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 an open admissions from high schools from neighborhoods within essex county. rpo, the puerto rican student organization, followed suit and within seven days of the university's response 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 of engaging the puerto rican community 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 college education, tuition and housing. 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 newark 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 p.r.o. 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 experiences and voices in the public remembrance of rutgers history 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 subjecated 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. and commemoration of it. the liberation of conklin hall is celebrated as 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 of the participants interviewed for the project 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 highlights a singular narrative of success in which founding black organization of student members all became leaders in academia in the corporate 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 culvan and clement alexander price, rutgers continues to struggle in enrollment and retention. according to one of the most recent fact books, only 9 of the

167 tenured professors, that would make it 5%, 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 inaugural 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 radicalism expressed in negotiations for a more conservative theme of american idealism, progress, and racial reconciliation. had a goal of tirn racial democracy. 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 in which they allow 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 sought 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 and latino 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. rutgers used the protest within a carefully crafted narrative of progress. 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 patterns 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 collective 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 del corso and rhodes, 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 our campus. in terms of the moments at which interviews are conducted, 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 the 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 as we work through this project 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. >> kelly, you had a response. >> 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 there was this piece about it. so i took the map of the interviews and i spent a very long time in the archives. and most of the examples i shared with you actually came out of 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.

because 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 to step on your line, but he lost the senate primary race that tuesday, although 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 the governorship after two terms. so he stepped away for four years from '70 to '74. he was 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 then steps back, at least officially. he's always there as the central figure in ohio republican politics, you might say, and then comes back again for two more terms in '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 there are a few interesting quotes. and 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 language, 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. one died, is a pretty remarkable thing for this time, but they tried to battery ram the building and enter. >> lady in the green jacket had a question and then we'll go to the gentleman behind and then we'll go to you. we'll run a little later because i want to make sure we have time for all the questions. yes, ma'am. >> two relatively-quick questions. for kelly, i know this was touched on over here, but how representative was deontay lore in the second wave movement and on college campuses? >> you had two questions. >> and also for rosalie, i teach at cane university right outside of newark and i teach african-american history 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, first, a lot of my next project will be other deans of women. i do not think she was alone in doing this. some deans of women, i think, followed the stereotype, but there were certainly other women at other institutions that were doing similar work. i spent quite a bit of time in the dean of women's archived records as well as in the intercollegiate associate women's students records and this was obviously -- some of the ku models were being sent as best practices across 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 in individual waves. so i think some of it depended

on the dean of women and the institution and how much latitude that institution gave that particular dean of women. >> i'd like to respond to your question 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 kind of 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 liberties, one was civil rights. >> right. >> they were combined. the other factor is at this point dr. king becomes very, very vocally anti-vietnam. and there are some of us who feel that his assassination was related because he was being told -- we knew he was against it earlier, but he was being told your role is in civil rights, not being anti-war. and i would suggest to all of

you young people that you go and get for those who are still around, talk with some of the people in aclu, ada, naa, because they were very much involved in all of these at the time, and then we find that very soon after those protests, the -- the draft movement, the draft became almost eliminated, and the present army is primarily volunteer. it's no longer because parents and all people like that were not letting their sons go into a war, conflict that they thoroughly disagreed with, so they were just boycotting the war itself, and that was primarily the kent college

operation. that's just my suggestion and my memories that i care with me at age 92. >> thank you. i think you are talking about jackson state. >> yes. >> shootings, which happened about a week or so later. >> yes. >> and jackson state has often been very unfairly overlooked sort of in the aftermath of kent state. i know in the annual commoncations of kent -- >> two students were killed. >> two students were killed at jackson and at the annual commemoration of kent they always make a point of including jackson state and the alumni people who were there. it's interesting that you talk about all of that. >> no, keep going. >> thank you. >> the lady in the second row here. >> yes, thank you. my first question is to kelly. did your oral histories include the reactions of faculty, both for and, you know, against, you know, her progressive, you know, reforms? also to rasalie, i was looking

at your statistics, and the, and, you know, the number of students that was enrolled at rutgers. it didn't seem that, you know, you know, that many, so why do you think that? >> the administration at ku that was at the upper levels had largely passed away when i started the project with deontay loss, so i was not able to personally talk with those people. the reaction to her projects was pretty clear, and a lot of the written record, and certainly you would see sort of gaps, and the chancellor's papers with regard to the keys in 1966, huge sets of files from parents and citizens, very, very very upset with the dean of women, and they were actually linking it back to the early '50s, senior keys and

the dean of women's role, so it was obviously clear that people understood that she was pushing this agenda, but, no, unfortunately, i wasn't able to interview any of the administrators. i did talk with some of the faculty, and -- and i'd be more than glad to visit with you afterwards about that if you would like to. >> i'd like to respond to your question. thank you so much for asking. there are few stories going on, so at the time when the protest occurred, the community surrounding the school is predominantly a community of color, and the yet the campus is white, and the faculty is white. at the time of this protest there are about seven students of color on campus, most of whom were men, and if we even looked at the physical location of rutgers newark, there was a fence barricading it away from the community, and even the way the buildings were constructed because people were thinking of riots at this time, is that the only way to enter the buildings would be from the inside of the

campus, and i think that while i -- i think it's important that we keep in mind that we have a lot of work that continues to need to be done. and eof, like many other social policies, is actually benefiting more poor white students than any students of color, and we need to kind of keep these things in mind. and while the university certainly has a lot of community outreach at this time, we have marcia brown who was a community activist in the '60s and '70s as well heading some of these kind of outreach moments. i think it would be great for the faculty of rutgers newark to go into the high schools in newark and teach a lot of the classes and encourage students who would be the first people in their families to go to college, even the high school graduation rate in newark is very, very low, rather than necessarily just relying on remedial programs for students that can

already get in, and i think there's a real class issue that we need to think about. these students need a lot of support. a lot of people are not going to qualify for loans and other things to attend rutgers and pay tuition especially when we consider how our world is becoming more urban and global, and a lot of students at rutgers newark now aren't i national students who are by default paying full tuition and do not have to be subsidized in any way, so i think we need to kind of keep all these things in mind. and while i'm certainly being critical, i think it's just asking that we don't forget, that we don't just wear this crown of diversity in saying we're the most diverse campus in the nation without remembering that there's still a lot of work to be done. >> we have time for one more question. you had your hand up, fourth row. >> my question is for rosalie. i was struck by one of the slides that you showed that -- that said rutgers white oasis, and it made me