Eyes on the Prize II; Interview with Kenneth Clark

Dr. Clark, we're going back to 1968, the students have taken over the administration building. How did you hear about the students take over the administration building? I was on the board of directors of the university at the time, and I think I heard before our meeting, but we certainly heard at the meeting because that dominated the whole concern of the board of directors that the students had taken over and were doing a number of things in terms of seeking to obtain their objectives. What was some of your concerns and reactions in the board meeting at the time?

What was some of the discussion like? Well, the thing that I remember most was that some of us were very much concerned about preventing violence and keeping the conflict and confrontation to a minimum between the board and the students or the administration and the students. If I remember correctly in 1968, it's a long time back, there were some few members of the board who were sort of hardliners and who wanted to make the students understand that they had no power or control, that the power and control was to be found in the board and not in the students. They seemed as if they were going to dominate, but a few of us were going to give any

demonstration of who has power or we just want to prevent violence and we eventually got them to agree that a few of us would go and talk with the students, student leaders. Now some of the people on the board who were hardliners, I imagine they were hardliners because some of the students, the man's were very strong, for example, they wanted the resignation of President Napoli. That's right. He had contributed a lot to the civil rights struggle, I mean what was your reaction to the students demanding his resignation, President Napoli's resignation, if you could include what President Napoli's name and your answer? Well, President Napoli was out of the country at the time and some of us were trying to get hold of him and if I remember correctly, at a difficult time finding him and yes, I think there was no question that the students wanted his resignation.

To be quite honest with you, I don't know what their specific reasons were for wanting his resignation, but that was a very high level of concern for them. What was your reaction to the students? I mean, he was a man who had been involved in the civil rights struggle for many years and contributed a great deal. What was your reaction to your personal reaction to that? Well, I had worked with President Napoli very closely during the Brown decision cases. He was one of the lawyers. In fact, he was the chief lawyer for the case that involved the District of Columbia and in the meetings that Thurgood had up here in New York, Napoli was a very active participant and I felt close and friendly and I had a degree of respect for him and I certainly respected him during the period when he was president of the university.

I don't know what happened in that latter part of his tenure when the students became negative. I must confess that I, if I were to save you that I know what was happening at the time I would not be telling you the truth of me. So do you think the students had a valid reason? I mean, I don't know. All I know is that I was primarily concerned with protecting the students and the university from chaos and violence. I can't tell you whether they had a valid, a check, valid series of objectives or not. I mean, they were organized and they had taken over a couple of the buildings and they seemed quite persistent and insistent and a few of us on the board felt that if we didn't establish some communication with them, things would get worse and worse and worse.

One of the other concerns was that they didn't feel that how would you have a strong commitment to the black community, the large of black community outside of how university was a reaction to that. I have to repeat to you that my priority was getting the students out of danger and I cannot tell you that I have any remembrance of what their agenda was. I just can't tell you that. You must have had some sort of an opinion about some of these students' demands. You keep asking me that and I'm telling you that I was more concerned with preventing violence and preventing the police from coming up on that campus and carting these students off to jail.

I did not put priority on the issues that they were striking about. I really didn't. My priority was how do we get these students? How do we keep them from being hurt? How do we keep the university from being hurt? How do we keep the hardliners on the board from demonstrating that they had power by bringing in the police? At what point did you go up to see the students at night to talk to them? It was evening. At a point where we got the board to agree and by we, I meant the pupils, including that distinguished chemist Percy Julian, who fortunately was not a hardliners because he did have the board had respect for Percy Julian's pupils, had the board agree. That we should go and talk with the students and show them that there were ways of dealing

with their issues other than through violence. If I remember correctly, maybe the majority of the board didn't think that we were going to succeed. They said, all right, go. I think they gave us about 24 hours or so to accomplish our mission. If we did not succeed, then they would bring in the police. That's great. That's very good. Very good. Two. Parking things. All right. Dr. Park, I know you don't remember the demands of the students. You guys are quite right. One of the demands was that they felt that Howard should have a strong commitment to the black community.

Should have a what? That Howard should have a strong commitment to the black community outside of the campus. My question to you is, did you feel that Howard had already, were they doing that? Was the school doing that? Was the school involved in the community as far as you would concern? My personal feeling is I don't see how it would be possible for the school not to be related or involved or concerned with the black community. The purpose of Howard University was to communicate and educate the students and the community and the nation. I remember as an undergraduate that I would listen to the lawyers in the law school talk about the legal approaches to obtaining racial justice.

Well, this, to me, was a commitment to the black community and, of course, the whole brown decision cases came out of Howard University's law school. I certainly learned a great deal about American injustices, the racial problems and intelligent approach to trying to deal with them from people like Ralph Bunch and Frank Frazier and a group of good, solid, intelligent faculty people in the university. To me, this was commitment. I remember as a senior at Howard being arrested at the group of my classmates when we went

down to the Capitol building and protested against their not permitting blacks to eat in the restaurant there, Ralph Bunch and others on the faculty fought very hard to keep us from being expelled. Camera roll out, I'm going to camera roll 2156. Dr. Clark, many of the students on the campus, I mean, I'm not sure if you remember this, but the school should have a curriculum that was more black oriented, I mean, you were just talking about that you felt you went to Howard, that the school had a commitment

that you went downtown and been active and stuff like that. What would your reaction be to the students in 681 to Howard have a more black oriented curriculum? Didn't you think Howard already had that? Well, I certainly did. I had a great deal of respect for... I just actually didn't include, I thought Howard already had a curriculum that was oriented to what... You know, black... They won't hear his questions. I'd say, I felt that Howard had a very strong commitment and by Howard, I mean, faculty members have powered certainly those whom I respected and talked with, had a strong commitment for racial justice and the commitment term, I thought was a sort of a fashionable term when Howard was really being concerned with how do we use intelligence and law to

remove the more flagrant and eventually, I suppose, subtle examples of racial injustice. And to me, a university is a place where ideas are made to be dynamic and to the places where at universities you have concern with basic human values. And my feeling was that Howard University could be an institution that would bring this dimension of primary concern for justice as an important part of higher education.

