The concept of town and gown—the notion that universities are sequestered physically and figuratively from the cities and towns in which they are located—has a long and ongoing history. Yet the historical record reveals a more complicated story, where students and community partners, especially the Syracuse Peace Council, have worked together in their mutual quest for peace and social justice. The following represents a brief selection of such moments from the Sixties, though there are many other moments that occur long before them and as recent as this year. In crafting these snapshots, I draw primarily from a series of comprehensive books by John Robert Greene called Syracuse University (particularly chapter 14 from Volume IV and chapter 3 from Volume V), as well as the digitized and publicly available PNL archives which go back as far as SPC’s beginning in 1936.
The Civil Rights Movement in Syracuse
Soon after the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organized historic sit-ins in North Carolina in 1960 and Freedom Rides throughout the South in the spring of 1961, four SU grad students and one professor, George Wiley (one of two black faculty members), organized a chapter in Syracuse. Although CORE fought desegregation in the city schools and picketed for better jobs for blacks at the Hotel Syracuse, its most dramatic challenges arrived in the fall of 1963 as the city began plans to demolish the Fifteenth Ward to make room for public housing and I-81. At the time, the Fifteenth Ward was home to 90% of the black population of Syracuse, and the razing of existing houses would displace thousands of residents. As bulldozers moved in, CORE members locked themselves to construction equipment, climbed the rooftops of buildings, and picketed the main site on Harrison Street. Mayor Bill Walsh had fourteen of them arrested, sparking several tense discussions at SU and provoking public shame from Chancellor William Tolley.
During this time, most of the Peace Council’s attention was on the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. Even though the PNL ran a statement in October 1963 on race relations in Syracuse that echoed and supported CORE’s emphasis on racial equality in the areas of education, employment, and housing, there was an implied separation between the primary aims of SPC and those of CORE, epitomized in the final sentence of the statement: “As for civil disobedience, we do not take a position for or against it; but we fully support those who, in a spirit of creative non-violence, feel morally compelled to make this form of witness.”
But as time went on, CORE increasingly inspired SPC. One year later, in the fall of 1964, SPC sponsored a daylong symposium that asked a number of important questions, including: “Can the peace movement and the civil rights movement become united in a common enterprise?” CORE chairman Bruce Thomas, who replaced Wiley, spoke about his activism in Mississippi the previous summer and SPC sponsored a workshop on nonviolent tactics where participants were guided through a “series of carefully planned role-playing sociodramas” designed to help activists potentially confront tense or hostile situations. Perhaps a sign of things to come, the PNL suggested that “[tr]aining in nonviolent methods is helpful in preparing people to take part in nonviolent direct action projects.”
The Viet Nam War
The largest public demonstration ever recorded in Onondaga County occurred on October 15, 1969, when 10,000 Syracuse protesters joined other cities across the US for The Moratorium To End the War in Viet Nam. The October 1969 edition of the PNL listed additional activities from area schools, including SU, OCC, Le Moyne, and area high schools such as JD and Nottingham. On SU’s campus, Student Government President David Ifshin played a critical role mobilizing, while SPC helped form committees at OCC and Lemoyne that led to direct action both on those campuses and off. Members reportedly felt mixed about the Moratorium—invigorated, of course, by the numbers, but also “shocked” and “dismayed” at how much work was ahead: “Those of us who had grown used to a minority psychology, thinking of ourselves as the virtuous few, had to admit that we had greatly underestimated the potential for anti-war organizing in Syracuse. We had assumed that the apathetic middle almost by necessity would remain the apathetic middle.” But the momentum from the October Moratorium led to another historic march on Washington the following month, where half a million protesters descended on the White House. The SPC worked with representatives from the community as well as SU School of Social Work, SU Student Government, Lemoyne, OCC, and the High School Student Union to form a steering committee called the Syracuse New Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam; they also sponsored bus rides to Washington for $15.
The following spring, Nixon invaded Cambodia and publicly labeled student activists “bums,” while peace groups across the US met to plan additional demonstrations to end the war. Four days after the invasion, on May 4, 3,000 students at SU were in the middle of a rally when news reached them that four students were shot dead by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State. Later that evening, moods shifted from shock to anger as students at campuses across the nation reacted violently to the events at Kent State. At SU, students broke windows, graffitied buildings, and set up barricades. The next day, the Syracuse Herald-Journal ran a front-page story, whose headline read “Students run wild at SU.” That afternoon, however, a composed student body—approximately 7,000 students—marched downtown, two-abreast, in a line that stretched from main campus to South Salina Street.
Of these events, the 1970 April/May edition of the PNL remarked: “Few people realize how constructive and creative the student strike at Syracuse University has been. The normal business of the school came to an end as students and faculty gathered in many different meetings and forums to discuss how to end repression in the US and how to end the war in South East Asia.” These events had a direct effect on the daily work of the SPC. On May 6, for example, the Peace Council organized a silent vigil downtown, which was attended by 4,000 people—“[s]welled by Syracuse University strikers.” According to the PNL, many of the students at both SU and OCC depended on the SPC “for ideas, speakers, films, literature, and just plain help.”
Looking back, looking forward
As any history should, these two cases provoke some critical questions about the past, present, and future of activism in Syracuse. This is especially true in terms of how, over time, the SPC and Syracuse University students and faculty have collaborated on key issues, shared knowledge and tactics, and understood their roles and purposes in the city and beyond. Activist histories generally—and the PNL archive specifically—are useful tools for putting progress in perspective, for seeing what’s old, what’s new, and to hear the many voices that have come before us.
