To All Friends of CUNY and Black and Puerto Rican Studies:
The Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Community and Student Center has called a planning meeting at the Community Center for Monday, March 23rd PM 6:15 PM to organize a day of activities at Harlem University a/k/a City College to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the historic strike led by Black and Puerto Rican students at City College in 1969 and to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 1989 CUNY student strike that was started by students at City College.
The meeting will be at the Morales/Shakur Center in room 3/201 in the NAC Building at City College on 137th Street between Convent and Amsterdam Avenues. (Transportation instructions are at the bottom of this message)
The April 22nd events at City College will focus on the future, not the past.
The Morales/Shakur Community Center plans the commemoration to demand the restoration of the Black and Puerto Rican Studies Departments and the other ethnic studies departments that have been abolished at City College and other CUNY colleges in recent years and to oppose the budget cuts and tuition increases called for by the state, the city and the CUNY Trustees, to restore Open Admissions and to demand the admission and hiring of more Black, Puerto Rican and Dominican scholars as faculty and graduate students.
On April 22, 1969 250 Black and Puerto Rican students occupied the south campus of City College and renamed it Harlem University. The students held the campus for over two weeks and continued to shut down classes and finals for the rest of the semester in support of five demands:
1. An admissions policy that would guarantee that the freshman class at City College reflected the racial composition of NYC public high school graduates;
2. A separate freshman orientation program for Black and Puerto Rican students;
3. A student voice in governance, and in hiring and firing faculty in the SEEK Program;
4. Immediate establishment of departments of Black and Puerto Rican studies to be housed in an autonomous School of Third World Studies and;
5. Requiring all education majors to study the Spanish language and to take courses in Black and Puerto Rican history.
Thousands of community members marched from Harlem to City College in support of the Harlem University takeover and the demands of the students. Students on other CUNY campuses took up the demands of Harlem University. Despite the fact that the mayor, the governor and the president of the USA were all Republicans, the students won the strike. In May and July of 1969 the CUNY Trustees passed two resolutions codifying the agreements negotiated with the Black and Puerto Rican Students at City College.
CUNY agreed to immediately establish Open Admissions, Black and Puerto Rican students were given permission to organize freshman orientation programs, the degree requirements for education majors at City College were changed to include Spanish and ethnic studies and CUNY required every college to establish departments or programs in Black or Puerto Rican Studies.
Following the 1969 strike CUNY's historic policy of Open Admissions that transformed CUNY into the university with more Black and Latino students than any other institution of higher education in the history of the United States.
By the 1970's City College had the largest Black Studies Department in the nation with strong programs in Puerto Rican, Dominican and Asian studies at many CUNY colleges.
In 1989 Dominican, Black and Puerto Rican students at City College, with their allies defended the victories of 1969 when they began a strike against state budget cuts and tuition increases. The 1989 strike spread from City College until almost the entire CUNY system was shut down. The students were victorious in 1989 when the state agreed to rescind the tuition increase.
However, in 1996 CUNY abolished the Black Studies Department and all the other ethnic studies departments at City College and ethnic studies has been under attack throughout CUNY.
In 1999 CUNY abolished Open Admissions when the Trustees ended all remedial classes at the senior colleges.
And forty years after the 1969 student strike African-American, Puerto Rican and Dominican scholars are almost as underrepresented on the CUNY faculty and among students in the Ph.D. programs as they were forty years ago.
The Morales Shakur Center invites students, faculty, staff and community activists committed to restoring Black Studies, Puerto Rican Studies and other ethnic studies programs and committed to fighting the budget cuts and tuition increase to a planning meeting at the Morales/Shakur Center in room 3/201 in the NAC Building at City College on 137th Street between Amsterdam and Convent Avenues on Monday, March 23rd at 6:15 PM.
Nearest subway stop #1 to 137th Street. Alternate; A/B/C/D to 125th Street with Metrocard transfer to M100 or M101 to 135th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. ,Or A/B/C/D to 145th Street and walk one block west to Convent Avenue and then walk south to the NAC Building.
Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win,
Ronald B. McGuire
Harlem University '69 (expelled)
Resident at Huey P. Newton Hall for Political Action
We Will Never Forget!
https://theblacklist.net/
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