Protest Prompted Afro-Am

While white mourners eulogized Martin Luther king Jr. inside Memorial Church following his assassination, Black students stood outside to symbolize their alienation from the white institution they called Harvard.

That day in 1968, a year before the historic takeover of University Hall, a group called the Association of African and African-American Students (AAAAS) issued its "Four Requests on Fair Harvard."

The main demand of the group, the forerunner of the Black Students' Association, was a call for the establishment of an Afro-American studies program.

At Harvard and throughout the nation, Blacks stood on the threshold of full integration. Having won gains in the political and social areas, Black students at Harvard were crusading to clinch the last gain, to have an Afro-Am program of their own. Former students say this struggle for academic recognition parallels Black people's national quest for complete integration.

And today, other minority students at Harvard are making the same demands. This time they are proposing the establishment of an ethnic studies program, the acceptance of which may complete "the last unresolved business of diversifying the University."

Full Citizenship

"In the late 1960s Blacks saw themselves as being just about to enter intofull American citizenship," says Dean of StudentsArchie C. Epps III. "And they wanted to get therefaster and faster."

Epps, one of Harvard's first Blackadministrators, describes the atmosphere on campusin the last two years of the 1960s as"revolutionary."

"The student culture that was dominant then wasone of a counterculture," Epps says. "Activistswere questioning authority and calling forupheaval; but their endless list of critiques wasdirected not only towards the University buttowards society as well."

The University responded to AAAAS's demand byconvening a committee. In a published report, thecommittee, chaired by then-Professor of EconomicsHenry Rosovsky, recommended the establishment of asocial and cultural center for Black students, anintensified recruitment effort for Blackprofessors and graduate students, and thedevelopment of a standing committee on jointdegrees in Afro-American Studies.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS)immediately established a search committee to finda leader for the new program. And for the firsttime, the University invited threeundergraduates--all Black--to act as full votingmembers of the six-person committee: Ernest J.Wilson III '70, Robert L. Hall '69 and Craig M.Watson '72.

While some administrators and faculty memberscalled the student participation a watershed inHarvard history, student activists claimed theUniversity was still slow to give the new academicdiscipline the recognition it deserved.

According to McLean Professor of Ancient andModern History, Emeritus Franklin L. Ford, Harvarddepartments historically begin ininterdisciplinary committee form and only yearslater become autonomous departments with their ownfaculty. But students wanted that right away, Fordsays. And they wouldn't wait.

"We knew we couldn't trust the administrationand we knew that we had to take that opportunityto push for what we really wanted," Hall says.

"The formation of the department was nothingbut a formal recognition of what the Rosovskycommittee had already promised us" Hall adds. "Wejust wanted that status formally noted by theUniversity."

But Ford, who was the dean of the faculty in1969, recalls that he and other faculty memberssaw departmentalization of Afro-Am as a big leapfrom its proposed program status--and they wereskeptical about a hasty construction.

"We all agreed with the tone of the RosovskyReport," Ford says. "But you couldn't just snapyour fingers and bring a department into being."

"It was not a very good way for a program to beborn, in that kind of a shotgun atmosphere," Fordsays. "And the history of the African-AmericanStudies department has borne out; it didn't reallyget track as a department until a few years ago."

Even Rosovsky committee member Martin L.Kilson, who in 1969 became Harvard's first Blacktenured professor, says he was opposed to thedepartmentalization of Afro-Am.

"The University already had experience withinterdisciplinary programs," says ThomsonProfessor of Government Kilson. "The proposedsubject matter would have inevitably had to bemediated through several different curriculums."

Although the Faculty granted committee-statusto the fledgling Afro-Am program, students feltthat calling the program a "committee on degrees"rather than a department was indicative of a lackof University support.

The questioned the administration's commitmentto the project and accused the University ofunderestimating the intellectual value ofAfro-American studies.

"The only reason they didn't want to call it adepartment was because they didn't want it to betoo autonomous or to really be considered alegitimate academic enterprise," Hall says.

Hall speculates that, in initial negotiationswith the University in 1968, AAAAS members "mightnot have gotten anything substantial if we hadpersisted in using the word 'department' at thatpoint."

