Pattern of demands
Let’s look at students’ demands in the ‘60’s and ’70’s to understand their similarity to today’s demands.
Student demands typically included an increase in the number of faculty, greater recruitment and scholarships for black students, more courses on black history and black experiences in the curriculum, and setting up of a center to serve as a place of refuge from an otherwise racially hostile campus environment.
These early demand letters dating back to the late ‘60’s often followed a similar structure, which included a preamble stating the overarching issue, followed by a list of demands.
For example, a November 1968 letter of student demands at Reed College in Oregon started with the following preamble:
Reed is actively recruiting black students. They bring us here, force us to study the culture of our oppressors (Europe and America), and then neglect our own contributions to civilization. Black people are different. We come from a culture (history and language) and must face a different environment than white people after graduation. Reed does not answer this need.
They go on in this letter to ask for a black studies program. The Black Student Union asked to select the faculty who would teach in the program and wanted control over the curriculum until black faculty were hired to lead it.
Similar demand letters were drafted at other universities.
In May of 1968, the the Afro-American Association at Northeastern University, based in Boston, demanded 50 scholarships for black students as well as curriculum changes to include an Afro-American literature course, an African language course and other cultural courses. They later expanded this initial set of demands to include a black studies program and the establishment of an African-American institute.
Two years later – on October 3 1970 – students at the University of Florida raised similar issues.
This university operates in such a manner as to unjustly exclude black students and professors, and to underemploy black personnel – and damn little is being done to correct the situation. On the contrary, many influential persons are operating under the illusion that progress has been made. To do so is to compare the present to the past without realizing that neither extends a modicum of justice to more than a handful of blacks. There have been many meetings and few results.
They continued with such demands as the recruitment and admission of more black students, establishment of a department of minority affairs and hiring more black faculty.