User talk:African american studies

Atlanta University Center Student Activity Leading to Morehouse Take-over “Students at Atlanta’s institutions of higher learning watched events elsewhere closely, as did radical Black activists in the city. Officials at the Atlanta University Center (AUC) helped to quell a January 1969 student takeover organized by students with help from SNCC workers Willie Ricks and Cleveland Sellers. Hugh M. Gloster, Morehouse College’s president, informed the school’s board of trustees in a memorandum that he had obtained a list of student demands. Apparently, student’s hostile to the planned takeover had made Gloster and other administrators privy to the campus action only hours before it had been scheduled to take place. Campus activists called for the rejection of the term Negro as “a tool of racist colonialism” and the consolidation of the six affiliated schools into one major university and declared that the primary function of the Atlanta University Center should be to aid the Black freedom struggle worldwide. A demand that revealed the way in which blatant homophobia had become braided with a Black nationalist quest for self-determination called for the removal of “white racists [sic] homosexuals” from the faculty”. (Grady-Willis, Winston A.. Challenging U.S. Apartheid (p. 144). ﻿﻿“At first glance, it might appear as if Black student demands at the AUC should have caused less tension than those at the University of Georgia, especially given that Georgia had been segregated until the early sixties. Yet, that was not the case. As at most historically Black colleges and universities, administrators at the AUC schools wielded far more power than did faculty or students, and they were keenly aware that campus activism could jeopardize external funding. Largely supportive of students during the sit-ins of the early 1960s, these university presidents now contended with two related issues they had not been forced to encounter in struggles against petty apartheid in the city. (Grady-Willis, Winston A.. Challenging U.S. Apartheid “(pp. 144-145). First, they had to grapple with the rise in radical nationalist sentiment that had altered the course of the movement in the South from 1964 onward. Second, they had to confront Black student activism that challenged the status quo at their institutions. Gloster and other key administrators had avoided such a showdown in January, perhaps because other students exposed a planned takeover. (Up until this time non-violent integration was the focus of student activist. In the early 1960 AUC students were active in lunch counter sit ins and desegregation. This is a turning point for the focus of the student) Morehouse Take-Over In April 1969, however, the confrontation finally materialized. A group of students demanded a hearing at the scheduled meeting with the Atlanta University Board of Trustees on Thursday, 17 April, but received no invitation. (Grady-Willis, Winston A.. Challenging U.S. Apartheid (p. 144).﻿On the following day students representing several AUC institutions returned to the administration building on the Morehouse campus, but discovered that the meeting that day was of the Morehouse trustees. Determined to obtain a hearing, ten students moved quickly inside the meeting room, chaining the doors shut from the inside. Word quickly spread that students had confined the president of Morehouse and its board of trustees. Soon, rumors circulated that armed student activists had ransacked the room and threatened the lives of the trustees. After Gloster addressed a group of concerned students gathering outside, several of the students made an attempt to rush the doors, to no avail. Given the situation, Gloster took drastic action: “Since I cannot be a party to concessions made under duress to a group often individuals,” he stated, “I am herewith submitting my resignation as president of Morehouse College.” (Grady-Willis, Winston A.. Challenging U.S. Apartheid (p. 144). Twenty-nine hours and an informal agreement later, student activists unchained the doors and released their dazed hostages. During the takeover the Morehouse Student Government Association had called an emergency vote of students in which condemnation of the surprise protest carried the day. (Grady-Willis, Winston A.. Challenging U.S. Apartheid (p. 145). ﻿Students also voted overwhelmingly to ignore both Gloster’s resignation letter and the agreement reached during the building occupation. Less ﻿than a week later, the campus reading center was the target of a latenight firebombing that resulted in no injuries. (Grady-Willis, Winston A.. Challenging U.S. Apartheid (p. 145) Morehouse student president Nelson Taylor offered a sharp denunciation of those students responsible for the events of the past week. “We will oppose you,” a frustrated Taylor warned. “We will oppose you and let God decide the consequences.” He organized an impromptu meeting of twenty-five students to press for amnesty for student activists and consideration of merging the six affiliated schools “more completely.” (Grady-Willis, Winston A.. Challenging U.S. Apartheid (pp. 145-146). While he acknowledged that many activists were sincere in their convictions, he insisted that there were others “whose primary purpose is destruction and the building of confusion.” It was members of this second group, according to Taylor, “who are attempting arson on our campus.” (Grady-Willis, Winston A.. Challenging U.S. Apartheid (p. 146). Aftermath of Morehouse Take-over Meanwhile, the already turbulent atmosphere at the Atlanta University Center was about to receive yet another jolt. The Morehouse administration announced on 24 June that twenty-eight students would receive disciplinary action for their involvement in the 18 April occupation and lock-in. Five students, including two seniors, received full academic year suspensions, and five others received semester-long suspensions. Although Gloster declined to discuss the suspensions publicly, Ralph Lee, the outgoing academic dean, said that while he “sympathized” with student objectives he disapproved of their actions. George M. Coleman, associate editor of the Atlanta Voice, refused to be silent, lambasting the “immature actions by adults and students alike.” Coleman asserted that while the takeover “was a foolish, mean, and vicious act,” the decision by Morehouse to renege on the agreement and then suspend student activists was “snobbish” and “disgusting in every sense of the word.” Instead, Coleman wrote, it would have better served Morehouse if Gloster and the trustees had been lenient. “Who knows, but that a future M. L. King or Ralph Bunche may have been thrown out into the streets like a criminal.” (Grady-Willis, Winston A.. Challenging U.S. Apartheid (p. 147)﻿Protest activity had not been confined to Morehouse College. Atlanta University President Thomas D. Jarrett sought an injunction against five radical Black activists, including former SNCC stalwarts Bill Ware and Willie Ricks, for constructing a protest camp at the corner of Beckwith and Lawshe streets. The camp began as a vigil after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. but had continued as an ongoing protest of the Vietnam War, racism, poverty, and “man’s inhumanity to man.” The trustees contended that the property belonged to Atlanta University and that the camp, which had been constructed as a microcosm of the Resurrection City shantytown of the Poor People’s Campaign, posed sanitation problems for the surrounding neighborhood. Meanwhile, the volatile campus protest spread to the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC). Led by Ike Hentrel, students there presented a manifesto that called for a committee to look into grievances concerning a range of issues, from academic standards to substandard cafeteria food, ITC President Oswald Bronson held several highly charged meetings throughout the fall semester in an effort to address the manifesto. (Grady-Willis, Winston A.. Challenging U.S. Apartheid (p. 148).