activism while it removed all voices of opposition and the puerto rican student involvement from the memory of the event. most importantly, in reviving triumphant memories and object securing the more contentious ones, the commemoration established a community that is grounded as part of the larger civil rights movement without acknowledging the university shortcomings in generating real changes in faculty diversity, community enrollment and programs of study. this imagined community hailed the sit-in as a seat of diversity of rutgers newark, while ironic lick the majority of the demands continued to be unmet. i situate the conklin hall commemoration within the tension between history and memory. memory operates on a number of registers. what do we choose to remember? what do we choose to forget? who is the we that is remembering or forgetting?

and through process of public commemoration, how has the narrative of the takeover been transformed? what was the role of the public? i attempt to balance the claims of history and memory in my ongoing oral history project. it is too reductive to say that the history of the event is contradictory to its memory. unlike historians, i come not believe memory and history are opposed to one another. focusing on the tension between the official memory proceeded by the university's commemoration and the history of the takeover allow us to see the messiness and nuance of the liberation story. the narrative produced by rutgers excludes actual historical facts including the work of puerto rican students who organized and fought alongside the black organization of students. for equality and access to education. while i can see that there is a connection, i argue that the liberation of conklin hall is much more complex and often internally contradictory in a

way that official consensus memory fails to acknowledge. the commemoration matters because it is a performance of official history. its significance lies in the political means by which it's memory has been cherry picked, disseminated by a public university. the 40th anniversary celebration produced a collective memory grounded in a consensus view of the sit-in. rutgers memory of the protest emphasizes the liberate tors emphasizes the liberators call for ending racist enrollment in hiring practices while sanitizing the radicalism of the demands. the official memory constructed by the commemoration constructs an abridged story of the takeover. this has a linear progression and happy ending.

newark's journey from the epicenter of manufacturing to urban crisis has been mirrored by many other industrial cities across the united states. rates of poverty among black americans in cities like newark, chicago south and west sides, detroit, cleveland, pittsburgh, st. louis, camden and baltimore range from 25 to 45%. the residents have struggled with tremendous loss of manufacturing jobs and the emergence of the lower wage sector. racial discrimination, poverty, political corruption, urban renewal. police brutality were social forces that led to the uprisings in the summer of 1965. within weeks of dr. martin luther king's assassination, 125 american cities exploded in flames. the simultaneous outbreak of urban rebellions in 1967. the 1967 summer of discontent was in the words of "life"

magazine headlines predictable insurrection. between july 12th and july 17th, 1967, newark residents experienced six days of rioting, looting and destruction that left 26 dead and hundreds of men, women and children injured. the black community was rendered powerless and disenfranchised. through exclusion from meaning. representation and police brutality. the conklin hall liberator saw what happens when a city brutally institutionally and systemically disrespects its residents. unfortunately, two years after the rebellion, the fundamental racial economic and equalities of the city of newark were not reconciled. on the rutgers university campus, these were not even publicly acknowledged let alone addressed. in 1967, the black nationalist element of the black freedom

movement inspired black student on the college campuses across the united states to claim a new unapologetic but politically engaged black and proud identity. it was not only cultivated in historically black colleges in the south, but also predominantly white colleges in the north. the rutgers newark campus was no exception. during the second semester of the 1966/67 academic year, richard w. roper, one of 20 black students enrolled at the time, was elected president of the naacp campus chapter. roper and his like minded colleagues wanted social justice and demanded greater democratic access. they began to push for more radicalized direction of the group fueled by national debates, assassination of dr. king and malcolm x, protests about integration, state power and freedom. a new organization was launched. the black organization of students, or b.o.s., established

a powerful narrative of justice, peaceful discontent and equitable opportunity in the history of rutgers university through a bloodless coup. it received support from cross-sections of the rutgers newark communities. similar to the convergence of black and anti-war movements in 1967, it was the joining of these forces and ideals by b.o.s. members and supporters particularly the puerto rican organization of students that led to petitioning of the university's administration to tear down the physical fence that surrounded the periphery of the campus. b.o.s. drew attention to rutgers' disregard for the surrounding black community and put forth a list of radical demands. a welcoming environment for all people of color, the hiring of black student faculty and staff, and open admissions from surrounding urban neighborhoods. rpo, the puerto rican student organization, followed suit and within seven days drafted a

