Student Activism on Campus in 20th Century America

UCLA students in sit-down protest with banner reading “UC Out of South Africa! Divest Now” as two UC Police officers watch Los Angeles, Calif., 1986

Overview

Reveal Digital’s Editorial Board has selected Student Activism on Campus for Diversity & Dissent’s 2019/20 publishing theme. Jeff Moyer, Director and Founder of Reveal Digital states, “we are looking for projects that will benefit from open access, that will have an impact on scholarship and discourse, and are relevant in today’s political, cultural, and social context.” Projects that receive funding will be aggregated into an open access digital collection and made freely available through Reveal Digital’s website.

The study of activism on campus is important, not only to help us understand the history of protest movements but also to inform our understanding of today’s student activism. Angus Johnston, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education states, “The activists of the ’60s and ’70s, confronting universities that were hostile to their values and ideals, launched a movement that remade American higher education in their own image — not completely, and perhaps not permanently, but in significant, lasting ways. Today’s activists may yet articulate — and enact — a similarly far-reaching agenda.”

Scope

The completed collection will contain 150,000 pages drawn from dozens of special collection libraries and archives around the country. Materials include circulars, leaflets, fliers, pamphlets, newsletters, campaign materials, protest literature, clippings, publications, bulletins, letters, press releases, ephemera; and meeting, demonstration, conference, and event documentation.

Topics and events targeted for inclusion

Anti-apartheid divestiture, student involvement in the civil rights movement, Columbia student strike of 1968, East L.A. student blowout, free speech movement, Indians of All Tribes’ occupation of Alcatraz, Take-Back-the-Night protests, protests against the Vietnam War, women’s movement, LGBTQ rights, and the Orangeburg massacre.

Source Libraries

Check back regularly for updates as more libraries agree to include their collections

• UCLA – UCLA Students. Student Activism materials. 1927-2014
  Themes include communism, pacifism, World War II, the Vietnam War, civil rights, and freedom of expression.
• North Carolina A&T University, F.D. Bluford Library
  Greensboro Four sit-ins
• Civil Rights Movement Archive
  The Student Voice
• Densho Digital Repository
  Gidra

Content Contributions from Funding Libraries

As a benefit to funding libraries, ten percent of the collection is being reserved for content provided by those libraries not specifically targeted for inclusion. Funding libraries are invited to nominate source material from their own collections, whether a single document or multiple boxes. Please contact Anne Ray to propose content.
Anne.Ray@ithaka.org
+1 212.358.6428