[ Silence ] >> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. [ Silence ] >> Okay. My name is Mary Lou Reker. And on behalf of the Library of Congress's Office of Scholarly Programs and the John W. Kluge Center, I welcome you to a lecture by Dr. Ibram Rogers entitled, The Black Campus Movement and the Reformation of Higher Education, 1965 to 1972. First of all, let me say, be sure you've turned off all your cell phones and that we're going to be recording this for posterity, and it will be out on the Library's Website; so any questions you may ask afterwards will be considered an okay for your question to be part of the recording. Approximately one-half of all US Universities saw protests for a relevant learning experience between the years, 1965 and 1972. Hundreds of thousands of black students as well as white and Latino students were demanding attention to Civil Rights, to peace, and to an outstanding array of campus reforms. As a student at Marquette University in that era, I clearly remember the extraordinary sense of expectancy and empowerment that was in the air. So on a personal note, it is a particular honor for me to introduce this talk by Dr. Ibram Rogers who is the 2010-11 recipient of the American Historical Associations, J. Franklin Jameson Fellowship in American History at the Library of Congress. He's also a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Record Center for Historical Analysis in New Brunswick, New Jersey and is currently on leave as an Assistant Professor in African-American History at SUNY College in Oneonta, New York. Although Dr. Rogers earned his Doctorate from Temple University just last year in 2010, he's already published six articles on Black Student Activism and Black Power, and journals such as the Journal of African-American Studies, the Journal of Social History, the Journal of Black Studies, and the Peace Review, a Journal of Social Justice. Besides being a diehard New York Knicks fan, he is currently writing his first in a series of books on the Black Campus Movement. The book, which is under contract to Paul Gray McMillan, is attentively titled, The Black Campus Movement: A Historical Analysis of the Struggle to Diversify Education -- Higher Education in 1965 to 1972. Please help me welcome today's speaker, Dr. Ibram Rogers. [ Applause ] >> All yours. >> Thank you Mary. And for those of you who follow sports, of course, you know, I'm living the dream now that the Knicks have [Inaudible], we're finally winning and we're relevant again. So, you know, when I'm not working on the Black Campus Movement, I can actually enjoy myself. But, of course, I wanted to thank Mary for the introduction. I'd like to thank Carolyn Brown. I'd like to thank Robert. I'd like to thank, of course, my colleague fellows, peers, the Colleague Center, the Library of Congress, of course, for allowing me to come here and to research the Black Campus Movement and, of course, to speak to you about my labor of love for what, the last four or so years, and probably, another five or 10 years. And, you know, this is truly an honor to speak to you about this era. And I have as a subtitle, The King Effect, because, as you're going to see as I go through this narrative, you know, I want to specifically highlight the effect of the King among the King on the movements, and it's clearly, you know, we celebrating his birthday the other day. An unprecedented fashion, black students poured into American colleges and universities in the mid-1960's. Congress helped push, opened the doors to the Academy through the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Higher Education Act of 1965, which banned discrimination and higher education and provided funding for low income students. Urban, traditionally white institutions, increased their recruiting of black students to ease the budding tensions with nearby black communities. Even when they did not have nearby black communities pressuring them, many traditionally white institutions gingerly stepped up their recruiting efforts to move into the mainstream political orbit of higher education in the mid-1960's. Historically, black colleges and universities, what I'll call HBCU's, expanded their student bodies with new lifelines of government aid. Looking for more college trained workers, Corporate America helped fund and lobby for this new upsurge of black students and Civil Rights organizations supported it rhetorically and financially at every term. Civil Rights leaders, of course, were encouraged, since its multi-decade struggle for the desegregation of higher education was finally bearing fruit. Even though the number of black students was up by 70 percent in 1965, black students were only about 4.5 percent of the total enrollment. College programs and offices, geared to black students or diversity, were rare, to non-existent. There were few courses on the black experience, even at black colleges. There was not a single African-American Study Center, institute program, or department on a college campus. Finding unapologetic and outspoken, racists on campus seemed easier than locating black professors, administrators, and coaches. Literature on black people and non-racist colleagues examinations struggled to stay on their margins of the Academy, that was 1965. Now, let's fast forward to 1973. That fall, the percentage of black students stood at 7.3 percent as the absolute number of black students approached 800,000, almost quadrupling the number in 1965. In 1973, more than 1000 colleges had adopted more open admission policies or crafted particular adjustments to admit African Americans. Affirmative action, as we all know, was being openly and forced by the federal government. Several colleges had black cultural centers, black oriented dorms, black student lounges, and wherever there was a group of black students, there tended to be black student unions. Sections of the library on black history and culture had dramatically grown and moved from relative obscurity. Nearly 1000 colleges had organized black studies courses, programs, or departments, had a tutoring program for black students for providing diversity training for workers, and were actively recruiting black professors and staff. Unapologetic and outspoken, racist had been pushed back into their private domains and were now generally apologetic and soft-spoken. Literature, on the black experience was simply pouring out of the Academy. What happened in these eight years? What forced the Racial Reformation of Higher Education? A social movement, I call, The Black Campus Movement. Hundreds of thousands of progressive black students organized and joined BSU's, and white colleges took over and joined student governments at black colleges and made requests, which later turned into just demands for more relevant education. When administrators rejected over slow in instituting diversity on these campuses, black students organized student strikes, building takeovers, and sit-ins, took colleges, took college officials hostage, firebomb buildings, rioted, cedes control of entire campuses, engaged in shootouts with police, people marches, rallies, and mass