1968 - Mark Kurlansky [115]
SDS students called a meeting. Something had to be done with this Kafkaesque moment. Some argued that this was the turning point—the time to break in and announce the death of nonviolence and the age of Black Power, the beginning of the real revolution. But others argued that to do this would be to cede the figure of Martin Luther King to the white establishment. “Don’t do that,” some students argued. “He was one of us.”
What did happen, as Tom Hayden described it, was that “Mark Rudd, a young SDS leader, simply walked on stage, took the microphone, and denounced the university elders for the hypocrisy of honoring King while disrespecting Harlem.” Rudd does not remember himself as the nonchalant figure Hayden and others described. In truth, his legs were shaking in his boots as he managed to step in front of Vice President David Truman. He said into the microphone, “Dr. Truman and President Kirk are committing a moral outrage against the memory of Dr. King.” The microphone went dead. But Rudd continued, lecturing on how the university “steals land from the people of Harlem,” praises King’s nonviolent civil disobedience, but crushes such demonstration on its own campus.
It was the beginning of Columbia University’s most memorable spring.
It is remarkable how many of the movements of 1968 took on importance only because governments or university administrations adopted repressive measures to stop them. Had they instead ignored them—had the Polish government not closed the play and had they not attacked the protesters, had the Germans ignored the demonstrators who were largely protesting U.S., not German, policy—many would have been forgotten today. As in the civil rights movement, by 1968 it was easy to find a bad sheriff to keep a protest alive.
The SDS could count on Grayson Kirk and the Columbia administration. In April the university for unclear reasons banned indoor demonstrations, which was Rudd’s cue to lead 150 students into the Low Library with a petition against IDA, the Institute for Defense Analyses. The students had demanded to know if Columbia was part of this organization that researched military strategy. The university had refused to confirm or deny participation, and the SDS now claimed that not only did the university belong, but Grayson Kirk and another Columbia trustee were on the board of the organization. The university fell into step, singling out six students, including Rudd, for disciplinary action. Instead of focusing just on the gym, the April 23 demonstration was now also about what had come to be called “the IDA Six.” Then, as though to fuel the protesters even more, the day before the demonstration the university placed the six on probation. Now it was a demonstration not only against the gym and the IDA, but to “free the IDA Six.”
That also happened to be the day Rudd issued his open letter in response to Kirk’s speech about the “nihilism” of “growing numbers” of youth and the generation gap, in which he had called the Vietnam War “a well-meant but essentially fruitless effort.” This was particularly offensive to an antiwar movement that saw the U.S. effort as an immoral attempt to bully a poor nation into submission.
Rudd’s reply, in keeping with the tone of the rest of the letter, was titled “Reply to Uncle Grayson.” It began “Dear Grayson.” In it, he redefined what Kirk had called the generation gap. “I see it as a real conflict between those who run things now—you, Grayson Kirk—and those who feel oppressed by and disgusted