Black Power on Campus: The University of Illinois, 1965-75

2. From Negro to Black: The Black Students Association

35 2 From Negro to Black: The Black Students Association Be proud . . . not ashamed. Be real . . . not phony. Be Black. There is strength in that alone. —Drums, November 1967 The mid-1960s continued to be difficult for African American students at the University of Illinois in terms of numerical isolation and alienation from campus social activities. By 1967, only 223 African American undergraduates attended Illinois, a modest increase from the middle of the century and still only 1 percent of the student population.1 However, the civil rights movement’s successes and ever-increasing African American demands for equality and respect influenced Illinois students , and some involved themselves in protests around campus. As the prevailing ideology of the African American freedom struggle shifted, so too did African American Illinois student attitudes on appropriate protest activity and understandings of liberation. Demonstrating the dramatic shift in ideology was the shift in racial self-referents. As in the broader society, African American students at Illinois during the 1950s overwhelmingly identified themselves as Negro.2 By the late 1960s, Negro had become a pejorative term and had been eclipsed by Black—a racial selfreferent as well as a particular ideology embodying political, cultural, aesthetic, and organizational components. Black students at Illinois heralded the new Blackness and began to formulate their own particular understanding of it. They then took that understanding and used it to 36 Black Power on Campus create a supportive environment for themselves—an environment that would foster different and more militant forms of protest. Creating an organization that appealed to Black students and encouraged protest proved difficult, and building a campus movement would not be an easy or immediate process. While some Black students involved themselves in the movement, others simply wanted to get along on campus , make friends with other ethnic groups, and enjoy college life. Still others remained silent, fearing that their only chance at a first-rate education might be sacrificed on the alter of direct social action. Rather than engage in protest, they interpreted their individual college attendance and success as the most readily available mode of racial uplift. Their attitudes did not mean that these Black students decided to forfeit their Black identity or that they were not interested in Black liberation. Nor should pre1968 Black students be juxtaposed against post-1968 Black students to understand one group as apathetic and the other activist. However, pre1968 Black students experienced a different campus ethos. Many arrived before the Black Power movement and subscribed to a civil rights, integration model of racial relationships. Not until later in the decade would their numbers and shifting ideology precipitate a more militant form of grassroots protest based on an ethic of Black self-determination. The Campus Climate in Black and White Beginning in the mid-1960s, the University of Illinois campus became increasingly volatile and marked by student protests. However, Black students and white students often focused on completely different issues. Campus protest groups, with the exception of the NAACP and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, were de facto segregated.3 Black students were not ostracized from white protest organizations through organizational mandates, but they did not see their futures inextricably linked to the issues white students protested. Racial issues were paramount to Black students, but rarely did race become a defining issue in white student protest.4 White activists set their sights on broad and international issues, such as free speech and ending the war in Vietnam , while Black students focused on domestic and immediate concerns, such as adjusting to an overwhelmingly white university and eradicating racism and discrimination. Black students viewed white student protest issues as ephemeral and abstract and instead focused on creating healthier conditions for themselves in their immediate environment— the University of Illinois campus. From Negro to Black 37 black student protests In the early to middle 1960s, many Black students focused simply on adjusting to the drastically different environment that the University of Illinois offered. When recounting their initial impressions of the campus in 1965 and 1966, many former students remembered being struck by the sheer number of white students, who outnumbered Black students 99 to 1. Though a few of the Black students had attended high school with white students or had been in academic tracks with white students, many, especially those from Chicago, had lived in predominantly Black communities and had attended predominantly Black schools...