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Peace talks
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Perkins meets with Whitfield and other student leaders to resolve the crisis.
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On the outside
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Protesters gather outside of Barton Hall to urge the faculty to reject the administration’s negotiated compromise with the Afro-American Society. (Photo Credit: Larry Baum / Sun File Photo)
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To the masses
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Thomas Jones ’69 addresses over 10,000 people in Barton Hall on April 22, 1969. (Photo Credit: Richard A Shulman/ Sun File Photo)
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Piercing cries of the bullhorn
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David Burak ’69 yells to a crowd through a bullhorn on Ho Plaza while black students occupied the Straight. Among the crowd were many SDS members. (Photo Credit: Richard A. Shulman / Sun File Photo)
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Full force
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The Sun’s photo of the AAS students leaving the Straight, with a wider lens than the Associated Press photo, captures more of the ensuing action. (Photo Credit: Brian Gray / Sun File Photo)
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Intently focused
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With a closer focus on the perpetrators, The Associated Press photo captures the gravity of the situation on campus. Its widespread circulation may have helped it win the Pulitzer Prize. (Photo Credit: Steve Star / Associated Press)
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Heavily protected
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Armed students line the crest of a hill at 320 Wait Avenue, which would be the brief home of the Africana Center until the building was gutted by a fire in April 1970. (Larry Baum / Sun File Photo)
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Student of Straight Takeover Reflects on Cornell Activism
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Correction Appended
This is the second in a series of four interviews with people involved with the Willard Straight Takeover of 1969, in which black students took over the Straight to demand greater equality for minority students at Cornell. The interviews, along with a newspaper supplement and panel discussion in April, will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the takeover.
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Cornellians Reflect on Changing Face of Black Student Leadership
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When Renee Alexander ’74 first set foot on campus in 1969, she was unaware that she would become part of an unbroken record at Cornell. Alexander’s graduating class had the highest number of black students to date — about 250 people.
“Back then we didn’t realize how significant that was,” said Alexander, who is director of Cornell’s Alumni Minority Programs.
As with many cases in history, it is difficult to pinpoint an exact date when black student leadership at Cornell began to take root. Alpha Phi Alpha, which was established at Cornell in 1906, was the first black fraternity in the nation. In more recent memory, the takeover of Willard Straight Hall in 1969 also goes into Cornell’s history books as a defining moment of the University’s black history.