by Diane Brady
The protest against GE recruiters in front of Hogan Campus Center
Ted Wells organized an emergency BSU executive meeting that evening when he learned about the outcome of the demonstration. Wells thought the charges were racist, pure and simple. While most of the white students charged had organized the protest, the black students were just peripheral players. At the meeting Art Martin was visibly exasperated, and furious with the black protesters whose involvement was forcing the BSU to take a drastic stance. He described them as “badasses” and argued that it was their own fault if they were expelled, since the BSU had formally declined to participate in the protests. But he eventually agreed with Wells; the collective insult was too great to ignore. Clarence Thomas also felt torn. The school had set up a law, he argued, and these men had blatantly broken it. Still, he added, fair was fair, and in a crowd of mostly white men, the fact that it was easier to pick out the people with dark complexions didn’t make it right. Thomas himself had contemplated going down to the demonstration. He shuddered to think that it could have been him—likely would have been him—about to face the judicial board if he had acted on his whim; this time he had ignored his usual instincts to oppose whatever stance Wells and the BSU put forward. In the end, all the men agreed that the college’s behavior was unacceptable and racist. The board would have to drop all charges against the black men, or else the BSU would take action. None of them were willing to contemplate what kind of action they would take; they hoped that the college would understand the BSU’s position and agree to its demands.
They decided to appoint a spokesman who would represent the black protesters before the judicial board. Each of the sixteen students would be making his individual case for why he shouldn’t be suspended or expelled. It would be hard for any of them to argue that they didn’t know they were breaking the rules, but the BSU wanted to make this a formal issue about race. Wells was passionate about how wronged the men were, and the BSU members agreed that nobody was better than Wells when it came to presenting a persuasive argument, not even Clarence Thomas. The accused students agreed to have Wells speak on their behalf.
The next morning, on December 11, Ted Wells left a message for Father Brooks, asking to meet before the 12:30 P.M. hearing. He believed the dean would share their outrage. Brooks didn’t get the message in time, so Wells went to the meeting a half hour before it began and asked the board chairman, a larger-than-life chemistry professor named Michael McGrath, if he could represent the black students. A surprised McGrath turned to the four accused students to ask if they really thought that having another student explain their actions would help their case, and if they were sure they didn’t want to speak up for themselves. The men nodded.
Wells immediately tried to shift the discussion away from the legality of the demonstrations. What they were there to talk about, he asserted, was “a much higher issue—racism.” There had been fifty-four students at the demonstration, including five who were black. Of the sixteen who were singled out for punishment, though, a dozen were white and four were black. In other words, Wells noted, only 20 percent of the white demonstrators were charged, while 80 percent of the blacks were. “As spokesman for the Holy Cross BSU, I charge that this school has exhibited racist attitudes in the naming of a grossly disproportionate number of blacks to stand trial in this case,” he told the room. Moreover, Wells noted that he was standing before a judicial board that was entirely white and, in all probability, unlikely to appreciate the inherent racism in how the students were charged.
The board, which consisted of one administrator, six professors, and three students, was silent after Wells’s speech. Then they began to ask questions: Why were the black students at the protest? What were they doing during the demonstration? Were they members of the RSU? Weren’t they standing near the door, where they would have been easy to identify—black or white? Did they want to have their cases looked at individually, so they could present extenuating circumstances, or did they want to be heard as a group? Each of the men responded that they wanted to be heard as a group. McGrath asked them again: Were they sure they wanted to stick with the group? They did. Several of the white students then jumped to their own defense, claiming that they had been charged only because of their involvement with the RSU and because they had been willing to give their names.
The board then began its deliberations. In an account later presented by McGrath, he noted that the members agreed that the rules had been broken, and debated whether the RSU itself had a right to exist, given its history of trampling on the rights of others. The fate of the black students was less clear. One member pointed out that just because they had been identified in higher numbers than the whites didn’t mean they weren’t subject to the same rules. But the fact that they had been singled out made some members uncomfortable, as did Ted Wells’s warning that if amnesty weren’t granted to the four men, the BSU would have “no alternative except to take action commensurate with the situation at hand.”
Wells was worried when he walked out of the hearing. Back at the dorm he rounded up every member of the BSU to enlist their help in contacting all sixty-four black men on campus. Stan Grayson was away at a basketball game and couldn’t be reached, and a few others were missing as well.
When the BSU met that night, the fury in the room was palpable. Wells wasn’t optimistic about what the judicial board would decide. If its members didn’t immediately see the racism of the situation, he believed, they probably never would.
The men began to yell out suggestions. “Let’s blow something up,” said one.
“Let’s occupy a building.”
“Let’s march into Swords’s office, man!”
Bob DeShay spoke calmly over the fray. “Let’s just leave.”
