“Movements Come and Go and Are Soon Forgotten”: The Black Campus Movement at Fayetteville State, 1966-1972 Francena Turner. This superficial account derogates a movement that was thoughtful, active and profound, but effectively squelched after its brief tenure of a year or so. Provoked by the arrival of Jack Washington, Halsey and Pearson, Archie Johnson and fostered by Ollie Cox, that i had a part in it cannot be denied, but it was what it was, in that teaching that all human beings are geniuses.
The dates of Halsey and Pearson's contributions interrupted the status quo and after they were gone it is back in order. This dates coincide with our tenure there, an accident of time.
Halsey Nov 1, 1967 p. 3
Halsey, Jan 11, 1968 p. 7
Halsey and Pearson Jan 11, 1968 p. 4
Pearson and Halsey Feb 22, 1968
This article should retitled, The Bad Trip of the BCM, since it wasn't the way as described, in reality. But what's reality but manipulation? Here are offered the mindsets and words of what was really being thought and said. What's the prob, take over the bldg. fire the pres! What's the prob take over the bldg, fire the pres! Over and over a cycle of depression, so Howard Fuller, community organizer says, " “I did not come to [Fayetteville State] to start a riot. I have never gone anywhere to start a riot. But you know I have turned the last cheek. The next time I turn a cheek, I’ll follow it with a right cross.” He delivered a right cross. Then he got a doctorate.
Upward Bound 31 Jan 67 chaired by Charles I. Brown, Assoc Prof of Education, head of institutional research 1 Sept 67, p. c
As must happen in every revolution the beauty is lost and the ugly surfaces. Consider France. The first result in FSC of the '68 affair whose goal was to improve faculty and offer relevant courses of the day was the firing of the recently hired white MAs half of or more were to earn Phds in the next years, which they would have done there, but for the expulsion.This was given as making room for Black Studies, but Penelope Slacum, Paul Roberts in history, ourselves in English, she with a doctorate in Dickens, her husband with one in Elizabethan voyages, Guy Jacobson, the Judokan, were not evidencing entrenched social norms of the white majority, rather the opposite. These were all people who took students thoughtfully and seriously and opened their homes to them. If I am judged incalcitrant for teaching at two HBCUs, at Bishop in the 80s, it was not from an ethical intent at all. What was my concern for black people? The question was addressed in the student evaluations at FSC on this occasion: but for me, whereever I went I embodied a teaching method of free spontaneity as an antidote of hope:
Being in the same room with this man for four months has played a greater effect on my whole life than the 14 years of schooling which I have had previously. His wonderful ability to make you think is something only experience can tell. The method he uses is not a "do or else" but of a desire to learn as much as possible in a short time.
--Another wrote: Being a white man in a black school, he shows no sign of prejudice towards the black student.
--It is true that he is a white man, but what negro man or woman could you go to and tell him your problems and ask for help? Not one! The negro man will give some smart remarks and try to get fresh, which the negro woman doesn't like you because you look better than she does.
By the time the mid 80's arrived it was possible to overcome doubts a little better so Bishop College granted me promotion and tenure. The school had about a third foreign students, Nigerians, many Ibo, Kenyans, even Cubanos, who discussed all their views of Chango and Santeria along the way and after the first weeks' ice breaker singing Psalm 8 a capella to a lit class I was even loved and spend much effort sponsoring and stimulating student creative work in the two issues of Red Rose, taped lectures in the library, tree planting and teaching linguistics and creative writing. I published Native Texans then, an herbal, and A Poetical Reading of the Psalms of David 1-41, which a couple dozen religion students got copies of. I exhibited paintings in the library and sometimes brought my three year old daughter with me to school while my wife was in med school across town. By then I was vested in lit., even made it into Conosenza Religiousa. The only complaint was a threat by a Jordanian student very believably that if I didn't give him at least a C he would report to Dean Daniels that I was prejudiced. It's not hard to get good grades or make money if you just know how.