meetings, and they simply withdrew from campuses in protest. In this presentation, I'd like to provide a narrative overview of the Black Campus Movement, paying special attention to the impact of Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior, specifically his assassination. And I'll include discussing a few of the movements of historical contours and significance. Before the Black Campus Movement, most black students in both, black and white colleges, did not try to unravel and amend the racial codes of their colleges. At historically white colleges, before the Black Campus Movement, practically all of the professors, administrators, and staff were white. The coursework covered Europeans and white Americans, and racist traditions were innumerable across the nation. At black colleges or HBCU's, even though practically all of the students were black, these schools encouraged their students through their curriculum, policies, and programs, to assimilate or accommodate to the politics, culture, and values of white America. Until the 1920's, most of the HBCU Presidents were white. Until the 1960's, most of the trustees at black colleges were white. Black cultural and political nationalism was usually shunned and habitually dumped on the edges of these campuses. There were rarely courses on the black experiences, as I stated earlier. The administrative paternalism toward the students was overwhelming and intoxicating, non-academic rules were innumerable. HBCU's tended to focus as much on moral uplift due to the perceived low moral acumen of blacks, as they did on intellectual development. These schools were havens of black political conservatism, even as there, of course, was a legacy of black radicalism. At the beginning of the twentieth century, W.E.B. Du Bois, the nation's leading black academic, called on college educated blacks, whom he called, the Talented Tenth, to lead black America. It was a daunting charge, for people rising out of one of the most politically and culturally conformist may lose in American society at the time. Before Du Bois passed away on the eve of March -- on the eve of the March on Washington, in 1963, multiple decades of studying these college students had caused him to make -- has caused him to note that they were simply only interested in leading themselves. He said, and I quote, they propose to make money and spend it as they please. They had beautiful homes, large and expensive cars, and fur coats. I assumed with knowledge, sacrifice would automatically follow. In my youth, an idealism, I did not realize that selfishness is even more natural than sacrifice. Before the Black Campus Movement, colleges and universities did produce, of course, some phenomenal race men and race women, as they were called at the time, but they were also breeding grounds for small class conscious black middle class. As one pre-1960's black student recalled, the implication was plain that we were being led into the university on the condition that we become white men with dark skins. Oh, man. [ Inaudible ] >> Yes, I did. [ Pause ] >> Aside from the clamor of black presidents at HBCU, -- the clamor for a black president at HBCU's during the 1920's, the pushback against these culturally and socially hostile campuses had been isolated in minor. Most of the pre-1965 mass activism was directed off-campus at Jim Crow and all of his manifestations around the nation. Black students did not acquire the critical mass, the critical ideology, and the critical impetus, to the man and sacrifice were drastic changes, until the mid-1960's. They were profoundly influenced politically by Malcolm X. The increasingly left-wing philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior, the vocal and charismatic man of local radical leaders, liberation movements in the Third World, and most of all, the repression and the failures from their perspective of the Civil Rights Movement. Beginning in 1965, there were a series of what I call, transitional protest at black colleges, kicking off the Black Campus Movement. They combined protest, aimed at segregation and disenfranchisement off campus, with demonstrations against paternalism, irrelevance, and political conservatism on campus at schools, like Tuskegee in Alabama, Southern in Louisiana, and Hampton University in Virginia. These duels, somewhat reactive protest, had gripped black colleges since the rash of black student sit-ins, destabilized segregation in 1960. But increasingly in 1965, black campus activists were not merely rebelling against administrative and transigence to their Civil Rights protest, they were critiquing the very nature of their black colleges. Aghast at administratives, politically immobilized by white benefactors, in February of 1965, Hampton student leader Donald Hughes said, his peers were, quote, no longer continuing to the white man or eating cheese for the white man's money. Do we need funds that only serve to perpetuate the things that the Negro's trying to get rid of once and for all, non-self-reliance, subordinating due to fear, and feelings of inadequacy? No! with an exclamation point. Before issuing the movements, first known set of demands in November of 1965, a campus activist at Southern said, his school, quote, perpetuates academic slavery, not freedom. The politicization of black students intensified in 1966, with the transformation of the student nonviolent coordinating committee into an openly Black Power organization, and the emergence of Stokely Carmichael as its leader, who went around traveling and inspiring black students to unite and demand an end to institutional racism and a culturally relevant education. Students hated Carmichael's call and began organizing black student unions in the spring of 1966. This college has done little for black students, except try to whitewash them, said Mariana Anawady [Phonetic], after assuming the Presidency of the nation's first known Black Student Union at San Francisco State College. We will now strive to incorporate the eminent and profound concept of blackness into a new and positive image of black students on this campus. Historically, colleges and universities had black fraternities and sororities, and even a few non-Greek black clubs. These organizations were primarily social, though. They were, of course, black political organizations, usually Student Chapters of major Civil Rights Organizations, like the NWACP, Congress of Racially Equality, and others, but they primarily focused on off-campus injustices. In contrast, BSU's actively sought to reform, and in some cases, revolutionize their campuses. Instead of merely organizing social gatherings, these BSU's put on cultural events, specifically geared to African-Americans, and it utilized campus resources to aid nearby black communities. Black Student Union was the most popular name of these new groups, but, of course, they came in many names across the nation; Black Student Alliance at Vanderbilt, African-American Society at Dartmouth, Neil Black Society at UNC-Greensboro, Pan African Students Coalition at Saint John's University in Queens. In the fall of 1966, black students ended their