The men grew quiet. It was such a casual, yet compelling, suggestion. “Let’s just leave,” DeShay repeated. If the college didn’t want them there, he argued, then why should they stay? There was no power in staging a sit-in, or marching to the president’s office. But if they all got up and walked out together, that would really say something.
The men mulled over the suggestion. If they quit school, all of them might suffer. But the gesture would be impossible to ignore and, in one swift action, Holy Cross could lose its entire black student population. Clarence Thomas understood the risk in what his friend from Georgia was suggesting, and he was scared. He would have nowhere to go. There were scholarships on the line, and there would be heartbroken parents. But what choice did they have? If they weren’t going to be treated fairly, he argued, the only answer was to calmly leave.
Art Martin sat quietly, staring at his hands. He was in his final year, headed to law school. He had endured three and a half years of studying, three and a half years of looking the other way at veiled insults. Graduation was in sight. But he couldn’t let that stand in the way of doing what was right. “I’m in,” he said.
Ted Wells had a lump in his throat as he thought about calling his mother, and about trying to get admitted to another good college on scholarship if he quit this one in protest.
Over the next few hours, they continued to debate strategy and give each student a chance to have his say. It was close to midnight when they finally put the matter to a vote. All of the men unanimously agreed to leave Holy Cross if the board declined the four protesters amnesty. It was the most powerful statement they could make, a test of the college’s commitment to truly furthering civil rights. The college was important to the men, but they recognized that the black students were important to Holy Cross, too. Their presence, however small, was a visible testament to the dedication of Father Brooks and others to civil rights. They were taking a gamble: If the college wanted to make an example of four black men, it would lose them all.
Wells immediately called Brooks to explain their decision, and Brooks suggested that Wells and Martin meet him right away at the president’s residence. When they arrived at 1:30 A.M., Brooks and President Swords were already wai
ting. The president listened as Wells and Martin explained the BSU’s position, but although he acknowledged their concerns, he was unmoved by the argument. Nobody at the college should be allowed to disrupt legitimate campus activities and violate the rights of fellow students. Moreover, the decision lay in the hands of the members of the board. As president, he would abide by whatever they decided.
Brooks tried to find a middle ground, but he could see that there wasn’t one. He argued to Wells and Martin that identifying the black students was likely less motivated by racism than by laziness, but he agreed that the results were the same. It was simply wrong to have such a high proportion of black students charged when most of the white students were exempt from punishment. But Swords wasn’t about to dismiss charges against students who had broken the rules simply because they were black, either.
Brooks could see that the problem wasn’t going to be resolved there. Even if the black students were willing to put their fates on the line over a matter of principle, the president wasn’t about to give in. Brooks had witnessed how distraught his colleague and mentor had become amid what he saw as mounting chaos on campus and growing disrespect for the rules. Three months earlier, Swords had told Brooks that he couldn’t go on any longer and was going to make preparations to leave at the end of the school year. The college was under financial strain, and the president had tapped its small endowment to raise faculty salaries. He had to deal with anger from alumni, faculty, and students who didn’t like the form or the pace of change at Holy Cross. The stress had become too great.
Swords looked upset when he told the men that he couldn’t make an exception for them.
“I guess that’s it then,” said Wells.
As he and Martin walked out the door, Brooks called after them, telling them not to do anything drastic. “Give us a chance to try to work things out.”
Art Martin felt hurt and full of rage. The school wasn’t even aware of its own racism, and Father Brooks, the man who had done so much to make them feel like a part of the community, now appeared to be utterly impotent.
Wells and Martin left their meeting with Swords at 2:45 A.M. on Friday, December 12. Fifteen minutes later, elsewhere on campus, the board announced its decision: All sixteen students charged would be suspended for the rest of the academic year; they had to pack up their bags and leave before 5 P.M. on Sunday. They would be allowed to take their exams for the final semester but they would not be allowed back on the campus for any other reason, though they would be allowed to apply for readmission to the college and resume their studies, with approval from the dean of men, in the fall of 1970. Wells and Martin walked over to the campus radio station and announced that, in response to the administration’s decision, the black students were leaving Holy Cross. The BSU would hold a press conference at 10 A.M. to make its views known.
When they returned to the corridor, many of the men were still awake. They were devastated when they learned of the board’s ruling. Wells suggested that they should all put on their best clothes in the morning, make their statement, and then walk proudly out of the school to start a new chapter of their lives. Several of the men began to call up the black freshmen who lived in the other dorms to inform them of the decision.
Eddie Jenkins felt passionate but also anxious about the walkout: He had already lost his football season and had barely recovered from hepatitis. It looked certain that he was off to Vietnam. Now he had to tell his parents that he would no longer be enrolled in the college that had made them so proud. His father had pushed hard for him to attend Holy Cross. Both parents would be crushed to learn that he quit.
Clarence Thomas sat in his room, anxiously deliberating over where he would go. Savannah was out of the question. He thought he might be able to spend a few nights in town at Kathy Ambush’s house. He might find a way to continue his studies somewhere else, but it was the long term that worried him. What law school was going to accept and support a student who had dropped out because of alleged racism?
Ed Jones, though equally anxious, felt a surge of quiet pride in the BSU’s willingness to stand together and fight racism. This was the kind of solidarity he had been calling for all year. As he later wrote in an article that ran in National Catholic Reporter: “Our concerns must begin to wander from the anxiety of getting a girl for the weekend to the future of black girls in the ghetto, from our grades to the total education of black people. If we fall into the ivory [white] tower bag, then we are doubly guilty of anything the whites are.” If Jones hadn’t come to Holy Cross, he firmly believed that he would have joined the Black Panthers in D.C. by now. But he was in Worcester, about to pack up his bags and leave his college education behind. He wasn’t sure how his mother would react. While she was proud to have a son in college, she hadn’t encouraged him to go. Jones knew that his life was a mystery to his mother. She wasn’t the type to hope for too much. He imagined that if he quit and went home, she might just shrug, light up a cigarette, and tell him he better go find a job.
Ted Wells called his mother from a pay phone. Ma Wells was quiet while he explained what was going on. She trusted her son more than anyone in the world. “If you think it’s the right thing to do, then that’s what you should do,” she said. Later Wells talked strategy with Art Martin: The men were to pack whatever belongings they could carry. In the morning they would walk together to the auditorium at the Hogan Campus Center and gather onstage to announce their departure. The BSU would pay for everyone’s ticket home with cash on hand, which they would no longer need for anything else.
Ted Wells announces the black students’ decision to quit Holy Cross.
News of the planned walkout spread fast. The student government chairman held an emergency meeting and issued a statement condemning the “de facto racism” of the board’s decision and calling for amnesty for all sixteen students. Several white students went to the corridor in support, as did a number of the black freshmen.
Father Brooks began fielding calls from parents before dawn. He understood their concern. Dropping out of college in the middle of the year would be damaging enough, but most of these men were also receiving full financial support from Holy Cross. Even if their sons were somehow able to return to the school, the parents were worried that the men’s actions might jeopardize their scholarships. And in any case, they would be branded as reactionaries, which might jeopardize their future. Though he was scared for them, too, Brooks told them not to worry and promised that the college would do everything possible to work the crisis out.
Art Martin at the BSU press conference announcing the walkout
By 10 A.M. Friday morning, more than six hundred students had gathered in the Hogan ballroom. There was a sense of anticipation in the air, the feeling that something dramatic was going to happen. Most of the students had come out to support the BSU’s stance. Fearful about Vietnam and disillusioned with the establishment, many of the students felt a bond with the men who had the courage to stand up to authority. The crowd erupted in cheers as the black students filed in and walked up onto the stage. With the exception of three or four students, every black man on campus had agreed to join in the walkout. Brooks stood to the side looking grim as Wells read a statement.
The BSU sympathized with the Revolutionary Students Union in its struggle against human oppression, he said, but this was about racism. It was about the arbitrary decision to charge 80 percent of the black students at a demonstration and let 80 percent of the white students go free. The black students of Holy Cross had no choice but to walk away from the college until the four men in question were reinstated without punishment.
When Wells finished speaking, the men behind him raised their arms with clenched fists in a sign of black power. Then, one by one, they threw down their student ID cards and walked single file out of the ballroom. As they left, the other students in the room began to chant “Strike!” and other words of support. Brooks pushed his way through the ballroom to reach Wells outside, and asked him t
o please keep everyone close by. He was going to find a way to work everything out. Wells told Brooks that they had made their position clear. Brooks nodded. He would do what he could, but Wells and Martin, at least, had to be willing to stay close by to negotiate. Wells agreed.
Much of the student body was now threatening to boycott classes unless the black students returned. More important, Brooks felt that they couldn’t let every one of those men walk away from their education. “There are times,” he told the president, “when one principle has to override another.” To Brooks’s surprise, Swords agreed. Brooks learned that a few members of the College Judicial Board were even reconsidering their decision. Brooks offered to help gather a group together to discuss the situation with Swords so that the president could reconsider the facts of the case. He knew they needed to act quickly.
Photo of the walkout published in The Crusader on December 19, 1969
His top priority was to find a person to join the discussions who could represent the views of the black students. He approached John Scott, a respected black community activist and former sociology professor who was also chairman of the city of Worcester’s Human Rights Committee. Paul Rosenkrantz and Brooks would be part of the group, along with John Shay, who had been on the judicial board but had abstained from voting. Others would be invited to join in and speak, when appropriate. On the surface the goal was to present all points of view, but for Brooks it was to bring the black students back before it was too late.
As Brooks rushed to assemble the group, the black students dispersed in different directions. About half the students went to Clark University to camp out on dorm room floors. The rest left Worcester, and many of the students went to Clark or tried to stay locally to see if they’d be heading home on Sunday night.