Black Educational Issues of the 1970s

Institutionalizing Black Activism.

Black activism on college campuses in the 1960s was widespread. Students demanded a voice in admissions and in curriculum. At San Francisco State a two-month protest demanding that all blacks who applied be admitted turned violent; student takeovers at Columbia and Cornell Universities emphasized student dissatisfaction with "racist" policies; at Brandeis blacks seized the computer and telephone switchboards to protest treatment of blacks on campus. These tactics worked. By the early 1970s black students and faculty, sometimes through channels, sometimes through violence, succeeded in institutionalizing many demands that had seemed out of reach just a decade earlier. Suddenly, universities were making long-term commitments to faculty recruited for burgeoning black-studies departments or courses. This institutionalization of black studies was met with controversy and heightened emotions, but the...

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