Upending the Ivory Tower. Stefan M. Bradley

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СКАЧАТЬ respect to admissions, housing, and other aspects of college life. Having witnessed the deaths of citizens fighting for civil and human rights as well as the local and national reactions to the urban rebellions that occurred in the nation’s northern and western cities, a contingent of black students turned the tables on white administrators by demanding black curricula, residences, and spaces on campus. After generations of dejection, some members of the Black Power generation decided to extend the coping mechanisms that Fields had described earlier. They raised the levels of their voices and militancy and some even decided that it was better to live among black people so that they could live without the stress of constantly educating their white peers and “masters” of the residence houses. Those pushing for separation were not always in the majority of black students, but their campaign was a direct response to the ills of institutional racism and a departure from the methods of earlier generations of black students.

      Just as the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement did not manifest themselves the same way in the different regions of the United States, the black student movement took on varied shapes on different campuses. The students at San Francisco State College, Merritt College, or Howard University did not have the immediate need to protest for a higher number of black students in the same way that Princeton and Brown black students did. Although all institutions of higher education stake claim to the advancement of knowledge, part of the identity of Ivy League schools is the awareness that in addition to the advancement of knowledge, they produce the world’s leadership class. Upending the Ivory Tower covers what happened when black people joined that class in larger numbers. In response to the arrival and agitation of young black learners, Ivy institutions worked to respond to their separate emergent needs but also, in ways, banded together to envision outcomes that could satisfy protesting students and the institutions’ desires to remain elite.17 As they competed for black students and professionals, the officials at Ivy schools maintained communication to ensure the league maintained some cohesiveness.

      By analyzing civil rights and Black Power in the Ivy League, Upending the Ivory Tower attempts to add nuance to the movements. Scholars have for years painted Black Power as part of the “bad 1960s,” where violence and destruction reigned, whereas the “good 1960s” featured integrationist leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Whitney Young, Jr. Using this model, those who challenged the white power structure outside of the bounds of traditional marches and boycotts—leaders like Huey Newton and H. Rap Brown—were demonized as narcissistic militants. That rendering is, of course, skewed and simple. With that in mind, it is easy for some to see the Black Panthers, who had a chapter in New Haven, Connecticut, as representatives of Black Power. It is more difficult, however, for some to view the erudite black college students on Yale’s campus in New Haven as Black Power agents.

      Upending the Ivory Tower argues that what the students did on campus in the name of black freedom was just as significant as what advocates for black liberation did off campus. The struggle for black people existed wherever they found themselves—even in historic, castlelike buildings. Indeed, Black Power, as with all other social movements, had varying elements and people that attempted to attain liberation by employing different tactics. By considering the diversity within the Black Power Movement, which included campus movements, Upending the Ivory Tower will help to complicate (and complete) the narrative. While some black students at schools like Cornell, Columbia, Penn, Yale, and Princeton took over campus buildings and even flirted with violence to achieve their goals, students at schools like Dartmouth and Brown were much less dramatic in their demonstrations but equally successful at winning their demands on behalf of black people. Depending on their schools’ responses to their demands, black students at each of the eight Ivies employed various aspects of the language, rhetoric, and tactics of the movement.

      The question is why. Why would these mostly undergraduate black students and professionals risk their own chances at individual freedom? Some of the students came from the black elite, while the majority in the 1960s came from the urban black working class, and fewer from lower economic circumstances. The mix of working class and middle- to upper-middle-class black people created interesting interactions, but a student’s class background was not always easy to determine by the student’s actions. As one multigenerational college graduate of Harvard recalled: “Some of the people who were Black Power to the max had parents who were physicians.”18 Regardless of the higher socioeconomic statuses of some students, if they were black they were likely not that far removed from the lower class in terms of familial, friendship, and social ties. The militancy of the moment crossed class dimensions, which for black people were often fluid. Subsequently, young people, regardless of their backgrounds, worked together to change their institutions to better accommodate their blackness. In spite of all else, they shared their race and what came along with it.

      One answer as to why they would risk their opportunities involved the call to collective action that so many young people made during the period. Members of the generation, even today, reflect on the times that “we” stopped the war or when “we” faced down the Ku Klux Klan or when “we” brought Black Studies onto campus. Individual progress was important, but at a time when their entire racial group faced threats, acting in coalition with other black people was both logical and practical. Thomas W. Jones, of Cornell’s class of 1970, explained that “it was in a spirit of self-sacrifice that we were determined to fight for beliefs and principles greater than ourselves.”19 If necessary, he said, they were ready “to meet our destiny in a struggle that was much bigger than any one of us, and even bigger than all of us,” said Jones.

      Another reason was the pressure they felt from others. Students described feeling guilty, in some ways, for being at the prestigious institutions knowing that so many black people faced oppression. As more students came from areas and cities where the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement had taken hold, they felt almost beholden to their blackness. This was a point of contention among students, who may have sympathized with the postwar black freedom movement but who did not want to actually demonstrate and protest. Those students felt pressure from some of the urban black working and lower-income students who came during the late 1960s, who believed more militant action was necessary. Moderation and liberalism became targets in much the same way as conservatism and bigotry. That led some black students to relent to what today is called “peer pressure” in the struggle. To compensate for the self-imposed pressure they felt for “making it” to the Ivy League and from the more militant factions on campuses, some black students became activists. These conflicts of ideologies manifested in terms of gender convention, class identities, neighborhood backgrounds, and political agendas.

      The few black students who made it to the Ivy League were in a precarious position because of privilege. Ernest Wilson III, Harvard class of 1970, was able to articulate the awkwardness of his situation: “I was born at the top of the bottom and on the inside of the outside of society.”20 His depiction of his life circumstances shed light on the experiences of other black students similarly situated. Ivy Leaguer Eric Holder of Columbia University’s class of 1973 bolstered Wilson’s point about the educational experiences of black students who attended elite institutions: “I had this dual existence.”21 Although he was in a mostly white environment at school, Holder felt the need to prove he “was still one of those guys” from the neighborhood. He attempted to convince his peers from his Queens neighborhood that he “was still cool.” At Columbia that meant he had to stay engaged with the black community through his activism and through service in his black fraternity. As the 1960s ended, larger numbers of black undergraduate students enrolled in Ivy League schools from working class and lower socioeconomic backgrounds. In spite of their paucity of resources, they, too, were part of their communities’ and the nation’s elite once they arrived on campus.

      The members of that minority of black people in colleges confronted double marginalization. They were different than the masses—black or otherwise—because of their opportunities to attend college and especially Ivy schools. Concurrently, they were manifestly distinct from the mostly white, well-to-do students at the top universities and colleges. According to Henry Rosovsky, a white economic historian who headed the committee to design Harvard’s Afro-American Studies program, the students, СКАЧАТЬ