"The d-word raised such a red flag for Mr.Rosovsky that it wasn't worth it," Hall says. "Theprogram was described in functional and behavioralterms instead--and in those terms it had all thepowers and prerogatives of existing departments."

Students simply wanted public recognition ofthe department's status at Harvard, Hall says."Our insistence in April of 1969 on the change oflabel did not constitute an addition of functions.Rather, they were embedded in what the Rosovskycommittee had already proposed."

Contrary to what many Black students thought,however, the "program's nomenclature meant nodisrespect," Kilson says.

"We took for granted, even, that people wouldsee this as something with a specific rationalebehind it," Kilson adds. "It just seemednatural--it's not as if it were a new curricularinvention created solely to oppress Blacks."

Some former students say they did not think thedemands too ambitious--they may have been radical,but they were presented in the context of thetimes.

"People didn't talk in terms of change then,"says former AAAAS President Leslie F. Griffin Jr.'70. "People talked in terms of revolution, andthey really meant it."

Griffin says the proposal for a committee wasseen as too gradual and too incremental. "We wererearranging the balance of power, based on ournotion that to struggle was noble."

Students, faculty and administrators agree thatthe perceived threat of violence was a majorfactor in the success of student demands.

On April 22,1969, attendance at the Facultymeeting was so high that professors had to meet inthe Loeb Theater. Once there, the faculty rejectedthe Rosovsky committee's proposal for a committeeon degrees and voted Afro-American studies fulldepartment status while a first-year with ameat-cleaver sat on the curb outside.

"The faculty may have felt that they had tomake concessions to us, but we were only trying tosend a signal that change was needed. We didn'tmean to make a threat," Griffin says. "[They]probably weren't convinced by our arguments, butthey were seized by fear that we would damageeither them or the campus in some fundamentalway."

Ford described the period as "exceptionallyviolent. There was a sense that the world hadturned upside down, and there was a real fear thatviolence which had occurred on other campuseswould come to Harvard."

The outside world did come to Harvard, Wilsonsays. And with it came threats of violence aswell. "Harvard was not immune to the tremendousturmoil that swept the country," he says.

According to DuBois Institute Associate Lee A.Daniels '71, who was an active member of AAAAS,real world turmoil--such as the Vietnam War andespecially the assassinations of presidentialcandidate Robert F. Kennedy '48 andKing--facilitated the students' demands.

"We had been stonewalled by the University foryears before 1968," Daniels says.

"The administration couldn't be sure that theirBlack students were going to behaveproperly--whereas before the University had hadthe power to say no, Dr. King's murder changedthat for a moment," Daniels adds. "That was that.From that moment, the existence of anAfro-American Studies program in some from was aforegone conclusion."

Today's Struggle

Today, campus minority leaders are makingdemands for curricular inclusion similar to thosemade by AAAAS members 25 years ago. The currentcall for an ethnic studies program is what Eppscalls "the last unresolved business ofdiversifying the University."

But today's crusaders aren't seizing buildingsand wielding meat-cleavers. Instead, they aretrying a more conciliatory approach in dealingwith the University.

The results: while Afro-Am was only born a yearafter AAAAS began to launch their major protests,ethnic studies remains only a specialconcentration even one year after nine minoritygroups allied and stole the campus stage.

"The zeitgeist isn't there now," Griffin says."I've had students call me who are baffled by whatwe did then and what they can't do now. Thecontext of the historical time has changed."

Minority Student Alliance (MSA) Co-Chair JeanL. Tom '96 agrees, "In 1969 the spirit of the agewas entirely different," she says. "Now I seepervasive apathy where students are more concernedwith their personal success and not too many arewilling to struggle for a cause."

MSA member Xavier A. Gutierrez '95 says he isdoubtful that the ethnic studies movement coulddraw the same degree of participation and supportthat Black students did in the late 1960s.

For example, when MSA members protested thepaucity of tenured minority faculty members at aJunior Parents Weekend event this year, only 20students picketed. In contrast, the demand forAfro-Am garnered the support of the Students for aDemocratic Society, which organized the UniversityHall takeover, as well as other protesters oncampus.

