ASRC 4115 - The Willard Straight Takeover and the Legacy of Black Students

(CA-AS)

Spring. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

R. Richardson.

This course focuses on the complex history related to this famous incident from 1969 and draws on a range of materials, including some of the archival resources available in the John Henrik Clarke Library. The April 19, 1969 incident known as “the Willard Straight Takeover” occurred during Parents’ Weekend when black students occupied the student union on campus and, when threatened, returned with firearms in self-defense and also advocated for an Africana center to be developed. When the takeover ended, the students were photographed by Steve Starr as they exited with their firearms. This protest, even after nearly fifty years, remains misunderstood, and its facts are grossly distorted or exaggerated, and sometimes even forgotten or else omitted from major histories and timelines at Cornell. The main goal in developing this course is to make a scholarly framework available in which they might expand and reinforce their knowledge of this topic, while contributing to new research on it.