Gender at the Barricades: Women and the Columbia University Uprising of 1968

Abstract

New York History Winter 2014© 2014 by The New York State Historical Association 8 Gender at the Barricades: Women and the Columbia University Uprising of 1968 Bonnie Stepenoff, Southeast Missouri State University On Sunday, April 28, 1968, a call went out on a student radio station requesting a clergyman because a couple wanted to get married in the midst of a tense period of protests at Columbia University. The bride and groom were among the students unlawfully occupying a campus building. Andrea Boroff and Richard Eagan had planned to be married later in the spring, but they decided to take their vows in the presence of their fellow student demonstrators. Moments before the wedding in Fayerweather Hall, a group of street actors presented an allegorical play about a king who gave his people welfare checks and then sent them off to war. Someone in the crowded building yelled “Clear the steps,” and a few cheering students moved out of the way, as Boroff, wearing jeans, a white sweater, and a veil and holding a bouquet of daisies, appeared next to Eagan, wearing a Nehru jacket and beads. A procession of student demonstrators marched down the stairs carrying candles. The Reverend William Starr, who performed the unofficial ceremony, concluded with these words: “I now pronounce you children of a new age.”1 The couple later married legally, and the bride became an advocate for women’s rights. Twenty years after the events in Fayerweather, Andrea Boroff Eagan published a magazine article about the protests at Columbia entitled “Women were Invisible and Inaudible.” Recalling her experience as a participant in the demonstrations, she wrote, “Back then, we typed, ran the mimeograph machines, made the coffee.” When they were asked to provide the food in Fayerweather, the women demurred, and some of the men took over the job of feeding the strikers. In general, how1 . Jerry Avorn, et al., Up Against the Ivy Wall: A History of the Columbia Crisis (New York: Athenaeum, 1969), 129–130. The wedding ceremony appears in the film Columbia Revolt (Newsreel, 1969), Prelinger Archives, Part I: https://archive.org/details/Columbia1969 and Part II: https://archive.org/details/ Columbia1969_2. To mark the 40th anniversary of the demonstrations in 2008, Columbia University organized a conference, Columbia 1968+40. The conference’s website contains a large photo gallery, which can be accessed here: http://www.columbia1968.com/history/photos/. Stepenoff Gender at the Barricades 9 ever, according to Eagan, women played supportive, not leading, roles in the demonstrations. In the influential 1979 book entitled Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left, Sara Evans briefly mentioned the protests at Columbia and noted that male protesters “turned the housekeeping chores over to women.” Evans interviewed Eagan, among other female dissidents of the 1960s, while researching her book. At the time of the Columbia demonstrations, there were signs of change in gender relationships, but in 1968, the “new age” strongly resembled the old one, even among those who struggled mightily against the status quo.2 In Personal Politics, Evans argued that a negative experience in the protest movements of the 1960s motivated women on the left to 2. Andrea Eagan, “Women were Invisible and Inaudible,” New York Newsday, April 24, 1988; New York Times, March 11, 1993. Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), 201. Columbia Revolt, a documentary on the 1968 Columbia University demonstrations , by the radical film collective Newsreel. Beginning at 21:47 in Part I, footage from the wedding of Boroff and Eagan is shown. Be advised that the film contains brief depictions of violence and strong language. 10 ■ NEW YORK HISTORY push for gender equality. The experience of women during and after the Columbia protests supports this argument, but there is another lesson to be drawn from this example. During times of struggle, people may call for change and at the same time cling to traditional patterns, habits, roles, and customs. The wedding at Fayerweather Hall, in the midst of a radical protest , is a case in point. The bride, groom...