Student activism was an important part of the civil rights movement in the US. Now, as another chapter is added to that effort, students are once again on the frontline
Race has for long been a bone of contention in the US. Since the landmark cases of Brown vs Board of Education and Plessy vs Ferguson, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. In recent months, the higher education establishment in the US received a jolt with the University of Missouri responding to complaints of Black students on campus. There was a spate of resignations and appointments in the University of Missouri as the collegial situation became one of angst. The university witnessed the appearance of Swastikas and the college premises were also vandalised.
Then university president Tim Wolfe resigned in early November 2015, stating that, “I am resigning not out of hate but out of love and I hope this decision makes the people and situation heal even more.” The general contestation of the protesting students was that Mr Wolfe had soft-pedalled on racial incidents on campus.
The movement at Mizzou, as the University of Missouri is called, was initiated by graduate student Jonathan Butler who went on a strike. He reportedly contended that, “Students are not able to achieve their full academic potential because of the inequalities and obstacles they face. In each of these scenarios, Mr Wolfe had ample opportunity to create policies and reform that could shift the culture of Mizzou in a positive direction but in each scenario he failed to do so.”
Also, Missouri Students Association president Payton Head was called the ‘N-word’ on campus; when he registered a protest on Facebook, there was a huge debate on the state of race relations on campus. On November 7, the Black members of the MU football team boycotted upcoming games, which cost a great amount to the team and the University. Previously, in February, when Mizzou was celebrating Black History Month, cotton balls were strewn in front of the university’s Black community centre — a reminder of the cotton-growing past of some Black members. Now, the university is attempting to normalise the academic and social veneer of the campus after a series of recriminations and strikes which rocked Mizzou. Hopefully, the new crop of campus managers will make Mizzou a better place.
University unrest was a major phenomenon in the US even during the days of the Vietnam war and the civil rights movement. University of Washington and Kent State University became hotbeds of student activism during the 1960s when the quintessential American Dream was being challenged. Also strident attempts were made to reform the American Dream in the light of new domestic and foreign challenges. In 1970, the National Guardsmen were let loose on the KSU campus, and four students lost their lives clashes with security personnel.
The student unrest was portrayed as a viable social movement by a Pulitzer Prize-winning image which captured a fourteen-year-old girl screaming over the body of a dead student who had been shot in the mouth. Similar to the civil rights movement, the issue of US foreign military interventions blazed anew the challenge to the American Dream. In 2009, for example, a library of Congress webcast, titled We Had Sneakers, They Had Guns: The Kids Who Fought for Civil Rights in Mississippi by Tracy Sugarman, remains an everlasting echo of hope for better race relations in the United States.
(The writer teaches at the Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi)