Student strike - a student view

              Student Strike /
A Student View
Randi Bryant Strutton, president
of Student Government in 1969,
recalls the events of the strike.
For two days in May, I met with
friends at my tenth-year reunion.
They were good friends of all ages,
and seeing them again on campus,
and talking with them again about
our common experiences stirred within me recollections long-since lost to
time.
They were recollections of active
commitment, for those of us on campus during the sixties became more
than just friends. We became comrades caught in a tangle of conflict.
Like   most   universities,   UNC-G
found itself in the peculiar position of
providing a forum for the advocates
of unprecedented social change and,
at the same time, of defending its own
resistance  to  change.   Unlike  most
universities, however, UNC-G's students, faculty, staff and administration possessed the rationality to explain   themselves   to   each    other.
Disagreements, though heated, were
honest  and  controlled.   Never  was
there a time when I was refused an
audience with the Chancellor, nor he
with me. The entire University was
open for debate. Nothing was sacred
except the freedom of speech. There
were symposia  and  lectures  which
educated us all about the Vietnam
War, black power and student rights.
We learned about the issues, not from
reading   TIME or  the   Greensboro
Daily News or from watching Walter
Cronkite. We learned by listening to
and questioning the actual founders
of a movement. As a result of this
viable, personal exchange, we became
deeply committed to a principle, and
we   often   took   to   the   streets   to
demonstrate   our   determination   to
prevail. There seemed to be an issue
for everybody.
One of the most turbulent issues of
Attorney Henry Frye, second from left, reveals negotiation results (o student strikers on April 1,
1969 on the UNC-G campus.
the sixties, black power, reached into
the consciences of many at UNC-G.
The vast majority of us had come
from middle-class neighborhoods remote from the black areas of town.
We had graduated from high schools
which, until our sophomore year, had
never enrolled a black student. We
had been carefully shielded from the
wounds inflicted by poverty and
discrimination. Yet by 1965, we had
seen enough of the bombings and
riots and demonstrations to abhor the
obvious injustices of our society, and
we were willing, even eager, to help
correct those injustices.
Unfortunately, few of us had ever
had any real social contact with
blacks our own age, and we were
unprepared for the bitterness and
resentment and distrust which seemed
to characterize the emergence of
black power. When the University
sponsored the Black Power Symposium in November, 1967, all of us
were offered a new perspective, a new
understanding. Our own black students organized themselves into the
small but vocal Neo-Black Society.
Our awareness of racism grew, and
we began to understand the anger.
Consequently, we seized the first opportunity to express our camaraderie
with black students everywhere. At
UNC-G that opportunity came when
our black dining hall workers, many
of whom were students at A & T State
University, went on strike in March
of 1969.
Seeing Jim Allen, who was
Presbyterian campus minister at that
time, again brought back a memory
of that strike so clearly that even as I
think of it now, I feel a little terrified
at what could have happened. The
student government led a boycott of
the dining hall, manned soup lines,
and sponsored massive rallies and
marches to demonstrate our support.
More significantly, we also hired an
attorney to represent the workers in
negotiations with the dining hall officials. Many came to the aid of the
students by contributing time and
money to the strike, but the administration seemed reluctant to inject itself into the conflict.
This attitude of neutrality angered
supporters of the strike. One night in
Cone Ballroom a student suggested