Race Relations in Higher Education: The Case of the OSU 34

One of the most frustrating experiences a Negro can have on this campus is to walk up Fifteenth Ave., starting at High St., and around to Indianola and Iuka Aves. He is in the midst of the luxury of the white student, and to know that this is put [out] of his reach is enough to rip him inside out. To know that every house he sees is closed to him, but open to the fellow he sits next to in his history class every day, is enough to shatter his scant faith in the American dream.

—Hollie West

On April 26, 1968, more than two hundred students assembled in front of the administration building at Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus. Students gathered to confront university officials about historical injustices black students faced on campus. Weeks after their nonviolent demonstration, thirty-four of the protestors, likely those suspected of being the organizers, were targeted for suspension from OSU and indicted by a Columbus grand jury on several charges, including kidnapping and trespassing. If convicted, the students faced thirty years of imprisonment as well as substantial fines and court costs. Forty-seven years later, in November 2015, black OSU students and faculty and their allies again led a march, this time from Hale Hall to the OSU Union. The protest, similar to the 1968 rally, attempted to bring attention to the persistence of racial discrimination at the university. Students chanted and posted to their social media outlets, “Racism Lives Here,” and “O-H-I-O Racism has got to go.”¹

The continuation of student protests well into the twenty-first century is evidence of the important role students still play in helping to bring awareness to sociopolitical issues concerning racism, war, misplaced patriotism, immigration, and sexual violence. Students’ weapons of resistance continue to take the form of boycotts, die-ins, kneel-ins, sit-ins, strikes, and walkouts. Such responses fit within a long tradition of activism in the United States, particularly as it concerns race relations in institutions of higher education. For example, Jerry Roberts, one student involved in campus protests and a member of the Afro-Am organization at Ohio State University in 1970, claimed that many students had been prepped for the campus clashes to come, earning their battle scars on the front lines of the so-called nonviolent civil rights struggle in the South prior to 1968. Although there exists no evidence to support Roberts’s claim of OSU students on the front lines of the southern struggle, students at OSU did undeniably organize rallies, campaigns, and marches in support of local and national civil rights efforts. For instance, in August 1963, Students for Civil Rights Legislation, an OSU student organization, with the support of OSU faculty and local religious groups, held a campus rally and mailed letters to the Senate Judiciary Committee to show support for the Civil Rights Bill of 1963, then up for debate. In August 1964, OSU students welcomed Roy Ginsberg, a Case Institute of Technology student and member of Students for Liberal Action, to discuss the work of Mississippi’s Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and how OSU students might get involved. Given their familiarity with marches, strikes, sit-ins, and boycott strategies, black college students like Roberts simply updated and reapplied practices used to desegregate schools and public accommodations in the South to challenge university administrators’ and Board of Trustees members’ resistance to the full inclusion of African Americans at their institutions.²

Ohio State students gathered outside the Administration Building while members of the Black Student Union met with university officials inside the building during the April 26, 1968 protest.

courtesy of the ohio state university archives

Between 1968 and 1971, clashes escalated between black students and college leadership throughout the country, including at schools such as the University of California, Berkeley, Columbia, Michigan State, Rutgers, and the University of Pennsylvania as well as colleges in Ohio—including Antioch, Kent State, Central State, Oberlin College, Ohio University, and the University of Cincinnati. While significant...