The worst rises to the top in revolution and is called liberation. The school always had a plantation feel to its layout, which persisted in some hide bound practices. It exists to defend itself and larder its pantry when, as we always learn, power is always the opposite of what it says, so Turner's work suffers from this. There is no mention of the real grassroots Voice presentation of seminal poems and essays (See the Voice 1/11/68, 25 Nov '69 for their activities) by Bernard Pearson, 19 Apr '68, William Halsey (2/22/68) on basketball scholarship, all city from Bed Sty, who came to Austin the next spring and we performed Halsey: Jan 11, 1968
Bernard and Halsey's plays accompanied by Nancy Doucette who was with them.. There was honest work! or (Dr,) Jack Washington's revival of the black traditions of Trenton was my student at FSU. He said that myself and Paul Roberts (History) completely contradicted everything he knew about the Caucasoid up to then. He had passion and light and another thing I liked about him, he was challenging. He wrote among other works: In Search of a Community's Past: The Black Community in Trenton, New Jersey, 1860-1900. The Quest for Equality: Trenton's Black Community 1890-1965. The Long Journey Home: A Bicentennial History of the Black Community of Princeton, New Jersey, 1776-1976 (2004) (Africa World Press. His daughter, Dr. Dawne Washington, of Brown Girl’s Vision, LLc has continued the legacy of her late father. Archie Johnson (9/1/67) (25 May '67) who published Uncle Tom Speaks, a wild satire, tongue in cheek series of broadsides traded me teaching him to write for teaching me chess since he was an air force champion and had been to Stanleyville he also took me to the technicolor black clubs downtown and into the Fort Bragg PX. Students spent a lot of time in our home visiting back and forth. There was a rich cultural exchange going on which Jack Washington attested to in a one on one game with him in the gym when he said that Paul Roberts and I had changed his notion of the universal evil of the white race. We want to meet as many people different from ourselves as we can, especially those of good will, but none of this suited the desire for Hector Power, who was making decisions by that time on faculty selection. I know this because I had an ear to the deliberations in Charlie Brown, Assistant to the President, with whom I played tennis on the college courts twice a week-we were all really involved with each other--Charlie Brown was the last face I saw on departing Fayetteville that May. He came to expressly state his regrets at the events. His goodby was moving. Charlie Brown and I share a full page in the '67 yearbook playing tennis. I am expunged by '68. Ollie Cox faculty advisor to the Voice fostered publications of many of these writers, including faculty member Gershom Fiawoo, "Nations of the world will you wage war!" his voice echoed in the rooms, (The Voice, 1/11/68) and some of my own satires on football. Laura Gilmore is mentioned as editor but not shown to be the beautiful reasoned intellect. Gregory Savoy is mentioned, but none of his thought occurs, which I know of from his semester in lit writing his own Notes from the Underground and from visiting him in his home in D.C. on a revisit. It is all McEachern, who turned the moment into a career, and Howard Fuller stuff, politicians who got what they wanted power and more power. Hector kept Barbara Meyerson on, later of the NJ Ethical Culture Society. her brother's eulogy says: "She was a civil right activist who wasn’t afraid to march and protest both in the North and in the deep South. After receiving her Master’s degree from Berkley University, she decides to take a teaching position at an all-Black Collage in Fayetteville North Carolina." You get to be a hero in the world and enter the politics if you are a winner. Hector was a student of hers. Malvin E. Moore the Dean is omitted, who made many good faith efforts to improve faculty. He was the reason we were in D.C. working for NASA in the first place in summer '67 and how it came about I read all that summer at the Folger Shakespeare Library, not being able to stomach NASA. Dr. Moore made these arrangements for all faculty. He alerted me to a 10K grant for new library books deadline about to expire and I spent many afternoons in the library basement filling out order cards. That the traditional stalwarts of the English faculty, Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Massey, Mrs. George, Miss Johnson and Miss Turner thought it pornography was also fair. Who knew then that all modern avant garde and other lit was porn? I view this as further attempt to break up the blackness of the black institutions by weakening roots. That's what the