Wisconsin Student Did Not Attend Schools Again to Protest Have to Stay Extra Days at School
The Black Student Strike of 1969
Fifty years ago, black students at UW–Madison, propelled by longstanding grievances and fresh flash points, called for a campus-wide student strike until administrators agreed to 13 demands. Joined by thousands of white allies, they held rallies to educate the community about racial inequities, boycotted classes, marched to the state Capitol, took over lecture halls and blocked building entrances. The latter actions spurred the governor to activate the Wisconsin National Guard. The protest, surging and ebbing over roughly two weeks in Feb 1969, was among the largest in the university's history. Dubbed the Blackness Educatee Strike, information technology would forever modify the campus. Here, in their own words, participants recount why the strike was needed, what they did, and how it changed the university and their lives.
Story
The Black Student Strike played out amid a burgeoning Black Ability Movement and in the raw aftermath of Martin Luther Male monarch Jr.'s assassination the previous spring. Massive protests over racism and the Vietnam State of war roiled campuses beyond the state, including UW–Madison, where a sit-in against Dow Chemical in October 1967 marked the start use of tear gas on campus.
Starting in 1966, black students began organizing by educating themselves, bringing in speakers and advocating for changes with the academy administration. By Feb 1969, black students were frustrated over what they considered meager progress on race-related campus goals, and they were outraged that 94 black students at the University of Wisconsin campus in Oshkosh recently had been expelled post-obit a protest there. A calendar week-long briefing at UW–Madison on "The Black Revolution: To What Ends?" farther emboldened students.
Liberty Rashad Leader of the campus Black People's Alliance and a strike organizer
We had a lot of issues nosotros wanted to bargain with. The fact that there was an African Studies Department but nothing about "African America," so to speak, was quite distressful. So we immediately targeted that as a big result we wanted to tackle. And secondly, we wanted to increase the number of African-American students — students of colour in general — on campus, because it was just outrageous that you have this huge academy with this teensy-weensy minority that'southward non even a drop in the bucket.
Donna M. Jones Strike organizer and spokeswoman
The university kept saying information technology had almost 1,000 blackness students, merely no one believed that. We adamant that many of those students were from Africa. At that place were not nearly as many African-American students. So nosotros definitely wanted more blackness students and more black faculty members. (The university did not publicly report enrollment data by race at the time, only by country of origin.)
Hazel Symonette Graduate student and strike participant
What I think every bit a triggering factor was the Five Year Program. The director was a white woman. The person was dainty and had washed good work to even get the plan started, but it needed something different. And then there was a lot of turbulence around that. (The program was an early on endeavour to recruit African-American students.)
John Felder Strike organizer and spokesman
We were also aware that, after Martin Luther King had died, we were part of a continuation of the Civil Rights Movement. We wanted to do our part in our location to advance the cause.
Gerald Lenoir Strike participant
Black students, including me, were going through what one sociologist dubbed "the Negro-to-Blackness transformation." We were cementing a new identity that was in formation when we arrived hither, and we were fighting to be recognized every bit full human beings worthy of recognition in all of our dimensions.
Oral History Participants
Run into Harvey Dirt First-year student, football game actor and a leading protester
Harvey Clay arrived at UW–Madison on a football scholarship in the fall of 1968 — a half dozen-foot-viii-inch, 255-pound center. A native of Midland, Texas, he was a member of the last graduating class of a segregated loftier schoolhouse. The transition to Madison was brutal – "There was no black food, there were no black clubs, there was no black community." He hoped life would be dissimilar here, only he found only more bigotry. "Racism isn't regional," he says. "Information technology exists all over."
Come across Frank Emspak Fellow member of the steering commission of The United Front, a group of white students who supported the strike
As a high schoolhouse student in Yonkers, New York, Frank Emspak picketed a local Woolworth'due south, office of a nationwide effort to end the department store chain's discriminatory service and hiring policies. It was the beginning of decades of activism for Emspak. At UW–Madison, while earning a available's degree in zoology, he became president of the UW Socialist Club and helped launch the national anti-Vietnam War movement every bit chairman of the newly formed National Coordinating Committee to End the State of war in Vietnam. By Feb 1969, he was a doctoral student in history and a instruction assistant in a black history class launched that semester. Of campus activism at the time, he says, "What we saw was a coming together of people who had moral and political objections to the war and to racism."