Some graduates, however, say the small ranks ofprotesters and the relative calm on campus todaymake current protesters the real crusaders.

"I think today's student reformers are braverthan we were," Wilson says. "Their environment isnot as conducive to protest as ours was."

Tom and Gutierrez say the political atmosphereon campus today warrants different tactics thanthose used by radical protesters in the 1960s.Gutierrez characterizes the 1990s as "more subduedtimes."

"We've talked about being more activist andmore drastic," Tom says. "But I'm afraid that wewould inspire negative repercussions. We couldnever recreate the spirit of the '60s, and I thinknow we would be seen as extremist, and would thenbe ineffective."

Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles says thetactics of yesterday wouldn't be acceptable today."I see few, if any, parallels between 1969 and1994," he says.

But some student complaints voiced in 1969persist today. "We don't want to openly antagonizethe administration because I don't think thatwould work. But I'm still not sure theadministration is trying hard enough to addressour concerns," Tom says.

"We realize that this is a gradual process, butI'm not sure that it has to be," she adds."Afro-Am was created overnight."

Tom says the MSA has concrete demands andexpects that the group will submit a recommendedtimetable to University officials in the next fewweeks.

"Sometimes I do feel like we need to push forsomething to happen now, because if it drags onand on we'll graduate and then administrators canjust start their dance all over again with newpeople."

Gutierrez says Harvard has yet to take even afirst step towards admitting that ethnic studiesis a valuable intellectual pursuit. "I think thatwe have to criticize the meager response of theadministration, which is indicative of theirreluctance to do anything," he says.

Daniels says that even in his time, theadministration was far from supportive. "Some ofour agreements were retroactively altered orreneged," he says." We all knew that we couldn'ttrust the Pusey administration, and this breakdownof trust caused yet another fissure in theUniversity."

Like the protesters of the 1969, MSA memberssay they seized a unique moment to put theirdemands into the spotlight--last spring's JuniorParents' Weekend. They say they saw a chance forsuccess and jumped at it.

"We had just a moment to slip in and push theUniversity to move forward," Hall says of theAfro-Am movement. "That's why we had to be soaggressive."

Griffin also says the Afro-Am department wasonly possible because of a brief moment in time inwhich almost anything was possible.

"That was a time when gradualism and partialsolutions just weren't acceptable," Griffin says."That was a time when students had the power andthey were going to use it. I don't think studentstoday could ever get that power back."CrimsonSuresh N. MaggieLast month, minority students rallied fortheir own demands, including the creation of anethnic studies program.

Epps, one of Harvard's first Blackadministrators, describes the atmosphere on campusin the last two years of the 1960s as"revolutionary."

"The student culture that was dominant then wasone of a counterculture," Epps says. "Activistswere questioning authority and calling forupheaval; but their endless list of critiques wasdirected not only towards the University buttowards society as well."

The University responded to AAAAS's demand byconvening a committee. In a published report, thecommittee, chaired by then-Professor of EconomicsHenry Rosovsky, recommended the establishment of asocial and cultural center for Black students, anintensified recruitment effort for Blackprofessors and graduate students, and thedevelopment of a standing committee on jointdegrees in Afro-American Studies.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS)immediately established a search committee to finda leader for the new program. And for the firsttime, the University invited threeundergraduates--all Black--to act as full votingmembers of the six-person committee: Ernest J.Wilson III '70, Robert L. Hall '69 and Craig M.Watson '72.

While some administrators and faculty memberscalled the student participation a watershed inHarvard history, student activists claimed theUniversity was still slow to give the new academicdiscipline the recognition it deserved.

According to McLean Professor of Ancient andModern History, Emeritus Franklin L. Ford, Harvarddepartments historically begin ininterdisciplinary committee form and only yearslater become autonomous departments with their ownfaculty. But students wanted that right away, Fordsays. And they wouldn't wait.

"We knew we couldn't trust the administrationand we knew that we had to take that opportunityto push for what we really wanted," Hall says.

