When the racial tension reaches a boiling point
by Dan Hirschhorn
Senior Editor
Features | 4/24/07
Posted online at 3:52 AM EST on 4/24/07
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On Jan. 8, 1969, more than 50 black students walked into Joseph and Clara Ford Hall, insisted the day's classes be cancelled and staged a sit-in they vowed not to end until the University met their demands.
Among those demands were the formation of an African Studies Department, the hiring of more black professors and the creation of an Afro-American Center, an idea that eventually inspired the Intercultural Center. At the time, white students' initial reactions ranged from disapproval to tacit sympathy. In an increasingly hostile confrontation with the strikers, then-University President Morris Abrams offered the striking students amnesty for their actions, later retracting the offer and replacing it with threats of suspension.
Ford Hall was demolished in 1999 and the Shapiro Campus Center now sits in its place. The students ended their protest that same month without the immediate fulfillment of their demands, but today, many of them have been long-fulfilled.
"If I mention Ford Hall in a classroom, everyone knows what happened," said Prof. Gordon Fellman (SOC), who has taught at Brandeis since 1964.
Almost 40 years later, the sit-in is still telling of the racial tensions largely obscured by the University's liberal character. And there are still times such tensions come to the forefront.
Student hosts of a program on WBRS made disparaging on-air remarks about Asian women in 2002, and The Hoot, a campus newspaper, printed a racially charged poem titled "I hate you thugs" that inflamed students last year. As with Ford Hall, there was a perception among some white students during both affairs that the minorities involved were overreacting.
But no event in recent memory matches the conflict ignited when this newspaper printed an allusion to the most infamous of American racial slurs. In a 2003 sports column criticizing then-Chicago Cubs manager Dusty Baker, the author closed by quoting a student who later said he had never been interviewed:
Among those demands were the formation of an African Studies Department, the hiring of more black professors and the creation of an Afro-American Center, an idea that eventually inspired the Intercultural Center. At the time, white students' initial reactions ranged from disapproval to tacit sympathy. In an increasingly hostile confrontation with the strikers, then-University President Morris Abrams offered the striking students amnesty for their actions, later retracting the offer and replacing it with threats of suspension.
Ford Hall was demolished in 1999 and the Shapiro Campus Center now sits in its place. The students ended their protest that same month without the immediate fulfillment of their demands, but today, many of them have been long-fulfilled.
"If I mention Ford Hall in a classroom, everyone knows what happened," said Prof. Gordon Fellman (SOC), who has taught at Brandeis since 1964.
Almost 40 years later, the sit-in is still telling of the racial tensions largely obscured by the University's liberal character. And there are still times such tensions come to the forefront.
Student hosts of a program on WBRS made disparaging on-air remarks about Asian women in 2002, and The Hoot, a campus newspaper, printed a racially charged poem titled "I hate you thugs" that inflamed students last year. As with Ford Hall, there was a perception among some white students during both affairs that the minorities involved were overreacting.
But no event in recent memory matches the conflict ignited when this newspaper printed an allusion to the most infamous of American racial slurs. In a 2003 sports column criticizing then-Chicago Cubs manager Dusty Baker, the author closed by quoting a student who later said he had never been interviewed:
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