Columbia in Turmoil-our Articles Black and White
ROBERTS, STEVEN V.
talking ominously of "getting guns" and "getting whitey"—soon ended all discussion by telling the whites they were not militant enough and would all have to leave, including those who agreed to...
...We each agreed to take our own building and push our own demands...
...For them the problem is especially acute...
...Another black leader was later quoted as saying: "The whites would vacillate and panic, and we felt they could not be depended upon...
...With black kids the issue is clear—to fight racism...
...The pull in both directions grew stronger when poor black communities started fighting for their rights at the same time that increased job opportunities in the white world became available to the educated black youth...
...Then they threw us out...
...They certainly have more guts than we do...
...And growing numbers of poor blacks from places like Harlem, which Columbia students gaze symbolically down upon from Morning-side Heights, have been getting into top schools...
...It made me wonder how far I'd go...
...Witnesses report that even Mark Rudd, the radical leader of Students for a Democratic Society, was dazed...
...I thought we could compromise, but they didn't even want to talk...
...They saw in it a division and bitterness between the races many had scarcely guessed...
...They refused to participate in the Strike Coordinating Committee and marched through Harlem several times...
...They have a right to form their own identity and their own community...
...It's a very basic question of survival...
...But the story of that first night is meaningful in its own right...
...We don't care if we are suspended from Columbia, we're Harlem residents first," Cicero Wilson said on one of the marches...
...They also placed several fierce looking types in the doorway to glare menacingly at onlookers...
...Black identity and white befuddle-ment are growing on many campuses...
...These guys had been playing revolutionary, and now they were stunned...
...It was complete anguish...
...A little learning might be a dangerous thing, but a lot of thinking can be far more dangerous...
...Whites aren't nearly so serious or committed, and we'd only hold them back if we formed a coalition...
...The militant blacks ate together, formed their own organizations, socialized with each other, and largely frustrated white liberals who genuinely wanted to make friends...
...Meals were regular and the music was good...
...The whites ejected from Hamilton Hall saw the face of black power?a face that none of their liberal sympathies could soften into the slightest smile—and found it disturbing...
...For years many blacks at schools like Columbia have been torn between two worlds: the world from which they had come, and the white bourgeois world into which they were being thrust...
...One is that each individual should develop his own potential and abilities...
...By now the initial incident has been obscured and meaningful progress apparently is being made toward a restructured university, which probably could have been started only by a rebellion—accidental as this one was...
...There was never a dispute...
...That really frightened me...
...The shock was too sharp to cover completely, however...
...Some of those blacks guys were willing to die," added another student...
...The blacks had advised them to Black and White By Steven V. Roberts seize a building of their own, and after some consultation Rudd led a group over to Low Library, where they broke the window of a side door to gain entrance...
...They had been thrown out of a building by guys who were really serious...
...talking ominously of "getting guns" and "getting whitey"—soon ended all discussion by telling the whites they were not militant enough and would all have to leave, including those who agreed to the barricade plan...
...The whites, many of whom were deeply angry at their rebuke, wandered out into the grey dawn creeping over Morningside Heights...
...But blacks are now realizing that if th«y take the first premise of liberal education seriously, the second might very well prove false...
...When they were arrested they went quietly—¦ some whites wondered fleetingly what had happened to their militant posture—and left the building meticulously clean...
...There was no one around, and that glass sounded so damn loud," said one of the students...
...They even barred some suspected Uncle Toms...
...The demonstrations apparently forced those blacks who had kept their white friends to make a choice...
...The only ones black people can call on in their struggle are other black men...
...There has been very little communication between blacks and whites, to put it mildly," said Robert Stulberg, a reporter for the Columbia newspaper, the Daily Spectator...
...They have analyzed the forces that are oppressing them and are prepared to fight...
...Then they were smashing their way into a building without really knowing what they were doing...
...It was not only MARK RUDD that a political alliance had been cracked...
...Thus the occupation of Columbia began...
...After they were released from jail, few blacks returned to the campus...
...Resentment and confusion mixed with fear...
...History was quickly rewritten...
...The demonstrations showed that many of Columbia's blacks have decided their first allegiance is to their people...
...It was great...
...In recent years separatism had been increasing on campus...
...Ironically, then, it is probably the excellence of Columbia and similar universities that is bringing so much trouble on their heads—from whites as well as blacks...
...They didn't want to compromise at all...
...The reason is that liberal education in this country is based on two premises...
...Personally I felt terrible," said one sds leader...
...I had felt for the first time that white and black students were working with community people to form a strong alliance," said one student later the next morning...
...The blacks further showed their disdain of whites by allowing only blacks into their building...
...The incident also had important implications for the black students...
...The second, though, is that these individuals, who are assumed to partake of a similar culture and tradition, will also accept the basic values and outlook taught by and embodied in the university...
...Many are finding that if a university really teaches them to think rather than merely accept, the white world no longer seems so attractive...
...We had set up something very beautiful and then we had to give it up...
...Many believed, quite sincerely, that the blacks should run their own show and that their seizure of power was very important...
...By afternoon sds leaders were saying: "The split was very amicable...
...Blacks, in short, would be delivered to the white world bleached and submissive...
...His mouth just opened—he was really shocked," said one student...
...They seek their own vision...
...Just as significant, the feelings of friendship and solidarity that are such vital elements of the New Left had been shaken...
...But inside life was orderly, relaxed, and even gay...
...Rudd said: "Columbia is just at the beginning of a pre-revolutionary stage, but the blacks are way ahead of us...
...It would be simplistic to say that they merely hated whites, but when Cicero Wilson, the black student leader, spoke to a crowd of Harlem residents from the window of "liberated" Hamilton Hall one evening, he said: "Those whiteys who were in here really got taken...
...They were shaking all over...
Vol. 51 • May 1968 • No. 11