"The formation of the department was nothingbut a formal recognition of what the Rosovskycommittee had already promised us" Hall adds. "Wejust wanted that status formally noted by theUniversity."

But Ford, who was the dean of the faculty in1969, recalls that he and other faculty memberssaw departmentalization of Afro-Am as a big leapfrom its proposed program status--and they wereskeptical about a hasty construction.

"We all agreed with the tone of the RosovskyReport," Ford says. "But you couldn't just snapyour fingers and bring a department into being."

"It was not a very good way for a program to beborn, in that kind of a shotgun atmosphere," Fordsays. "And the history of the African-AmericanStudies department has borne out; it didn't reallyget track as a department until a few years ago."

Even Rosovsky committee member Martin L.Kilson, who in 1969 became Harvard's first Blacktenured professor, says he was opposed to thedepartmentalization of Afro-Am.

"The University already had experience withinterdisciplinary programs," says ThomsonProfessor of Government Kilson. "The proposedsubject matter would have inevitably had to bemediated through several different curriculums."

Although the Faculty granted committee-statusto the fledgling Afro-Am program, students feltthat calling the program a "committee on degrees"rather than a department was indicative of a lackof University support.

The questioned the administration's commitmentto the project and accused the University ofunderestimating the intellectual value ofAfro-American studies.

"The only reason they didn't want to call it adepartment was because they didn't want it to betoo autonomous or to really be considered alegitimate academic enterprise," Hall says.

Hall speculates that, in initial negotiationswith the University in 1968, AAAAS members "mightnot have gotten anything substantial if we hadpersisted in using the word 'department' at thatpoint."

"The d-word raised such a red flag for Mr.Rosovsky that it wasn't worth it," Hall says. "Theprogram was described in functional and behavioralterms instead--and in those terms it had all thepowers and prerogatives of existing departments."

Students simply wanted public recognition ofthe department's status at Harvard, Hall says."Our insistence in April of 1969 on the change oflabel did not constitute an addition of functions.Rather, they were embedded in what the Rosovskycommittee had already proposed."

Contrary to what many Black students thought,however, the "program's nomenclature meant nodisrespect," Kilson says.

"We took for granted, even, that people wouldsee this as something with a specific rationalebehind it," Kilson adds. "It just seemednatural--it's not as if it were a new curricularinvention created solely to oppress Blacks."

Some former students say they did not think thedemands too ambitious--they may have been radical,but they were presented in the context of thetimes.

"People didn't talk in terms of change then,"says former AAAAS President Leslie F. Griffin Jr.'70. "People talked in terms of revolution, andthey really meant it."

Griffin says the proposal for a committee wasseen as too gradual and too incremental. "We wererearranging the balance of power, based on ournotion that to struggle was noble."

Students, faculty and administrators agree thatthe perceived threat of violence was a majorfactor in the success of student demands.

On April 22,1969, attendance at the Facultymeeting was so high that professors had to meet inthe Loeb Theater. Once there, the faculty rejectedthe Rosovsky committee's proposal for a committeeon degrees and voted Afro-American studies fulldepartment status while a first-year with ameat-cleaver sat on the curb outside.

"The faculty may have felt that they had tomake concessions to us, but we were only trying tosend a signal that change was needed. We didn'tmean to make a threat," Griffin says. "[They]probably weren't convinced by our arguments, butthey were seized by fear that we would damageeither them or the campus in some fundamentalway."

Ford described the period as "exceptionallyviolent. There was a sense that the world hadturned upside down, and there was a real fear thatviolence which had occurred on other campuseswould come to Harvard."

The outside world did come to Harvard, Wilsonsays. And with it came threats of violence aswell. "Harvard was not immune to the tremendousturmoil that swept the country," he says.

According to DuBois Institute Associate Lee A.Daniels '71, who was an active member of AAAAS,real world turmoil--such as the Vietnam War andespecially the assassinations of presidentialcandidate Robert F. Kennedy '48 andKing--facilitated the students' demands.

"We had been stonewalled by the University foryears before 1968," Daniels says.