traditional protest and started focusing primarily on campus issues. BSU's continued to materialize that fall, like at NYU, where the organizers pledged to find ways to, quote, finding ways to make white middle-class and NYU more meaningful to the black student. Students elected how its first Homecoming Queen, with natural hair, that semester, and introduced the Black Studies idea at San Francisco State. The concept of a Black Studies Department, studying the lives of African people, from their perspective, for their benefit, emerged out of the minds of BSU members, brewing with ideas of self-determination, black pride, and criticism of European thought. Propelled by [Inaudible] organizers, HBCU's students at Lincoln in Pennsylvania, South Carolina State, and Howard, wage protest and violent rebellions to demonstrate their displeasure with their conservative and what they perceived as irrelevant Negro universities in the spring of 1967, also a series of protests disrupted Texas Southern in Houston. The protests turned violent in late May of 1967, armed in the [Inaudible] and black campus activist, and their allies and peers in a dorm, had to endure a 40-minute hail of gunfire from police, who then cleared out the dorm and arrested almost 500 students. The black student is being educated in this country as if he were being programmed in white supremacy and self-hatred. Ernest Stevens started in spring of 1967 article. Stevens was a graduate student at Tuskegee and Editor on his student newspapers. And he wrote the first coherent and detailed ideological foundation of the Black Campus Movement at HBCU's. He asked, how long will it be before black leaders and educators take hold of Negro colleges and transform them from training schools for Negroes into universities designed to fit the real needs of black people in this nation? Meanwhile, the organizing of BSU's surged in the spring of 1967. The Black Power Committee at Howard formed too, according to the students, quote, overthrow the Negro College and replace it with a militant black university, which will counteract the active whitewashing black students now receive in Negro and white institutions. The activism at HBCU's had traversed over to white institutions in the fall of 1967, with the first known protest to diversify a white college, occurring at San Jose State. Black students also went protest at semester at Grambling in Louisiana, the University of Texas, Central State in Ohio, and San Francisco State. The local and national media began to notice the Black Campus Movement, as 1967 was ending. The Black student is demanding a shaking from the roots up, over all of their colleges, aimed at upgrading academic standards, reported the Chicago Defender. After the death of three black students in the Orangeburg Massacre at San Francisco State, -- at South Carolina State -- excuse me -- in February of 1968, the number of protests dramatically increased. At Howard, students issued the Orangeburg ultimatum, demanding that their college be revolutionized into a radical black university. But the principle accelerant of the Black Campus Movement was the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. Like thousands of campus activists, on that day, Jerebrial [Phonetic] Hill, a student at Ohio Central State, said, he got as serious at the time we were living it. I never looked back on the meaningful life I had lived before. I lived a life of conviction, resistance, and protest on my college campus. Hill started to confront what he called, Negro Educators Trapped in Black Bodies, and protesters for more Black Studies courses. At Howard, students lowered the American flag and raised the Black National red, black, and green flag, as tribute to their fallen leader. Black students attended memorial services at almost every college and university in the nation, in the week after King's death. Martin Luther King had a dream but it turned into a nightmare, declared Ed Cookson, the leader of Boston University's BSU, at a convocation. At a campuswide memorial, for King at Cornell, in his speech, Larry Dixon shouted to the 2200 assembled when Martin Luther King died; nonviolence died, baby. The black students wrote off in their own section, applauded. More than 500 were listening to a chaplain speak at Boston's tough University at a memorial service for King, when a black graduate student stormed up to the stage and yelled, America, we are staring in the ugly face of your naked hypocrisy. We are grieved that the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, and we deploy your efforts to bury the shame of that death in the rhetoric of religion and political moderation. More than half of the audience followed Sanders out of the service and had their own silent meditation. In order to clarify their anger and present their new ideological point of departure, black students issued verbal and written statements. At the University of Mississippi, black students marched on the office of the student newspaper. If Dr. King's tactics will not work, we must find new methods with which to express ourselves in order to gain our equality, said a black law student to the surprised newspaper staff. At Vassar College, black students wrote; white America has no compassion, love, nor peaceful notions in its heart for suffering blacks. It is plainly demonstrated that the only tactics that can move its violent heart is violence. Force only responds to force and power to power. A black student at the University of Illinois echoed those statements in an article on April 5. The white man has lost the only black friend he had, the student declared. From now on, he will have to deal with us black militants. Students at Harvard marched on the Dean's office on the evening of King's death to demand an end to the quote of limitation of black students in the establishment of a Black Studies Department. Five days later, 80 black students boycotted Harvard service for King and had their own commemoration on the church's steps. Jeff Howard, the President of the BSU pointed to the church, if they come out there with tears in their eyes, we want it to be plain that we don't want their tears. We want black people to have a place here at Harvard. Most of the violent reactions to King's death occurred at historically black colleges, as black students led a few of the more than 100 violent urban rebellions that gripped the United States apart the week after King's assassination. On the evening of April 4, students at [Inaudible] University firebombed a white-owned grocery store near campus. At Jackson State in Mississippi, students looted white-owned stores, burned an automobile, and threw rocks at police. Student at Tennessee State harassed passing white motorists with [Inaudible] and sniper shots, and they set the campus ROTC on fire, causing the National Guard to soon invade the campus. Black students at Stanford on April 5 watched an American flag burn at a campus rally. This burning flag may mean a lot to you, but it does not mean much to us, shouted a black student leader. As they came to grips with the violent death of their apostle of nonviolence, thousands of