144
Washington, Harold, 80, 113
Washington, Mary Helen, 249
Washington Post, 200
Watson, Wayne, 85, 275
Watts: liberation school, 44; rebellion,
18, 32
Wayne, James, 170
Wayne State University, 205; Reginald
Wilson speech, 204
WBBM, Chicago, 214
WCBS- TV, 25, 213, 214
Weaver, Fred, 220
Welker, Helen, 92
Wellesley College, 15, 17 18, 20, 40
Wells, Ida B., 276
Wesley, Charles, 217
Wesleyan, 17, 186
Western Addition Community Or ga ni zation, 65
356 | Index
Western cultural imperialism, Black studies