Run across John Felder Strike organizer and spokesman
Days before classes even started in the fall of 1968, John Felder, a freshman from Brooklyn, New York, remembers beingness mesmerized past a grouping of blackness upperclassmen at an informal gathering at Memorial Union. "They were talking about some of the situations on campus, and I was immediately engaged by the linguistic communication," he says. "It was much more gratuitous-flowing than I was used to." Felder had been recruited to UW–Madison as a participant in the Five Year Program, an early effort to increase the number of African-American students. Inside a few months, at age 18, he was leading press conferences as a prominent spokesman for the Black Student Strike. "There's a role of me that's sort of shy, just I really asserted myself in that part." His college experience included flight to New York City to explain the demands of black students on "Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.," a popular national public affairs prove.
See Geraldine Hines First-twelvemonth constabulary student and strike participant
A native Southerner, Geraldine Hines earned her undergraduate caste at Tougaloo College, a historically black, liberal arts institution in Mississippi. Recruited by the UW Law School, she found herself one of simply four black students in a form of 300 in the fall of 1968. "I had never lived outside of the Deep South, and so going from a mostly black environment to a mostly white environment was quite traumatic." She believes she was the merely law student who took function in the strike.
Meet Liberty Rashad Leader of the campus Black People'due south Aliance and a strike organizer
Every bit a high school senior, Liberty Rashad traveled from Harlem to Madison to visit her stepbrother, a freshman at UW–Madison. Things went well. "I enjoyed myself quite a bit – maybe also much," she says, laughing. She enrolled the post-obit year and arrived in the fall of 1966. Immersing herself in the Black Pupil Motion, she helped found the Blackness Student Matrimony on campus. Years of grooming led to her high-contour role in the Blackness Pupil Strike. Some of her fondest memories are of herself and her fellow black students educating themselves past bringing to campus prominent black intellectuals, activists and speakers, including Muhammad Ali, Toni Morrison and Stokely Carmichael. "It was a very special part of my education at UW," she says.
Come across Wahid Rashad Strike organizer and a leader of the campus Black People'south Alliance
Born in Arkansas with the given name Willie Edwards, he moved to Chicago with his family unit at a young age. In high school, he trained every bit a youth organizer through a plan at the Academy of Chicago. He put those skills to apply his first semester at UW–Madison, calling a meeting in the autumn of 1966 that led to the creation of the Black Student Union. He became the group'due south beginning president. He fell in love with another founding member, Freedom "Libby" Davis, and the ii married the following summer.
On February. 7, 1969, blackness students presented 13 "not-negotiable" demands to the administration, including the creation of a Black Studies Department, the admission of at least 500 black students for the fall semester of 1969, and the firsthand enrollment of any expelled Oshkosh students who wanted to nourish UW–Madison.
Liberty Rashad: (The administration) had been promising and they'd been reneging on their promises. In that location was just a whole lot of dorsum and forth, dorsum and forth, until nosotros got to the point that we said, "OK, these are our demands now." And what we did to support the demands is, "If you lot're non going to meet them, nosotros're going to organize a strike."
John Felder: There was such resistance, such a refusal to practise anything, that we thought that it was necessary for us to go on strike.
Freedom Rashad: Nosotros were pushing it to the limit to get what we wanted, and that was sort of our last resort.
In a four-page response, UW–Madison Chancellor Edwin Young said the university had been "challenged to do more than to give black people acceptable weapons with which to fight their way out of misery and poverty" and that "this is a kind of challenge we gladly accept." He contended progress was being made, pointing to courses in Afro-American studies, a seminar on black history offered the prior two semesters, and a black literature course established by the English Department. The educatee protesters deemed the measures inadequate.
It's of import to recall that the pupil strike was the culmination of three years of efforts – many meetings, agreements made and broken, a relentless faith in the protest process. It got to the signal where nosotros felt that the only ability we had left was the power to disrupt. We held the university to the standard they committed to – equality – and told them basically, "Put up or shut up."
Wahid Rashad Strike organizer and a leader of the campus
Blackness People's Alliance
Strike leaders called for a boycott of classes starting Feb. 10, 1969. On the offset twenty-four hour period, equally many as 3,000 students demonstrated in front of ten campus buildings, emphasizing the cold-shoulder of classes and nonviolent confrontation.
