In the spring of 1969, I was wrapping up my senior year at Cornell and looking ahead excitedly to the summer and fall. I had been accepted for graduate work in international studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies—in Bologna, Italy!-- and I had an interesting summer job lined up with a think tank in my hometown of McLean, Virginia. So when the Straight takeover happened that April, I was only marginally engaged and involved. Mentally, I was mostly out of Ithaca already.
So when I recently read Donald Downs’s history of those events—Cornell ’69—I was transfixed and stunned to find out how much was swirling around me in those days; how potentially dangerous the situation was; and how little I knew about all this at the time. I was, after all, a senior government major, and the Department of Government was centrally and critically involved in the faculty deliberations and negotiations at the time. Downs’ mesmerizing narrative is packed full of accounts of people who I had classes with: Walter LaFeber, Clinton Rossiter, Eldon Kenworthy, Walter Berns, Allan Bloom, Paul Marantz, and Andrew Hacker. Every one of these people had shaped me and my view of the world, and set me on the course of my future profession. Yet I was oblivious to almost everything they did and said that spring. Plus, two guys who were in my freshman dorm—Tom Jones and Skip Meade, were central actors on the student side of the drama.
Until I read Cornell ’69, I did not realize how bitterly torn was the Cornell faculty, and how much tension there was between many of the faculty and President James Perkins. I also did not know at the time—or maybe I just forgot—the irony of Perkins’s fate, since he was instrumental in integrating Cornell, and expanding the number of African-American students. I did not know that spring how radicalized and close to violence the whole situation was. In a radio interview in the midst of the crisis, AAS leader Tom Jones said, “before this is over James Perkins, Allan Sindler and Clinton Rossiter are going to die in the gutter like dogs.” How could I not have known about THIS? Maybe I knew at the time, but forgot? But how could one forget such a thing?
And I did not know that when students were assembled in Barton Hall, ready to march on another university building, there were several hundred sheriff’s deputies, many of them recruited from little Upstate towns, assembled in the parking lot at Woolworths downtown. They were armed and ready to confront the students. A veteran Ithaca Police Department officer later said that “young rednecks from the hills” were being deputized in the Woolworths lot that night. “They were loading their shotguns with double-0 buck and saying, ‘Tonight we’re going to get some Niggers and them Jew commies.’”
Reading all this was, for me, both chilling and disconcerting. How could I have not known these things at the time? Or, even worse, is my memory really getting that bad that I simply do not remember? I have queried friends and classmates from those days, and many of them confess to not remembering much either. So either we were all oblivious, or all getting senile!
I think, mostly, though, that it was because of the things I mentioned in my first paragraph. I was 21, graduating, on my way to graduate school and Italy. Other Cornell friends have told me that they were absorbed with final exams and papers and preparations for graduate, law and medical school.
And why did it take me so long to get around to thinking about all this, and reading about it? I left Cornell, went to Italy, met my wife there, got married, went to Indiana for a Ph.D,, had kids, and started a career. I was busy. This year I retired, and have time to think about these things. Time, but not the memory.
Hi, Dave. I remember some very earnest bull sessions we had as freshmen in and near Uris Libe (and how some more serious studiers used to give us dirty looks--well deserved--for disturbing their concentration).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I have several firsthand memories relating to campus unrest and the Straight Takeover. The first is the fear I had during the Statler Hall event where President Perkins was scheduled to discuss the question of divestment (or not) of university endowment investments in South Africa. I had thought that such was ceremonial in effect since investment buys and sells were between investors, not between investors and the companies. Therefore, university sales probably wouldn't have any impact on South Africa. Nevertheless, I went to the program to hear what Perkins had to say and was scared s__tless when one of the fellows on the stage walked over and grabbed President Perkins by the shirt collar and the people in the front rows started beating on some large Conga drums, making the place resonate with loud rhythmic noise. It was as if chaos and anarchy had been enacted within that room, and I got out of there as fast as my feet would take me, as I was quite afraid of what sort of violence might erupt.
Not long after that, I was walking up the road from College Town past the Straight one cool morning and as I passed the Straight, something felt different, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. What I soon realized was that this was the only time I ever saw the front doors of the Straight closed. I didn't at that moment know why, but I soon heard about the takeover and understood why the doors had been closed.
Like you, I was close to heading off to the next chapter in my life, medical school, so I stayed out of harm's way for the remainder of the semester, spending as much time as I could at the golf course, to which I had become quite attached. I tended to be sympathetic of the difficulty black people had functioning in a racist society and supportive of demonstrations. But the presence of guns inside and outside the Straight bothered me, as it came with the possibility of violently ending people's lives, when discussion seemed so much more civilized and in tune with the intellectual nature of a university. I admired the commitment that the black students were making to a just cause, without necessarily agreeing with all their tactics. I was and am proud of the Cornell community for defusing the incident without a shot's being fired, especially in light of the subsequent disaster at Kent State. It was a truly memorable time.
I too remember our earnest bull sessions in the library, Steve! Thanks for your reflections here. Send me an email: I would like to hear more about what you have been up to in the last 40 years!
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