Columbia protest

Chapter 4

Two Faces of Journalism

When protesters at Howard University planned a takeover of the administration building in March 1968, student newspaper Editor-in-Chief Adrienne Manns was one of the key organizers. She considered herself a crusading journalist. “That’s what I wanted to be and kind of patterned myself that way, making sure the facts were correct but always looking for a way to improve the world through journalism,” she recalled. “That was my ideal.” During the five-day sit-in, she only left the protest to negotiate with administrators. Other editors handled the duties of publishing the weekly Hilltop student newspaper.[1]

When protesters at Columbia University took over several campus buildings, including the administration building, about a month later, protest organizers asked student newspaper Editor-in-Chief Robert Friedman to participate. “There was a moment for me, the very first day of the building occupation, where I was asked to join the coordinating committee and I declined,” Friedman said. “I said I couldn’t do that and be the editor of the newspaper. We all in our own ways kept our distance, or found some way of separating ourselves from the actual protests even though we were essentially in support of them. We saw ourselves as journalists and that was our mission. The most important thing was to be in a position where we could write our stories and get the [Columbia Daily Spectator] newspaper out.”[2]

The two young editors, both working to define themselves as journalists at the same time and in very similar experiences, grappled with the same question that journalists have been facing for decades: “Should I be an advocate or an objective observer?” Each made a different choice. Yet their college newspaper experience ultimately guided their career path just as it has for so many journalists. Manns, frustrated by an inability to make significant change in the world after graduation, reluctantly left journalism. Friedman made his career in journalism.

For many who are planning careers as professional journalists, student newspapers at colleges are their training grounds and as such are the places they learn about what it means to be a journalist, what role journalists play in society and what impact the objectivity/advocacy question will play in their careers. The student press allows young people the opportunity to practice writing and reporting skills while at the same time molding their ethical viewpoints and their ideals about journalism. Even though students will likely model their work on that of the professional press, the student newspaper is the place many of them will begin to make self-defining decisions, just as Manns and Friedman did, about the kind of journalism they would practice when they graduated. The college newspaper experience, then, is an important time in the development of future journalists. This chapter considers not only how these two editors and other student reporters and editors at The Hilltop and Columbia Daily Spectator did the job of reporting events but also studies their journalistic goals and beliefs about objectivity and advocacy in journalism. Eight former reporters and editors participated in interviews to tell the story of what happened: three from Howard and five from Columbia. Though some at both schools had short journalism careers after college, only two of those interviewed — one from each school — continue in those fields today. Four of the eight now have careers in law (three attorneys and one judge). One editor went into higher education, and another is a private equity investor and theatrical producer. Additional staffers from both schools could not be located or did not reply to requests for interviews.

Considering the development of advocacy/objectivity ideals within the context of the 1968 student protests also addresses two important areas in journalism history: the understudied student press during the turbulent protest years of the 1960s and the personal development of journalistic ideals.

Advocacy vs. Objectivity: Howard and Columbia — 1968

Objectivity in journalism is “the apparent value-free impartial reporting of observable or verifiable factual data from a detached, impersonal point of view.” Some of the elements of objectivity in news reporting actually go back to the first newspapers when the colonial printers promised to report in a factual, truthful and impartial manner. It was a lofty goal but one few could realistically meet simply because the individuals funding the newspapers controlled the point of view. Colonial printers may have considered themselves to be impartial, but it became almost impossible to attain as the American Revolution loomed.[3]

Impartiality and objectivity are not the same even though impartial is part of the definition for the word objective. An objective news story is impartial, but a piece of writing that is impartial may not be detached and impersonal or even factual.[4]

Researchers have found no clear point when objectivity entered into the world of journalism though one of the earliest press criticism books in 1859 castigated newspapers of the time for failing to be factual and impartial, both elements of the definition for objectivity, hinting that newspapers should therefore be objective.[5] Most of mainstream journalism had adopted the standard of objectivity in reporting by the mid-1900s. It was the core of the Code of Ethics for the Society of Professional Journalists that was first adopted in 1973.[6] Certainly by 1968, society had an expectation of the practice of objectivity in the professional press. Indeed, objectivity was seen as a key value of the responsible press.[7]

Advocacy journalism has perhaps deeper roots that stretch to the earliest days of newspapers when it was common for the writing to reflect the opinions and bias of whoever paid for the printing. Through the more than three centuries that newspapers have been published, advocacy journalism has been part of the mix in various ways. At times it has enjoyed a resurgence, even to a certain extent in more mainstream newspapers. The popular idea of civic journalism in the 1980s or investigative journalism into government wrongdoing like the Watergate scandal of the 1970s are such examples. Today, advocacy journalism has morphed into something more along the lines of the muckrakers of a century ago when journalists exposed various abuses in big business and corruption in government. Advocate publications are often left leaning and not apologetic about what they do, like Mother Jones, which is happy to be called left, liberal, and progressive as its reporters “cheerfully investigate any people or entities of any political persuasion, right, left, or center, if their behavior warrants it.”[8]

Both forms of journalism have been able to find a place in society and have drawn students to their ranks throughout the decades. It is not surprising, then, that student journalists in 1968 found themselves considering these same issues.

The Year of Protest and Violence

The entire year of 1968 was a turbulent one in the United States, marked by protest, death, and violence both on and off college campuses. Most of the protests centered on civil rights/African American concerns or the unpopular Vietnam War. On February 8, three black college students were killed when police officers fired into a crowd of South Carolina State College students who were protesting a segregated bowling alley near the campus of the historically black college in Orangeburg. More than two dozen others were injured by the bullets, many in the back as they tried to flee. Afterward, Howard University student Tony Gittens went to Orangeburg to see the situation first hand. He wrote about it for The Hilltop, which also included a picture Gittens took of a demonstration that followed the shootings. One demonstrator in the photo held a hand-lettered sign that read, “Bullets make excellent substitutes for tear gas and water hoses.”[9] Large civil rights protests were launched around the country in response to the deaths, notably at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Almost two months later, April 4, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, touching off demonstrations of all kinds throughout the country. In the aftermath of King’s death, Black Panthers and Oakland police squared off in a shootout that left several dead or injured. Meanwhile, a double explosion in Richmond, Indiana, killed 41 and injured 150. Two months after that, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. In late August, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago was rocked by massive anti-war protests where hundreds of people, including bystanders, were beaten by thousands of police and National Guardsmen. Organizers of the protests, known as the Chicago 8, faced federal charges of rioting and conspiracy to riot.

In the midst of all this protesting, Howard and Columbia universities saw students take commonplace demonstrating to a new level: occupy campus buildings for several days and close down the school. Howard University in Washington, D.C., was the first to do so for five days in March, demanding a change to a more Afro-centric curriculum. New York’s Columbia University followed a month later, pressing for an end to university involvement in an organization that conducted research to benefit the Vietnam War as well as an end to the construction of a new gymnasium that raised racial issues. Occupations and strikes at many universities occurred in the following months of 1968 and into the next year. Among these were students at San Francisco State College, who in November began what has become the longest strike in college history, and Harvard University and Boston University, where students occupied buildings in April 1969.

Although the protests at Howard and Columbia had dissimilar specific issues at the heart, both shared more than many might realize. Both were elite schools: Howard was known as the Black Harvard; Columbia was an Ivy League school. The 1968 sit-ins were not a spontaneous event at either school; issues that had stewed for a year or more had begun to boil and finally spilled out, taking the form of a takeover of the administration building at Howard and five buildings at Columbia. Race and war played a role in both protests, though certainly not in the same way. Protesters at both schools also found the administrations to be out of touch with students’ changing needs and desires. When the takeovers occurred, neither administration was willing to budge much or work seriously for a compromise. Both university presidents stayed away from the university during the protests and kept themselves away from the student press. Before the Columbia sit-in, demonstrators from the New York-based university met with Howard protest leaders to learn how they had done it in Washington, D.C.[10]

Howard University was the first campus to have students occupy a building that spring, but Columbia University often becomes the face of the takeover student protests of 1968. A book devoted to discussing all the events around the world of just that one year gives Howard University’s protest two sentences, and oversimplifies the underlying issue as “a lack of black history courses.”[11] (The deaths at South Carolina State College do not even rate a mention in the book.) In contrast, the discussion about the demonstrations at Columbia University included details such as the development of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organization that spearheaded the protest. It featured 17 pages devoted to explaining the issues and the events that occurred.[12] Enterprising newspaper students from both universities went on to publish books about the events on their campuses that spring. Tom Myles, a photographer and writer for The Hilltop student newspaper at Howard University, published a 133-page book in 1969 that he subtitled a “photographic and narrative account.”[13] Eight staffers from Spectator banded together to create a group called Members of the Board Associates. They worked through the summer in order to get their 307-page book to publishers that fall.[14]

The Howard University Protest

Howard University is named for founder and Civil War Hero General Oliver O. Howard. The U.S. Congress chartered the university in 1867 as an institution for the education of African-American students and since 1879 has provided at least some of the funding. In 2016, the federal appropriation was 28 percent of the school’s $783 million budget, with 10,002 students attending in fall 2015.[15] Among its 13 schools and colleges today are a medical school, law school and dental school.[16] In 1960, James M. Nabrit Jr., a renowned civil rights and constitutional lawyer in Washington, D.C., and dean of the Howard University School of Law, became the second black president of the university. He left in 1969. His tenure included the 1968 takeover of the administration building and the events that led up to it.[17]

Though it may seem easy to summarize the main issue behind the 1968 protest as a demand for black history classes as one author did,[18] it was anything but that simple. Rumblings “that the university [must] become more relevant to the needs of black people” had been fomenting for a few years before the five-day takeover in 1968. Black students had become increasingly aware of the role education was playing in the “continuation of the so-called ‘niggerization’ of black people,” a process that involved “depreciating self-worth and encouraging black people to look outside of themselves for solutions to their problems” while putting them through a four-year “whitewash” at Howard that prepared them “to disappear into the white mainstream.”[19] It was also becoming clear that proportionately more black soldiers were dying in the Southeast Asia war, and this added more fuel to the fire.[20]