Geraldine Hines, a first-year law student and strike participant: I can call up being at the Law Schoolhouse and sitting on the steps and making it known that I was role of it and that I was hit. One of the banana deans came by and said to me that information technology was disgraceful and that I should non exist doing that and that it was unbecoming.
They inverse to more disruptive tactics the next day, blocking building entrances and bursting into lecture halls to halt classes.
Richard Spritz Offset-year pupil and strike participant
(UW–Madison Police Chief) Ralph Hanson would come out with a bullhorn, yelling, "Aaaah! Aaaah! Disperse! Don't block the buildings!" And people would be yelling, "On strike! Shut it down!" And at that place would exist police with riot gear on.
John Kaminski Pupil
Our political scientific discipline class was occupied by 10 to fifteen young black men who demanded that we end the lecture and talk over "democracy" and the demand for an African-American Studies Department. When Professor William Young put the result to a vote, the entire class voted that he should go on lecturing, whereupon several of the black males literally picked Professor Young upwardly and carried him out of the classroom.
Striking students presented administrators with xiii demands, including the immediate enrollment of whatever expelled Oshkosh students who wished to attend UW–Madison. Ninety-four students at Wisconsin State College Oshkosh were arrested and expelled post-obit a November 1968 protestation that came to be known as Blackness Th. Photograph by John Wolf
Every bit the strike went on, the law enforcement presence on campus grew, with hundreds of local and regional police officers working alongside more than than 2,000 National Guardsmen. Photograph: UW Archives
David Marcou Educatee
Our calculus professor was a tiny man physically, with a quick wit and generally winning style. But he didn't know what to do when Harvey Dirt ascended the lecture stage and tossed a very large metallic desk-bound like kindling off the stage. I learned a lot from that incident. Black students did have legitimate grievances and needed to do something to gain positive attending and activeness.
Harvey Clay First-year student, football player and a leading protester
I grabbed the desk and tossed it in rage. I only thought at the time that we weren't respected. I was completely ticked off and felt that at least we should be respected and be able to voice our stance. I had been browbeaten by the police for no reason. Some people would say, "Why wouldn't you lot remain calm?" At-home for what?
Clay was i of at to the lowest degree two dozen protesters, both black and white, arrested past campus and surface area law during the strike, sustaining a caput wound in the process. Clay says he was trying to protect female protesters from existence knocked over by rampaging male students who opposed the strike.
Harvey Clay: I was probably the biggest, about visible sight there, so I became a target. I was blindsided when ane of about thirteen or 14 police officers cracked my head open with a anarchism stick. I still accept the scars.
Gerald Lenoir: I retrieve being bum-rushed by the Madison police as they came through swinging billy clubs. I think them pushing me aside and brutally beating Harvey to the ground.
On Feb. 12, after the UW police chief said the disruptions were more than 350 police officers could handle, Gov. Warren Knowles activated 900 Wisconsin National Guard troops. Commenting to the press, he chosen the protesters "a radical element," adding, "the educational procedure must be able to move frontward (and) the lives and safe of students and faculty and the holding of the university must exist protected." The guardsmen, many of them UW–Madison students, arrived the adjacent morning time.
Guardsmen with bayonets fixed to the muzzles of their rifles march downwardly Academy Avenue. Photo past John Wolf
Frank Emspak Member of the steering commission of The United Front, a grouping of white students who supported the strike
Recollect about this: Yous have somebody who is a student yesterday, who may or may not be a racist, who doesn't like what'due south necessarily going on, standing there with a loaded rifle as you lot're walking by.
Liberty Rashad
The adrenaline was very high. What we knew was that we had to run circles around them, and that's what we did. That was our strategy, to go along moving. We had people here, in that location and everywhere, and we'd exist over here creating a disturbance, and they were running trying to continue up with information technology. I remember they had helicopters circling all over town. We were nonviolent and nosotros stuck to that, merely they used tear gas, they used pepper spray, and they used their batons.
Minton Brooks Strike participant
Activating the National Baby-sit was the final affair they should've done, because and then it really became magnified tremendously, and huge numbers of people would come out.