similar manifesto to advance the accesses to postsecondary education of puerto rican and other spanish speaking students. their letter to the vice president dismissed rutgers attempts as tokenism and put forth an uncompromising series of demands. the demands put forth by the puerto rican organization of students reflected the racial ethnic and economic disparity in access to higher education at rutgers. the manifesto underscores the inability of spanish speaking urban residents to access credit or take out private loans to pay for a private education, tuition and house. the university's anniversary celebration of the takeover focuses on black/white relations, largely ignoring the role of latino students in the protest. rutgers history advances the

idea that the neward story is predominantly a black/white story. this omission of latino activities can also be examined through the lens of gender. the puerto rican organization of students included many women on its chapter. the pro demands were drafted and submitted by jenny diaz at the time when the campus was not only predominantly white, but also overwhelmingly male. the exclusion of women's voices is highly selective, organized and strategic. philosopher writing on knowledge, power and the modern state revealed both the constructive processes of histories and the voices from archives and unlegitimated sources that tangle with history's stories. he identified the subjected knowledges as knowledges that have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated. if we consider that public history is a form of collective knowledge, the exclusion i have

knowledge, the exclusion of women creates a complete and punitive history. the contentious history of the student protests disrupts the consensus driven memory. the liberation of conklin hall is celebrated as a an acts of nonviolent civil disobedience racial con sill agency, and not a black student protest. the commemoration focuses on positive aspects of the sit-in, while reducing the experiences to a single act. nearly all participants interviewed say for many, conklin hall became the highlight of their lives. many of the activists detoured from their college rears and failed to graduate. several faculty members left the university in the '70s, disenfranchised, because they felt lack of control over the programs of study and perceived the academic climate of the campus to be one that is no longer rigorous. yet the anniversary program

highlight as singular narrative of success in which founding black organization of student members all became leaders in academia in the world as the rutgers newark campus became a paragon of diversity. although some positive results were gained from the meeting with the board of governors, including the hiring of robert and clement, rutgers continues to struggle in enrollment and retention. according to one of the most recent fact books, only 9 of the 167 tenured professors are black women and men on the newark campus. from a total of 5336 admitted first year undergraduate students, 658 are african-american. historians have long grappled with analyzing how individuals and groups perform collective memory work. while commemorative practices

they generate and how a cultivated view of the past is politically constructed. nongrowth of a two year project on the historical construction of identities at rutgers university entitled commemorations the politics of national identity was a collection that considers the role of public commemoration within the formation of collective memory. historian john gillis' chapter presents a useful lens because it explains that identities and memories are not things we think about, but things that we think with. the commemoration as a political process promotes particular interpretations of the past to the public. during the sit-in, the black organization of students put forth a series of demands that outlined black issues regarding student admissions, enrollment, retention and recruitment of faculty. today the university remembers the takeover as a step towards the campus' growing multiracial diversity. in this way the commemoration of conklin hall is a powerful example of the differences between history and memory. the b.o.s. demands have been framed by rutgers newark as a call toward an open democratic

color blind environment while the original intent of the negotiations was specifically increase the number of african-american students and faculty on campus. the university has played a major role in the process of shaping the public perception of the protest through domestication of black student radicalism. the university's memory of the takeover and the commemoration which it produced curtails black power radicals expressed in the conservative difference and perhaps agreeable theme of american idealism. as the 40th anniversary approached, they had several decades of framing the movement that began with obvious disregard for the first 30 years followed by the 35th anniversary

commemoration which did not include first person reflections of the activists. by 2009, the grand narrative of conklin hall was forged as a successful black student activism for a multicultural diversity that generated change for years to come. the story of the takeover's aftermath is a tension of conflicting narratives. the progressive narrative in which the university's response to the protest is characterized in terms of social justice and racial cooperation, the redemptive narrative to evoke a sense of progress. the commemoration allowed all participants to find themselves on the right side of history, and a toxic narrative about the ongoing racial inequality within rutgers faculty and underrepresentation of newark high school graduates within the student body. the liberation of conklin hall