Author Tom Myles pointed to protests in spring 1965 as perhaps the beginning of the unrest that became the takeover in 1968. That spring is when SAF (Students for Academic Freedom) conducted rallies to protest the firing of professors they liked. The protests were unsuccessful, but it encouraged students to think about banding together to address concerns. Other events compounded the students’ desires to work for change. A due-process issue involving student discipline in 1966 was the impetus behind the founding of the Student Rights Organization, which was concerned that the university “was promoting and supporting a social and psychological frame of reference known for de-energizing and vitiating potential leaders of the black community.” Members of SRO were also becoming more dissatisfied with some long-standing campus practices, such as compulsory Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) for all males and a required freshman introductory course that equated a cultured education with, among other things, European and classical music while ignoring African-American music and culture. Some of the newspaper staffers were also members of SRO. “Needless to say, the newspaper was very important in creating a new positive framework for black students.”[21]

Myles’ Centennial Plus 1 details the events that led up to the 1968 protest. The frequency of the demonstrations increased in the semesters prior to the takeover because of various administrative policies and actions, but the administration made few changes to address student concerns, opting instead to wait out the complaining students, who would graduate and take the issues with them. Then the Black Power Committee (BPC) arrived “and from that time on, the campus was literally ‘on fire’.”[22] The BPC was born a year before the takeover, the day after an incident on March 21, 1967, when students rushed onto the stage as a Project Awareness lecture was beginning and disrupted the proceedings. The lecturer was the director of the Selective Service, General Lewis B. Hershey, who was to address students about the Vietnam War. The BPC’s philosophy was basically that the administration would not make any changes unless forced to by a crisis situation. In their opening press conference the day following the Hershey incident, BPC members promised “to revolutionize black universities and to defeat the colonialist administrators who ruled on behalf of the white power structure, and to create universities to serve black people.” Several students were ordered to appear for disciplinary hearings after the incident, but the hearings were postponed several times, including once when students stormed the hearing room. Shortly after that, President Nabrit announced a policy that the administration would be controlling and regulating all demonstrations and student-sponsored press conferences in the future. During this turmoil, the BPC sponsored at least two speeches by men refusing to go to Vietnam, including Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali. They also targeted ROTC, the top grievance for freshman males who were required to participate. Several started wearing Afro hairstyles and refused to cut it to meet ROTC standards. (ROTC participation became voluntary on February 1, 1968.)

Student demonstrations became stronger in February 1968, according to Myles’ book. “We’re going to get things straight in ’68” was the mantra when angry members of the UJAMAA student group took action. UJAMAA, a Swahili word meaning togetherness, had been founded the previous fall when several campus groups joined forces, with Anthony Gittens as the director. About 500 students had gathered in mid-February to express support for the students killed and injured in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Then Gittens and Howard University Student Association President Ewart Brown announced demands they had for the administration that included resignations of the president, vice president and liberal arts dean as well as changes toward a more Afro-centric curriculum. Following the speeches, students removed the U.S. flag flying nearby and took it and the list of demands to President Nabrit’s office. They asked for an answer to their demands by February 29. Later, protesters removed a portion of a controversial fence near the women’s dorms, along with the U.S. flag that flew there, and delivered them to Dean Frank Snowden Jr. When no response from Nabrit came, students disrupted the 101^st Charter Day forum on Friday, March 1, 1968. Just as Nabrit was conferring honorary degrees, students mounted the stage and tried to take over the microphone. The sound system was immediately turned off and the meeting concluded, though protesters continued to shout to the audience. The administration sent letters to students believed to have participated in the Charter Day protest, ordering them to appear for disciplinary hearings. The action spurred students to rally and then stage the five-day sit-in at the administration building, March 19—23.

The takeover shut down the university. Students at the sit-in basically had four demands: drop charges against students named for disrupting Charter Day, reopen the university before students leave the administration building, restructure curriculum with more commitment to Afro-American thought, and give student leaders more freedom to handle their own business. They also asked for administration resignations.

The Board of Trustees and administrators did not capitulate completely on any of the demands. They did agree to work harder to become more relevant to students, but fell short of promising a major shift in the curriculum. They also would allow more student control over student affairs (they let The Hilltop be independent, for instance), would set up an ad hoc tribunal to deal with the Charter Day demonstrators, but would only resume classes when the building was cleared. If the building was not damaged, no charges would be leveled at the occupiers. As to the call for administration resignations, they reminded students that they are not in charge of deciding who runs the university.

Just after midnight on Saturday, March 23, the students accepted the administration’s offers and ended the takeover.[23] Though the Vietnam War was not listed as part of the students’ grievances, it was part of the backdrop of issues that angered students and part of the discussion throughout campus.[24]

The newspaper clearly supported the protesters from the beginning. Reporters positively covered speeches and meetings that called for promoting black pride,[25] finding black identity,[26] and even “a mild revolution.”[27] A front-page editorial on March 8 explained that “it is the responsibility of The Hilltop to present issues and suggest solutions.” A long list of suggestions followed: provide a more Afro-centric curriculum in many areas of the university, begin classes in jazz and other modern music, make all Afro-American newspapers available on campus, establish an Afro-American Research Institute, create a work-study program that put students out in the community, reorganize academic affairs on campus to give professors control, reinstate professors fired for political activism, free student government and the student newspaper from administration control, abolish curfews for women, ensure fair disciplinary hearings for students. Lastly, “all administrators who wish to retain the present non-democratic, non-black interest policy of the university should resign.”[28]

Adrienne Manns was intimately involved with both the Charter Day demonstration and the subsequent administration building takeover. “Tony Gittens and I were the first ones to get up on the stage and interrupt the [Charter Day] proceedings,” she recalled. “Tony got up and then I got up with him. I was really afraid because the security people were there with guns. But Tony was pretty fearless, so I got up when he did. … That’s the first time I had participated in any demonstration.” Along with the others, she received a letter ordering her to appear before the judiciary committee, the act that prompted students to plan the takeover of the administration building.[29]

Writing for the Hilltop

Manns was also the editor-in-chief of The Hilltop, the student newspaper with a history that stretches to 1924 when it first began publishing. In 2017 it had a circulation of 7,000 and published Monday and Tuesday.[30] In 1968, The Hilltop was a weekly newspaper that hit newsstands on Fridays. Manns recalled that students had to have stories and photos ready on Wednesday with proofreading on Thursday night. Students did the layout and helped with the paste-up work involved in preparing the pages for the offset press.[31] Pearl Stewart, a freshman reporter in spring 1968, was not involved in the production of the paper until her later college years, but she recalled weekly trips to the production shop in Maryland and staying up half the night “putting the paper bed.”[32] Both women worked at the student newspaper the entire time they were in college, beginning as reporters before they worked their way up to editor positions. Manns served as an editor beginning in her sophomore year and was the editor-in-chief in 1968. She recalled that the top editor received tuition as compensation, which was $550 a semester at the time. The managing editor received $250 a semester and other editors $200—250 for a year.[33]

Manns almost did not become the editor-in-chief for her senior year. The top editor position was determined by a publication board of administrators, students, and student government representatives. The board was unhappy about Manns’ satirical column “Coon’s Corner” that regularly criticized the administration, so they rejected her application for the job and proposed hiring a student with no newspaper experience. The Hilltop staff then rallied behind Manns. By her senior year, Manns already had some professional experience that included working as a stringer for the Washington Post and doing general assignment reporting at the Daily News in Washington during the summer of 1967. The staff went to the publication board, which eventually relented and hired Manns. She then chose the other editors who served with her. She managed a mostly volunteer staff with an $11,000 yearly budget from student fees, but that did not cover all the cost of publishing the newspaper. A business manager generated advertising to supplement the budget.[34]

Manns counts herself as a student of the muckrakers and the pioneer journalists. As a youth, she became a great fan of the Chicago Defender when she visited family in Chicago. The Defender was a daily newspaper at the time aimed at African-Americans. She also admired the work of writer Langston Hughes, who had been a reporter there in the 1920s. “Our family tradition, though I don’t know if it was true or not, was that my great-grandfather had been a member of the staff of the Defender. I read it avidly and just thought that kind of newspaper had a crusading spirit. A crusading journalist — that’s what I wanted to be,” she said. Howard University’s Hilltop newspaper seemed a good place to start. “The newspaper was kind of a hot bed of radical thinking among students. When I came to Howard, there were members of the staff who were against the draft; they were against mandatory ROTC. Some of them were SNCC members [pronounced snik, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was a prominent civil rights organization at the time] or at least they were sympathizers. So when I walked into the office to work, I walked into a center of controversy. They were already activist journalists.” The transition from observer to participant probably occurred for Manns during the summer of 1966 when she went to Harvard and heard civil rights activist and SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael speak about black power. Then working with voter registration “politicized me,” she said. [35]

She aspired to become a professional journalist who could change the world and tried to do just that for a few years after she graduated from Howard. “But I left [journalism] because it seemed hopeless. I was so disillusioned and frustrated. … I was looking for a way to make a difference,” she said. She was one of only two black journalists at the Washington Post at the time, sitting across from Carl Bernstein who would later become famous for breaking the Watergate scandal. She left the Post to work at the Washington Afro American where she was the acting city editor when she was just 23 years old. Manns decided she could not be a crusading journalist there, so she returned to the Post but found herself stuck working for the style section. Then she tried graduate school, returned to the Post again and finally left Washington, D.C., in 1976. During another graduate school stint, this time at Hopkins, where she got deeper into African studies, she had the chance to teach temporarily at the University of Maryland and fell in love with teaching college students. She has spent most of her career in higher education. “I gave up journalism. That was emotionally one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” she said. “At heart I am probably always going to be a writer.”[36]