moderate students thrust themselves into the Black Campus Movement and, of course, the radicals welcomed them with open arms. It was the politicizing moment for an entire generation of black campus activists. They closed ranks socially and politically across the nation. We often, as scholars and students of King, disclosed a changed agency, inspired during his life, but we must also reveal the revolutionary magnitude of his death. His martyrism resulted in an unprecedented urgency for change in American Higher Education. Thousands of enraged black campus activists, in the first week after King's death, struck the Academy with the first conservative and widespread blow for diversity in American history. Meanwhile, King's assassination dramatically appealed to the moral conscience of white America, particularly those in the academy. That emotional carbonation, administrative warming to diversity, our students were boiling over in anger, led to a drastic reorientation. Black students were mystified as they watched the deluge of diversity flood into the Academy more in the month after King died than in the first three years of the Black Campus Movement combined. Hundreds of colleges agreed to address their black student's demands and or establish scholarships for blacks in honor of King, held symposiums on racism, set up diversity in Black Studies Committees, and ultimately, launch the most massive summer recruiting effort of black students in American history. Black students steamroller changed, slow down in mid April as the academy tried to make amends for 100 years of exclusion. But it was too little too late for these black students. In April, May of 1968, black students issued demands and even protested at Tuskegee in Alabama, Colgate in New York, University of Michigan, Colombia, Boston University, Ohio State, Northwestern outside of Chicago, and Brooklyn College. Black College athletes joined the fray advocating an end to athletic discrimination. Also that spring, the Black student alliance at Yale hosted the formative conference for Black Studies. The largest incoming class of black students walked into Higher education in the fall of 1968, still seething from the death of King and Robert Kennedy that summer and the police brutality, weeks earlier at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Some enrolled in the nation's first Black Studies courses and programs. However, once again, black students were far from satisfied. The protest activity did not let up in the fall of 1968. It was raised when two San Jose State students raised their fists in protest at the Olympics in October of 1968. Black campus activists accelerated their protest once again in November. Howard students hosted and skeined with representatives from dozens of HBCU's during -- towards a black university conference, which intensified activism at HBCU's for the rest of the year. At San Francisco State, the nation's first BSU started the longest student strike in American history, for a series of demands including an autonomous Black Studies Department, that they controlled. It lasted almost 5 months, inspiring black campus activists across the nation. Even though this strike reined in January of 1969, the Black Campus Movement, as a whole, continued to surge. Brandeis in Boston, Queens College, Squawkmor [Phonetic] outside of Philadelphia, and UC Berkeley, all were sites of black student protests. The movement only intensified in early February 1969, wreaking havoc at the University of Virginia, Fayetteville State in North Carolina; and it reached its pinnacle on February 13, 1969, a day that I call, Diversity Thursday. February 13, 1939 -- 1969. It proved to be the most widespread day of activism during the Black Campus Movement. On this one day, 10,000 Wisconsin, Madison students marched to the state capital to support the black demands. Black students led strikes at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley. Black campus activists at University of Illinois delivered a list of demands. Black students at Duke seized their administration building, members of the Black student alliance at Roosevelt University stormed the President's office, black and Puerto Rican city college students in New York swarmed the administration building and ejected its workers, and close to 200 class boycotters were arrested and expelled in Mississippi Valley State, all on this one day. Black campus activists -- activism persisted after the Diversity Thursday for the rest of the semester becoming an almost everyday occurrence, upstaging the series of campus disruptions after King's death. The most notorious demonstrations ravaged several Rutgers campuses in New Jersey and students took trustees of Atlanta's Morehouse College hostage including, ironically, Martin Luther King's father, to press for their demands for a radical black university. They took no prisoners [Laughter]. Even though the violence had saturated several protests, specifically the unknown violent demonstrations at small HBCU's, the Academy did not link the movement with violence, nor did it deem the student's demands to be legitimate until students smuggled guns into an occupied Cornell building, and Harvard established a Black Studies Department within days in late April 1969. Ironically, as their demands will legitimize, the Academy grew more insensitive to them with this hovering specter of violence; still the activism did not end. In late April, May of 1969, among other protests, black students in New York City took over an entire city college campus for 14 days and barricaded it off only allowing those who they allowed to enter in. 1200 seized a Hampton administration building, students gained control over a building at South Carolina Voorhees College with arms, barricaded themselves inside six buildings at Howard, and shot it out with police at North Carolina A and T for three long days, an exchange that killed a student. The shots were relevancy social responsibility, and the intrusion of the black experience in the curriculum were deafening at most of the -- at most of the prominent disciplinary and academic conferences in 1969. This apex academic year of the movement led to crippling levels of repression in terms of imprisonment, new laws and campus police forces, secret infiltrations, expulsions, and, of course, substantial reforms through the racial reconstitution of the Academy. That may of 1969, the New York Times printed a sizable story on the movement. The article begins; Colleges and universities across the country are hardly instituting changes and reforms, as administrators attempted to deal with student aggressiveness and to avoid the kind of demonstrations that have shaken Ivy League and other major institutions, speaking of Cornell. Most of the significant reforms, -- the story continues, -- were Black Studies programs and increased effort to recruit Negroes and other minority groups. Kenneth Bruce Vice President of the American Council of Education was quoted as saying, even in areas where faculty resistance was strong, the walls are crumbling, but to the black students, more walls still stood; so the movement was