The Students of Malcolm X College

The Students of Malcolm X College

Students walk through the doors of Malcolm X Liberation College every day at Columbia University in New York. They attend class during the day and hold meetings there in the evenings. Many if not most do so unknowingly, as the College now goes by a different name at Columbia. Now as before, it is known as Hamilton Hall. However, for the span of a few days in 1968, angry students stormed the building and took it over in what began as a sit-in and ended as a full-blown occupation in what would later be called “the ’68 strike” and be condemned, idealized, studied and critiqued by succeeding generations of students at Columbia for the next 40 years.

Now as before, Hamilton Hall stands in South Lawn, the University is preparing for an expansion into Harlem and the displacement of over 5,000 people; the school’s finances are directly profiting from the continuation of an unpopular war; and students are again being asked to choose sides. A few things have changed- a few meters from Hamilton there is now a Malcolm X Lounge where students of color now organize campaigns and discuss politics. Groups from the 60’s have lasted and learned from their experiences- BOSS, the Barnard Organization of Soul Sisters was born directly from the tumult around ’68, and is now a major force in responding to hate crimes and advocating for students of color at Barnard and Columbia. SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, the most notorious student group of the 60’s is also making a strong comeback. Re-founded on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2006, SDS now boasts hundreds of chapters nationwide and thousands of members.

The similarities, but especially the differences between 1968 and 2008 make it vital for understanding the state of student activism today that activists examine the role played by students of color in the strike and how circumstances informed these students’ decisions. Doing so inevitably involves questions of institutional racism, Affirmative Action, alienation, and assimilation, all uncomfortable topics that can nevertheless only lead to a growth in awareness of how students of color can best use their strengths and address their challenges to accomplish their goals and change society for the better.

Columbia College did not allow women to enroll until 1983, when the year’s Convocation ceremony greeted the first mixed-gender class. While Columbia now styles itself a bastion of diversity, it has in fact lagged badly behind in bringing its admissions statistics on a par with the numbers race and gender equality would bring about. An urban school located in New York City, a center of African-American culture and history, has an admissions rate of black students that perpetually hovers between 5 and 10% (Enrollment), even below suburban Ivies Dartmouth and Harvard. The first black student to graduate Columbia did so in 1909, but it would be until 60 years later that students of color would begin to attend Columbia in large numbers. Even though Columbia graduated such African-American icons as Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, and Zora Neale Hurston, the first-year class of 1960 still had only 5 black students. Indeed the few black students who did attend Columbia often faced harsh discrimination, a fact often ignored by official historians of the school. Langston Hughes, who enrolled in the School of Mines (the now-renamed SEAS) in 1921 and left the following year to attend historically-black Lincoln University because of racist discrimination at Columbia (Rampersand 56). His Columbia profile glosses over this, however, and in one place explains that Hughes departed Columbia in order to “see the world” (MAAP).

1954 brought the Brown v. Board of Education decision that opened the way for school integration, and in 1965 the Higher Education Act, by providing federal monies and new policies, prompted universities to increase their minority recruitments to bolster their funding. At Columbia, Barnard College led minority recruitment with their “Special Students Program” in the mid-60’s, which aimed to recruit underprivileged students and stereotypically took this to mean black students (Dominique 1). These years therefore brought with them a moderate influx of middle-class black women, at first a few, and then a few dozen(McCaughey 426). Across Broadway, Dean of Admissions Henry Coleman (CC ’46) took a hint, and in 1964, Columbia College began to recruit black students for the first time in its 210-year history. By the following year, there were 50 black men in the College, who went on to found several organizations, among them two fraternities and one political group- the Student Afro-American Society, which at first appeared completely innocuous compared to the similarly named Students for a Democratic Society, SDS, founded in 1964 and making its way to Columbia the same year as SAS (427). SDS was “an association of people on the left… bringing together liberals and radicals, activists and scholars, students and faculty” whose goal was to “put forth a radical, democratic program” for a new, truly democratic society (Heath 391). This is the description of the group that is on membership cards to this day.

Columbia therefore saw, in the first half of the decade, a sudden change in recruitment policy- from complete neglect to a misguided search for underprivileged minorities, all without the administration taking into account the needs of this new population of students. In response, these new recruits felt intensely isolated, both from the rest of the student body to the all-white faculty. Students at the time told of feeling “worried about assimilation” and having little contact with whites on campus (Dominique 2). As the black student body reached a critical mass, a sustainable community of students of color became isolated from the rest of the academic community which seemed unresponsive to the particular situation of students of color within a white university, or the special needs this engendered (3). As new students sought to understand their situation, two currents became salient- black students began to turn to Harlem for a sense of community, and their views on society and politics began to shed their previous idealism and began to be influenced by radical politics and black nationalism (Dominique 3). Their middle class sensibilities did not withstand the realization that they were expected to be “Columbians who happened to be black” (McCaughey 428 ) and nothing more, at the same time that black leaders were being shot down in their own neighborhood. Malcolm X, three days after speaking at LeFrak Gym at Barnard, was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965, that same Spring term.

