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In the fall of 1964 the leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee made a visit to West Africa. At the time SNCC was one of the most prominent civil rights organizations in the United States, and its leaders were among the country’s most capable black activists.
Traveling to Africa from Jim Crow America was a shock for these young people. At one point on the trip, as the group boarded an airplane, SNCC communications director Julian Bond noticed that the pilot was black. He turned to a friend and, only half joking, said “I hope this guy knows what he’s doing.”
Forty-five years ago one of America’s strongest advocates of racial equality wasn’t quite sure that he trusted a black man to fly a plane. Today at noon, a black man will be sworn in as president of the United States of America.
How quickly did this happen? How fast did we move from then to now?
Here’s how quickly. Here’s how fast.
When Julian Bond stepped onto that airplane, America’s first black president was three years old.
“If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all the youthful vim and vigor, then there is something wrong with our colleges. The more riots that come on college campuses, the better world for tomorrow.”
–William Allen White, April 8, 1932.
In 1964 students at the State University of New York at Buffalo pulled off an extraordinary prank.
While cramming for a botany final in late 1963, one student stumbled across the phrase “the thallus of Marchantia,” referring to a stem-like structure on a moss-like plant. Deciding that the phrase sounded like an Arab title of royalty, this student and his friends decided to send the local paper a press release telling them that the Thallus of Marchantia was coming to Buffalo on a state visit.
The prank snowballed from there, and by the time it was over the organizers had sent a student to New York City, flown him back to Buffalo dressed as the fictional potentate, staged a massive protest upon his arrival at the airport, and secured a limo and a police escort to take him to a meeting with the mayor.
The full story of this bizarre escapade can be found here.
The Texas Student Association, a statewide student advocacy and lobbying group, has officially constituted itself at a meeting on the University of North Texas campus.
Texas’s last statewide student association was founded after the Second World War but went dormant about a decade ago. The new group, organized over the course of the last few months, is moving forward in 2009 with a lobbying agenda that emphasizes pocketbook issues.
A quick Google didn’t turn up a website or contact information for the TSA, but if any of our readers have that info, we’d be glad to post it.
Here’s an excellent project.
Students for a Democratic Society has set up a wiki page for links to news coverage of SDS events and actions. The page is set up chronologically, so it’s easy to see what’s new, and easy to check up on what was going on at any particular time.
Since it’s a wiki, of course, anyone can add anything to it whenever they like. And it’s not just for traditional media coverage, either — I learned about it when the page linked to a December post of ours on the aftermath of a Brown SDS protest.
The page is part of a larger SDS wiki that I haven’t had a chance to explore much yet, but what I have seen I really like.
studentactivism.net 
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