far from over. As hundreds of new initiatives were unveiled in the fall of 1969, and black leaders, like the NWACP's Roy Wilkins questioned the efficacy, many black campus activists face criminal charges for their protests. Even more black campus activists were not allowed to return to their schools or were under constant surveillance, slowing the movement. Yet Malcolm X liberation University, and a few other college students and community leaders, established to provide a relevant and socially responsible education, opened their doors and the revolt of the black college athlete picked up at schools that fall. Most prominently in a series of protests in opposition to the Mormon controlled and what the activists deemed as theologically racist, Brigham Young University. Black campus activists demanded more Black Studies programs and students at smaller colleges, like Central Connecticut State, where critical masses of students had been reached. Black students at UNC Chapel Hill, Tufts in Boston, and Harvard also fought for the rights of black campus workers that fall. In the spring of 1970, the decline of the Black Campus Movement carried on, but students still protested for relevant reforms at Florida State, Mississippi Valley State, where almost 900 class boycotters were arrested. The largest mass student arrest in American history. University of Mississippi and the University of Michigan and black students, particularly at black colleges, disrupted schools around the nation in May of 1970, after hearing about the death of two Jackson State protesters. Black students were mourning the Jackson State tragedy, as white students were mourning the killings of students, days earlier at Kent State. During the next academic year, defensive protests to keep games during the movement became more prominent, and the students grew more interested in off-campus injustices, but they increased repression of Black Power Leaders, like Angela Davis; yet more black students still waged these offensive protest to demand new measures in the 1970-1971 academic year at schools like, Syracuse, Norfolk State University, University of Georgia, and the University of Florida, keeping alive this movement. Nationally, the pendulum continued to shift among black students from offensive to defensive protest and from on-campus to off-campus activism in the next academic year, 1971-1972, but offensive protest for new reforms were still prevalent, manifesting prominently a global force in Ohio, University of Nevada, Merrill state of Guano College, Stanford, Harvard, and a few schools in New York City. The final chapter of the Black Campus Movement was written in the fall of 1972 at the school where the largest collection of black students in the nation, Southern University, where two students were killed on November 16, 1972, which was the climax of a semester of protest to radicalize this institution. What happened to the black campus revolution? asked a California professor and former BSU Founder in 1972 in the nation. Whatever happened to the gun tone nationalist, uncombed hair, the demonstrations, the hand bill to play cards, the protest, the black leather jackets, and Malcolm X sweatshirts, that came to symbolize -- that came to be symbols of black student militancy in the 1960's? Well, simply reform and repression happened. Cultural and social hostility was still felt by many black students, institution and individual racism was still persisting, but the black students had enough peers, programs, and school officials, and initiatives that they could relate to or that they could retreat to. Black campus activists set their sights on, instead of defending these reforms, they won during this mass movement. Repression was just as important to demise at the movement. Black campus activism was slowed by the intelligence community, and the introduction and expansion of laws, restrict student codes, and campus police forces. More and more administrators, as the struggle elapsed, called on the police to crush protest. The army of hundreds of thousands of black campus activists was killed, injured in prison, institutionalized, exiled, expelled, suspended, or dropped out due to constant harasses, not to mention, many graduated. The population of this movement -- I'm almost finished. The population of this movement was primarily black students, a varying ideological persuasions from revolutionaries to moderate militants who continuously jockeyed for their supremacy of these BSU's. In some cases, they're white institutions, blacks united with progressive white students, and radical organizations, like the students for a Democratic Society, and, of course, they allied with other racial groups too, like Puerto Ricans in New York City or Mexicans and Asian-Americans on the West Coast. The two most story demands of the Black Campus Movement were from black cultural centers so students could have their own cultural and social space and, of course, Black Studies. They were placed to scholarly assumptions of race neutrality with race specificity and challenge basic notions of objectivity, emphasizing the effects of racial perspective and social scientific inquiry. Many of these black campus activist rebelled against the idea of a politically removed culturally salient Higher Education, all the while, highlighting their own blackness and connection to the working class and working poor masses, while de-emphasizing their privilege status as students. Black Studies, which they declared would give them the tools to connect and invigorate the black community, resolve this paradox of race and class and political identity. Most administrators were amenable to courses and programs in Black Studies, but not autonomous departments, which usually surfaced on the backs of -- usually surfaced on the backs of disruptive protest. In addition to Black Studies, black campus activists demanded financial aid and funds to initiate their own campus and community programs, of course, more black students professors, and administrators, presidents, trustees, staff, financial aid counselors, coaches and athletes, they wanted black student lounges, residence halls and offices, and positions on decision-making bodies; specifically, those bodies that effected black students. Supporting black construction and non-academic workers, they demanded their hiring, equal wages, and working conditions, and good working conditions. They demanded more library books by black authors, the liberalization of strict student codes, the integration of white student groups, specifically fraternity and sorority's at some of the smaller schools, the ability to bring in relevant speakers and organize cultural festivals, and an end to the expansion of urban historically white campuses, racist student rituals, and institutional, individual, academic administrative, and professorial racism and paternalism. The Black Campus Movement was one of the social movements that made up the expensive Black Power Movement, and, of course, the '60's student movement. As blacks disrupted the racial more of Higher Education, white student activists were voted against the War in Vietnam and