The administration remained unaware of these developments among the student body, possibly due to the demographics of the faculty, which traditionally served as mediators of sorts between the students and higher administration. Manning Marable, director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia, has pointed out that in 2000, “only five of the 400 full professors at Columbia’s School of the Arts and Sciences who have full tenure are black” and that this figure remained unchanged for a full decade (Faculty). He and other critics perceive an “unstated belief” that “neither black studies nor… significant numbers of black faculty” are very important for Columbia’s success (33). This, in conjunction with the frequency of race-based violence around the campus, translated to a sentiment that black students were also not considered relevant to the University as a whole. One white student’s account of the events surrounding the ’68 protests recorded statements of extreme alienation on the students’ part. One such statement, used to begin the book, was an anonymous “Sometimes I just feel like such in incredible nothing” (Kunen). The author, James Simon Kunen, provides a concise overview of how such alienation quickly turned to rage-

There is loneliness as can exist only in the midst of numbers and numbers of people who don’t know you, who don’t care about you, who won’t let you care about them… All of this makes us sad. And all of this is at Columbia, is Columbia… But sadness is not despair as long as you can get angry. And we have become angry at Columbia. Not having despaired, we are able to see things that need to be fought, and we fight. We have fought, we are fighting, we will fight. (Kunen 6)

Such an environment was ripe for a process of radicalization. Slowly on-campus groups with vaguely leftist tendencies began to embrace this process, each in its own way. Majority white groups such as the Columbia Citizenship Council, previously content to tutor neighborhood students out of their Ferris Booth Hall base began to help organize Harlem rent strikes and started to build ties with other political action groups (McCaughey 428 ). The few student leaders of color involved in these organizations later went on to join explicitly radical minority organizations. From among the few Puerto Rican members of CCC, Juan Gonzales (CC’68 ) eventually became involved with the Puerto Rican Young Lords, an organization whose 13-Point Program included the “liberation of all Third World people,” and the belief that “armed self-defense and armed struggle are the only means to liberation” (Young Lords Party). Other student leaders’ future curriculums were equally impressive.

White-majority groups that were already radicalized, primarily SDS, were largely composed of so-called “red-diaper babies,” the children of mostly Jewish radical parents from the New York area. Many within the SDS leadership fit this profile, including the most famous among them, Mark Rudd (CC ‘69) (McCaughey 429). Rudd was the president of SDS in 1968, and emerged during the protests as the primary leader of the white students. Accused of authoritarianism, misogyny, and arrogance, and fond of referring to University President Grayson Kirk as “that shithead,” Rudd was a polarizing personality on campus (Kunen 20). When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, and memorial service was held for him at Columbia in St. Paul’s Chapel, it was Rudd who stood up, accused the University of hypocrisy for its exploitation of black labor, and walked out accompanied by a large section of the audience. However, the environment that led to this first staged act of defiance had little to do with Rudd himself.

Columbia has always felt cramped in the space-starved Manhattan, and throughout its history it has found itself in the role of unwelcome neighbor as it expands wherever it finds an opportunity. Those on the receiving end of Columbia’s dreams of academic sprawl have historically had two thing in common- they have been angry, and they have been black. In 1960, Columbia was once again wishing to expand, this time into Morningside Park, where it intended to build a private gym on public land. The necessary arrangements had been made, and all relevant details were taken care of, except for a crippling lack of funds on Columbia’s part. Thus, construction was put off until 1968. In the intervening years, community members and students began to take issue with more and more parts of the plan, including the fact that the expansion directly benefited some Trustees with investments in construction companies. Other issues surfaced with the plans for the gym itself. Of the previously public land, only 20% would be open to the public. This separate part of the building would also have its own entrance- the back door to the building, opposite the main entrance on the uphill side of the park (Margolis). This provided for a de facto segregation of the gym- the main entrance and most facilities for the majority white students, and a separate back entrance and small allowance for the majority black community whose park it had been in the first place.

Another difference between 1960 and 1968 was that by the latter year, there were enough students of color at Columbia to take issue with the gym from within the university, and to begin to state protests against it. The gym served as a rallying point for students of color, and catalyzed the creation of “race consciousness” on campus, a process that combined the budding academic radicalism of SAS other students of color and the rich traditions of the Black Power movement that held so much sway in Harlem. This caused many students “to reject integration and move toward a black nationalist understanding of race relations, especially as they became more politicized” (Dominique 2). One black student wrote in the Barnard Bulletin- “Martin Luther King is dead now. He died because non-violence is out of context in the American experience. Black Barnard realizes that this golden dream of peaceful reconciliation of Black and white society has died with him” (Williams 3). From this political ferment at Barnard, black students formed the Barnard Organization of Soul Sisters, a radical women’s group that was at the forefront of both theory and practice in the radicalization of students of color at Columbia.