On the evening of Feb. thirteen, an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 people – the largest crowd of the strike – marched without incident to the Capitol.
Donna M. Jones: That was really a triumph. It was a turbulent time for the land, so if yous had a nonviolent march, especially one of that size, information technology was considered a tremendous success.
Wahid Rashad: Nosotros shut down State Street. One side of the street to the other side was students walking. Seeing this oversupply of people following you – it's overwhelming and impressive.
Minton Brooks: It was an amazing miracle. How many times do yous have a relatively small-scale grouping of blackness people leading thousands and thousands of white people in the streets? Information technology was incredible to take this sense of unity toward these explicit demands.
Indeed, white students, many of them learning almost racism for the first fourth dimension, had become of import allies.
Minton Brooks
My perspective was that of a relatively clueless, white, upper-eye-course guy, of which there were many at UW. I went to Van Hise Hall and blocked the doors at that place and was confronted past really nasty objections from students just wanting to get to class. The strike had a big impact on me because it was the first time I put my torso on the line, blocking doors and dealing with screaming students.
White students became important allies during the Blackness Student Strike, swelling the ranks of protesters to many thousands at times. Photo: UW Archives
Occasional scuffles bankrupt out equally demonstrators and counterprotesters clashed. Some students did not concord with the demands of the strikers; others were upset that their education was existence disrupted. Photo by John Wolf
Richard Spritz
By complete chance, my assigned roommate as a freshman in Witte Hall was a black student from the far due south side of Chicago. We became house friends, as I did with his best friend, a high-school classmate. I retrieve they felt completely marginalized. It was a university of mostly white people that was mostly speaking to white people and white people'south goals and aspirations.
Dolores Emspak Graduate student
(The racism) was not only prevalent but very out front. I tin can remember going around trying to enhance money for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for their bulldoze for voter registration. People in the dorms who had probably never fifty-fifty spoken with a black person in their whole life would say to me, "We don't think they should be allowed to vote." Nobody made whatsoever endeavor to even hide how they felt.
Kathy Schneider Michaelis Strike participant
On the night that thousands of united states of america marched around the Capitol Square, my parents in small-scale town Wisconsin actually picked me out of the crowd. I'1000 only 5 anxiety 2 inches, just I was recognizable by the huge chocolate-brown-and-white scarf my mom had made me. Their reaction was not positive.
Donna Thousand. Jones
The participation of white allies was very valuable. The anti-Vietnam War protests and the black student protests actually supported each other, because at the time it was well known that poorer men were being drafted for the war and black men were disproportionately dying on the frontlines. So when they marched, we supported them. And when we marched, they supported united states.
Maury Cotter White educatee who, together with a black student on her dorm floor, landed a meeting with the UW Organisation president
We thought if the two of us went, we would represent the issue from multiple perspectives. Nosotros had no thought the university had a chancellor, then nosotros went to the president of the System. We were naïve enough to be so bold to ask, and they likely thought we had more influence than nosotros did.
Upon arrival, Cotter and her friend were greeted past the president. When it became apparent that they were non representing an official group, a vice president continued the conversation with them.
Maury Cotter
We tried to tell our perspective of what we idea was of import. I don't know if annihilation came of it beyond that, but we thought meeting face-to-face would help create better understanding. It's a philosophy of mine: Do what you lot tin can from where you sit, and do it every bit authentically as you lot tin with your own perspective and story and with whatever influence and power you accept, no matter how limited it may be.
While thousands of students supported the strike, many did not. Some opposed the grouping's demands; others supported the demands but not the group'due south tactics. And some students simply didn't capeesh their education existence interrupted.
Frank Emspak
Basically, it was not business organization as usual, but you have 35,000 students on campus. Even if 5,000 or six,000 people are doing something, well-nigh people are not, and that was too true.
Some students actively confronted the protesters, including posting a sign to the Abe Lincoln statue atop Bascom Hill reading, "Down With Student Fascism." Strikers and counterprotesters occasionally scuffled.
Wahid Rashad
We were on Bascom Hill and there were these white football players who wanted to disrupt us and button us around, but the black wrestlers and black football players came and pushed them dorsum and backed the states up.
UW–Madison administrators were far from alone in their opposition to the strike. A petition signed by ane,372 faculty members, virtually two-thirds of the kinesthesia, supported the administration'due south stance.
