In 1969, student protesters destroyed a 2500-year-old Egyptian sarcophagus on display at the École des Beaux-Arts de Montreal.

For the last four decades the pieces of the coffin — eight large fragments and hundreds of smaller shards — have been in storage, but three months ago, conservators began the work of restoring it and the mummy it housed. The sarcophagus will be featured in a museum exhibit that opens in December, and will then be returned to the college, now part of the University of Quebec in Montreal.

Google and scholarly searches have turned up no information about the 1969 protest in which the sarcophagus was damaged, or about how the damage took place.

Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

 

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give 5 and 10 and 20 to the cause.

 

It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy, who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.

 

It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organised and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

 

This is your victory.

–Barack Obama, November 4, 2008.

The president of the University of Florida’s “Gators for McCain,” one of the nation’s largest pro-McCain student organizations, is voting for Barack Obama.

In about eighteen hours I’m flying to Ohio, where I’ll be doing campaign work through to the election, and I’ve got a lot to take care of between now and then, so I’m unlikely to post again before Saturday afternoon at the earliest. 

You leave a link to work that you’re doing or work that you’ve heard about in the comments, and I’ll bump the news up to a post of its own when I get back to the keyboard tomorrow.

An effigy of Barack Obama was found hanged from a tree on the campus of the University of Kentucky today. The effigy was discovered and reported by a faculty member early this morning, and an investigation by campus and local police is underway.

In a statement, UK president Lee Todd called the act “despicable.”

This is the second such incident to occur on a college campus this year. In late September, an effigy of Obama was hanged on the campus of George Fox University, a small Christian college in Oregon.

About This Blog

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StudentActivism.net is the work of Angus Johnston, a historian and advocate of American student organizing.

To contact Angus, click here. For more about him, check out AngusJohnston.com.