The students of color that rallied around the gym issue were by now well on their way to such radicalism, and as they coalesced, their organizations changed to reflect this. BOSS began to organize, and more and more calls for all-black student meetings began to appear around campus. SAS refused to participate in the official memorial for Dr. King, instead co-sponsoring a rally at the sundial on April 23. The rally at the sundial, located at the very center of campus, was to be the starting point for a semester-long series of actions concentrated on racism and the construction of the gym. It was orchestrated by the new leader of SAS, Cicero Wilson (CC’68 ) and Mark Rudd. Previous to the rally, a “Letter to Uncle Grayson” was circulated by the students, with a sign-off quote from black poet Amiri Baraka – “up against the wall, motherfucker.” This would later become a slogan of the protest, and be written on the wall of Hamilton Hall (Kunen 22). Meanwhile, the students and community had another slogan, this one to describe Columbia’s expansion- “Gym Crow” (BSO).

With the increasingly tense situation on campus, demonstrations became more common. A major protest came when 100 students marched into Low Library to demand that Columbia cease its participation in the Institute for Defense Analysis, a military think tank that utilized university resources for Pentagon research. President Kirk was on the IDA board, and Columbia Trustee William Burden was both a board member and its Chairman. SDS has discovered the link with IDA in 1967, when the administration claimed that no secret research happened at Columbia. When this later turned out to be false, Kirk refused to open the question to a faculty vote, inciting anger and incredulity from both students and faculty (McCaughey 439). After the protest in Low Library, only six of the 100 students were named for university disciplining. All six were also, conveniently for the administration, in the SDS leadership. The students, both white and of color, now had three nonnegotiable demands to put at the center of their protests- halting of the gym construction, withdrawal from IDA, and amnesty for all student protestors from university discipline, particularly the “Low Six” (441).

This list of demands represented a compromise between the students of color and white students. White radicals refused to support the racist mode of expansion and took an auxiliary role in the black students’ protests. In exchange, black student radicals expressed their solidarity in supporting amnesty for the white SDS members under threat from the administration. Since the Vietnam War was viewed by all as racist occupation and prime example of U.S. imperialism, students from across the left’s color spectrum and ideological preference could agree on the point about the IDA. After the rally at the sundial, the students of color and some white students, for lack of access to a locked Low Library, made their way to the gym site, where they were harassed and beaten by the police (Kunen 21). They then moved on to Van Am Quad and Hamilton Hall, where their short sit-in quickly became a building take-over. Taking cues from other black nationalist organizations, the black students in Hamilton were armed and ready to defend themselves from the police. As time passed and the rally drew to a close in the Hamilton Lobby, SAS and other black students asked the white protesters and SDS to leave the building, as part of the black students’ struggles for self-determination. BOSS members explained the ideology behind this action in an editorial for the Barnard Bulletin-

There can be no integration, assimilation, call it what you will, between two groups unless they are on equal footing. It is clearly recognized that Blacks in this country are not on equal footing with Whites. This can only be reversed by Blacks developing a sense of community and a consciousness of themselves, which cannot be fully achieved when we are thoroughly enmeshed in the White community. Blacks need to close ranks, to consolidate with and behind their own,… (BOSS)

So the white students left Hamilton, which was promptly renamed. As they exited the building, they were told “Get your own building” (McCaughey 444). The black students were not alone for long, as the white students quickly heeded their advice and moved on to occupy other buildings around campus, and promptly declared them liberated (BSO). First, Avery Hall was taken by angry students who had been interrupted from studying for exams by administrators demanding they exit the building. Later, parts of Low would be occupied, as well as Mathematics Hall, which was taken over by SDS, and from which an iconic red flag was flown. With the taking of Fayerweather Hall by graduate students, the possibility of involving the police came up with the administration. As the black students had expected, the police plan was a forcible removal of all students from all occupied buildings, regardless of University petitions to clear only selected halls. Afraid that police violence would cause further reaction from Harlem, which was already providing food and communication to the strikers in the occupied buildings, the administration refrained from calling in the NYPD.

From the threat of police intervention, two more groups were formed- the Strike Coordinating Committee, composed of both SAS student leaders of color and white leaders of SDS, and the Ad Hoc Faculty Group, AHFG, which sided conservatively with the strikers and held many late night meetings in Philosophy Hall to decide on how to defend the students from police and deter administrative disciplining (McCaughey 446). Meanwhile, the black students were taking care of themselves, armed and with support from local black radical organizations. Stokeley Carmichael of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, among others, made an appearance at Malcolm X College (450). As the days passed and negotiations continued, life inside and out of the liberated buildings went on, with picnicking, studying, and even a marriage performed in Fayerweather, where the couple was declared “children of the new age” (Margolis).