Rockefeller foundation intended in publicizing and promulgating white M.A. s in black colleges in the first place. You might hear Judge Joe Brown on this. It was a mixed effort, what isn't? If you want purity we cannot advise you. Some good, some bad in the revolution. Charles I Brown is omitted, asst to the pres. a reasoned the thoughtful help to the institution. Harvey Jenkins art is not mentioned, a brilliant athlete who worked in all the artistic forms. None of these enter into the publicity of the political Black Campus Movement. There were a large number of wanna bees from Chapel Hill who came along with Howard Fuller, many white, out to dabble in social liberation, of the staff of Lillabulero, then they would go back home. There was a long sound and fury signifying something, cut back and forth accusations, fires in ash cans. FSC is still ranked at the bottom of schools, has avant gard white faculty but is now part of NC system and the indigenous is siphoned away. Fort Bragg has changed its name too. The author Turner was not on site and interviews only the victors in the beheading of black culture that weakened family and church ties. Stability goes away.
Mention of the AAUP in the article is ironic since those teachers fired in the last week of spring '68 semester were all members and filed a notice of this event that resulted in a mild censure of the school for such incipient behavior in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Just the opposite of hard feels, of love, we revisited FSC the next year at spring break, stayed with Archie Johnson in Lumberton, the place MJs father met his end. I went to see Dr. Jones, who I liked and vice versa, for my enthusiasm. He said he wished I had not done the things I did and I returned the sentiments, but it was cordial. I assumed he meant the AAUP notice. He resigned in following months. Revolutions do not tolerate a community of interest. If the argument occurs, as it should, that whites should go and change white society, then so be it, but you will have to read what happened in Austin Humanist Anecdotes of Humanyte's Tale of the Tub when I arrived three months after leaving FSC. It must be for joy, not fear, that change is urged, otherwise change falls into jaws. It must be for love, an invitation to self transcendence, to lift up the humiliated self. This is not spiritual. It is human, as Arrowsmith says, the motive of teaching, "teachers of the humanities should embody “the formal discourse of the amateur who visibly lives by his convictions...a free and unindoctrinated habit of mind, provisional and complex according to the nature of its subject, a habit of mind based on knowledge and love.”
Francena Turner, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Associate for Data Curation in African American History and Culture,
Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities
Abstract: Broad surveys of college student activism are impossible without the study of individual
campuses. Studies of activism on historically Black college and university (HBCU) campuses in the UnitedStates tend to focus on larger more well-known campuses or those in large urban areas. Studies of student activism within North Carolina repeatedly highlight only three of the eleven extant institutions. This study contributes to the historiography of Black campus activism by using nine oral history interviews
conducted with university alumni paired with extensive archival research to excavate the ways FayettevilleState University students contributed to the Black Campus Movement. This essay is a narrative ofstudent protests between 1966 and 1972. Ultimately, such protests were grounded in major breakdowns in
meaningful communication between faculty, administrators, alumni, and students and in HBCU students’
shared desire to have a say in decisions that affected their lives. Fayetteville State’s student body fully
invoked James Baldwin’s notion of critiquing America in that they loved their institution more than any
other institution in the world, and, exactly for that reason, they insisted on the right to criticize Fayetteville
State and demanded that she rise to the occasion for which she was formed.
North Carolina has eleven of the over 100 historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs)
in the United States, making the state fertile ground for the study of Civil Rights/Black Power
Era student activism at such institutions. While scholars of the era(s) have conducted studies of
lesser-known HBCUs during the last decade, most studies focus on exemplar institutions such
as Howard, Fisk, Tuskegee, N.C. A&T Universities, and Spelman College. Scholarship specific
to North Carolina focuses on Greensboro’s N.C. A&T and Bennett College and Durham’s N.C.