And I felt that certainly my five or six years at the university, I felt that it's very strongly, I felt that the university was doing this. I also feel that the black power movement wanted something else. I don't know that I quite understood what they wanted a university to do in terms of black power demonstrations. It seemed to me that what went on in the seminars, in the classrooms, in the conferences, in the legal, the discussions of the law school, these were the kinds of things that a university could contribute.

So did you think that the students, I mean, that what they were doing was disrupt the kind of progress that had been happening at Howard for so many years? Well I will tell you very honestly, I felt that what the students were doing then was fashionable. And they were apparently, there was a great deal of enthusiasm about that approach. Now my feeling was, look, let's look at this approach, let's see what the university could contribute and what the university has contributed and what it could contribute even more so. But again, this had nothing to do with my concern with not having violence, it had nothing to do with, if I disagreed with the students, I still did not want police coming in there

using clubs and handcuffing them and taking them away. That I would prefer was for us to find some way of having dialogue with the students and listening to what they wanted and letting them understand what the field has felt, the university should contribute and could contribute. What did you think did take over accomplished after it was over? Frankly, I don't know. I know what it prevented. I know what was prevented, that if I remember correctly, the students were not handcuffed and taken off to prison. What their objectives and goals were, I don't know whether they accomplished them or not,

I really don't. And you mediated with the students that you really expressed strong with your concerns about them working out some solutions so they could walk out of that administration building without having police come in? Our mediation with the students was concerned primarily with this problem of not having police come on that campus and take control and take the students off the prison. I repeat, this was my primary concern and the attempt to get the students to understand that this was a very important priority concern and really having to do with justice and having to do with the role of the university.

The university is not a place in which typical these and differences of opinion should be mediated by violence. Dr. Clark, I'm going to ask you again, did you think what happened if the police came on campus if you could be explicit about what you thought would happen to the students if police walked into administration building and tried to take them out of it? I think they would be, I think that if the police come on that campus during that period of controversy and confrontation with the students in control of administration building, there would be physical violence, there would be arrests obviously, the student leaders

would be taken off the jail and then we'd have to start all over again getting them out. It was clear that this was not the thing that happened and that the students had to understand that although some of them might have considered it more exciting if that happened, but for some of us on the board this would have been increasing the turbulence. But for some others on the board wasn't there a way to show that who was in control and who had power? Oh sure, in a way they might have had something positive on their side that you couldn't have, I mean the students, the board members who felt that no concessions whatsoever should be made to the students and a few board members who felt that we shouldn't even engage in communication

with them or that the members of the board should not take the initiative in communicating with the students, they believed that authority had to be demonstrated and that one could not submit to the irrationalities of the students without regard to the consequences. Now that's to say, saying that too harshly, I'm sure that even though the more hardline members of the board would not want to see any blood, but they certainly wouldn't mind seeing some of the students being arrested. Was there a concern that since Howard had a very strong relationship with the federal

government that that relationship might be threatened by the student take over? I don't recall anyone saying that, and certainly that was not anything that we would communicate to the students when we were talking with them. You said earlier a question before they said black power was fashionable at the time. Yes, either it was fashionable or black power at that time was either quite fashionable among young people or was beginning to get fashionable and the students and the student leaders wanted to demonstrate that they were in tune with the ideology and the activities of the students at that time. Did you feel relevant, did you feel it was relevant? Did I feel that the black power was relevant?

I didn't. I didn't feel that. No, I didn't feel that. Oh, no. I grew up in that. I grew up in Tarantown. I'm born in Raysia. But I can't feel that she was born in Raysia, but that's not true. We came up here when she was in sixth grade. I don't remember any next few. And my son was in third grade. Oh. Okay, fine. Just if you can answer to Sam, but just so people understand why you were so concerned about police not coming on campus, what did you envision would happen if they came on campus? I felt strongly that we should do everything within our power to keep police from coming in to this conflict or coming on campus, because I had images of police using their night sticks and their bludgeon and worse, really. Now this may have been just my imagination, but this was my imagination.

And I just did not want to be on a board or to be associated with the university in which students were being bludgeoned. And that's what I was saying to my colleagues on the board. And this was the main point that I was communicating to the students and the student leaders. You had said earlier that we put Black Power was fashionable, I mean did you find it relevant in terms of the students' needs on the campus? I wasn't involved in any discussion of the ideology or the rhetoric of Black Power or putting blackness as a major issue in terms of the responsibilities and goals of the university. As far as I was concerned, a university was a place where you considered all kinds of problems

and conflicts and sought to have intelligent and rational discussions. At that time, if I remember correctly, Black Power was a marching slogan and I don't recall anything about that slogan that was leading to an increase in justice and decency in racial justice, I guess, to be quite honest with you, I was not particularly popular with some of the Black Power advocates at the time because I thought that it was really the negative side of white supremacy and I thought white supremacy was sort of stupid. And I think that Black Power rhetoric was not particularly rational or intelligent either.

That's it. Let me just add one other thing. Okay, coming up this room, Tom. That was a long 30 seconds.