Frank Emspak
I wish we had been able to win the faculty vote. On the table were all the black demands, and the academy'southward position was, "We have to support the chancellor. We have to support the governor calling out the National Guard." A police-and-order position, basically.
For the leaders of the protest, the strike was both a major growth experience and a culmination of years of report and training.
Harvey Clay: I was very nervous. I'grand a country boy from Texas. I had never participated in anything like that. I was trying to help make a divergence and trying to get some fairness that I thought we did not have at the university.
Wahid Rashad: We were versed in the issues. You couldn't out-talk the states or intimidate united states of america in a debate. If nosotros got on Television, nosotros articulated. We got the support of the community from that articulation and the self-education we gave each other. We were comfortable and confident.
Liberty Rashad
We just worked, worked, worked, worked, and we organized, organized, organized. Information technology took a lot of that to brand it happen.
Frank Emspak
I just remember countless meetings.
By Feb. 21, strike organizers had chosen for a moratorium on protests due to smaller turnouts, though there was a brief outburst on Feb. 27.
Frank Emspak
It was a brilliant success for a week. The number of people probably peaked on the Tuesday and Wednesday of that second week, so petered out.
Wahid Rashad
It was the winter. Less and less people came out. We never said, "It'south over." I wish information technology had gone on longer, merely I understand that people have exams and stuff.
Freedom Rashad
It'southward kind of a blur to me right at present (how long the strike lasted). Information technology was enough time for (the administration) to give in.
On March 3, the Faculty Senate, on the recommendation of the campus Commission on Studies and Instruction in Race Relations, OK'd a plan to create an Afro-American Studies Department. The commission had been researching the issue since May 1968. However, because of the protesters' demands, the committee moved from a chat about individual black history and literature classes to a recommendation for a total department.
Seymour Spilerman Assistant professor and a member of the Commission on Studies and Instruction in Race Relations
There was a feeling that the university had to have steps to show that it understood the pain of African-American students, while non necessarily agreeing with how they were expressing that hurting. It certainly was the right thing to exercise, and mayhap information technology should take been done before.
Hazel Symonette
That was a major accomplishment to go that department.
The Afro-American Studies Department, which exists to this solar day, began in the fall of 1970 and is considered the most tangible result of the strike. Other outcomes were less straight, though many people credit the strike with a renewed commitment on the part of the administration to recruit African-American students, to hire and promote kinesthesia and staff of color, and to strengthen the campus Afro-American & Race Relations Center by hiring a permanent, total-fourth dimension director.
Frank Emspak
Information technology would take been prissy to say we had this great march down State Street in victory, but that's not what happened. There were clearly changes fabricated, though we didn't become the boosted 500 African-American freshmen, that's for sure.
The primeval reporting of student race/ethnicity in official academy records came five years later, in the 1974-75 bookish year: Of 36,915 undergraduate and graduate students, 825 (2 pct) identified equally African-American. In recent years, the data drove has changed to allow students to written report multiple racial identities. In 2018-nineteen, of 44,411 students, ane,443 (3 percent) identified as African-American, either solely or in addition to other identities.
Liberty Rashad
There wasn't any way for us, every bit students who were leaving or graduating, to meet those kinds of things through, which is ever the problem with campus movements. (Other students) have to proceed on pushing, keep on making a loud noise and continue on doing stuff that would push the envelope further.
Wahid Rashad
I don't have any regrets. I think the strike was a success. I was very pleased that we got our problems out there in the whole community, and we did it in such a way that at that place was a lot of support. The academy began talking about spending more money (on the bug we'd raised).
Hazel Symonette
We stand up on the shoulders of those undergraduate activists who sacrificed and gave so much — some of whom lost the opportunity to secure a UW degree.
Wahid Rashad
If I came back to campus, I would say this to black students: "Do not feel marginalized. Be you. Be confident and do your affair. Let your calorie-free shine."
