Swarthmore historian helps students remember black protests of 1969

Students from Professor of History Allison Dorsey’s class “Black Liberation 1969” have begun to hold various events around campus as part of what Dorsey called a “takeover of Black History Month.”

The series of events includes interactive workshops, student-led discussions, art installations, and performances around campus that will take place through the end of February. Dorsey wrote in an e-mail that the takeover, led by students in her fall 2014 class “Black Liberation 1969,” is intended to educate the wider campus community about the Black student protest movement that occurred at the college over 40 years ago.

During that decade, the then newly-formed Swarthmore Afro-American Student Society came into conflict with the Admissions Office and the college administration over declining Black enrollment, the lack of an official Black Studies program, and the paucity of Black administrators and professors at the college. The friction between the two groups culminated in a SASS-led sit-in in the Admissions Office, which lasted from January 9-16, 1969. The events of the takeover are meant to remind the college of these events, and educate those in the college community that may not be aware of this history.

The thirteen students who took “Black Liberation 1969” with Dorsey all contributed to the events of this takeover. The course, offered exclusively in the fall 2014 semester, asked students to write the first accurate history of the protest movement, as well as to individually develop a creative project meant to educate the community about this history.

Students also conducted interviews with alumni involved with SASS during this period of Swarthmore’s history and compiled these interviews with other data, such as photos and newspaper articles in the Swarthmorean and the Phoenix, into an online database, now open to the public. ...