Excerpt: Stefan Bradley

An excerpt from -

Harlem vs. Columbia University: Black Student Power in the Late 1960s

by Stefan Bradley

If they build the first story, blow it up.
If they sneak back at night and build three stories,
burn it down. And if they get nine stories built,
it's yours. Take it over, and maybe we'll
let them in on the weekends.
-H. Rap Brown, February 1967

Race and power are two key elements in the narrative of American history, and they are even more important to the story of Columbia University's student revolt that started in April 1968 and continued into the fall of 1969. The predominantly white Ivy League school, in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York, functioned, as did many white institutions in the 1960s, as one that would impose its will on the seemingly defenseless black communities of Morningside Heights and neighboring Harlem by building a ten-story gymnasium in the precious recreational space of Morningside Park.

In the 1950s, university officials planned to build a new gymnasium in the park for several reasons. First, the university officials had already constructed softball fields in the park earlier in the decade, so they wanted a field house to go along with the ball fields. Second, as part of the federal, state, and city renewal movement of the 1950s and 1960s, officials believed that they had the right to use whatever land the university could afford to buy in order to improve the aesthetics and appeal of the school to current and potential students. Third, the university assumed that the neighboring communities, mostly black and Puerto Rican, did not have the power to stop Columbia. This last belief was based on several premises, including paternalism, white privilege, and class privilege.

Despite its claims of wanting to cooperate with the Harlem and Morningside Heights communities on matters such as the gymnasium, the university was using its power to expand into black neighborhoods that could rarely resist a large, white institution's efforts to encroach onto land that they considered their own. Because of Columbia's power and prestige in American society, many university officials did not see the need to respect the idea of ownership that black people in the nearby neighborhoods believed was so important to their survival and advancement in the United States.

Those who held top positions at Columbia also led the world. Nicholas Butler, president of Columbia from 1902 to 1945, had received the Nobel Peace Prize and was president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. At one point, Butler had even received nominations to become the vice president of the United States. During Butler's tenure as president, Columbia expanded greatly and provided the venue for such endeavors as the Manhattan Project. Such leadership was apparently common at the school on the Heights. After he orchestrated the victorious campaigns of the Allies in World War II, General Dwight D. Eisenhower became the president of Columbia University and served in that capacity until 1953. He left Columbia to take his post as president of the United States. Grayson Kirk, who was president of Columbia from 1953 through the controversy of the 1960s, had served with the Department of State and had helped to broker the United Nations Charter. The trustees of Columbia were equally notable and even more powerful. Members of the university's Board of Trustees were stalwarts in the U.S. economy, owned or operated the nation's most lucrative companies, and oversaw the university's governance and assets. They held top positions at CBS, National City Bank, and the New York Times, as they worked to economically enrich the university.1 For as powerful as all these men were in the world, they were just as powerful in the neighborhoods of Morningside Heights and Harlem. Their influence led to Columbia's expansion.

The fact that this story involved the Harlem community makes it that much more important to American and African American history. Scholar Harold Cruse, author of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, made a very keen observation about Harlem. He claimed that "Harlem has, in this century, become the most strategic community of black America." Furthermore, he asserted, "Harlem is the black world's key community for historical, political, economic, cultural, and/or ethnic reasons." As it was, Columbia University's close proximity to this historically significant black community linked the school to the narrative of black America.

From Harlem vs. Columbia University: Black Student Power in the Late 1960s by Stefan M. Bradley. Copyright 2009 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with permission of the University of Illinois Press. This excerpt, in whole or in part, may not be reprinted, photocopied, posted on another website or distributed by any means without the written permission of the copyright holder.