Monday, April 23, 2018

Opinion | The Missing History of the Columbia ’68 Protests - The New York Times


Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown backing
African American students barricaded in Columbia's
Hamilton Hall

This is a quite thoughtful essay by Mark Rudd regarding the rarely recognized leading role of black students in the Columbia University protests of 1968.
He provides a link to a recent essay by Raymond M. Brown.  The son of a brilliant Black trial lawyer, the younger Brown is an outstanding and dedicated lawyer and public interest advocate in New Jersey.
A suburban kid from Maplewood/South Orange, New Jersey (where I later practiced law), Rudd played a negative role in the anti-war movement as a prominent voice in the divisive and extremist Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) which soon disintegrated.  This essay shows he has moved beyond his regrettable embrace of violence as a young man. - gwc
Opinion | The Missing History of the Columbia ’68 Protests - The New York Times
***[The Black students] saw themselves as representatives of the Harlem community. Local political leaders, black activists and revolutionaries, and elders bearing hot food all trekked to Hamilton in support. Their occupation, much more than anything we white students did, was “the pivotal act” of the Columbia protest, as Raymond M. Brown, a leader of the Student Afro-American Society , aptly termed it in a recent essay.


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