Former US Senator Claiborne Pell died on New Year’s Day, at the age of 90.

Pell wrote the laws that created the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, but as his New York Times obituary noted, he is best known as the father of Pell Grants.

Pell Grants, federal need-based grants to college students, today provide assistance to almost one-third of all those who attend American colleges. Claiborne Pell was the Senate’s greatest champion of the program, and an editorial appreciation of Pell Grants appeared in yesterday’s Times as a tribute to him.

But the Pell Grant program, passed by Congress in the summer of 1972, was not simply the product of Pell’s vision. It was also the first great victory in the American student movement of the 1970s.

On June 30, 1971, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing the vote to Americans between the ages of 18 and 20. With the lowering of the voting age, college students became a significant voting bloc in American politics. In the 1970s, for the first time, students could exercise political power not just in the streets, but in the voting booth as well.

A new kind of student politics demanded a new kind of organizing, and so 1971 also saw the creation of the National Student Lobby, America’s first national student-funded, student-directed, professionally-staffed student lobbying organization.

Created by students in the service of the students’ interest, NSL was a milestone in American student history … and the passage of the Pell Grant program was its biggest priority.

In March of 1972 NSL held its first lobbying conference in Washington DC, bringing hundreds of students from 39 states to the Capitol for one day of training and two days of lobbying.

The students of NSL made their case in the offices of more than 80 Senators and 300 Representatives in those two days, and just three days later Pell Grants were endorsed by a one-vote margin in a crucial vote in a House-Senate conference. The Pell Grant program was signed into law by President Nixon later that summer, and this year it will provide more than $16 billion in aid to more than five million students.

Six years later, NSL merged with the National Student Association to create the United States Student Association. USSA has continued the tradition of lobbying conferences started by NSL and NSA, and will be holding its next National Grassroots Legislative Conference in Washington DC on March 21 through 24 of this year. Check it out.