south to make rutgers recognize its responsibility to the black community by forcing the university to reconcile its identity crisis as a white school in a black city. the city of newark became a contested space in the 1960s, one that had been a vehicle of upward mobility for whites, but offered bleak prospects for its increasing black population. the demand for equality and access to higher education became vital in a city whose job opportunities continued to decline for working class residents while racial tensions depressed the quality of life. rut fwers used it. the university emerged as a hero in the memory of the protest because according to the narrative created by rutgers it was challenged by students and in response became an open and multiracial environment. the collective memory produced

through the commemorative process fails to attribute the role of post 1965 immigration appearance in the current diversity of the student body demographics. it also celebrates the education opportunity fund as an outcome of the protests even though the program was a state initiative that precedes the sit-in and today provides support to many students less than 30% of whom are black. the relationship between history and memory as two different forms of narration essential to the struggle of individuals and communities because historical narrations often shape and transform our understandings of place. the meanings attributed to place in turn can dictate which events are remembered or forgotten. commemoration and sights of memory are plagued by competing claims of moral values and authenticity. memory forgets, eases down and smooths over the contentiousness of the past. in the 2009 commemorative community, all participants agreed on a single collect i have memory. the '69 liberation is one of the most effective, nonviolent

student protests and its legacy created the most diverse university campus for the last 15 years and counting. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> i'll now open the floor for comments and questions. when you're called on, please wait for the boom mike to reach you. let's start in the front row. >> where is the -- >> it's coming your way. right up here in the front row. here he comes. >> i'm deeply embarrassed at how

touched i am. i'm reliving my school experience. i was at ohio state as i told you when kent state occurred. and i remember it vividly. i still have a lot of anger and resentment. i have no problem assigning guilt. i don't think you order the national guard or allow them to have live ammunition on campus. so this is to me one of the most heinous things when we kill our own students. i think this is terrible. the way in which i have tried to cope with this, not very well, is that i have bought a day, may 4th, at the local radio station and i dedicate it to the lives of the students who were killed that day. but there is an alternative to the way in which corso and rogue who i hope are in hell handled that incident. and that was shown by the president of michigan state university, walter adams. he led the student protest. no national guard were called. no live ammunition. no students were killed. that is leadership that requires courage. that is heroism.

all of that was lacking at ohio and kent state. [ applause ] >> do either of you have a response? let's go to third row, right there. >> first i want to thank you for those remarks because as a political activist and scholar, i have a great deal of trouble with the truth and reconciliation model. but that's another issue. i wanted to make a comment in terms of the student affairs office and a more general comment to the three of you in terms of the historical moment at which interviews are conducted. in terms of student affairs, this was really enlightening and i think it is part of our revisioning of the second way. most of that revisioning is in terms of the activities of women of color. so this is a very different kind

of thing i have to tell you on my own campus, cal state long beach, one of the counselors in student affairs was the most active person in promoting chicano feminism on campus. you took this model and have these three conceptual points. but i'm wondering if you've looked at the relationship between those conceptions and how you identified people's memories and when the interviews were done. because i think that has undoubtedly changed over time. so rather than just having these as three discreet models or concepts, i think it's really

necessary to see for each of these people when those interviews were done. and similarly with rosie's work, i wonder if there were interviews of the students from the b.o.s. at the time of the commemoration and how they characterized their memories or what happened compared especially to if they were interviewed at the time of rebellion. >> just a comment. i agree, yeah, it would be wonderful in a way if we could have had sort of a longitudinal process by which we maybe had interviewed folks at the time and then sort of carried that forward every few years, et cetera. unfortunately, we don't have that. but you're exactly right, and that's the job we'll have to do is to think about how these

memories have changed and how they've impacted sort of the interconnection between memory and history. so you're exactly right, yes, i agree. >> i'd also like to respond and thank you for your question. i think what i tried to do in my presentation before i held down the enter button for too long was to really talk about the nuance and the messiness of this and while interviewing the student protesters, some felt that this was a great moment for them and that it allowed them to become leaders later on in the community. one of the members of b.o.s. is now the head of umdnj which is the major medical university in new jersey and in newark. one of them is also in an administrative role at rutgers university, as well. but there were others that kind of felt that this was a crown that the university really wore without necessarily meeting the demands that were put forth. and that in many ways it was usurped, that this moment of radical protest was really taken