Where Are They At present
Harvey Dirt, 68
Harvey Clay lost his scholarship as a result of the strike because his academics suffered and coaches frowned on his activism. He dropped out of UW–Madison, afterwards taking classes at the Academy of Hartford in Connecticut and Antioch University New England in New Hampshire. He at present owns Existent BBQ and More than, a restaurant in Shreveport, Louisiana. Customers call him "Papa." He started cooking charcoal-broil in Madison because he couldn't discover whatsoever local cuisine to his liking. Yelp reviewers named the restaurant the #26 Best BBQ Joint in the state in 2018.
Frank Emspak, 75
Frank Emspak received his Ph.D. in history from UW–Madison in 1972. He is a professor emeritus in the School for Workers. He founded Workers Contained News, a daily newscast with a 15-year run. At its height, it aired in more than than 200 markets. He resides in Madison, where he remains active in social justice causes.
John Felder, 68
John Felder earned a available'south caste in economics history from UW–Madison in 1974. Early on in his career, he taught freshmen orientation classes at Hunter College in Manhattan and wrote art criticism for the New York Amsterdam News. He spent 23 years as an administrator with Teamsters Union Local 237 in New York, retiring in 2008 as director of membership. He resides in Brooklyn, New York.
Geraldine Hines, 71
Geraldine Hines graduated from UW Law School in 1971 and went on to become a prominent ceremonious rights attorney and estimate. "My whole life's piece of work has been dedicated to social justice," she says. "I went to Madison with the thought that I was going to do that, but what happened at Madison made me more committed to it." In 2014, she was appointed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, condign the kickoff African-American adult female on the land's highest court. In 2015, she received a Distinguished Alumni Laurels from the Wisconsin Alumni Association. She retired in 2017. She resides in Roxbury, Massachusetts.
Donna M. Jones, 68
Donna 1000. Jones earned a bachelor'south caste in American institutions from UW–Madison in 1972. She went on to graduate from UW Law School and earn a master'due south degree in public administration from the Bernard Baruch Higher at the City University of New York. She served equally an assistant to Madison Mayor Joe Sensenbrenner Jr., as the city's contract compliance officeholder, and every bit the affirmative action officeholder for UW–Madison. She retired from the university in 1995 and resides in Marietta, Georgia.
Liberty Rashad, seventy
Liberty Rashad finished the leap semester of 1969 at UW–Madison merely did not return in the fall. "There were some things that happened that made usa feel unsafe," she says of herself and her married man at the time, young man strike leader Wahid Rashad. Returning to New York, she continued equally an activist, customs organizer and youth worker. She raised three sons while earning a bachelor'due south degree in psychology from Marymount University and a master'due south degree in educational administration from Lesley Academy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A retired educator, school manager and business owner, she owns and runs Huckabuck Village, a bed and breakfast in the historic Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans.
Wahid Rashad, 71
Wahid Rashad did not return to UW–Madison for the fall 1969 semester. "I had a target on my dorsum," he says. "The law knew me. Everyone in the community knew me. I didn't like the prominence." In 1978, he legally changed his name from Willie Edwards to Wahid Rashad due to his interest in the Black Muslim movement. His wife became Liberty Rashad. The couple, who raised three sons, divorced in the early 1980s. He became a drug rehabilitation advisor in New York City and was after employed as a piece of work-release counselor for the Baltimore City Jail, then every bit a sales manager and trainer. Moving to Chicago, where he currently resides, he was employed in the mortgage industry as a broker, trainer and group manager until his retirement.
Hazel Symonette, 72
Hazel Symonette lost the fellowship that supported her Ph.D. piece of work as a consequence of her participation in the strike. She went on to spend more than 50 years studying and working on the UW–Madison campus, earning 2 primary'south degrees at the academy, as well as a doctorate in educational policy studies. She founded and directed the Excellence Through Multifariousness Institute and the Student Success Establish. She works part-time as a specialist in social justice and culturally responsive evaluation at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research and the Division of Diversity, Equity and Educational Accomplishment on campus. In 2014, she received a City-Canton Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award for her decades of work on campus and in the community.
Memories
"Every bit someone who grew up in an area with no black population, I was naïve about blackness concerns. I institute the strike very illuminating, and that began my learning process on black issues."
— Patricia Gregg Hesterly, 70, Kapaa, Hawaii
"My roommates and other students and I met communally in my flat to cook vats of chili to mitt out in front of Memorial Union to feed protesters. I boycotted classes and marched with the blackness students. Equally a event, I failed my tennis grade."