"The administration couldn't be sure that theirBlack students were going to behaveproperly--whereas before the University had hadthe power to say no, Dr. King's murder changedthat for a moment," Daniels adds. "That was that.From that moment, the existence of anAfro-American Studies program in some from was aforegone conclusion."

Today's Struggle

Today, campus minority leaders are makingdemands for curricular inclusion similar to thosemade by AAAAS members 25 years ago. The currentcall for an ethnic studies program is what Eppscalls "the last unresolved business ofdiversifying the University."

But today's crusaders aren't seizing buildingsand wielding meat-cleavers. Instead, they aretrying a more conciliatory approach in dealingwith the University.

The results: while Afro-Am was only born a yearafter AAAAS began to launch their major protests,ethnic studies remains only a specialconcentration even one year after nine minoritygroups allied and stole the campus stage.

"The zeitgeist isn't there now," Griffin says."I've had students call me who are baffled by whatwe did then and what they can't do now. Thecontext of the historical time has changed."

Minority Student Alliance (MSA) Co-Chair JeanL. Tom '96 agrees, "In 1969 the spirit of the agewas entirely different," she says. "Now I seepervasive apathy where students are more concernedwith their personal success and not too many arewilling to struggle for a cause."

MSA member Xavier A. Gutierrez '95 says he isdoubtful that the ethnic studies movement coulddraw the same degree of participation and supportthat Black students did in the late 1960s.

For example, when MSA members protested thepaucity of tenured minority faculty members at aJunior Parents Weekend event this year, only 20students picketed. In contrast, the demand forAfro-Am garnered the support of the Students for aDemocratic Society, which organized the UniversityHall takeover, as well as other protesters oncampus.

Some graduates, however, say the small ranks ofprotesters and the relative calm on campus todaymake current protesters the real crusaders.

"I think today's student reformers are braverthan we were," Wilson says. "Their environment isnot as conducive to protest as ours was."

Tom and Gutierrez say the political atmosphereon campus today warrants different tactics thanthose used by radical protesters in the 1960s.Gutierrez characterizes the 1990s as "more subduedtimes."

"We've talked about being more activist andmore drastic," Tom says. "But I'm afraid that wewould inspire negative repercussions. We couldnever recreate the spirit of the '60s, and I thinknow we would be seen as extremist, and would thenbe ineffective."

Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles says thetactics of yesterday wouldn't be acceptable today."I see few, if any, parallels between 1969 and1994," he says.

But some student complaints voiced in 1969persist today. "We don't want to openly antagonizethe administration because I don't think thatwould work. But I'm still not sure theadministration is trying hard enough to addressour concerns," Tom says.

"We realize that this is a gradual process, butI'm not sure that it has to be," she adds."Afro-Am was created overnight."

Tom says the MSA has concrete demands andexpects that the group will submit a recommendedtimetable to University officials in the next fewweeks.

"Sometimes I do feel like we need to push forsomething to happen now, because if it drags onand on we'll graduate and then administrators canjust start their dance all over again with newpeople."

Gutierrez says Harvard has yet to take even afirst step towards admitting that ethnic studiesis a valuable intellectual pursuit. "I think thatwe have to criticize the meager response of theadministration, which is indicative of theirreluctance to do anything," he says.

Daniels says that even in his time, theadministration was far from supportive. "Some ofour agreements were retroactively altered orreneged," he says." We all knew that we couldn'ttrust the Pusey administration, and this breakdownof trust caused yet another fissure in theUniversity."

Like the protesters of the 1969, MSA memberssay they seized a unique moment to put theirdemands into the spotlight--last spring's JuniorParents' Weekend. They say they saw a chance forsuccess and jumped at it.

"We had just a moment to slip in and push theUniversity to move forward," Hall says of theAfro-Am movement. "That's why we had to be soaggressive."

Griffin also says the Afro-Am department wasonly possible because of a brief moment in time inwhich almost anything was possible.

"That was a time when gradualism and partialsolutions just weren't acceptable," Griffin says."That was a time when students had the power andthey were going to use it. I don't think studentstoday could ever get that power back."CrimsonSuresh N. MaggieLast month, minority students rallied fortheir own demands, including the creation of anethnic studies program.