Central University as these cities had larger Black populations and economic and voting power.
These institutions also have more extensive archival holdings and secondary sources than the other
institutions.1 Repeated studies of these institutions, however, consume smaller cities like Fayetteville
and institutions like Fayetteville State.
Fayetteville State students participated in Black Power Era activism as part of what historian
Ibram X. Kendi conceptualizes as the Black Campus Movement (BCM), yet no substantive study
of their experiences exists.3 This study uses archival records and oral history interviews from nine
alumni to show how a small institution that never had a yearly enrollment of over 1,500 students
during the period under study demanded some say in the curricular, administrative, and social
decisions that affected their lives. The BCM encompasses the years between the 1965 assassination
of Malcolm X and the 1972 police killing of two students at Louisiana’s Southern University.
Kendi posits the BCM as the development of an “oppositional space or a place for relevant reforms
inside what was deemed the Eurocentric American academy. At the other more radical extreme,”
he argued, “some activists sought to create black universities–institutions controlled by African
Americans to educate them about their experience and give them the tools to empower their
communities.”4
Black Student Activism at Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Studies of HBCU student activism generally comprise one or more of four major categories.
First, scholar activists conducted studies that included their own autobiographical experiences as
activists, mentors, and college faculty or administrators thereby allowing room for deeper reflection
and contextualization of their experiences.
As previously indicated, most scholarship specific to North Carolina either ignored or briefly
mentioned Fayetteville and Fayetteville State.9 Several studies, however, did devote some attention
to both. John M. Orbell conducted a theoretical analysis of Negro college student participation in
civil rights protests beginning with the 1960 sit-ins by surveying several HBCUs administrations.
He did not, however, discuss its students in the section he devoted to chronicle Black college student
activism.10 Brian Suttell’s study of the sit-in movement in Fayetteville successfully showed the
centrality of Fayetteville State students to the desegregation of the city’s downtown area. Andrews
and Gaby exclusively and heavily referenced Suttell’s master’s thesis on Fayetteville State students’
1963-1964 efforts to desegregate the downtown area in their brief synopsis of Sit-In activism in
Fayetteville. Nicole Lewis devoted one chapter of her master’s study of Rudolph Jones’ presidency
to the 1960s. As she sought to analyze Jones’ tenure, she dedicated little space to the many instances
of student protest during the decade.11 As the scholarship devoted to some aspect of student activism
in Fayetteville and at Fayetteville State are all studies of the sit-in movement, there is no existing
study on Black Power Era activism at Fayetteville State. This historical study seeks to fill this gap.
Fayetteville, North Carolina & Fayetteville State University
Fayetteville, located in Cumberland County, is the sixth largest city in North Carolina and is a
neighbor to the largest military base in the United States—Fort Bragg.12 The county experienced
a population boon sparked by the growth of the base and several annexations of neighboring
townships during the 1960s. This population surge significantly increased Fayetteville’s Black
population while also drawing the attention of Black North Carolinians from neighboring rural
areas interested in leaving agrarian lives. Like most HBCUs, Fayetteville State was first a normal
school with a white Board of Trustees that provided the equivalent of a high school education
and a teaching certificate in elementary education.13 Unlike most HBCUs, Fayetteville State has
always had Black presidents/chancellors and, at least through the Black Power Era, an almost
exclusively Black administration. This, to some degree, accounted for differences in student protest
9 Bermanzohn 2003; Biondi 2012; Favors in Cohen and Snyder 2013; Chafe 1980; Wolff 1970; Crow, Escott,
and Hatley 2002; Benson 2010; Greene 2005; Flowers 2017; Brown 2013; Goldstone in Glasrud and Pitre 2013;
and Fuller 2014. Each of these studies foregrounds North Carolina A&T University, North Carolina Central
University, or Bennett College or the cities in which these three institutions are located.