on by the university without changing the real things that needed to be done. and it's more seen in the faculty diversity at rutgers newark. we're really struggling that even when we are able to bring faculty of color into the university, our retention rate isn't great, there's not a great amount of support. the students demanded specific programs of study and those things are just not happening at this time. certainly not from a grant -- certificate granting institution. >> for me, i spent a lot of time in my work thinking about the role of memory because when i started interviewing emily taylor, she was about 85. so there had been 25 to 30 years since she was at the university of kansas. and emily taylor sort of had a persona in kansas. people knew who she was and was. so i took the map of the

interviews and i spent a very long time in the archives. because i'm not sure my exact interpretation of what happened would be the way any one of the people i interviewed would explain the activities, because i do think there is as greg talked about a change in how we talk about things. we start to create a narrative around what it meant and your own personal role in that, which is a very interesting topic, from the point of view of history. you also need to track through the activities from various points of view. and that's where i think archival documents in conversation with oral history are so important because otherwise you get a disjointed sort of view. so thank you for your question. >> let's go right there in front -- dark sweater, yes. you.

>> thank you very much. i have two questions about the present. and one has to do with anthony emperiala. am i pronouncing that right? whom we might call the great white hunter after that beautiful quotation. and that is where he is now and what is he doing. and similarly with governor rhodes, where is he and what is he doing now? >> well, he's dead. >> is that true? >> yes. one thing i'll say about rhodes, not step on your line, but he lost the senate primary race that tuesday, all hoe it was very close. and he actually got a bump in points based on his rather heavy

handed inflammatory reactions. so, yes, so he lost the primary and his governorship ran out and he kind of faded. >> and then he came back and was governor again. >> oh, he was. >> and he keeps coming back. he wins and stays twice and then by law you have to step away from governorship after two terms. so he stepped away for four years from '70 to '74. reelected again in '74 and again in '82. and he tried to run again later, but by then, his time had sort of passed. so he emerges in the early '60s, and steps back, at least officially. he's always there as the central figure in ohio republican politics, and then back again for two more terms '74 and '82. >> is he still living. >> he is deceased. >> i wanted to respond to your question.

the councilman has passed. the "new york times" has a -- i'll let you read it. but a few interesting quotes. but for the liberation of conklin hall during the student takeover of the building, a lot of his goons came to counterprotest on the campus and at some point a giant battery log, i'm sorry, english isn't my first lag, was used to try to enter the building. and other student protests and activists surrounded building because they didn't want to become violent and no one died, which is a pretty remarkable thing for this time. but they tried to battery ram the building and enter. >> lady in the green jacket and

then to the gentleman behind. and then we will go to you. we'll run a little later because i want to make sure we have time for all the questions. >> two relatively quick questions. for kelly, how representative was dean taylor in the second wave movement and on college campuses and also for rosalie, i teach at kane university right outside of newark so i'm really interested in what you're doing. and i'm wondering how the university -- if the university has seen your research and how they've potentially responded to it and what it's like for you to be doing research as a graduate student in the university and critiquing the university. >> well, fira n. i do not think she was alone in doing this. some deans of women i think followed the say i don't type, but there were certainly other women at other institutions that an of women's archived records as well as in the intercollegiate associate women's students records and

some of the ku models were being se the country for the keys, for the sex education courses. those sorts of things. so it certainly was going on. and some of my work illustrates that you can look at deans of women who were involved with the first wave of the women's movement and then sort of moving these concepts forward on campus if individual waves. so i think some of it depended on the institution and how much latitude that institution gave that particular dean of women. >> i'd like to respond, as well. i know it's hard to get this point across in a short presentation. it is not my attention to vilify anyone or say one side was wrong or one side was right. it was -- my greater point is that it was highly contested at the time. and it seemed very strange to me to attend the commemorative practices and see a very almost disney-like portrayal of what

happened. and i'm really interested in kind of recovering a lot of these voices and really interested in continuing this project and interviewing more of the women who were involved both in the puerto rican student organization and the black student organization. and i told people c-span was recording this, so i'll let you know when i get back about how this goes. >> yes, sir. in the back row. >> quickly, the idea, the same time that was going on at kent, similar was going on in north carolina. at that same time which got little attention, one was civil liberty, one was civil rights. they were combined. the other factor is at this