But in 1968, Manns the editor was also one of the takeover organizers. She stepped back from the day-to-day operation of the student newspaper, letting other editors produce the newspaper for a few weeks and not interfering with what the reporters wrote. “I was able to detach myself pretty much from my two roles,” she said. “I was able to compartmentalize to the point that I was able to say accurately what happened or didn’t happen.” Besides, she had surrounded herself with a hard-working staff that got along well, so it was not difficult to turn it over to them. “We were pretty much on the same page. The only difficulties we had were basically meeting deadlines. I was a little bit of a task master. I pushed people hard about making deadlines. But for content of the paper, we were mostly in agreement. …We spent a lot of time talking about issues, how much emphasis we would put on what. The only time I got upset was with Oswald [Ratteray, managing editor] because he used an expletive in a headline, a curse word, you know, the F word.” The incident occurred at another time when Manns had been away from campus and had put Ratteray in charge. His “Fuck War” headline had gotten Manns called into the dean’s office. “I had to stand by him, for loyalty sake,” she explained. “I couldn’t tell that he slipped this in on me, but he did.” Privately, though, the staff had several conversations about the action and it never happened again.[37]

Manns’ role during the takeover was less visible than the other organizers, and she preferred it that way. She led the negotiating team and issued statements to the press but never spoke at the rallies. With the deaths in South Carolina still fresh, she constantly feared for her safety: “Maybe it was my idealism at the time that this had to be something worth dying for because I knew students had been killed at Orangeburg; we were focused on what happened in Orangeburg. So we had to make a decision. We wanted to do everything to prevent violence — confrontation with law enforcement — but we knew it could happen.” She said she had come to understand the gravity of protests while covering the now-famous October 1967 march at the Pentagon for The Hilltop. She saw the thousands of anti-war protesters confront 2,500 armed troops guarding the Pentagon. Though no protesters were shot, many were arrested. The experience was a reality check and helped her make a choice. “It was a decision I made to die if I had to,” she said. “I don’t know what I would have done if it actually happened, but I decided if it came to that, I guess that’s what we would have to do. I feared for other people who may not have understood that could happen.” [38]

In the end, when the protest leadership team decided the takeover was done so students should leave the building, Manns was disappointed. “I wanted to come out, but I wanted to have a boycott of classes until we got our demands met. But they overruled me.” Exhausted and emotionally drained, Manns agreed to stand by the other leaders — Tony Gittens and student body President Ewart Brown — as they declared victory. “I remember that most vividly. I learned from that, that you have to back down sometimes. You can’t always speak your truth. They weren’t speaking my truth; they were speaking their truth. But I had to back off because it would have been very bad to lose our unity at the end. So, for the sake of the unity of the group, I didn’t say anything.”

Still, she learned an important life lesson about making real changes in the world: “It takes a long time. Tony said that. He said, ‘you can’t expect us to do in a week or a month or even four years what we are trying to accomplish.’ He was right.” Afterward, she had stress nightmares and felt frustrated that the takeover had failed. Her grades also suffered.[39]

The Hilltop covered the Charter Day event and the takeover protest. Two of its reporters were at the Charter Day event; Clyde W. Waite wrote a story for the student newspaper and Pearl Stewart’s piece appeared in the freshman newsletter, The Dialogue. Stewart remembers seeing the students get up on the stage to interrupt the proceeding, and then the microphone was turned off. “As I recall, I was trying to take notes and I couldn’t hear. I went up and approached the stage with my notebook,” she said. “My involvement was to be there as a reporter.” However, she ended up being on the list of students who allegedly caused the disturbance. “My parents contacted me and told me that they had received this letter from the university saying I was one of the people who had disrupted the normal processes of the university and that I would be dealt with accordingly,” she said, noting that she also received a copy of the letter at her campus address. She was never disciplined.[40]

Waite recalls trying to be impartial as he covered the Charter Day event: “I remember the forlorn look of James Nabrit, the president, who was so besieged by the students, and I remember feeling a bit of sympathy but also disdain for him. As a reporter you try to see both sides of things. I know that Nabrit was under pressure from the establishment. The funding for the university in large part came from the federal government, and he had to placate the funding sources while at the same time try to be responsive to the students.”[41]

Waite’s story appeared on page 2 of the paper a week after the event. Written in chronological order, much like the minutes of a meeting, the story did not get to the student protest until the second column of the article, which filled most of three of the five columns on the tabloid-sized page. Several stories in the newspaper followed this same style rather than emulating professional news writing that would likely have used inverted pyramid style reporting with the most important elements of the story leading out the piece. Editors, often too busy getting the paper out to do much work on articles, apparently did not rewrite the piece either, opting to let it run as written. Both the writing style and editing may be a reflection of not having a journalism program at the school. Stewart said students could minor in journalism by taking a few classes, but no journalism major existed at the time.[42] There was little training for reporters. “It was pretty much on-the-job training,” Waite explained.[43]

Waite tried to maintain an open mind about the protests throughout that year and never participated in any demonstration or rally. His view of what was happening was perhaps not the typical student view because he was not the typical student. He had not planned to attend college when he traveled from his small hometown of McKeesport in western Pennsylvania to Washington, D.C., after high school graduation. Then, while apartment hunting a few weeks later, he saw what he thought was an apartment building full of girls and went inside to apply for an apartment, thinking this would be a fun place to live. Instead it turned out to be a women’s dorm at Howard University. The experience got him thinking about attending college. It took him two years to earn the money he needed to get started, so he was older and more mature than the typical freshman. Throughout his time at Howard, he also maintained a part-time job at the Library of Congress, which provided him with a different view than those students who mostly spent their time on campus. “I could see the more establishment view of achieving things through compromise, through participation,” he said. “I just had a difficult time understanding the attitude of tearing up the social structure to rebuild something to replace it.” He had joined the newspaper staff because fellow debater Adrienne Manns and others worked there. He was a reporter but never an editor.

By spring 1968, he was preparing to graduate, yet Waite was not unaffected by the social turmoil of the time. “There was a dynamic tension that was going on, not only throughout the country, from a social status standpoint, from a racial standpoint,” he said. “It seemed that everything was in flux at the time. I was terribly conflicted. You could probably see some of that in my reporting, which was factual, what took place in the conflict between the administration and the students. … I know that there was the conflict between the practicality of achieving results and the destructive behavior that I saw that was hard for me to reconcile.”[44]

Waite asked to write the main story about the takeover after it began. “I had a great interest in it,” he explained, “and I was not inclined to be a demonstrator myself, but I was interested in the issues that both sides had raised. I don’t believe I got assigned to do that. It was something that I felt the need to do.” He went in and out of the building many times during the protest. “There was this anticipation that there was going to be tear gas; there were going to be people dragged out and arrested and all the rest of that,” he said, though that never happened because eventually students left on their own.[45] Once again in chronological order, his story on March 22 explained how the protest developed, quoted some of the speakers at the rally that preceded the takeover, and finally described some of the scene inside the occupied building.[46] “These stories that we were writing, they were all first person [accounts],” Waite said. “They were all what we saw, what we were doing.”[47]

Stewart, on the other hand, was among the takeover demonstrators and spent a few nights sleeping on the floor inside the administration building. “People slept. People talked. There was a lot going on. It was kind of like camp,” she said. “I remember feeling very passionate about the issues concerning black studies. The mantra was ‘Howard should be a black university,’ which sounds ridiculous now because it was majority black [at the time], but the curriculum did not reflect that. The issues were very real and very important.” She also felt it was important to report on the event. Being a participant journalist was not an issue at Howard where the newspaper staff had no code of ethics that reporters were expected to abide by. It was not unusual for the time, she said, noting that student newspapers throughout the country in general supported the student protesters on their campuses. “You wouldn’t find many [student newspapers] that would editorialize against the protests,” she said. She was elected as vice president of the sophomore class for the next year, continued to work for the student newspaper, and continued to cover campus issues.[48]

Stewart also had a close connection to the demand for a Black Studies Program. As a sociology major, she sat through some of the social science classes that she said were Euro-centric, which many students saw as a big problem, “even for students who had no interest in majoring in Black Studies but who didn’t see any relevance to their lives or the lives of black people throughout the country,” she said. “I remember walking out of a sociology class where the professor was having a discussion that involved [white movie stars] Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and their lifestyle, and I just thought, ‘this is so absurd.’ I remember walking out of the class and getting out of that major.” She later was one of the first students to graduate in Afro-American studies when it was finally added to the Howard curriculum. [49]

Stewart’s report on the takeover in the March 22 paper was a front-page sidebar to Waite’s main story and was filled with quotes from other protest participants.[50] These were the only two stories about the takeover on the front page of the issue, which was the only paper published during the event. Editors devoted about half the front page to the demonstration, including a photo. A campaign speech by presidential hopeful Eugene McCarthy and a preview of the coming visit of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. filled the rest of the page. Inside, one page was devoted to the takeover event, including the jump from Waite’s front page story, along with one other story on a third page, and pictures of students manning the campus telephone switch board and studying in an administration building conference room.

The rest of the eight-page, tab-size paper contained normal college newspaper fodder: announcements of coming events, sports, and opinion pieces. The usual columns and commentary filled the op-ed page but did not address the takeover. Instead, a long open-forum piece commemorated the 1960 Sharpeville massacre in South Africa where police killed 69 people when they fired into a crowd of black demonstrators. Two regularly student-written columns addressed other racial issues. One of the letters to the editor offered support from students at George Washington and American universities.

The editorial, titled “The Motley Crowd,” said the demonstration was the result of “101 years of stifling plantation rule” that students had finally decided to throw off. The Motley Crowd referred to the students who received letters for disrupting the Charter Day program. (The editorial indicated 37 students received letters. However, Waite’s story reported it was 39 students, and Myles’ book said it was 38.) The editorial points out that student government leaders were not among those cited on Charter Day, noting the move was the administration’s failed attempt to “divide and rule.” Instead, student leaders joined in the takeover protest. The piece concluded by urging UJAMAA members and other students to stick together because “you have nothing to lose but your chains.”[51]

The March 22 issue was typical of The Hilltop reporting throughout the year. Most of the news pieces read like modern blog entries filled with opinions and observations about life, politics and any other topic on the writer’s mind. “It was a student newspaper, and it was perceived by the staff as an advocacy publication as far as student rights and student protests were concerned,” Stewart explained. “There was an effort to cover the facts. If we ever got a response, say from the administration, it was in the story.”[52] Waite said he could see the competing interests the newspaper faced. Newspapers, even those published by college students, “are supposed to operate as a news gathering operation, to report the things that are going on, to inform the student body,” Waite said, “but the newspaper was looked to as an organ of the movement. There was a lot of pressure to involve the newspaper as an advocate of a position as opposed to one that just reported.”[53]

The protest ended Saturday, March 23, between issues of The Hilltop. The next paper, March 29, had more coverage of the five-day event, including a full-page chronological account of the last two days of the takeover,[54] and another shorter piece that included more quotes from sit-in participants.[55] However, it was another college’s protest that garnered the top spot on Page One. Written by Waite, it told of 90 Howard students traveling to Bowie State College, 20 miles northeast in Maryland, to help students there who were conducting a boycott of classes in an attempt to force administrators there to deal with their demands for improving the quality of the everything from the condition of the dorms to the food and the registrar’s office.[56] Another story that was almost as large dominated the bottom of the front page. Though not designated as an analysis, it did just that by examining the development of protests at Howard that finally culminated with the takeover.[57]

A strongly worded March 29 editorial chastised the administration for doing nothing, not just during the takeover but for some time leading up to the demonstration.[58] Though Manns does not remember if she wrote the editorial, she said it reads like something she would have written at the time. Specific word choice in the piece is an interesting example of what she said was an “attitudinal terminology” at the time.[59] When referring to the students or African-Americans in general, the author uses the word “black,” but administrators or people who did not support the students’ cause are called “Negroes” or “coloreds.” The opening sentence shows the difference: “Black students at Howard, like black people in urban areas, are becoming the subject of intensive studies by irresponsible Negro tokens. …” Further down in the editorial appears references to “those Negro[es] who operate Howard,” “colored nationalists,” and “defending Dean Snowden as a colored hero,” all showing the students’ disdain.[60] “That was our thing. I take responsibility for that,” Manns said, though she points to human rights activist Malcolm X as probably the person who started the practice of using the terminology this way. “We were saying the old guard, that they wanted to be known as Negroes, and they wanted to be known as coloreds, … that they were for promoting the status quo and getting along and fitting in.” Referring to African-Americans as “black” was a sign of militancy, of a willingness to embrace racial identity, of a desire for change. It was meant to send a message to the administration and the administration knew it, she said.[61]

The Hilltop appeared to have no more problems than other student newspapers when it came to getting along with the administration. Campus officials were upset with some of the things the students published and did not say much about others. Sometimes, though, “it was pretty rough,” Manns recalled. Her satirical pieces got her in the most hot water with the campus officials. Once she had accused Howard’s president of tap dancing for Congress, equating the need to procure federal funding to a black person dancing and entertaining to get favor. The staff had even superimposed President Nabrit’s head on the body of a ballerina. The president was angry, and the dean called, demanding an apology for the obscene portrayal. Manns replied that the piece was satire, and since the ballerina was clothed, it was not obscene. She did not apologize.[62]

One incident in particular stands out for Manns because of the heat she took for it. In a March 1, 1968, editorial, the newspaper chastised Howard law professor Patricia Harris, the administration, and the Board of Trustees for not speaking out publicly about the Orangeburg shootings. Harris, who served as the first black ambassador from the United States from 1965 to 1967, had the opportunity to speak out, the editorial maintained, because she served on the Human Relations Commission at the United Nations and, just four days after the shootings, conducted a press conference where she could have addressed it but did not.[63] Harris made an angry call to Manns about the “scurrilous attack” because she was not presently a member of such a commission (the correct name was Human Rights Commission, Harris said), and she had not conducted a press conference. The newspaper reported Harris’ response in a correction story the next week, also on the editorial page. The newspaper apologized for the errors but tempered it with a call for action: “We apologize for the misstatements, but in doing so we do look forward to her speaking out as a fellow Afro-American.”[64]

The Columbia Protests

When Columbia protest organizers decided they were going to take over buildings in New York City, they contacted some of the Howard students for advice on how to do it. Manns remembers meeting with some Columbia students to explain how they had managed the takeover at Howard. She was proud of the civility students maintained at Howard because, despite the crush of students piled into the administration building, students kept the building clean and did not vandalize the premises.[65] Students at Columbia were accused of just the opposite when police ended the eight-day occupation, though many students and faculty claimed the damage was caused by the police and not the students.[66]

Like Howard University, the Columbia protest did not just happen one day. It was the culmination of several issues, some that stretched back several years, in an environment that was ripe for something big to happen. The story is documented in the book Up Against the Ivy Wall: A History of the Columbia Crisis, which is the source for most of the information used here about the protest. It was written by members of the Spectator staff. Just as students had been expressing for several years at colleges and universities across the country, many of the Columbia student body felt the administration was not responding to their desires for change and a place at the decision-making table about issues that affected their academic lives. They also raised concerns about the university’s continuing expansion that throughout the decade was taking big bites out of neighboring Harlem and evicting blacks and Puerto Ricans who made up 85 percent of the area.

While unrest over the unpopular Vietnam War was only part of the backdrop of the Howard protest, it was one of the key issues at Columbia. A little more than a year before the building takeovers, the Spectator student newspaper confirmed that the university was affiliated with the Institute for Defense Analyses, an research group started in 1956 to evaluate weapons and conduct other research for the Department of Defense. In 1967, Columbia’s president, Grayson Kirk, and a Columbia trustee were on the IDA board. [67] Students saw the office on campus as Columbia’s complicity in the Vietnam War that so many hated. Later that year, on October 23, 1967, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) delivered a letter to Kirk demanding that Columbia sever all ties with any defense-related research. Eventually, the university did just that although Kirk continued as an individual on the IDA board. On February 23, 1968, SDS also stopped campus recruiting by Dow Chemical, one of the chief producers of the flamethrower fuel napalm and the defoliant Agent Orange, both used in the Vietnam War. On March 27, 1968, members of SDS protested inside Low Memorial Library, which served as the administration building at the time. The demonstration was two-fold: protest involvement in IDA and flout the new campus rule that forbade protests inside campus buildings. Six protesters, who became known at the IDA 6, were later ordered to appear before the dean but wanted an open hearing; the dean refused and placed them on probation.

The construction of a new gymnasium sparked the second key issue in 1968. The university was finally starting construction on the building that had been planned since 1960 when the city leased part of Morningside Park to the university. The plan called for the Black Harlem community to have access to the facilities as well. To do that, the community’s entrance was designed to be on the lower level on the back side of the building — basically a back door. Community members, who felt they had not been part of the planning process, found the door solution to be a symbolic return to the days of blacks being required to enter through the back of a building. The community would also be able to use only about 12 percent of the building, another sore point for critics. The day after construction began in February 1968, 20 people staged a sit-in with 12 arrested. The next week, 150 protested and 12 were arrested.

The two issues came together on Tuesday, April 23. SDS protesters, upset about how the IDA 6 were treated, staged a rally at the gym construction site, joined by black students. SDS leaders were expected to attend a discussion with university officials in the McMillan Theater following the rally. Police converged on the construction site, and the crowds moved back to regroup at the sundial, located in the center of College Walk on the campus. Rather than meet with the administration in the theater, protesters then decided to take over the Columbia College administration located in Hamilton Hall until six demands were met: drop action against the IDA 6, with general amnesty for protesters; drop the ban on protests inside buildings; stop construction on the gym until appropriate community involvement could be accomplished; provide open hearings and due process for future student discipline issues; get out of the IDA; drop charges from previous protests at the gym site. When Columbia College Dean Henry Coleman came into the building to talk to the protesters, the students decided to hold him hostage until their demands were met though they allowed him to leave the next day.

The takeover spread to other buildings in the following days, and the university shut down. In the early morning hours the next day, black students in Hamilton Hall, members of the group Student Afro-American Society, asked all the white students to leave. Although the black students were also opposed to the gym, they had a different agenda that also included a demand for more Black Studies classes. The white protesters, directed by SDS leaders, marched to Low Library and broke a window in a door in order to enter. They commandeered President Kirk’s office and rifled through his drawers and cabinets. Architecture students took over Avery Hall to protest the architecture program. Graduate students took over Fayerweather Hall. Other students took over Mathematics Hall. The students barricaded the various entrances to keep police or others from entering. To gather supplies, students entered and left the buildings through the windows.

The administration made feeble attempts to diffuse the situation by offering disciplinary warnings instead of probation. They did not want to give in on any of the demands. A faculty group’s proposal, called “the bitter pill,” would not give either side everything it wanted but called for working toward change. The administration finally called in the police. They came during the early morning hours of Tuesday, April 30. Officers, both in and out of uniform, cleared the buildings and arrested 695 people. Then they swept through the campus, beating anyone they met — including innocent bystanders — to force them off the grounds. Students followed up the takeovers with a class strike that about 6,000 students respected. Professors planned alternative ways to end the semester, and students were allowed to take passing grades rather than a letter grade. A second round of protests occurred May 17—18. This time students protested in the neighborhood at a building that the university had purchased and then evicted tenants in preparation for expansion. Students also took over Hamilton Hall again, continuing the protest of the IDA 6 discipline.[68]

Columbia Daily Spectator

The student newspaper began as the Columbia Spectator in 1877. It published twice a month until fall 1896 when it went weekly for three years, then biweekly from February 1899 to June 1902. Daily publication during the regular school year began October 6, 1902, with summer publication beginning in 1916. In 1880, it was published in a small two-column format. Subscriptions cost $2 for a year of 18 issues. It bears little resemblance — in looks or content — to its successor, the Columbia Daily Spectator.

