Willard Straight Occupation Study Guide: Key Books

This book looks into the Black Student Movement of the 1960s. Edwards, a graduate student at Cornell University when Black students seized Willard Straight Hall, this book provides a detail account of events surrounding the Straight occupation on April 19, 1969.

This book is a historical overview of the Willard Straight Hall takeover. Donald Alexander provides eyewitness accounts and retrospective interviews with various people who took part in the takeover. The author also gives information about key issues that surrounded the takeover as well as an analysis of its aftermath.

This is a memoir by Thomas W. Jones, the story of an African American who engaged in one of the most searing and traumatic campus confrontations of the 1960s in 1969 at Cornell University, and then transitioned to being one of the first wave of African Americans attempting to climb the ladder to the top ranks of corporate America. The first chapter, “Guns at Cornell” provides a firsthand account of the occupation of Willard Straight Hall on April 19, 1969.

Glenn C. Altschuler and Isaac Kramnick examine the institution in the context of the emergence of the modern research university. The book examines Cornell during the Cold War, the civil rights movement, Vietnam, antiapartheid protests, the ups and downs of varsity athletics, the women's movement, the opening of relations with China, and the creation of Cornell NYC Tech. It relates profound, fascinating, and little-known incidents involving the faculty, administration, and student life, connecting them to the "Cornell idea" of freedom and responsibility. In addition, Altschuler and Kramnick a great depiction of the Willard Straight occupation and its aftermath.

This book provides the first national study of this intense and challenging struggle which disrupted and refashioned institutions in almost every state. It also illuminates the context for one of the most transformative educational movements in American history through a history of black higher education and black student activism before 1965.

This book is both a reader and an introspective tribute, comprised of writings by James Turner and commentary from several of his former students. The book strives to underscore critical connections between multiple dimensions of Turner's legacy (as scholar, activist, institution-builder, teacher, and mentor), while also aiming to contribute to the growing historicized literature on the Black Studies movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The black power movement helped redefine African Americans' identity and establish a new racial consciousness in the 1960s. As an influential political force, this movement in turn spawned the academic discipline known as Black Studies. Fabio Rojas explores how this radical social movement evolved into a recognized academic discipline. Rojas traces the evolution of Black Studies over more than three decades, beginning with its origins in Black Nationalist politics.

Martha Biondi masterfully combines impressive research with a wealth of interviews from participants to tell the story of how students turned the slogan "Black Power" into a social movement. Vividly demonstrating the critical linkage between the student movement and changes in university culture, Biondi illustrates how victories in establishing Black Studies ultimately produced important intellectual innovations that have had a lasting impact on academic research and university curricula over the past 40 years.