10 Bermanzohn 2003 has mentions of Fayetteville regarding community activism during the Civil Rights Era
and Fuller 2014 never mentions the city regarding such activism during the Black Power Era even though he
spent a considerable amount of time there organizing students. Crow, Escott, and Hatley 2002 has only a passing
mention Fayetteville as a city that also had Black college student led protests. See Orbell 1965.
11 Lewis 2012.
12 United States Census Bureau, Annual Estimates of the Resident Population 2019.
13 Fayetteville State began in 1867 as two schools led by two free Black educators. Cicero Harris ran the Phillips
(Elementary) School and his brother, Robert Harris, headed the Sumner (Secondary) School. On May 31, 1877,
the State Board of Education selected Fayetteville as the city and the Howard School as the location for the first
Black normal school in North Carolina. See Huddle 1997.
Zanj: The Journal of Critical Global South Studies47DOI: 10.13169/zanjglobsoutstud.6.1.0004
efforts. While student activists at predominately white institutions and HBCUs organized against
white administrations and senior leadership, students at Fayetteville State fought to make their
Black institution with a history of Black senior leadership amenable to the needs of the Black
community both on and off campus. Transitioning from outward facing sit-in movement activism,
Fayetteville State students turned inward during the mid-1960s to use some of the same tactics as
they attempted to effect change on their campus.
“I Play it Cool and Dig All Jive”: February 1966
In a movement that was “brewing since December” Student Government Association (SGA)
President George Langford submitted a list of demands to President Rudolph Jones with the
understanding that the students would strike if the administration did not respond. On Wednesday,
February 23, 1966, a crowd of 200 swelled to 600 as students met at the flagpole in front of the
administration building. The mass meeting held two purposes. First, the public meeting to discuss
and resist the “authoritarian attitude” of the college administration was both a protest action and
the official kickoff of a class strike. Six hundred of the institution’s 1200 students signed the SGA
petition for the strike. Students verbalized five grievances at this initial meeting. First, they wanted
more input in decisions made on campus that affected their lives. Next, they wanted “less stress” on
the social lives of female students. Third, they wanted an efficient health and medical care program.
They wanted a full-time director for the men’s dorm, and lastly, they wanted a restructuring of
the athletic program.14 Jones told the press that he was aware of the SGA’s demands, but that he
simply had not set a meeting the body to discuss them. Further, he said, “There’s always a certain
amount of student unrest on any campus. The administration and faculty are eager to know why
the students are unhappy and certainly we are willing to make every effort to meet their legitimate
complaints.”
In a meeting President Jones called the next evening, he more fully addressed a more complete
list of complaints to include those with respect to female students. Jones admitted knowing that
there were some problems with male professors, and he indicated that he handled those problems
quietly. Jones indicated that anyone with complaints about improper advances should see him. “If
nothing else, he said, “I can terminate the faculty member’s contract at the end of the school year.
We have even paid people to stay off the campus. There was one we paid like that last summer
(1965). We told the police not to let him on the campus.”15 Langford believed that by the press
focusing on only one of five complaints, the strike “petered out” before it could get going.16 Even
though Jones did not commit his response to paper, a reporter in the room changed the tide of
the strike by focusing only on the demands related to female students and male professors. While
the safety and wellbeing of the overwhelmingly female student body was vitally important, it was
not the only charge being made. Student leaders removed it from the list of demands the next day.
In any case, the administration met most of the students’ demands and the students returned to
class on Friday, February 25. The administration did not punish any student protesters.
ith author 2020. See also, Fayetteville Observer 1966: 1B.
