1969 was a very big and tumultuous year, and I was paying attention to a lot of things.
But I didn’t catch everything, and I don’t remember this story. In the annals of the follies of higher education in this country in the 60s and beyond, it’s one of the grimmer tales. Now it’s the 50th anniversary of the incident:
The tiny “High Potential Program” was UCLA’s early, experimental form of affirmative action. Unlike today’s affirmative action programs, which primarily benefit middle- and upper-middle-class students, this was a real effort to benefit young people born on the wrong side of the tracks. As one might expect, UCLA relaxed the academic qualifications for this project. One of the founders of the program put it this way: “A high school diploma was not a requisite. We recruited people who were active in their community and who had the ability to lead.”
Here’s the crazy part: In practice, the leadership requirement meant that UCLA wanted—and actively recruited–leaders of street gangs, especially those involved in black nationalism. A history of violence was no barrier to admission.
Not a lot of learning went on in the special classes conducted for the program. Linda Chavez, a UCLA grad student at the time, wrote about her experiences in teaching classes for Chicano High Potential students in An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal. I won’t spoil her story here. Suffice it to say it wasn’t pretty.
Among the students recruited for the program was Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter. Carter was the former leader of the Slauson gang, a mega-gang in South Central Los Angeles, and was known as “Mayor of the Ghetto.” Shortly before registering at UCLA he had spent four years in Soledad prison for armed robbery, where he had become a disciple of Malcolm X. In 1967, after meeting Black Panther Minister of Defense Huey Newton, he formed the Southern California chapter of the Black Panther Party, mostly out of members of the Slauson gang.
This does seem crazy—deluded, idealistic, dangerous. It culminated in a gang shootout on campus in which two of the students were killed (Carter was one of them), and the program was ended. A fitting 60s story.
Here’s a fact that caught my attention:
Shortly before the gun battle, student activists pressured UCLA Chancellor Charles Young to create a Center for African American Studies—complete with an executive director and staff, office space and a generous budget.
This immediately reminded me of the brouhaha at Cornell that occurred the same year (although later) and was brilliantly described by Allan Bloom (who had been a Cornell professor at the time) in his book The Closing of the American Mind. I’ve written many posts about the Cornell situation: please see this and this, for example.
A little background:
…[Cornell] professors and administrators there proved that they were pushovers more interested in PC thought and placating student pressure (including, in the case of Cornell, the threat of violence by armed students) than in defending any principle they had supposedly held dear.
The issues were somewhat different back then. In Cornell it was race, and the establishment of a Black Studies department, as well as threatening a black student (Alan Keyes, as it turns out) who had disagreed with the protesters…
…Cornell was already slated to get an Afro-American Studies Center [one of the student demands], but that wasn’t good enough for the demonstrators, who said they wanted it to be autonomous.
I had always figured that the black students at Cornell in 1969 had come there as part of some sort of affirmative action or outreach program to get more black students at Cornell in an era when they were ordinarily few and far between.
More:
On Sunday afternoon, following negotiations with Cornell officials, the AAS students emerged from the Straight carrying rifles and wearing bandoleers. Their image, captured by Associated Press photographer Steve Starr, in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, appeared in newspapers across the country and on the cover of Newsweek magazine under the headline, “Universities Under the Gun.”
Although physical disaster was averted, deep psychological scars burned into the minds of many on campus. Four decades later, feelings in some quarters are still raw. The university as a bastion of reasoned argument, thoughtful debate and academic freedom seemed to be under siege. Relationships among faculty members were destroyed. Students were torn. An atmosphere of pervasive fear and anxiety gripped the campus and the nation. The AAS students were not punished, outraging some faculty members, students and alumni.
Cornell was fortunate that there was no bloodshed. If you want to know more about what happened, here’s a source:
But despite the efforts of the president and faculty to attract and integrate them, many black students at Cornell felt alienated from the student body and hostile to the administration. In 1966, a group of black students created the Afro-American Society. Strongly influenced by the national Black Power movement, the AAS sought to increase black students’ autonomy and change Cornell’s curriculum to suit its views, rather than pursue integration. A typical AAS statement, in the form of a letter to the Cornell Daily Sun, read as follows:
“If Blacks do not define the type of program set up within an institution that will be relevant to them, it will be worthless. Moreover, the Blacks must have the right to define the role of white students in the program, even to the point of their restriction, if it is to be valid for Blacks or whites. We do not expect whites to understand because their perception is dimmed by the racism they admit they possess.”…
In 1968, a group of AAS members disrupted the class of Father Michael McPhelin, a visiting economics professor from the Philippines who had criticized the economic-development policies of a number of African nations. Without addressing McPhelin’s criticism on the merits, the AAS tried to intimidate him into recanting. The students first tried to read a letter criticizing him in class—without showing it to him first—but he refused to allow it. Then they attempted to take over the class, and he resisted. McPhelin complained to the chairman of the economics department, who, instead of punishing the offending students, praised them for their activism. By the end of the year, McPhelin had left Cornell and, as Tarcov saw it, a pattern had been established…
The pattern continues to this day, is adopted by all leftist activist groups, and has become extremely commonplace. As universities capitulate more and more, the demands escalate rather than subside.
More about Cornell that will sound very very familiar:
On April 18, students at Wari, a cooperative for black women, reported a burning cross on their lawn and blamed racist whites for the incident. The cross burners were never caught, and Ithaca police suspected, but could never prove, that AAS members themselves had burned the cross, trying to create a pretext for further protest. Stephen Goodwin, a Cornell student at the time who served as the AAS treasurer, later called the cross burning “a set-up. It was just to bring in more media and more attention to the whole thing.”
Whether it was a set-up or not, the incident set the stage for a massive escalation…
In carrying out the takeover, AAS students crossed the line between incivility and life-threatening violence. The invading students ran through the building shouting “Fire!,” sending 30 confused parents outside without even a chance to gather their luggage. A number of parents had the presence of mind to call the university’s department of public safety and ask for help, but they were advised, “There’s nothing we can do; do what they tell you.”…
According to Allan Sindler, chairman of the government department at the time, black students then brought rifles to Straight’s loading dock for use by AAS members, and campus police, acting on orders from the administration, did nothing to stop them. Once armed, AAS leader Eric Evans, a senior majoring in communications, demonstrated a proclivity for his chosen field when he shouted through a megaphone, “If any more white students come in, you’re gonna die here.”
The occupiers demanded the nullification of campus judicial action against the students who had overturned vending machines the previous year, the commencement of housing negotiations between the administration and the AAS, and a complete investigation of the Wari cross-burning. They spent Saturday night smuggling in more rifles and preparing for another day of antics. On Sunday, they negotiated with a special committee of faculty members and administration officials appointed to manage the crisis.
That afternoon, the AAS and the administration came to an agreement, and 110 black students left Straight and marched to the Africana Studies and Research Center to sign the deal. Even the exodus took place in a manner embarrassing to the university…
I’ll stop there. You get the picture.
[NOTE: I’m wondering—although I haven’t been able to locate the information so far—whether Cornell’s program that recruited these students was anything like that at UCLA, or whether it more closely resembled the admissions process of today. If anyone finds any information on this please post it in the comments.
Also, that book by Linda Chavez sounds like a very interesting changer story.]