Independent since 1962, the newspaper was completely run by students in 1968 with no faculty or administration oversight. Advertising paid for publication, and no one was paid for their work. The editors, chosen by the outgoing managing board of editors, typically served for one year, beginning in March of what was usually their junior year.[69] As protesting started to heat up at Columbia in spring 1968, a new set of editors was moving into leadership roles. At the annual Blue Pencil Dinner in mid-March, 10 men were named to run the newspaper, including Robert Friedman as editor-in-chief with Michael Rothfeld as managing editor and Oren Root Jr. in the newly created executive editor position with the responsibility to coordinate editorial and business policy as well as plan and write editorials.[70] That same night, more than 40 staffers were promoted to various news boards, including reporters Michael Stern and Robert Stulberg, who had both been covering the different protests occurring on campus.[71]

All of these five men had been with the Spectator staff since the beginning of their college careers at Columbia. As freshmen, though in different years, Friedman and Stern had shown up at the newspaper office, got an assignment, and kept coming back, which was the typical way people got started at the newspaper. Stern’s first assignment was a review, but he soon was writing about community affairs, including the controversy about Columbia’s expansion into Morningside Heights.[72] Rothfeld started because someone at the dorm where he lived suggested checking it out.[73] Stulberg followed in the footsteps of the first female Spectator editor, Eleanor Prescott, whom he had known when both of them were growing up in Detroit. “She really didn’t try to sell me on the Spectator,” Stulberg recalled about telling Prescott he was considering debate instead. “She looked kind of disbelieving that it would even be a choice in my mind.” And, of course, Spectator won out.[74] Root remembers clearly his first byline as a freshman with a story he had written about a student athlete who had been reclassified as 1A for the draft, making him eligible to go to Vietnam despite his student status. His editor completely rewrote the entire piece with hardly any of Root’s original wording, but Root still got the byline. As an editor, Root tried to truly just edit and leave the rewriting to the reporters.[75]

The Columbia Daily Spectator published each weekday, including Saturday and Sunday during the takeovers. Though it was scheduled to be available each morning at 8 a.m., it sometimes hit stands in the afternoon. “We used to joke that we were New York’s second largest afternoon newspaper even though we were supposed to come out in the morning,” said Stulberg, who was one of the lead reporters that spring.[76] Typically, the students published 10,000—15,000 copies of the tabloid-sized paper, usually eight pages, Monday through Friday. It was distributed free around campus.

Producing the paper required a mixture of production techniques common at the time. Using what was known as cold type or offset printing, students set copy with a Friden typesetting system that turned out long strips of copy that had to be cut and then affixed to the layout sheets with wax, which allowed for repositioning of the blocks of copy. Headlines were created on a linotype machine — hot type — run by a professional operator the newspaper hired. After assembling all the page elements — known as paste up — the students would grab a taxi and take the completed pages and artwork to the press in Brooklyn. The goal was to finish by 2 a.m. and then visit the West End Bar for a drink before it closed at 4 a.m. However, it stopped serving food at 3 a.m.[77] “The question was,” Root recalled, “would we get the paper to bed in time to get to the West End to get my favorite sliced egg sandwich on rye with mayo and lettuce?”[78]

Putting out the newspaper required a lot of commitment. Work began early afternoon each day, including Sunday, with Saturday off. Most of the editors and reporters tried to squeeze classes into the morning hours and then spend the rest of the day at the Spectator. Many of the staff, all volunteers, spent 75—80 hours each week there. “I ended up majoring in Spectator rather than academic subjects,” said Rothfeld, who was the managing editor when the takeovers began. “I went to classes, and I did OK on my grades and stuff, but I really loved Spectator.”[79] It was the one-week break at midterm and two weeks before finals when the newspaper did not print that saved Friedman’s grades. “That’s when I did all my school work,” he said.[80] Stulberg immersed himself in newspaper work so much that by the end of his first semester he was ill.[81]

Throughout the protests, the staffers worked to maintain objectivity and professionalism in their writing. “Most of the reporters and editors were sympathetic to the strike, but I would say none of them were actually participants,” Friedman said, noting that he and most of the staff saw their role as journalists as “simply to tell the story as truthfully and tellingly as possible. And make sure we got the paper out every night. I think we kept a very high standard of journalism in reporting what was going on and we got a lot of praise for it from our colleagues in the professional press.”[82]

Objectivity can be an elusive concept to try to embrace, but it was something the staff always strove to achieve. “We definitely tried to write coherent stories,” Root said. “We had standards we tried to live up to in terms of the appearance of the paper and the way we wrote headlines. I look back on it, and I’m proud of what we did, even through the prism of 44 intervening years.”[83]

Stulberg recognized that complete objectivity was really not achievable: “We talked often about the canard that journalists are somehow bound to report objectively as if to say there was an objective truth from which the true reporter would emerge in the newspaper, when in fact every reporter at every newspaper had certain subjective views of what was going on and brought ideas about that to the table as they approached any event. So we talked about the importance of accuracy, the importance of care, the importance of fairness — giving multiple sides of the controversy [an] opportunity to express a view.”[84]

The editors and reporters also thought they should not become participants in the protests because it would jeopardize the credibility and status of the newspaper. “The newspaper was highly regarded as a source for campus information by faculty, students and administrators,” Friedman said, and the staff wanted to keep it that way.[85]

The Spectator staff worked hard to be professional. “[The editors] had very high expectations of distinguishing what we knew and what we didn’t know and how we knew and how we determined that we knew it and how we would demonstrate it to others,” Rothfeld said. After a story was researched, reported and written, the reporters had to defend it to the editors. It was a rigorous process. “It was run like a professional, metropolitan daily newspaper, and everybody took it very, very seriously,” he said.[86]

The staff also tried to emulate the New York Times. “The Times is what we aspired to,” Root said. “There were quite a few Spectator alums who went to the Times, and in a grandiose way that’s what we tried to measure ourselves to.”[87] Rothfeld remembers copying the Times style of making headlines complete sentences and ranking stories by placement on the page just as the Times did.[88] “All of our standards had been formed by the Times,” Stern said. “We tried to be fair and balanced in reporting unless it was a news analysis, which was a classic Times distinction of the ‘60s.”[89]

However, none of the editors or reporters was impressed with the New York Times’ coverage of the protests and especially a front-page opinion piece that castigated the student protesters. “When we saw the Times write what we thought was a beyond-the-pale opinion piece on the front page, we were pretty scandalized,” Root said.[90] Stern recalls the Times reporting the news stories about Columbia like a typical police story. “They really missed the story,” he said. “The issue was about the role of the university in society and its relationship to the war, and that was what the student movement was about in the ‘60s. … The [entire] student movement was covered as a police story. That’s what we resented, really.”[91] The Times was not alone in covering it this way. “There was a strong tendency in the mainstream press to focus on this as some sort of youthful acting-out,” Stulberg said, noting that it was rare for any professional media to “even mention the underlying issues, which had moved people to support the protests, including most especially the war in Vietnam and the racial issues raised by the construction of the gym in the adjoining park. … We took the politics and social impacts of the events quite seriously rather than view this as just some sort of exuberant boxing match between contending sides. I think that was a fairly sophisticated view, given that we were student journalists.”[92]

When the takeovers, strike and subsequent protests occurred, the Spectator editors began an ongoing conversation about how to cover what was happening, making sure they really tried to express the underlying issues and explain them to readers. “It was not a complicated story to cover,” Friedman said, especially with everything happening right on campus. “What was complicated was figuring out what we wanted to write and getting it all done on schedule. In the first three days I didn’t sleep but a couple of hours. The protests were going on 24 hours a day. We would double back to the office about 6 o’clock in the evening and try to make sense of what had happened that day and try to write our stories and get them edited over the next eight hours.”[93]

Reporters did not find the requirements for covering the protest to be any different than their other assignments. “The goals during the crisis were the same goals the newspaper always had, which were to research and report with care and accuracy,” Stulberg said. “In a sense, an additional imperative during the protest was to try as best we could to report on and illuminate the underlying grievances to the protests, the underlying political social issues.” So the reporters spent time explaining the issues in many of the news stories. “The act of reporting them itself had an advocacy quality about it because we were saying to the reader it’s important that you know about these; it’s important that you think about them; it’s important that you have the information you need to evaluate them.”[94]

The first night of the takeovers, several staffers were up all night, covering the story or trying to get the paper out. Rothfeld had been at McMillan Theater, waiting to cover the SDS meeting with the administrators. When the SDS leaders did not show up, he went outside, just in time to see the protesters entering Hamilton hall.[95]Spectator reporter Mark Jaffe had gotten inside Hamilton Hall with the protesters but had to leave early the next morning when the white students were asked to take their protest elsewhere. Stulberg was on the plaza as the white students streamed out of the building. “I can just picture right now, the groups kind of contesting about what should be done next,” he said. He interviewed protesters as they headed for Low Memorial Library and the president’s office.[96]

Root and Rothfeld were working in the Spectator composing room on the fourth floor of Ferris Booth Hall when they saw the white students leaving Hamilton and heading toward Low. Both grabbed notebooks and went to report on what was happening. Root watched as students broke a window in the door to get into Low Library and went into the president’s office. “I was there and witnessed the beginning of that substantial expansion of the building occupation,” he said.[97]

Rothfeld met Provost David Truman at Low Library. Truman, half dressed, had rushed to the campus when he heard of the occupations. He asked Rothfeld to talk to the student protest leaders, who were now sitting in the president’s office, and try to get them to leave. Rothfeld told Truman that he was there as a journalist and did not think it was appropriate, but Truman finally persuaded him to do it. Rothfeld spoke to SDS leader Mark Rudd, who only responded with a lewd remark. Rothfeld then returned to the entrance and urged Truman not to call in the police at this point because he thought it would only escalate the situation. In hindsight, removing the students from the building immediately would have been the wisest move, Rothfeld said. Instead, when the police did come to campus, the situation had been allowed to fester for days, and the police were ready to take out their anger on “these rich white kids” who were disrupting the university.[98]

Rothfeld also was appalled at what was going on at Hamilton and Low. “To me, philosophically, the taking over of buildings, the shutting down of classrooms, the disruption of the education process, those were things that I abhorred,” he said. He opposed the Vietnam War but not for the same reasons SDS members did. His view of a university’s role included expression without violence. “A university should be the one place in society where all points of view can be presented and discussed and analyzed. And people should be allowed to make up their own minds about developing their own views.” He was not happy when the newspaper editorial stance was in support of the protesters and portrayed the administration as “basically a bunch of hoods” when he knew from his reporting time covering the administration that it was not true. While he was opposed to any building occupations, he sympathized with the black students, who, he believed, had “tangible issues” with the “blatant racism” in the gym construction and thus had a positive goal. The other protesters, however, were making “a negative, amorphous attack on society.” The black students had been willing to negotiate with the administration but the other protesters had not. “They [white students] not only disrupted an open-university process, but also employed the tactics of totalitarian governments,” Rothfeld said.[99] He also saw a slant creeping into the news stories that also supported the protesters.[100]

The Editorial Position

Rothfeld continued to attend the daily editorial meetings where the seven student editors would hash out what the stance would be in the next day’s editorial, but he was not always happy about the position they adopted. Only a majority of editors need support an editorial for it to run. The editors had a policy that if any editor did not support an editorial and felt strongly about it, a dissenting tag line could be added to the piece, listing the editor who disagreed. On the seventh day of the takeover, Monday, April 29, the dissent line read, “Michael Rothfeld took no part in the determination of this editorial.”[101] The next day, Tuesday, for only the second time during the protest, the editorial page had space for a staff box; Rothfeld’s name was missing.

