Conscience and conflict: Patterns in the history of student activism on southern college campuses, 1960--1970
Description
This dissertation examines the origins and impact of student activism on southern college campuses during the 1960s. Southern students of the sixties joined their colleagues in other parts of the nation in addressing the major social and political questions of the day, but the political mobilization of these students has received scant attention from historians. When a student-led sit-in movement against segregated public establishments swept the South in 1960 and 1961, it initiated a new era in the region's political history and in the history of southern higher education. The sit-ins provided new precedents for southern students as political actors while they simultaneously exposed limitations on academic freedom. On this foundation, southern students built a student movement that challenged not only the racial discrimination in the region but also inadequacies in the region's higher-education system. The escalation of American military involvement in Vietnam intensified this movement in the late 1960s. At the same time, the emergence of black-power rhetoric signaled a rise in militance among the region's black students and raised questions about the meaning of integration in formerly segregated colleges and universities. In 1969 and 1970, campuses throughout the region experienced unprecedented demonstrations. Nevertheless, faced with strong resistance and beset by internal weaknesses, the southern student movement soon lost momentum Based on research conducted at a variety of institutions throughout the region, this dissertation differs from most previous studies of the student movement of the sixties by adopting a biracial focus. Historically black institutions and predominantly white campuses provided different contexts for the emergence of a student movement. But despite the differences, the clashes on black and white campuses were part of one movement---a movement that sought to remake southern higher education and, in the process, southern society