48Volume Six, Number One
“Movements Come and Go and Are Soon Forgotten” — Langford stated that “the principal objective we are striving for was to be treated more like
adults and to have greater participation in campus affairs in policy making. The goals have been
accomplished in that our requests have been well received by the administration.” Langford later
remembered,
You know, we were really trying to get the administration to engage with
us in a more serious way. We felt that the administration didn’t really
value our input and they didn’t really include us in any of the policies and
decision making that were taking place in the administration. So, we had
to protest on the lawn of the institution. It was a major turning point, I
felt, in our relationship with the college administration.17
President Jones acknowledged the concessions students won with their class strike—namely a
decrease in the rules governing female students, class attendance, and assembly requirements while
cautioning the student body to refrain from abusing their new privileges.18 Clearly feeling that
students did not heed Jones’ warning, the administration reinstituted the class attendance policy,
with students missing more than three class periods without approval risking expulsion.19 Students
found out of this reversal in a letter Jones wrote to their parents. Alluding to a reoccurring theme
in the stories of BCM activism—that graduating student leaders often left gaps in collective student
movement memory—Langford reflected, “That was the disappointing part. I was graduating, so
I didn’t get to really get to see whether any of those activities were actually implemented by the
institution.”20
“That’s the Reason I Stay Alive”: April 3-5, 1968
Prelude to a Takeover
Whether students wrote about protests at other colleges or whether they were referring to
something brewing at Fayetteville State, The Voice staff published several activism related stories
prior to the administration building takeover during the spring of 1968. While reading the student
newspaper may be less prevalent now, college students increasingly began to see their paper as
an important medium used to work through pressing social, political, and sometimes emotional
concerns. As the student body never numbered over 1500 students by the end of the period under
review, it is likely that most students read or discussed articles in the student newspaper.
The Voice staff asked sixty-five freshmen about the intellectual and cultural life on campus.
Some students discussed a low general morale due to witnessing discord between faculty and
administrators. One student referred to this discord as “a coldness.” Some students referenced poor
teacher-student interactions.21 Editor Laura Gilmore, considering reasons students might protest,.
Zanj: The Journal of Critical Global South Studies49DOI: 10.13169/zanjglobsoutstud.6.1.0004
argued that they were on the defensive due to existing in an interstitial space where they were
neither child nor adult. Gilmore did not provide a definitive answer to her question, but her article
shows that she, and perhaps other students, thought about the rationale behind student protest
before acting.22
During the fall of 1967, students asked themselves, “Should a College Student Have
Unlimited Freedom?”23 Carolyn Woodard believed, like many other students, upperclassmen
deserved increased social freedom, but that female student should have curfews. While students
considered the questions of protest and unlimited freedoms, community organizer and sociologist
Howard Fuller (previously Owusu Sadaukai) made the first of several visits to the campus. At the
behest of the Social Science Club, Fuller gave a talk entitled simply, “Us.”
He urged students to think of the working-class Black community and to critically analyze integration. He connected the
underpaid staff worker to the experiences of college graduates who faced racism as they pursued
post-graduation employment. He referenced those who went without work because they were
“overqualified for one job and underqualified for the next.” He said, “I did not come to [Fayetteville
State] to start a riot. I have never gone anywhere to start a riot. But you know I have turned the
last cheek. The next time I turn a cheek, I’ll follow it with a right cross.” He closed his talk with the
following sentence, “The need for our economic and political leverage can be summed up in two
little words. Black Power.”24
The Takeover
On Wednesday night, April 3, 1968, 300 students took over and barred all faculty from entering the
administration building. The students set up food and television stations, assigned security guards
“to protect female students,” chose typists to produce press releases, set up card playing rooms, and
set up tutorial sessions for participating students. In an alloy of the Preamble to the United States
Constitution and the worlds of Malcolm X, an unnamed student told the press, “We will use any
means to secure a better and more perfect Black education.” Continuing a theme from the Sit-In
Movement, student protesters refused to name an individual leader. An unidentified student simply
stated that the takeover “was carried out by [B]lack students seeking a better [B]lack education.”25
President Jones, away on business, rushed back to campus. Again, Jones told the press that the
protest did not surprise him as such protests were happening all over the country. Sophomore
class president and SGA representative Raymond Privott agreed with Dr. Jones. Privott said, “It
[the building takeover] was joining in with other schools protesting the normal discrimination
all over the nation.”26 While Jones met with a student delegation in his home, thirty students
held the building into the next day. The next morning, the students presented Jones with a list of
demands entitled the “Dissatisfied Student Body” wherein students demanded improved teacher
and infirmary quality, increased funding efforts on the part of the admin, Black Studies courses, no
mandatory attendance policy for upperclassmen, longer library hours on the weekend, improved
campus office procedures, decreased textbook costs, a reconstruction of the athletic program,
improved food and canteen hours of operation, improved residence hall equipment, less social
constraints on female students, and improved and expanded social events on campus. They also
demanded that they not be punished for their protest. Some of these demands were identical to
those students made in 1966. Jones cancelled Thursday’s classes and met with student leaders twice
that afternoon, while roughly one third of the student body waited in the gym.
