Upending the Ivory Tower. Stefan M. Bradley

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СКАЧАТЬ the serious commitment, they said, “We will refuse to help in finding black students.” Perhaps foreshadowing, the black Pembrokers also noted that if the college did not put forth an immediate and more concerted effort, then “we will do what we can to make known this lack of interest” in black people.

      Via a series of position papers, activists at Pembroke demanded that the overall enrollment of black students at the women’s college at least match the overall percentage of black people in the United States, which was 11 percent. The black men of Brown University supported the female activists’ cause. In response to the demand, Brown University president Raymond Heffner (who presided over Pembroke as well) wrote a letter that began “Dear Black Students” and explained that the university would not automatically agree to admit any percentage of students, but that it would “endeavor” to enroll thirty-five black students into the incoming class at Pembroke (which would make up nearly 12 percent of the class).34

      The Pembroke women also demanded a black admissions officer for the college that could act in the same capacity as Richard Nurse, the newly hired admissions officer for Brown. Nurse came to the university after Brown’s AAS took its grievances regarding the need for a black recruiter to President Heffner.35 These student-activists on the Brown and Pembroke campuses knew the benefits of attaining an education and a degree from such a prestigious institution, and they attempted to make it possible for more black people to enjoy those benefits. In doing so, these young members of the black intelligentsia were extending the movement for black freedom to campus, like many other students across the nation had done. In their minds, black students could not afford to be just students. They had to be freedom fighters as well. In their push for freedom, they were maneuvering white university officials into areas of thought and action that the officials had never contemplated.

      It is true that after the advent of the Civil Rights Movement Ivy League institutions attempted to admit higher numbers of black students, but it took black students themselves to intensify the tenacity with which these universities approached the effort (this happened, in part, because students and professors at these universities were participating in the Civil Rights Movement).36 In doing so, black students helped their universities and colleges live up to their own proclamations of fairness and liberalism. For those student demonstrators, however, the goal of admitting thirty-five black students into Pembroke that Heffner suggested for the fall 1969 semester was not enough to assure them of the institutional commitment to black advancement. The protesters explained that while that number might have been a good goal for the time being, the president did not take into account the fact that Pembroke’s (and more broadly Brown’s) population might increase in the future and thirty-five black students per class would be less significant.

      Their rebuff of the president’s suggestion launched a debate in which Heffner publicly refused to employ any “quotas” to admit students. The black student activists reacted quickly by clarifying that they did not seek a quota. “A quota is an upper limit. We are seeking a minimal goal,” explained Pembroke sophomore Sheryl Grooms, who came to the college from nearly all-black Roxbury, Massachusetts.37 As the term “affirmative action” was just coming into the lexicon of the nation, the debate regarding black college admissions and employment raged at Brown and Pembroke.

      Dissatisfied with the progress of the negotiations, Brown and Pembroke students took further and more militant action. The New York Times reported that on December 5 (incidentally the thirteenth anniversary of the start of the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott), sixty-five black students from Pembroke and Brown, with suitcases and sleeping bags in hand, organized outside the student center on Brown’s campus and then marched to the nearby Congdon Street Baptist Church, where they intended to stay. Because there was so little in the way of black life on campus, students had previously established connections with the members and pastor of the church. The relationships the students established made it possible for the Congdon Street congregation to welcome them as they boycotted the university.38 The actions of the church members mirrored those of black community members around the nation who provided solace and help to black students seeking to advance their causes on and off campus. In the South in particular, the black church became the staging ground for the movement in the 1960s. In Providence, the black church also provided the space for black freedom visions. In a similar vein, black community members who lived nearby and observed institutions like Brown, Yale, Columbia, Penn, and even Cornell, understood the difficulty black students had in navigating the starkly white environments. The residents sympathized with the actions of the students who were attempting to increase access to a white institution, and in doing so improve the community.

      The black student activists pledged to boycott classes and stay in the basement of the church until their demands were met. The New York Times reported that the students claimed they were “disassociating” from their institutions because of the schools’ inability to meet the needs of black people and particularly the students.

      As was the case in other demonstrations involving black students and demands, white students and professors showed up in solidarity with the black activists. Nearly 800 mostly white supporters met at University Hall, one of the oldest buildings on campus—and one that enslaved black people helped to build—to discuss the black student demonstrators’ demands.39 Before showing up, white supporters issued a statement that read, “We support our black brothers in the Afro-American Society in their attempt to achieve their goals.”40 The statement called for progressive white people to “Come to the Speak-Out” at “noon on the green” to discuss ways to augment the black protesting students’ efforts. In a message sent to “White Brothers and Sisters,” student Marc Sacardy outlined the philosophical conflict facing his racial peers. “Because black students have taken the initiative to test the university’s policies and its sincerity,” he wrote, “it is our [white students’] responsibility to take sides: part of the problem or part of the solution,” Sacardy said. “I hope we, as white students, can learn to understand blacks on their terms” and in a way that allows white students to at least attempt to “think black.”41

      Other students reinforced Sacardy’s message: “We white students of Brown support completely the twelve demands of the Afro-American Society and their right to determine the terms on which they will remain as members of the university community,” wrote Paul Rosenburg.42 Then, a group explained that they were inclined to support AAS’s demands for two reasons. The first involved black students having the ability to “determine for themselves decisions affecting their position”; the second was in regard to “the racist policies of the University” and “how they affect the entire educational environment.”43

      AAS member Kenneth McDaniel, who was graduating in the spring of 1969, revealed that the black activists had not asked for the support of the white students but that they were grateful for the white students’ efforts.44 He said AAS members wanted to “extend our thanks to the white students on campus who have given us support.” Progressive white students around the nation took the initiative to bolster the campaigns of black campus agitators. The interaction between the black and white demonstrators did not always resemble the participatory democracy kind of relationships that developed in organizations like SNCC and the Congress of Racial Equality in the southern movement in the early 1960s and Students for a Democratic Society in the late 1960s. Integration was not a priority for many black student activists in 1968, and white students had to accommodate the need for them to close ranks in terms of decision making. Regarding the demonstration at Brown and the Congdon Street Baptist church, black students did not inform white students of what was happening until just before the action. In doing so, AAS attempted to maintain control of communication to the press. Additionally, as McDaniel pointed out, AAS only wanted “direct communication” with the administration. Such communication did not require checking in with white students. Understanding this, white students and Brown affiliates organized on behalf of the campaign, showing solidarity with the cause. The organization of the activists resulted in a petition that 2,878 Brown and Pembroke affiliates signed in support of the black students’ demands.45

      White students and university affiliates were not the СКАЧАТЬ