Upending the Ivory Tower. Stefan M. Bradley

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ The wanted to “express gratitude” to the local black community “not only because of their support in giving us money and food but most important of all they gave us moral support.” The black members of the surrounding community may not have been able to attend Brown or Pembroke, but they wanted to make it possible for their children or others’ children to have the opportunity. Community members in urban areas offered help to protesting black students and youth throughout the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement and certainly throughout the black campus movement. Historically, the black church, in particular, was supportive of activist movements, and the Congdon Street Baptist church acted in that tradition.

      Black Power, and thus Black Student Power, meant foregoing class distinctions to unify along racial lines for the advancement of black life chances. The students and church members succeeded in that measure. “They [the church members] have done something tremendous in bridging the gap between the community and the students,” the AAS spokesman said. Linking campus and community was imperative to many of the black Ivy League students whose institutions resided within urban areas. That connection was also crucial to achieving Black Power, according to H. Rap Brown. The SNCC leader told students there is a danger that befalls some young people who are fortunate enough to make it to a university: “Black students begin to assume they’re different from the people on the other side of the track,” when in fact, “the [white] man stratifies the [black] community” by creating a distance between the campus and the people in the neighborhoods.47 The off-campus community members and the students hoped to benefit the larger black community from the coalition and shorten the distance to which Rap Brown referred.

      In light of that coalition and the support that white Brown and Pembroke affiliates offered, the increased number of demonstrators supporting AAS demands gave administrators that much more cause for concern. Negotiating early was essential if officials did not want the demonstration to reach the proportions of uprisings at Columbia University, Northwestern University, and San Francisco State College.

      Indeed, what occurred at institutions like Columbia shaped the outcomes of the Brown campaign. Black students, in a letter written to President Heffner in May, explained that in light of King’s assassination and the student rebellions of the spring, they observed that “the white university in America inherently reflects” racism. Black activist on campuses, the students claimed, were reacting to a “pseudo-egalitarian racist environment” and “Brown University is no exception to this characteristic white, educational institution.” The students warned that “The condition which precipitated the Black student rebellions at Columbia and Boston exist here.” According to the letter, “Brown is a stifling, frustrating, and degrading place for black students.” The students critiqued the university as a “bulwark of American liberalism” and questioned whether they were admitted in “order to maintain its image as a non-discriminatory liberal university.” Years earlier, other black students asked the same question of themselves. The black student agitators in 1968 stated that “it is our hope that the removal of these conditions is carried out without the need of an insurrection here.” In a tone that indicated impending action, the students exclaimed: “The university has been laboring under the misguided impression that we are happy because we have been quiet.”48 Believing that the president was taking the relative peace on campus for granted, the letter explained that Heffner and the university were “sure that we would blend right in and be silently grateful that we were here at all” even as tokens. “We are tired of being tokens and nothing else,” the students said.

      Black students clarified their stance on life at the university and college. Suggesting that they had been “refined enough, timid enough, and conservative enough to be Brownmen,” they were at the point where they knew “something must be done” and “racism, in all its diverse forms, must be eradicated” from the university (and Pembroke) to make life better for black students.49 Black Brunonians and Pembrokers in 1968 went beyond surviving at the university, which was what Redding and Beckham focused on, to demanding “a right to a complete, educational experience” that allowed them to not only feel as though they belonged but also gave them knowledge of themselves. Although they were willing to give the university time to “prove its sincerity,” with regard to its relationship to black people, the students wrote in the letter that “if the University tries to pacify us with excuses or stop-gap measures, we will have to think of the University as an enemy of black people and take appropriate action.” With their enhanced black consciousness and the letter they wrote, the young activists made the turn from mere presence to protest and sought to use their Black Student Power.

      The New York Times also reported that President Heffner did not plan to levy any disciplinary measures on the demonstrating black students. The point seemed moot as the students had not technically done anything to garner such action. They left campus during the day, which was entirely permissible; further, they took their protest off campus, which should have satisfied any restrictions against on-campus demonstrations. By disassociating themselves, these black students illustrated the power that young people had to draw attention to their issues without seeking permission from authorities. As black students disassociating themselves, they used their race and status as students to advance goals for the larger black freedom movement. Recognizing that they could affect black life in their own space, the students acted accordingly. As Sheryl Grooms put it, “The walkout is essentially to get a reaction, to force them [university and college officials] to do something” about life for black students and people in general.50

      The decision to walk off campus and boycott rather than take over a building was also deliberate. At about the same time that Brown students boycotted, black students throughout the nation took over buildings and flirted with violence in their demonstrations.51 Brown students moved peacefully—yet forcefully—to the church. Decades after the boycott, Spencer Crew explained that the black student activists understood that there was a “Brown Way.” The Brown Way, Crew indicated, did not involve raucous and potentially acrimonious confrontations. While students may have been concerned about punitive repercussions, they believed that it was more tactical not to provoke a bad reaction with a violent or disruptive campaign. As AAS coordinator Phil Lord remembered later, “we were very conscious of the role that peaceful agitation and nonviolence could play” in the demonstration.52

      This proved effective at that moment because Brown officials did not have to look far to see campuses shutting down when students chose to disrupt the normal operations of university business, which was the method used by black students at Columbia and Penn months earlier. Crew explained that before walking off campus there was a discussion about strategy. During the conversation, the students asked: “Do we want that kind of confrontational approach [like that at Columbia University] or do we want to try something different?” The demonstrators, according to Crew, “decided that the position to walk off was different and it might highlight issues without imitating what people had done earlier.” Brown junior and AAS coordinator Phil Lord was excited to be in a position where he could put into practice the “black consciousness” he had gained.53

      The Brown students’ discussion was a perfect example of the nuances of the movement for Black Power. Recent scholarship has highlighted the misleading way that traditional narratives about Black Power have inferred that violence or violent rhetoric was inherent to every action. This was clearly not the case with the Brown activists, who sought innovative ways to make their point but who also sought to create opportunities for black freedom. Nonviolent militant action proved effective in advancing the ideals of Black Power.

      The situation at Brown caused a problem in terms of publicity and undesirable attention for the university, but officials understood that the scenario could have been worse. University officials saw young black people participating in the urban uprisings in cities across the nation the previous spring, when a white supremacist assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. So, working with black students, who took such a measured approach, was much easier for Brown officials than having to call police onto campus as Columbia University officials did in April and May. Further, it was less expensive with regard to money, time, and energy to respectfully discuss issues with the student protesters than СКАЧАТЬ