Don Downs Reflects on 1969

Donald Downs, author of Cornell '69 reflects on 1969, and on his own book (published in 1999), in response to David Halperin's essay here on "Remembering the Straight--Without Pleasure, Without Pride."

[The following is Don Down's email to me, posted here with his permission]

Halperin's piece is very interesting, indeed, and I shared many of his thoughts and feelings at the time and now. When I wrote my book, I had to maintain the perspective of a researcher, not letting my own feelings and thoughts take over the narrative (though they did serve as data to some extent). Of course, as my book proceeded, it did take a narrative turn that ended up siding with Sindler, Berns, LaFeber, Kagan, and that camp. But it would have been interesting to have been able to be more personal, as Halperin was able to be.

Since writing the book, I have more sympathy for faculty's reversal, if only because it very possibly prevented a disaster from befalling Cornell. But then members of the faculty should have committed their own political act by doing something dramatic to show how angry they were about the necessity that confronted them, and how Cornell had sacrificed something that matters. (They could have submitted a collective resignation, or, short of that, a collective sit-in, or strike, or something similar.) As it was, a few resigned, while most limped back to their homes and their scholarly commitments. The lack of a political response meant that the trauma and recrimination would linger longer that otherwise would have been the case, for I believe that many would have regained a measure of honor that was sorely needed. I wish I had had this thought in writing Cornell `69, as it would have made for a more powerful ending. But, as you know, thoughts come when they will.

Regardless, I thank Halperin for his penetrating insight into the crisis, and his own reaction.

I Was There, But I Didn't Know Much

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.

Tom Jones: Obama Wouldn't Be President Without the 1969 Straight Occupation

The Cornell Alumni Magazine's March/April issue commemorates the events of Spring 1969 with an article by Beth Saulnier, "Getting it Straight" and lots of interviews, resources and links. The online version of the magazine includes a slide show and audio interviews on the events with AAS leaders Tom Jones and Skip Meade, student government leader Art Spitzer, history professor Walter LaFeber, and Don Downs (author of the book Cornell '69).

The interviews conclude with these thoughts by Tom Jones, one of the leaders of the Straight occupation, who later served as CEO of TIAA-CREF, the huge teachers and professors retirement fund.

JONES: Frankly, I do not think Barack Obama would be president today without what we did in Willard Straight Hall in 1969. I believe Barack Obama stands on our shoulders. The Straight was part of a series of historical events that began with Rosa Parks in 1955 and continued through the Sixties with the Freedom Riders and the marchers at Selma, Alabama, and made possible this magnificent thing that happened in January 2009. I think we're part of a chain of history. I'm not saying the most important part, but we're one of the links.