Rothfeld said he had resigned Friday. It was a tough decision. “I had worked hard for two and a half years to get onto the editorial board and to be the managing editor,” he said. “I had two philosophical differences with my colleagues on the editorial board, whom I respected as people and liked as we had all worked together for almost three years. First, I could not agree with their active advancement of the white students’ views and actions as well as the polemical language of the editorials. Second, I could not agree with the political spin that had entered Spectator’s news reporting. The prospects of endless ‘dissent’ lines under editorials and the futility of trying to change the reporting slant made me decide to resign and do other things with my time.”

After Rothfeld’s resignation, two of the editors asked him to reconsider, but Rothfeld held fast. One day he met SDS leader Mark Rudd on campus, and Rudd said, “‘Well, Rothfeld, I hear you got fired because of me.’ This was typical of the self-importance on the part of the SDS leaders. ‘No, Mark, I didn’t lose my job; I quit because I disagree with what you guys are doing,’” Rothfeld said.[102]

Rothfeld was not the only one who took issues with various editorial points. Sports Editor Andrew Crane had dissented from a front-page editorial the day before, Sunday, which called for the administration to grant amnesty or close the university and noted the use of force to end the occupation that was entering its sixth day was “abhorrent and suicidal.”[103] The business manager, advertising manager and comptroller did not sit on the editorial board and had no input on editorial policy, but they apparently wanted that made clear on May 2 when a tag line below the staff box and above the editorial noted their non-involvement.[104] The dissents were indicative of the varying opinions among the editors. “It was very contentious during that period,” Friedman said. “There were a lot of dissents in those editorials, but we managed through the process and reached consensus.” [105]

From the beginning of the takeovers, the “consensus” in the daily editorials, even if it was not strong, was generally critical of the establishment — first the administration and eventually the police. Even before the takeovers, the newspaper had a cool relationship with the administration. “They looked at us with wariness. We often published things that they did not like,” Friedman said. “I should say, to their credit, they never made an effort to interfere with what we did or censor what we wrote or shut us down or anything like that. They might have wished they could have, but they didn’t.”[106]

The morning after students first occupied Hamilton Hall, the Spectator editorial blamed the administration for causing the unrest because of its refusal to give students a say in their education and then recommended that the faculty act to take control, especially of disciplinary action for students. It also supported severing ties with IDA, getting rid of the indoor protest ban, halting work on the gym, and withdrawing trespass charges against those who demonstrated at the gym. The protesters did not get away unscathed, either. It condemned some of the acts of the demonstrators, especially those holding Dean Coleman hostage, those resorting to violence at the gym site, and those allowing non-students to play a leading role in the Hamilton Hall takeover.[107]

The next day, the editorial attacked the administration again, this time for waiting until afternoon before talking to students about the dean’s safety, for calling in police to wander around campus but do nothing, for locking campus buildings to ward off some possible community assault that never came. It also chastised the faculty for missing its opportunities to help, which essentially was an abdication of its role at the university. The only alternative to ending the protest, the editorial maintained, was to halt the gym construction and negotiate with the black students in Hamilton Hall.[108]

When a faculty ad hoc committee finally acted, the editorial praised them first for stepping up,[109] for being the only ones who appeared to be able to do anything to solve the crisis,[110] and then for crafting proposals for settlement that the editorial board encouraged all faculty and protesters to support as well.[111]

As the takeover entered its seventh day, Monday, April 29, the editors had plenty of criticism for all sides of the controversy: The Board of Trustees were out of touch; the administration was at the end of its rope with an exhausted faculty that was about to drop the tether; the protesters were losing sight of why they were demonstrating, seeking immediate action instead of real long-term change. Once again it laid out terms everyone should accept, some that were new this time: faculty must get behind the suggestions from the ad hoc committee and quit their jobs if the administration would not budge; the gym construction must stop; the IDA affiliation must end; and all protesters should receive the same punishment. (The tag line read: “Michael Rothfeld took no part in the determination of the editorial.”)[112]

After police swept through the campus in the wee hours of Tuesday, April 30, arresting and beating students, the editorial that day was a two-column blank space with a wide black border and only the staff box, now minus Rothfeld’s name. “I think probably the best editorial I wrote was the non-editorial,” Friedman said, “because that [marked] the moment in the history of Columbia that they would call the police and arrest 700 people.”[113]

The next day, Wednesday, May 1, the editorial called for resignations of President Kirk and Vice President David B. Truman for worrying about their authority more than what was best for the university, trustee Chairman William Petersen for paralyzing negotiations with protesters, and graduate faculty Dean George Fraenkel for undercutting the faculty. It called for a reorganization of the university, including the transfer of power from the trustees to the faculty, and it urged a strike until changes occurred.[114] The editorial on Thursday, May 2, addressed having police on campus, pointing to police presence as only fueling more student resentment and possible violence. Until the administration removed the police, it said, the campus could not begin to rebuild.[115]

When the student strike began the next week, the Spectator supported the effort and also supported faculty willing to conduct classes somewhere other than the usual classroom. Such a break from the norm would keep the university from falling back into the status quo of the days before the takeover, it claimed.[116] The next day, the editorial was again pointing fingers at the administration as it lauded a police report that showed the administration’s claims of fewer students and a large number of outsiders involved in the takeovers were false. This was more proof that the administration was out of touch with what was going on around campus.[117]

Writing about the Protest

The takeovers and protest were about the only news subject the newspaper covered for several weeks. Some days the paper’s eight pages contained nothing but protest-related stories. Reporters tried to cover every aspect of the protests, interviewing students in and outside the buildings, trying to talk to administration, police and faculty. When protesters blocked the entrances to the occupied buildings, the only way in was through windows, so reporters crawled in and out of the windows to get their stories. With the exception of one Village Voice reporter, the protesters only let student journalists join them inside.[118] Many of the professionals trying to cover the story had to rely on reports from the student reporters who could get inside. “We became the primary news source for everybody,” Friedman said. Reporting about what was happening in Hamilton Hall became difficult, though, because the staff had no black reporters and only blacks were being allowed into the building. Friedman wishes he could have had more diversity on staff and been able to cover the Hamilton Hall front better. Then his staff would have had a better understanding of the important role the black students really played in the protest.[119]

The protests of that spring spoiled the staff with news that was easy to find. No scrounging was necessary to fill the space. “The news was just handed to us on a plate,” Stern said. “All we had to do was be there, be honest, and keep our eyes and ears open. We didn’t have to do anything. We didn’t have to work. We didn’t have to dig. … I thought we did a really good job as kids reporting on a story that was bigger than we knew.”[120] Stulberg recalled the energy of the time. “There was a constant surge of excitement is the other thing that stays with me,” he said. “You’d get up in the mornings and go down to the office, and you didn’t know what the day held in store and that was very exciting, to feel you were going to be involved in unpredictable and emerging events, moment to moment. It was infectious.” [121]

The editors and reporters still have vivid memories of the major events, such as watching white protesters file out of Hamilton Hall as already noted, but also other events that never made the news. Stulberg recalled standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Tom Hayden, one of the SDS leaders, on the south side of the pedestrian bridge over Amsterdam Avenue that connected the law school with the main campus. Hayden was addressing a large assembly of high school students on the street below, trying to energize the youths who had come up Amsterdam to show their support for the college student strike. Hayden was explaining how important it was to focus on the issues behind all the protests. “Then he turned to me, and he whispered, ‘what’s the first demand?’” Stulberg said. “So I gave it to him. Then he asked me for the next one.” The exchange continued as Stulberg reminded Hayden of all the student demands. Telling the story still makes Stulberg laugh. “I never reported on that,” he said. “It would have been a wonderful little piece for the newspaper.”[122] Stern recalled how difficult the administration could be when reporters, both students and professionals, were trying to get information. After the buildings had been emptied by the police, Stern and a Washington Post reporter, Nicholas von Hoffman were at Low Library. The frustrated Post reporter kicked open the door and stormed in. “It was great,” Stern said. “You couldn’t do that as a student.”[123]

Friedman found an unexpected job he had to do when the takeovers happened: handle the professional press. “I had to entertain and educate the entire national press corps,” he said. “The first thing they said when they got to my office is ‘what the hell is going on here?’ The New York Times reporter and the Washington Post reporter were filing their stories from our office, so I was holding their hands. [The national reporters] were parachuting into a campus that they knew nothing about. They knew none of the people. They were learning on the job. They were asking the right questions, but they were starting from a position of ignorance. It’s a position I have often found myself in later on [as a reporter and editor]. You reach out to whoever you think are the most trustworthy people to give you guidance and advice.” Protesters would not let the professional press into the buildings, so the reporters had to rely on the student reporters for information.[124] Root remembers Times reporter John Kifner, who was only a few years older than the students, hanging out in the Spectator office, talking and listening to the students, something other professional reporters never did.[125] The editors had less positive interactions with other Times reporters. “They really missed the story,” Stern said. “Eventually we put a sign up saying none of them were welcome in the office because they were such assholes.”