so to accrue student power. In the spring of 1969, even the New York Times published a story with the headline, the Campus Revolutions; one is black, one white. The Black Campus Movement must also be contextualized in the almost century long Black Student Movement that emerged in the 1920's in an attempt to out white presidents at HBCU's, moved off campus, and civil rights crusades in the following decades until, of course, they traversed back to reforming the campus in the late 1960's. Higher Education desegregated in the decades leading up to the Black Campus Movement, but it was during the movement that the Academy truly integrated and began to champion some measure of diversity and relevant education for black students. Of course, we're living in a time when diversity statements are invoked, diversity officers, and offices are propping up everywhere. It is simply sexy to have a diverse campus; still the Black Campus Movement has rested for the last 40 years on the margins of America's historical consciousness. These stories of black campus activists who challenged and protested against the racist normality of Higher Education in 1960's are somewhat locally understood, studied, and remembered. But there is a national story too that I'm seeking to understand, study, and press the baby boomer generation to remember. The Black Campus Movement disturbed the racial traditions of upwards 1000 colleges and universities in 48 states, establishing a new national tradition, or should I say, aspiration in Higher Education. A tradition or aspiration, depending on your ideology, that embraced racial difference, a tradition or aspiration that said, equality does not necessarily mean uniformity. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Are you going to take questions? >> Oh, sure. Hopefully, we have time. >> All right. [ Pause ] >> Anyone? Yes. >> I think we have about 10 minutes. >> Okay. Yes. >> Can you comment on the different ways that the student movement developed in historically black colleges and universities from how they developed into historically white ones? >> Sure. Ironically, most scholars have studied the events at white colleges universities, and it seems to me, based on my research, that the first protest occurred in the fall of 1967, while protests pretty much began at HBCU's in the spring of 1965; so it seems as if one occurred later. In terms of the actual protest and the actual activism, it seems as if students at black colleges were more radical. Specifically, if you connect radicalism with violence, because, as I showed you, there were many shootouts on black college campuses, but some of that had to do, of course, with many of the black college presidents, -- were quickly calling the police, and many of the members of these police forces would come to these black college campuses after they had taken over a building, -- were in the Ku Klux Klan, right, you know, they were still seething over the desegregation of the South so there was, of course, racial animosity there while at white colleges. The presidents specifically, initially, in '67, '68, and in the spring of '69 were very hesitant to calling the police because they, -- first of all, specifically, if they were near black communities. Because, for instance, you know, of course, I didn't really speak a lot about the protest at Columbia, but the administration was very weary about calling the NYPD because they felt that the NYPD hurt the black students while they were clearing out the building they would be invaded by harm. Right. So you know, there were all of these dynamics that were underplay. And that's why actually during that -- when that protest ended at Columbia, -- because, of course, those of you who know, white students took over several buildings as well during that protest. It was like international phenomena. White students were brutally beaten during that, you know, -- after the buildings were cleared, while the black students were not touched, and that was specifically in order, you know, -- from, you know, counting up [Inaudible]. So there were all of these sort of dynamics. But I think the movement at black colleges was, to a large extent, very similar to the white student power movement at many of the institutions that were historically white. So they demanded, of course, student trustees, as white students did at their colleges. They demanded, of course, for their colleges to be relevant, even though, of course, relevance differ, depending on the ideology and the race of the student. But then again, in demanding relevancy, there were somewhat demanding the same thing that black students at these white colleges were. So they were similarities and there were sort of differences [Inaudible]. Yes. >> I was wondering about whether you could talk a little bit more about the national coordination and communication that was going on during this period, particularly [Inaudible] the King assassination. How much of this was happening on a local level spontaneously arising individually universities? And how much was their coordination? And if there were was coordination on a national level, what would the most communication [Inaudible]? >> Okay. At this point, I primarily done most of my archival research, and the next step is actually interviewing any of the black [Inaudible]. So that's one of the major questions that I'm going to ask. But I could, of course, speculate at this point. There were several conferences. I mentioned one, that dealt with black studies at Yale in May of 1968, but that was specifically geared to black studies. There were many black student conferences throughout the nation occurring. They were mainly region -- they were mainly regional conferences. So, of course, students got together and planned and devised methods utilizing those conferences, but then some of the major BSU's somewhat provided national coordination. So to give you an example, South Carolina State BSU, which, I'm sure you can infer from this brief narrative, was probably the most powerful BSU in a nation. It was able, as I stated, to wage a student strike that lasted almost 5 months in which half of the students at 18,000 student colleges did not go to campus or do not go to class, and it became very close to actually shutting this campus down, which was actually the strike call during the -- the model during the strike, Orange Strike shut it down. But, anyway, in speaking to a BSU leader, who was active there at that point, he had a list of contacts, BSU leaders across the nation, and, of course, they were exchanging letters. But I think the biggest thing that influenced students was simply reading the newspaper, was watching the television, was seeing what other students were doing and feeling compelled that they had to do something as a result. And then during this period, I didn't really -- I only mentioned one, Stokely Carmichael, of course, traveled around the spring of '66 and most of '67. But throughout this era, black leaders were traveling and ended up getting a lot of money for speaking on campuses across the nation. So they were circulating ideas as well, and specifically, speaking