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UP AGAINST THE WALL, MOTHERFUCKER! |
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By late April 1968 at Columbia University it was clear that the issues
plaguing the university were not going away. The university continued to
insist on its right to build a gym on land then occupied by apartment
buildings housing hundreds of Harlem's residents, and hundreds of students
and neighborhood residents continued to oppose those plans. In addition,
the university's ties to the U. S. defense establishment via its
sponsorship of a branch of the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) was
angering more and more students and younger faculty as the bloodshed in
Vietnam increased in volume and intensity. The Institute's rumored
involvement in the death of revolutionary Che Guevara didn't help matters,
either. In the minds of the student radicals these issues were not only connected, they shared the same roots. Consequently , those who carried out those policies were equally culpable. That included Grayson Kirk, president of Columbia, just as much as it included Lyndon Johnson and General Westmoreland. That left those who opposed the university's desire to build a gym on land bought out from underneath those who lived on it and its involvement in the war in Vietnam only one route of opposition. Confrontation On April 23, 1968, after a march opposing the gym construction, Columbia students and neighborhood residents headed back to the Columbia campus. Enroute, a group of black and white students headed towards Hamilton Hall and took it over. Early the next morning ano |