Stern ran into a unique problem with the Times: another man named Michael Sterne, with an “e” on the end of his name, was a Times reporter. Many people did not realize there were two with such similar names reporting the same event. “They kept asking why I could write such crap in the Times when I seemed to get it right in the Spectator,” Stern said. When student Michael Stern later went to Cambridge University in England on an English fellowship, he discovered the other Michael Sterne had been transferred to the London news bureau, so the confusion continued.[126]

Some of the editors and reporters remember the violence that occurred when the police removed the protesters because they were assaulted as well. Part of Root’s experience was documented on film and appeared in the Spectator without his knowledge or approval — he found it embarrassing. Student photographer Alan Epstein had snapped a picture of Root being helped to his feet after being battered by police, a grimace of pain on his face. “It was unbelievable because I knew everything that went into the paper every day,” Root said. “The fact they got it into the paper without my even knowing about it was quite a little trick.” He had been standing with the crowd of bystanders outside one of the occupied buildings, Avery Hall, when the police started to clear the campus in the early morning hours of April 30. “I was just there observing what was going on,” said Root, who was wearing a coat and tie as the reporters always did at the time to look professional. “All of a sudden, some cop hit me from behind and knocked me down. I caught a glimpse of him. He was a plainclothes cop. The plainclothes cops were some of the most brutal. I fell down and while I was on the ground, was hit or kicked a number of times. I was just standing there with my notepad and my pen.”

Later that night, as police arrested about 700 protesters, one grabbed Root, who was standing on the steps of Low Library taking notes. He told the officer he was a reporter for the Spectator and was just doing his job and even pulled out his light blue press card to prove his story, but the officer ignored it and put him in a line with other students who were being arrested. “Every cop I passed, I’d say, ‘I was arrested for exercising my First Amendment right, the right of the press to cover events,’” he said. He was loaded into a paddy wagon and then taken off again to wait for a bus. Once again he tried to tell the officers he was a journalist and not a protester. When an officer finally asked him if he had wanted to get arrested, Root told him no, so the officer said he was allowed to leave. Another officer who saw him leave the line tried to force him back, but the first officer intervened, and Root was allowed to leave.

Meanwhile, Friedman, thinking Root had been carted off to jail, called Root’s father, an attorney, who had telephoned his law partner at about 2 a.m. to have him deal with the situation. Root learned what happened when he got back to the newspaper office and called his parents to straighten things out. Root said through it all, the only real casualty was his favorite corduroy jacket. The left sleeve was ripped. “I got it sewed up,” Root said. “You could always see that it [had been ripped], sort of like a scar. I wore it for a number of years.” [127]

Root saw more violence a few weeks later during the second wave of protests and police action. “I certainly remember the out-of-control brutality by the police in public was even more pronounced at the second big bust,” he said of the police as they charged across the south part of the campus bisected by College Walk. “They were just beating the hell out of some people. It was pretty scary to watch them with their night sticks and blackjacks, just beating people up. Some people received some pretty bad beatings in that.” He saw Sanford Garelik, the chief inspector of the New York Police Department. “He was there witnessing his cops going completely wild and did nothing to stop them,” he said. It was class resentment turned to violence. “There were a lot of larger issues that were playing out between the police and the students,” Root said, noting that an officer had been injured by protesters so there were some police who were out for revenge.[128] Stern, who suffered a black eye and even was arrested and charged with trespass at one of the off-campus protests, explained the class issue: “These were lower middle class Irish cops who just hated everything that we were — and with good reason. Their kids were in the Army and going to Vietnam, and there we were at college.”[129]

After the main protests were over, Friedman and some of the others started to realize that they had a great story that needed to be marketed. First, they decided to reprint all the issues from the takeovers in a booklet they titled Crisis at Columbia: An Inside Report on the Rebellion at Columbia From the Pages of the Columbia Daily Spectator. It contained 80 pages of the Spectator, from the morning after the Hamilton Hall takeover, April 24, through May 10 and the publication of Connection, a magazine-style insert that reporters produced with in-depth stories about what had happened. Friedman said the business manager had refused to fund the project so the other editors scrounged financing to do it themselves and then sold the copies for $1 each. Later, he spearheaded the project to write the book about the protests and had a book contract in hand by June 1. Building on the reporting they had done, the students researched even more, re-interviewed many people, and had Up Against the Ivy Wall completed by the end of August.[130]

For Friedman, who is now an editor at Bloomberg News, the experience at the Spectator was the beginning of his journalism career. He was able to learn storytelling skills there that have served him throughout his career in journalism.[131] The other four dabbled in journalism some after graduation, and all learned a great deal from their experience on the newspaper. “I learned more about how things work writing and later editing than anything else I learned in college, really,” said Rothfeld, who spent three years writing for Fortune magazine and then two as assistant to Time Inc.’s chair and CEO before turning his interest to Wall Street and then Broadway as a play producer.[132] Stulberg, who was a reporter and editor in Miami for five years before attending law school, is now an attorney in New York. He said he still uses the investigative skills that he learned at the Spectator in his law practice. “We also gained a huge amount of experience in working as a team under an enormous amount of time pressure to produce a product,” he said. He likes to hire employees who worked for a student newspaper because he knows first-hand the skills they have gained.[133] Root also spent time as a journalist for a summer in Philadelphia and then nights at another paper but “I didn’t type fast enough,” so he too became a New York lawyer. He traces his ability to write up against a court deadline back to the Spectator publishing deadlines. “To be able to write decently and communicate well and not have people be totally distracted by bad or sloppy writing comes in useful no matter what one does,” he said.[134] Stern had a brief stint at the Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal before teaching English for 10 years then also becoming an attorney. He remains proud of the job the Spectator did in covering the protests. “We got the facts and the context of the demonstrations themselves and what that meant right, I think. It wasn’t just a police story. It was about the university’s role in society. That was the real story, and that was the right time for it. That, I think, we did get right.”[135]

Conclusion

As noted already noted, Howard and Columbia universities shared many commonalities. Their student newspapers, even with dissimilar views on journalism, also shared some important values that actually made their approaches to similar stories more alike than one might realize.

First, accuracy was critical to both. Advocacy and objective journalism both have factual, accurate reporting at the core. Indeed, the validity of any kind of journalism rests on the journalist’s credibility for producing accurate reports. Even the smallest infraction can seriously damage the reputation of a newspaper, so accuracy is held in high esteem. Every individual interviewed expressed the importance of accuracy in the reporting and editing they did.

Secondly, students of both staffs were completely devoted to their work on the student newspaper. The differing publication schedule — weekly at Howard and daily at Columbia — seemed to have little impact on the amount of time students spent at the newspaper office in what should have been basically part-time jobs. All of those interviewed talked about a work schedule of longer hours than even a regular full-time job. And they all reported struggling to do their best academically because the newspaper demanded so much of their time.

The challenges of doing the best job were similar for both staffs. Even though neither administration tried to muzzle the student newspaper, administrators did not always make themselves available for comment, which frustrated reporters at both schools. Both staffs also tried to go deeper in the issues and provide a clear understanding of what the issues really were instead of the “police story” approach the professional media gave student protests of the era. Crushing press deadlines were also a problem at both newspapers, certainly a common problem at most student newspapers throughout the country at any point in history.

The political stances of the members of each staff also ran the gamut, yet all those interviewed reported good relations among the staff and few disagreements that could not be resolved. As Oren Root explained, the newspaper participants were self-selecting because they had to be willing to spend 60—70 hours, six and half days a week working on the Spectator. “To a certain extent, if you didn’t get along with the people, it just wasn’t a place that you wanted to spend that much time.”[136] Most of the former staffers at The Hilltop have not kept in touch. Spectator staffers from that year still contact each other a few times a year, and all expressed that they continue to be friends. Of course, they also formed a different kind of bond because they had the chance to work closely on the book about the events, and some of them lived together during the summer while they did it.

The kind of journalism each staff practiced is a reflection of the professional influence each had as neither school offered a journalism degree at the time. (Columbia’s School of Journalism was for graduate degrees only.) Most had worked on their high school papers, so they had a notion about how a reporter goes about writing a story in the form they read in the professional newspapers. At Howard, Manns, who had often read an advocacy publication, decided early on that she wanted to emulate what she saw there. Other students at Howard were also familiar with the Afro-American publications, many of which also published in an advocacy style, and would be influenced by those newspapers in the writing they did for the student newspaper. Staffers also did not think it seemed out of line when at least two of the staff members, Manns and Stewart, became participant journalists, which is a sub-category of advocacy journalism.

At Columbia, student editors and reporters aspired to be the New York Times in their approach to the news, with objectivity as one of the key goals. However, as Robert Stulberg pointed out, the Times, like all newspapers, has reporters and editors who bring their own life experiences, opinions, and biases to their work. When a Times reporter was asked about the Spectator’s coverage of the protests, the reporter had responded, “‘They’ve done a very good job for a newspaper with a point of view’. That has always stayed with me, as if to say that the good, gray New York Times did not have a point of view,” Stulberg said chuckling.[137] Complete objectivity, then, can be an elusive place to reach, even for professionals.

Only Robert Friedman and Pearl Stewart made journalism their main adult careers. The others found different passions that fulfilled them. Yet their time at college had done just what colleges have done for centuries and continue to do today: help young adults define who they are, develop some of their beliefs, and shape their future. The time on the newspaper also provided the laboratory for them to experiment with writing styles, management styles, and leadership styles. It provided the opportunity to hone more than their writing skills but to master friendship, perseverance and team work as well.

Adrienne Manns Israel teaches African and African-American history in Greensboro, North Carolina, where she is the past vice president of Academic Affairs at Guilford College. She laughs when she thinks about how much trouble she caused as a student at Howard with her sarcastic jabs at the administration. “When the students do it to me now, I feel like it’s payback,” she said with a chuckle. She said the Guilfordian student newspaper has more of her respect because she understands what they are trying to do and how hard it is to do it.

Pearl Stewart went on to earn a master’s degree in communication and have a career in various types of print journalism, including some public relations. She was the first African-American woman to serve as an editor at a major daily newspaper, Oakland Tribune. She has also taught college journalism and now does freelance writing and editing from her home in Jackson, Mississippi.

Clyde Waite never intended to practice journalism as a career. “My career has always been one of serendipity,” he said. “Opportunities present themselves and I sort of fall into them.” After law school at Yale, he was an attorney until becoming the first black common pleas court judge in Doylestown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 2003.