and demanding for black students to organize. So they were very sort of -- and people like, oh, man, H. Rap Brown who became the leader of Snick [Assumed Spelling] after Stokely Carmichael, and others, were simply traveling at the time, Mohammed Ali. I'm trying to think of people that everybody would know. Another question. Yes. >> I will share with you a personal experience. >> Okay. [ Inaudible ] >> So you said this to your black student friends, ushered you off campus? >> They took me off campus [Inaudible]. >> And the reason, -- I don't know if you're familiar. I'm sure you're familiar with the reason at this, students threatened to -- there was a residence hall that housed many of the white faculty and some white students, and they basically pledged they were going to blow the whole thing up in anger at what happened. So of course they looked -- [ Inaudible ] >> Oh, yeah. They -- [Inaudible]. Yes. >> [Inaudible]. Just often you had said that you were trying to create a new narrative here. And one of the most common narratives I think that 20th century Americanists, especially historians tend to make is this one of the [Inaudible] that Civil Rights Movement and Snick is good, the move to desegregate the South is good but that five [Inaudible] radicals take over and everything is just horrible and they're, you know, reacting and everybody is hopeful, and maybe it's not so much to crunch the narrative as it is to call the good old moderate [Inaudible]. I wanted to know where you place yourself, where your narrative captures that. And also sort of how you would address this [Inaudible], how we can understand it as successful. Because I know my own college education completely -- either ethnic studies is not -- was not a radical thing but I was a college student, and yet here we are today where ethnic studies in Arizona [Inaudible]. >> First of all, about the last 10 years there's been sort of a new storyography called, The New Black Power Studies, that is being sort of lead by a historian at Tufts, Cornelius Joseph who wrote the book, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America. And he wrote a series of other books on Black Power and several scholars. And he -- actually, before I go there, he coined this phrase that I use called, Black Power has been known as the evil twin of the Civil Rights Movement. And, of course, he argues against that, as do many of the Black Power scholars. Because what has happened is, you know, just Civil Rights has been deemed one thing, and Black Power has been deemed opposite. So to give you an example, Civil Rights has been deemed nonviolent, Black Power has been deemed violent. Civil Rights has been deemed integrationist, Black Power has been deemed separatist. Civil Rights has been deemed -- Black Power has been deemed extremely sexist, while there's really not a gender critique for the Civil Rights Movement. So there's, you know, there's this dialectic that has occurred. And what these scholars are doing, and I would say I'm included, are trying, of course, complicate that dialect. So in terms of the Black Campus Movement, as I stated very briefly, there was a lot of ideological variation and, as I stated also, students of varying ideological persuasion were jockeying for power of BSU's. And invariably, the modern militants are usually the ones who was able to gain power, and to a certain extent, aside from there, black nationalism, they were very in-line with the politics of Civil Rights. So the vast majority of protests were not nonviolent, even at black colleges as well. The vast majority of protest had an integrationist orientation to them, although it was a different type of orientation. It's what one scholar calls, Pluralistic Integration, so group integration, as opposed to allowing that such one or two people can be integrated. So I, you know, I'm pretty much seeking to sort of complicate that dialectic. And I think the Black Power Movement was profoundly transforming in American society. And one of the ways in which scholars have been able to show that, is we're sort of breaking down the movement, and we're sort of de-centering the black party, which has became the Black Power Movement in and of itself, even though it was just one organization. And so in de-centering the Black Panther party and in looking at some of these specific strategic movements, what I call them, scholars are able to really flush out the legacy of the movement. So I'm able to do it, of course, on Higher education. And a woman by the name of Kimberly Stringer who wrote a book on the Black Feminist Movement. So there was a scholar of writings on these things. In terms of measuring the success of the Black Campus Movement, it's very complicated, sort of question. I think we are, of course, experiencing -- we're in a moment in which race specificity is under attack. And, of course, the concept of race neutrality, the color of blindness, of course, is increasingly gaining a political foothold across the nation, but even, of course, in Higher Education. So there's this battle going on, of course, between these two ideas, and in some places, it's winning, like in Arizona. But in other places, where these, you know, Black Studies, for instance, has become institutionalized. You know, many university recognize it. If they eliminate their Black Studies Departments, they eliminate their black faculty, right, and then they can't be called a sexy diverse campus, right, any more. So, you know, they have sort of a reason to sort of continue to support specific initiatives. But, of course, as many Black Studies students and scholars would argue, that Black Studies has somewhat retreated from the black community; so it's not like an activist, sort of radical discipline as the students wanted it to be. Yes. >> I'll just say [Inaudible] Cornell is one of the 10 African-American students when I started and just who -- so watching all of this unfold and watching some of it through my father's eyes, it was also [Inaudible], and yet in a generation before my father there had been very number of black students who started out [Inaudible]. So the whole dynamic is really interesting and multiple. And I think what it's even done [Inaudible] to begin to tease out some of the complexities we experience in different -- even in different generations and different elements of the whole conversation per se is really interesting. I'll just make one comment because it's very interesting at this point. Looking back at the late '60's and even at the time where it seems so radical -- it seemed radical, but even the Black Panther said to be radical and yet be the most radical of Black Panthers said, you know, we only shoot if you shoot at us, a radical would say that. People shoot back as opposed to not shooting back. And even as something so fundamentally American and conservative without simply wanting to be a [Inaudible] fully recognize part, the whole society. So be radical in the context but hardly, it's like playing Declaration of Independence radical. So I guess it's just amazing [Inaudible]. >> Yes. >> [Inaudible] if you could say something more about in your discussion about