As the impasse continued into the evening, students received word of the assassination of Martin
Luther King Jr. This news left the students both apoplectic and heartbroken. SGA Vice President
Hector McEachern remembered trying “to stop the guys on campus from setting fires.” He said,
“I was trying to calm the campus down when Martin Luther King was killed. What I remember
was trying to get the student population to remember why King lived, what caused him to die,
and to focus on non-destructive solutions to our problems.”28
Sophomore Jacqueline Rendleman remembered parents assuming that students would be safer in North Carolina than in large urban
areas such as Washington D.C. and New York City. She remembered that “Some of the parents
said, ‘No, you stay down there. This place is in an uproar.’ But North Carolina was in an uproar
too.” Randleman indicated that the institutions proximity to Fort Bragg “kept the campus ok.
There were little fires set, little ones. It wasn’t anything major that I am aware of. And so, we saw
these troops, these guys all out the window. You could just open your windows and they were
there.”29
Exhausted, the student body ended their occupation with half of their demands met
and returned to class. President Jones cancelled Friday’s classes as well and ordered classes to
resume on Monday, April 8. He told the press that he “would gladly [have met] with the students.
I [was waiting for them] to make an appointment.”30
During the next Board of Trustees meeting,
Lyons provided a detailed report of all complaints submitted by students and all negotiations. He
suggested that the administration work “with the majority of students who desire normal operations
at the college to secure their active support in preventing a radical, vocal minority from disrupting
normal operations.” He, again, wrote a letter to parents asking for their support in controlling the
students.31 During the final meeting of the academic year, the faculty changed “Negro History”
from an elective course to a required course effective fall 1968.32
While there was substantial support for the student protests, not all students agreed with
the methods. In the May issue of The Voice, those opposed to the building takeover shared their
thoughts.33 Freshman Martha Thorne found the protest illogical because the students broke
the law, embarrassed President Jones, and neglected to include day student (commuter) voices
in discussions leading up to the takeover. Commuter Nancy Harris, only found out about the
protests when she arrived on campus and found classes canceled.34 Thorne further revealed that
some of the female students said they were forced “under threat of fire” to leave their dorms and
participate in the takeover. She and fellow freshman Barbara Wilson opposed relaxing moral rules
for women. Pointing to a multiplicity of student organizations and activists, another student felt
that the “Black Power advocates interfered with the SGA and officers.” In retrospect, sophomore
commuter student Madelyn Bryant, remembers feeling empowered by the student protest efforts.
She remembered witnessing the protests leading her to rethink her own agency. She thought, “I
can control something in my life? I can speak up? It might not work out the way I want, but I don’t
have to sit and just be a robot and do what I’m told. And that was a great influencer for me.35
Movement Off Campus
As the building takeover concluded, and as the city of Fayetteville reeled after King’s
assassination, student activists directed some of their energies off campus. The Fayetteville Observer
published the Fayetteville Area Poor People’s Organizations (FAPPO) five-point plan to reduce
racial tension in Fayetteville. Councilman Johnny Joyce, an open segregationist, read the plan
into the record when FAPPO later appeared before the newly created Human Relations Advisory
Commission.36 While it is unclear if any Fayetteville State students were among the FAPPO
members, a prior voter registration based working relationship between Fayetteville State’s African
American Students Organization (AASO) and FAAPO points to the involvement of at least some
AASO members.