Robert Friedman taught high school for a year before earning a master’s degree in English from Columbia and heading back to professional journalism where he has spent the rest of his career. He worked for many publications, all based in New York City, including the Wall Street Journal, the Village Voice, New York Newsday, Life magazine, and Fortune magazine. He also freelanced for Esquire, Rolling Stone, and other publications. He has been with Bloomberg since 2008.

Oren Root spent time as a public defender and then a private criminal defense attorney after finishing Fordham Law School. His interests in immigration detention have brought him to the nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice where he works on providing counsel and legal information to people in immigration-detention and police-immigrant community relations.

Michael Stern earned a PhD from Yale and his law degree from Berkeley. His California law practice deals with technology law, intellectual property, and licensing issues.

Robert Stulberg became an Emmy-award winner for his investigative work on a documentary he wrote in Miami about the Florida citrus industry. He then attended Antioch School of Law and now is a labor attorney in New York City.

Michael Rothfeld has been a journalist and private equity investor, has devoted time to non-profit organizations, and serves as a member of the Board of Trustees at Columbia University.

Notes

---

[1] Adrienne Manns, telephone interview by author, August 11, 2012.

[2] Robert Friedman, telephone interview by author, August 14, 2012.

[3] James L. Moses, “Journalistic impartiality on the eve of a revolution: The Boston Evening Post, 1770—1775,” Journalism History 20, no. 3/4(Winter94 1994): 125.

[4] Harlan S. Stensacis, “Development of the Objectivity Ethic in U.S. Daily Newspapers, “Journal of Mass Media Ethics 2, no. 1 (1986): 50—60.

[5] Lambert A. Wilmer, Our Press Gang: A Complete Exposition of the Corruptions and Crimes of the American Newspapers (Philadelphia: J.T. Lloyd, 1859).

[6] Stensacis, “Development of the Objectivity,” 51.

[7] John W. C. Johnstone, Edward J. Slawski, and William W. Bowman, “The Professional Values of American Newsmen,” Public Opinion Quarterly 36, no. 4 (Winter 1972—73): 522—540.

[8] “What is Mother Jones?” Mother Jonesonline, accessed November 13, 2012, http://www.motherjones.com/about#13.

[9] Tony Gittens, “More Trouble Expected at S.C.: Three Students Murdered In cold Blood in Peaceful Desegregation March,” The Hilltop (Washington, D.C.), February 16, 1968, 1.

[10] Manns interview.

[11] Mark Kurlansky, 1968: The year that rocked the world (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004), 82.

[12] Ibid., 192—208.

[13] Tom Myles, Centennial Plus 1: A photographic and narrative account of the black student revolution: Howard University 1965—1968 (Washington, D.C.: Black-Light Graphics, 1969).

[14] Jerry Avorn et. al., Up Against the Ivy Wall (New York: Atheneum, 1968).

[15] Howard University Annual Report 2015—2016, accessed May 24, 2017, https://www2.howard.edu/sites/ default/files/pdf/2.01.1_HU_Annual_Report_FY2016.pdf

[16] “Howard University Facts,” March 31, 2017, accessed May 24, 2017, https://www2.howard.edu/about/ president/statements/howard-facts.

[17] “James Madison Nabrit, Jr. Biography,” Howard University School of Law, accessed October 17, 2012, http://www.law.howard.edu/1113.

[18] Kurlansky, 1968, 82.

[19] Tom Myles, Centennial, 7.

[20] Manns interview.

[21] Tom Myles, Centennial., 9, 22, 25.

[22] Ibid., 36.

[23] Myles, Centennial Plus 1.

[24] Clyde W. Waite, telephone interview by author, August 10, 2012.

[25] John Turner, “Chuck Stone Challenges Howard to be Black,” The Hilltop (Washington, D.C.), February 9, 1968, 1.

[26] Gayleatha Brown, “Rap Brown Endorses D.C. Black Front,” The Hilltop(Washington, D.C.), February 9, 1968, 6.

[27] Sanders Bebura, “Student Government: ‘We Need to Have a Mild Revolution,’” The Hilltop (Washington, D.C.), February 9, 1968, 1.

[28] “Editorial: What We Want,” The Hilltop (Washington, D.C.), March 8, 1968, 1.

[29] Manns, interview.

[30] “About The Hilltop,” The Hilltop: The student voice at Howard University, accessed May 24,2017, http://www.thehilltoponline.com/editorial-office/about.

[31] Manns, interview.

[32] Pearl Stewart, telephone interview by author, August 9, 2012.

[33] Manns, interview.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Ibid.

[40] Stewart interview.

[41] Waite interview.

[42] Stewart interview.

[43] Waite interview.

[44] Ibid.

[45] Ibid.

[46] Clyde Waite, “Students Take Over the University’s Administration Building; Over 1000 Stage Indefinite Days of Vigil until Their Demands Are Met; President Absent for Unprecedented Student Action,” The Hilltop (Washington, D.C.), March 22, 1968, 1.

[47] Waite interview.

[48] Stewart interview.

[49] Ibid.

[50] Pearl Stewart, “Together, Most Students Say after Seizure,” The Hilltop (Washington, D.C.), March 22, 1968, 1.

[51] “The Motley Crowd,” The Hilltop (Washington, D.C.), March 22, 1968, 4.

[52] Stewart interview.

[53] Waite interview.

[54] Cindee Marshall, “Sit-In Proves to be Effective,” The Hilltop (Washington, D.C.), March 29, 1968, 2.

[55] Cindee Marshall, “Roving Reporter: Sit-Inners Surveyed,” The Hilltop (Washington, D.C.), March 29, 1968, 3.

[56] Clyde W. Waite, “HU Aids Bowie Demonstration,” The Hilltop (Washington, D.C.), March 29, 1968, 1.

[57] Brenda Adams, “Students Struggle for Black University,” The Hilltop (Washington, D.C.), March 29, 1968, 1.

[58] “‘Do nothing’ administration,” The Hilltop (Washington, D.C.), March 29, 1968, 4.

[59] Manns interview.

[60] “‘Do nothing’ administration.”

[61] Manns interview.

[62] Ibid.

[63] “Patricia Harris,” The Hilltop (Washington, D.C.), March 1, 1968, 6.

[64] “Harris’ Reply to HILLTOP,” The Hilltop (Washington, D.C.), March 8, 1968, 6.

[65] Manns interview.

[66] Robert Stulberg, telephone interview by author, September 27 and October 7, 2012.

[67] Jerry Avorn, “Disclose Affiliation Between Columbia, Defense Institute: Individual Professors Do Weapons Research,” Columbia Daily Spectator (New York, NY), March 31, 1967, 1.

[68] Avorn, et al., Up Against the Ivy Wall.

[69] Friedman interview.

[70] P. Alan Green, “Friedman, Garaufis Named to Head Spectator Staffs: Editorial and Business Managing Boards Merged for First Time Since 1939,” Columbia Daily Spectator (New York, NY), March 15, 1968, 1.

[71] A. Stuyvestant Van Nes, “Spectator Promotes Staff Members,” Columbia Daily Spectator (New York, NY), March 15, 1968, 3.

[72] Michael Stern, telephone interview by author, August 17, 2012.

[73] Michael B. Rothfeld, telephone interview by author, September 11, 2012.

[74] Stulberg interview, September 27, 2012.

[75] Oren Root, telephone interview by author, August 28, 2012.

[76] Stulberg interview, September 27, 2012.

[77] Friedman interview.

[78] Root interview.

[79] Rothfeld interview.

[80] Friedman interview.

[81] Stulberg interview, September 27, 2012.

[82] Friedman interview.

[83] Root interview.

[84] Stulberg interview, September 27, 2012.

[85] Friedman interview.

[86] Stulberg interview, September 27, 2012.

[87] Root interview.

[88] Rothfeld interview.

[89] Stern interview.

[90] Root interview.

[91] Stern interview.

[92] Stulberg interview, September 27, 2012.

[93] Friedman interview.

[94] Stulberg interview.

[95] Rothfeld interview.

[96] Stulberg interview.

[97] Root interview.

[98] Rothfeld interview.

[99] Michael Rothfeld, email to author, September 12, 2012.

[100] Rothfeld interview.

[101] “What are the goals?” Columbia Daily Spectator (New York, NY), April 26, 1968, 4.

[102] Rothfeld interview and email.

[103] “An Editorial,” Columbia Daily Spectator (New York, NY), April 28, 1968, 1.

[104] “Cops Out,” Columbia Daily Spectator (New York, NY), May 2, 1968, 4.

[105] Friedman interview.

[106] Ibid.

[107] “A Day of Warning,” Columbia Daily Spectator (New York, NY), April 24, 1968, 4.

[108] “The Final Alternative,” Columbia Daily Spectator (New York, NY), April 25, 1968, 4.

[109] “The Way Out,” Columbia Daily Spectator (New York, NY), April 26, 1968, 4.

[110] “A Glimmer of Hope,” Columbia Daily Spectator (New York, NY), April 27, 1968, 2.

[111] “An Editorial.”

[112] “What are the Goals?” Columbia Daily Spectator (New York, NY), April 29, 1968, 4.

[113] Friedman interview.

[114] “The Reconstruction,” Columbia Daily Spectator (New York, NY), May 1, 1968, 2.

[115] “Cops Out.”

[116] “The Strike,” Columbia Daily Spectator (New York, NY), May 6, 1968, 2.

[117] “Misrepresentations,” Columbia Daily Spectator (New York, NY), May 7, 1968, 2.

[118] Stern interview.

[119] Friedman interview.

[120] Stern interview.

[121] Stulberg interview.

[122] Ibid.

[123] Stern interview.

[124] Friedman interview.

[125] Root interview.

[126] Stern interview.

[127] Root interview.

[128] Ibid.

[129] Stern interview.

[130] Friedman interview.

[131] Ibid.

[132] Rothfeld interview.

[133] Stulberg interview.

[134] Root interview.

[135] Stern interview.

[136] Root interview.

[137] Stulberg interview.