On April 22, 1969, hundreds of black and Latino students at New York’s City College took over seventeen campus buildings demanding reforms in the university’s treatment of students and faculty of color.

They shut down the university for two weeks, and their protests — which continued throughout the spring — led directly to the establishment of open admissions at the City University of New York a year later.

Open admissions nearly doubled the size of CUNY, and transformed the university forever. (It also helped open the door to the implementation of tuition in the system for the first time six years later.)

Today, students at City College will mark the anniversary with a 2 o’clock walkout in protest of budget cuts and tuition increases.