“Strike!” howard place and sixth street nw
Howard University has a long history of student activism. Students of the 1930s and ’40s protested lynchings nationwide and discriminatory DC businesses. In the early 1960s students organized sit-ins, registered voters in the South, and discussed pan-African theories. In 1966 university traditions merged with the Black Power movement when students elected the Afro-sporting activist Robin Gregory as Homecoming Queen. The following spring students protested the Vietnam War, charging that black soldiers fought for “freedom they do not have” at home. After students boycotted classes, Howard dropped the required military ( ROTC ) training that put many on the path to Vietnam. In March 1968 students demanding a more Afrocentric curriculum seized the Administration Building. Writing to President James M. Nabrit, himself a civil rights icon, students insisted that Howard open to the wider black community, produce “leaders who take pride in their true identity,” and become “the center of Afro- American thought.” The negotiated settlement gave students more say in curricular and disciplinary issues. One month later a stunned campus united in grief over the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Many graduates continued the struggle. Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Toure) chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and eventually moved to Guinea and worked for pan-African revolution. Student leaders Charlie Cobb and Anthony Gittens co-founded DC’s first Afrocentric bookstore, the Drum and Spear. Former theology student Douglas Moore led the Black United Front and helped found the DC Statehood Committee.
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