THE TUSKEGEE STUDENT UPRISING

Historical study of a little-known but significant student demonstration at a storied Black college.

The Tuskegee Institute is well known for having produced heroic pilots during World War II and, negatively, for “an attempt to use manipulative and deceitful methods to understand the late stages of syphilis.” As Jones, director of the Center for Educators and Schools at the New York Public Library, notes, it is far less well known for a student protest that took place days after Martin Luther King’s assassination, when students presented its board of trustees with a list of proposals to create a “Black University.” In response to the occupation of a couple of Tuskegee buildings, the Alabama National Guard prepared to invade the campus, with one White guardsman telling a student, “you all at Tuskegee have been too uppity for a long time.” A diligent historian who provides important cultural and social context throughout the text, Jones reminds readers that while student unrest in the 1960s and early ’70s has been enshrined in the memory of Kent State, it was at Black schools that the most state violence was exercised. Consequently, “when the Alabama National Guard entered Tuskegee’s campus in April 1968, it was not unreasonable for students and faculty to assume that the resulting confrontation might have been fatal.” As it happens, a dean convinced the Guard not to attack, but school administrators responded by dismissing the entire student body and requiring them to apply for readmission. They also “began openly making plans to use the shutdown to permanently expel the main organizers of the movement.” The following year, though, Tuskegee established a Black studies program and began its course of transforming itself into a true university. The book is part of the publisher’s new Black Power series, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Ashley D. Farmer.

A well-researched and -written addition to the history of the tumultuous 1960s.