FAPPO demanded that the city “Remove the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) sign from the US 301
South billboard” as one of its five points. Councilman Joyce deemed such demands “reckless” and
a hindrance to “two-way communication.” He further suggested that the commission try to talk
to FAPPO, determine if the authors of the five-point plan were locals, study FAPPO’s grievances,
and come up with a workable program. Mayor Monroe Evans bemoaned the audacity of FAPPO’s
plan. He said, “We have made a lot of progress in the area of white discrimination, but it looks
like racism among Black people is worse than it was among white people.” Invoking the outside
agitator motif, or the assumption that any overt protests are spearheaded by people who simply
do not understand the social, historical, and political culture within a place, this governing body
told concerned Black community members that requesting the removal of the KKK sign was
“reckless” and “reverse racism” thereby providing an example of the near constant psychic assault
33 “Protests and the Masses.” The Voice 1968: 5.
34 Nancy Harris, interview with the author 2016.
35 Madelyn (Bryant) Gilmore, interview with the author 2018.
36 The Fayetteville City Council formed The Human Relations Advisory Commission in 1968 to “to pro-
vide channels through which racial tensions may be anticipated, cooperation sought, and amicable resolutions
achieved.” The Commission had a racially mix group comprised of eleven adult community members, two
students, and one ex-officio member from Ft. Bragg. See Suttell 2007.
52Volume Six, Number One
“Movements Come and Go and Are Soon Forgotten” — Turner
under which Black Fayetteville existed.
As the spring semester ended, two Fayetteville State students attended the first Conference
of Black Students (CUBS) at Shaw University. Shaw president, James E. Cheek, conceived of the
conference to:
Provide Negro students, nationwide, with the opportunity of coming
together to build a movement whose purposes, goals, and objectives
would be positive and constructive, and which would enlist the resources,
talents, and energies of Negro institutions and organizations in a national
program of self-help, self-direction, and self-pride.37
The conference committee invited two delegates from each HBCU’s SGA and featured
tales by writer LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), historian Vincent Harding, Charlotte civil rights activist
and gubernatorial candidate Dr. Reginald Hawkins, and civil rights activist Julian Bond.38 During
the summer, Fayetteville State students Gregory Savoy, Larry McCleary, George Lowery, and B.J.
Nicholson joined thirty-five other Black college students in Durham for a community organizing
internship program for social science majors supervised by Howard Fuller.39
The student body elected prior Vice President, Hector McEachern, as its new President
for the 1968-1969 academic year. In his first message to the students, he urged them to make take
slogan, “I’m Black and I’m Proud,” seriously. Black Power, he argued, required Black people to
unite and work towards creating their own system.40 SGA Vice President Mercer Anderson and
Stanford Tucker attended the “Towards a Black University” Conference at Howard University in
November of 1968. Those attending the conference sought to “define the structure and mechanics
of the [Black] university.” Participants expressed frustration with the “white structure of higher
education that debilitates Black people.” The students spoke of the “warmth one felt as one rubbed
shoulders not with one’s adversaries from across the nation—and across oceans—but with ‘those
of us who have been dehumanized.”41 Student activists closed the semester with a “Black Week”
held December 10-13. Howard Fuller provided the keynote address. A play, panel discussions on
“The Role of the Black Students,” and “Black Man and Religion,” a Black culture program, and
a social wrapped up the week.42 The Fayetteville State student body was hungry for a racially and
culturally relevant education.
“My Motto, As I Live & Learn Is…” February 17-21,
