Rebellion and Factionalism in Black and White

Abstract

The author discusses the Students for a Democratic Society’s (SDS) involvement in the dispute between Cornell University and black students. The period from January to May 1969 witnessed Cornell getting embroiled in various issues over its responsibility for Ithaca’s housing shortage, its complicity with South Africa’s apartheid regime, and the presence of ROTC on campus. Here the author talks about the dispute involving the Cornell Afro-American Society versus the university administration and faculty, along with the SDS’s support for Cornell’s black student activists; the ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City rejecting the appeal of his conviction and sentence in Syracuse; Cornell SDS’s housing program; the reemergence of the debate over apartheid in South Africa; his confrontation with James Perkins over the university’s investments in South Africa; and Cornell SDS’s criticism of Chase Manhattan Bank over the issue of recruitment on campus.