Abstract
Shortly after molding the Organization of African and Afro-American Students at American University (OASATAU) in 1968, Walker “Moose” Foster clarified the group’s function. “All our lives, we’ve been told that niggers ain’t nothing.” But “it does mean something to be a Negro,” said the 19-year-old son of a maid and butler. “We want to appreciate our cultural differences.” Since first stepping on the Washington, DC, campus, “I felt like a fly in buttermilk. I was stranded in a wasteland, in affluent Spring Valley. The only Negroes we saw up here were janitors. I mean, it could be me or my parents.” In the fall of 1969, the University of Tennessee BSU circulated an orientation booklet that exclaimed, “The Black student must realize that, here at U.T., he constitutes what is analogous to the ‘fly in the buttermilk.’”1
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Notes
James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Sun (New York: Dial Press, 1961).
Lawrence B. de Graaf, “Howard: The Evolution of a Black Student Revolt,” in PROTEST! Student Activism in America, eds. Julian Foster and Durward Long (New York: William & Morrow & Company, 1970), p. 331.
Frank Morral and Arthur Gropen, “Memorandum on Negro-White Education at Carleton,” December 1, 1967, Willis D. Weatherford Papers, box 40, folder 12, BERC Archives; “Afro-American’s Seeking More Campus Involvement,” CRW, May 9, 1968, UA Archives.
Gary S. Gaston, “Crisis of Affiliation: The Merger of Arkansas Agricultural and Mechanical College with the University of Arkansas” (PhD. diss., University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 1997), p. 97; “Negroes Create Group for Political Purposes,” COR, May 5, 1967, F&MC Archives; “Black Student Union Forms at MC,” TMAR, March 7, 1969, MAC Archives.
Ernest Stephens, “The Black University in America today: A Student Viewpoint,” Freedomways 7 (Spring 1967), p. 131; de Graaf, “Howard University, 1967–1968,” p. 326.
John Hope Franklin, Mirror to America: An Autobiography of John Hope Franklin (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), pp. 247–248.
John Coffee, A Century of Eloquence: The History of Emerson College, 1880–1980 (Boston: Alternative, 1982), p. 385.
John Egerton, State Universities and Black Americans: An Inquiry into Desegregation and Equity for Negroes in 100 Public Universities (Atlanta: Southern Education Reporting Service, 1969), p. 82.
Earl Anthony, The Time of the Furnaces: A Case Study of Black Student Revolt (New York: Dial Press, 1971), pp. 50–51.
John Matthew Smith, “‘Breaking the Plan’: Integration and Black Protest in Michigan State University Football during the 1960s,” The Michigan Historical Review 33 (Fall 2007), pp. 50–55.
Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972), p. 281; “Black Militants’ Demands Are Changing Churches,” NYT, May 25, 1969; “Union Seminary Back to Normal,” NYT, May 14, 1969; “Protest Delays Exams at Seminary,” CD. May 13, 1969; “Social Welfare Accepts BSU Demands,” DB. April 16, 1969, UCLA Archives; The Black Graduate Student Union to Milton Eisenhow, May 5, 1971, Records of the Office of the Presidents, series 13, box 4, folder: “Black Students,” JHU Archives; Harry Alpert to R. D. Clark, May 15, 1972, Office of the President Records, Robert D. Clark (UA 16), box 68, folder: Black Graduate Student Council, UO Archives. Cone’s major text was Black Theology and Black Power (New York: Seabury Press, 1969).
Zira DeFries and Lilo Grothe, “‘Les Jours De Mai’ 1968—Barnard College,” Adolescence 4 (Summer 1969), pp. 158–160; de Graaf, “Howard University, 1967–1968,” p. 447.
Alford A. Young, Revolt of the Privileged: The Coming Together of the Black Community at Wesleyan University, 1965–1976 (Middletown, CT: Center for Afro-American Studies, Wesleyan University, 1988) pp. 33–34; Alexander W. Astin, Helen S. Astin, Alan E. Bayer, and Ann S. Bisconti, The Power of Protest: A National Study of Student and Faculty Disruptions with Implications for the Future (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1975), pp. 98–105; Franklin, Mirror to America, pp. 247–248; “Fisk Students Want Black University,” CD, December 15, 1969.
Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2007), p. 55; “The Eleven Days at Brandeis—As Seen from the President’s chair,” NYT, February 16, 1969; Ione D. Vargus, Revival of Ideology: The Afro-American Society Movement (San Francisco: R & E Research Associates, 1977), pp. 118–119; Richard P. McCormick, The Black Student Protest Movement at Rutgers (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990) pp. 3–4, 50–60; “Negroes at Rutgers Main Campus Stage Protest,” NYT, February 26, 1969. See also Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Guerilla Warfare (New York: Ocean Press, 2006); Robert Taber, The War of the Flea: Guerrilla Warfare Theory and Practice (London: Paladin, 1970).
Richard E. Peterson, The Scope of Organized Student Protest in 1967–1968 (Princeton, NJ: Institutional Research Program for Higher Education, Educational Testing Service, 1968), pp. 11, 13; Alan Bayer and Alexander Astin, “Violence and Disruption on the U.S. Campus, 1968–1969,” Educational Record 50 (Fall 1969), pp. 337–350; Student Protests, 1969 (Chicago: Urban Research Corporation, 1969); “Student Strikes: 1968–1969,” Black Scholar 1 (January-February 1970), pp. 65–75; Alexander Astin, “New Evidence on Campus Unrest, 1969–70,” Educational Record 52 (Winter 1971), pp. 41–46; Dale Gaddy, The Scope of Organized Student Protest in Junior Colleges (Washington, DC: American Association of Junior Colleges, 1970); “Demonstrations Occur at Rate of One a Day in 1970; Major Protests Hit Michigan, Washington U,” CHE, April 6, 1970.
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© 2012 Ibram H. Rogers
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Kendi, I.X. (2012). “A Fly in Buttermilk”: Black Campus Movement Organizations, Demands, Protests, and Support. In: The Black Campus Movement. Contemporary Black History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137016508_7
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