In the late 1960’s, Cornell University pioneered a program to recruit minority students and diversify. But, as their numbers grew, the Black students faced discrimination, racial slurs, and a nighttime cross burning. Protesting the racism, the Black students staged several demonstrations.

Finally, in a defiant protest, the Black students took over Willard Straight Hall, the student union, on Parent’s Day Weekend, Friday, April 18, 1969, evicting guests and occupying the building.

After the takeover, white fraternity brothers attacked the Blacks in a fist fight. That night, the Black students smuggled rifles and shotguns into the building and refused to leave. Fearing a deadly gun battle between students or police, university administrators began intense negotiations with the protestors. Sunday afternoon, the Blacks agreed to retreat from Straight armed with their weapons.

As the Associated Press Photographer covering Upstate New York, I was crouched at the doorway, ready with my Nikon when the Black students marched out. The next morning, my picture of armed Black s ran on the front page of almost every newspaper in the United States. The picture inflamed fears, soon realized, that protests over racism and the Vietnam war would escalate into armed violence and deaths.

As years passed, I become friends with two of the Black students, Skip Meade and Tom Jones. Skip was a beloved educator and W.E.B. DuBois scholar. He died in 2021. Tom is a senior partner in TWJ Capital with a stellar Wall Street career, including chairman and CEO of Citigroup’s Investment Management.

For definitive accounts of the Cornell takeover, I recommend: From Willard Straight to Wall Street by Thomas W. Jones (Cornell University Press 2019) Cornell ’69 Liberalism and the Crisis of the American University by David Alexander Downs. (Cornell University Press 1999)