the protest movement. You also had an intellectual challenge [Inaudible]. Can you, looking back from this [Inaudible], can you reflect on the intellectual and the traditional disciplines of history anthropology in all of these ways that have actually continued, maybe putting their lives on Black Studies, they no longer have had to [Inaudible]. I'm just wondering how do you reflect on that? >> Certainly. I mentioned, I guess in a sentence, there's just so much, you know, to cover in this movement, that, in 1969 and most of the disciplinaries was academic congresses, that there were these deafening calls for social responsibility and for the integration of the curriculum, and this was happening at HA conference. This happened at political science conference. Pretty much all of the disciplines, you know, they were the black students but even more black faculty and, you know, [Inaudible] white and other racial groups who are making this call. However, there was somewhat of this conflict, this ongoing conflict between, let's say black faculty. So you had somewhat of a radical, if you want to call it radical, you know, group of black faculty who demanded and who yearned for this autonomous Black Studies Department in which, of course, you know, everybody in the department would study black people, and they would have control, and they would be all of the disciplines within that one department, while, then, on the other side, you had a group who advocated well, yes, that's, you know, fine and dandy, but then what about those students who do not take Black Studies, specifically white students, who, chances are, they, you know, Black Studies, even though they increasing are in the last decade, you know, what are we going to do about them. You know, are we supposed to teach them about the history and the life of black people. And so I guess from my standpoint, it seems as if the argument was based on the orientation and the ideology and the focus of each individual professor scholarship, meaning some scholars argue that in order for black people, in order for the black America to really, you know, gain a foothold in American society, that whites had to allow it. Other blacks argue that whites were never allowed, no matter what we teach them, so therefore, we have to push it through. Right. So the latter, of course, argued for Black Studies, for obvious reasons. The former argued for, you know, the intrusion and the diversification of the traditional disciplines and that argument, of course, is ongoing and it still exists, you know, on campuses today. You know, I'm of the belief that, you know, why not do both, you know, -- and, you know, because usually, either our argument's usually the right answer is, you know, both. But that's -- I got my PhD in an African-American Studies Department and so I know, you know, these battles and I've engaged in these battles, and I've tried to sort of bring people together in these battles, you know. Yes. [ Inaudible ] >> Certainly. Just very quickly. Just like with white students, many of the white student leaders were sons and daughters of [Inaudible]. In a similar way, many of these black campus activists, specifically the leaders were sons and daughters of the '50's and the '40's, in the '30's, you know, civil rights and black radical activists. So, you know, I certainly agree. However, there, of course, were students whose parents did not support what they were doing. And usually, when students would take over buildings, first, they would do, would be to call their parents. They informed them, you know, about, you know, before you hear what's happening on the news, you know, I want to tell you, you know, myself. And one parent in particular, Brandeis, a parent of a student at Brandeis, when she found out that her student -- I think his name was Christopher Colombo. I don't know why I remember that name -- had been held up in the building there. She went up to the campus and demanded that he, you know, come out of the building. And there's this picture of him rushing out of the building [Laughter]. [Inaudible] really there, you know, so. [ Pause ] >> Yes. >> Yeah. Again, that logical question, we're getting out a little bit more of the context of why you're doing the work, which is what you told us, but this history often is locally remembered but there's a lot of national [Inaudible]. But I wanted to ask you a little more contextual coming into the research here at the Library of Congress. Certainly, you have various strong expectations of what you would find. So I want to flip it, though. What has surprised you that you were prepared to find or not find? What has shown up in this process of doing your archive or research that was going to be a surprise for you? >> One of the major things I wanted to do here was really get my hands on many of the small college history that were published by college, you know, presses all over the nation. And, of course, they have a collection here, you know, many of the colleges, small college histories written, you know, commissioned by the universities, and I didn't expect there to be much in those texts, but usually, there's a lot, which really surprised me. Because, again, you know, these texts were commissioned usually by the University and, you know, I was expecting them to sort of gloss over, you know, that period, when they really don't. And so those have been very useful, you know, providing an origin, of course, [Inaudible] the footnotes, and, you know, being able to get at many of these smaller campuses. Because that's pretty much what I'm doing now. You know, I have these -- I have an understanding as to what happened in many of the major institutions, but in terms of these smaller schools, you know, that's, you know, the bulk of the research. Because many of these schools, of course, their archives, you know, are not the best. And specifically, the rule of blacks historically, to rule historically black colleges, some of them have no archives at all. So, you know, one of the things that I'm doing here is, you know, mining local newspapers, small newspapers in those towns trying to find out about the movement of those schools. And some of the rule historically white colleges don't have archives either; so I'm having to do those because, you know, it's really -- in the last year, contacted about 1500 college archivists and it's really, you know, flip a coin as to whether the black campus school was that one of these small rule historically white institutions. So sometime, of course, there were no black students here, and other time, oh, yeah, they took over a building, but, you know, two weeks, you know, it's really hard to tell. So, you know, that's why you have to do individual research on every single one of these schools. Because I feel in order to really make a national assessment, you know, I have to do that type of research and it's a lot, but I think it's going to be rewarding for those who are interested in this period, time [Laughter]. >> First, we'll have to ask questions off-campus. >> Thank you. >> Thank you [Applause] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov. [ Silence ]