— Gail Auster, 69, New York, New York
"This was by far the virtually militant (and encarmine) sit-in I encountered during my 4 years at 'Tear Gas U.' Entrances to classroom buildings were ofttimes physically obstructed. Existence the diligent pupil that I was, on one occasion I got to my calculus class in Van Vleck Hall past climbing through a basis-floor window."
— Norman Dake, 68, Tulsa, Oklahoma
"I grew up in a smallish boondocks in Wisconsin, in a very conservative area of the state. Nosotros were taught to trust the regime, to fear and hate the Russians, and that the Ceremonious War had freed the slaves. The Black Student Strike had a profound and lasting effect equally information technology opened my eyes to a different reality and raised questions that I would never have even thought to ask."
— Virginia Broomall Weil, 73, St. Louis, Missouri
"I remember blackness student leadership every bit the driving force of the strike and a growing understanding of how all oppression was connected. I felt skilful that the white students, like myself, were supporting this strike. My time in Madison was life-changing and shaped my politics and world view to this day."
— Phyllis Kirson, 69, Fairfax, California
"Day later on day of lectures and discussions greatly schooled me in the depths of institutional racism, a lesson that has afflicted both my professional person and personal life across these fifty years."
— Ruth Ruttenberg, 70, Northfield, Vermont
"I became very proud of UW and its role in respecting and promoting various student activists (whom I admired greatly) because those laudable policies enrich the people and the purposes of the academy. I am a improve person because of those strikes."
— C. Richard Tracy, 75, Reno, Nevada
Near
This story was produced past University Communications and University Marketing in partnership with the Black Cultural Center and The Black Vocalisation, a student-run publication. Special thank you to Assistant Director of Cultural Programming Karla Foster and BCC Program Coordinator Lauren Adams for their enthusiasm, wisdom and aid throughout this effort.
With the assistance of the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Clan, we solicited memories from students who were on campus in 1969. We received a strong response from alumni all over the world and are grateful to everyone who took the time to share their recollections.
Interviews were conducted past student journalists Fatoumata Ceesay, Shiloah Coley, Trinity Cross, Chelsea Hylton, Nile Lansana, Alexandria Millet, Summer Mitchell, Enjoyiana Nururdin, Kingsley Pissang and Breanna Taylor and past University Communications staff writer Doug Erickson. Transcripts and audio recordings will be shared with Academy Archives for its permanent collection.
View videos of the journalists discussing what they learned: Shiloah Coley – video i, Shiloah Coley – video two, Chelsea Hylton, and Nile Lansana.
Student Breanna Taylor, right, interviews strike participant Hazel Symonette, who lost her graduate school fellowship because of her activism.
Student Alexandria Millet interviews alumna Maury Cotter, who met with the UW Organisation president in 1969 to discuss the demands of strikers.
Chelsea Hylton, left, listens as fellow student journalist Shiloah Coley discusses the Black Student Strike during a meeting on the oral history project.
Newspaper sources included the Wisconsin Land Periodical, the Milwaukee Journal, the Milwaukee Spotter and the Daily Cardinal.
John Wolf '71, who was a graduate educatee at the time of the strike, provided several of his never-earlier-published photos. University Communications staff photographer Bryce Richter made portraits of several participants. The photos in the timeline depict scenes from the Black Student Strike in full general, non necessarily an event on that solar day.
True cat Phan and Troy Reeves at UW Archives, Tanika Apaloo and Paul Hedges at the Wisconsin Historical Society and Dennis McCormick at the Wisconsin Land Periodical provided great help locating and identifying archival materials.
Editors: Pecker Graf, Mike Klein, Meredith McGlone
Spider web pattern and production: Linda Kietzer, Joyce Johnston, Libby Peterek, Julie Schroeder
10 UW–Madison student journalists conducted a majority of the interviews for the oral history of the Black Pupil Strike of 1969. Back row from left, Breanna Taylor, Shiloah Coley, Enjoyiana Nururdin; forepart row from left, Alexandria Millet, Summer Mitchell, Nile Lansana, Chelsea Hylton. Not pictured: Fatoumata Ceesay, Trinity Cantankerous, Kingsley Pissang. Photo past Andy Manis
Source: https://news.wisc.edu/black-student-strike/
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