When the police bust finally came, on April 30, eight days after the strike began, it went almost exactly as expected. A month earlier at a protest at Grand Central Station staged by Abbie Hoffman of Youth International Party fame, a police riot had taken place. Even the Mayor of New York had warned the University of a possible “massacre” by the police. However, this same Mayor was convinced by Yale President Kingman Brewster to let the police have their way, as “the very future of the American university” depended on it. That Tuesday, 1,000 police showed up at Columbia, and proceeded to clear the buildings with the expected amount of head bashing and arrests. The only exception was Hamilton itself, where black students had agreed beforehand to evacuating the building, escorted by the few black police in the force, and mediated by black community organizers. After the buildings were cleared, mounted police went ahead and, for no well-understood reason, charged the assembled by-standers into a corner, and led their horses in a “stampede” against the crowd in what even the University acknowledged was “inexcusable violence” (McCaughey 459).

In the end, the strike was a “bittersweet success” (BSO). SAS and the black students who had avoided arrest, along with the other few white students, called for a university-wide strike, which was endorsed by the Student Council. Demands for the resignation and censure of President Kirk and Vice-President Truman eventually succeeded, and a faculty organization born partially from the AHFG set about to oversee the University’s recovery. Columbia withdrew from IDA, and to cleanse the campus from military influence, armed black students stormed the ROTC office in Hartley Hall and renamed it the Malcolm X Lounge, a small but resonant echo of the former Malcolm X Liberation College at which, for one week, they had been students (BSO).

The Malcolm X Lounge was used by SAS until its disappearance, and then by the Student Organization of Black Unity, SOHU, until that group too dissolved. In 1979 the current group, the Black Students Organization emerged and inherited the Lounge until today (BSO). Since then, other groups for non-black students of color, from cultural ones such as the Asian American Alliance to explicitly political ones like LUCHA have been formed and organized around issues relevant to students of color. Columbia refused for decades to earmark funds for a Black Studies curriculum, yet now there exists the Institute headed by Professor Marable, as well as the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, CESR, Latino Studies, and other majors available for all students.

Columbia was the last Ivy school to have an Office of Multicultural Affairs. OMA is now housed in its own brownstone, and has quickly grown into a vital center for student activism. Hamilton Hall was again occupied in 1996, and groups have led protests and campaigns from ’96 to the hunger strike in 2007, which culminated in the University promising an expansion of the Ethnic Studies program, an address of student claims of Eurocentric bias in the Core Curriculum, and significant restructuring of the Major Cultures requirement for the Core (Editorial Board).

The Class of 2012, 49% of which identifies as students of color, solidifies Columbia’s position as “the most diverse Ivy” (OPIR). The students arrive on campus with many campaigns already won, and many others long lost. However, as students of color, they will have to make a place for themselves within the university, and now as before, they will have to defend it.

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Works Cited

BOSS. “BOSS and Racism.” Barnard Bulletin (1969).

BSO. Black Students Organization – History. Black Students Organization. 20 April 2008 <http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bso/history.html>.

“Columbia Explains Its Low Black Student Enrollment.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 8 (1995): 25.

Columbia Revolt. Dir. Melvin Margolis. Newsreel. 1968.

Dominique, Elvita. “Negotiating Integration: Black Women at Barnard, 1968-1974.” 2005. S&F Online. 20 April 2008 <http://www.barnard.edu/sfonline/hurston/dominque_01.htm>.

Editorial Board. “Looking Back and Moving On.” Columbia Spectator 25 April 2008.

Heath, G. Louis, ed. Vandals in the Bomb Factory: The History and Literature of the Students for a Democratic Society. Metuchen: The Scarecrow Press, 1976.

Kunen, James Simon. The Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College Revolutionary. 1st Edition. New York: Random House, 1968.

Langston Hughes. 20 April 2008 <http://maap.columbia.edu/place/48>.

McCaughey, Robert A. “Riding the Whirlwind: Columbia ‘68.” Stand Columbia: a history of Columbia University in the city of New York, 1754-2004. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. 423-461.

OPIR. 2007 Facts. Columbia University. New York, 2007.

“Professor Manning Marable Challenges Columbia’s Record in Hiring Black Faculty.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 28 (2000): 32-33.

Rampersand, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Williams, Paulette. “Black Students: North and South.” Barnard Bulletin (1968).

Young Lords Party. 13-Point Program and Platform of the Young Lords Party. 1993. 20 April 2008 <http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Manifestos/Young_Lords_platform.html>.