The takeover of Morrill Hall in January of 1969 led to systematic changes at the University of Minnesota.
It has been 50 years since students protested for civil rights following the death of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, and its story is still impactful on campus.
Professor Emeritus John Wright was an event organizer and played a major role in the occupation.
“In April 1968, the country exploded, major rebellions all across the country. More than 100 cities exploded,” Wright said. “So we as students met to decide how we could respond as a group constructively to the assassination and its aftermath. Our group leaders asked me to draft a response that we could then send on to the University administration.”
The demands were deliberated by former University President Malcolm Moos and a task force for eight months. Students felt they were not listened to.
“We then concluded that the progress was totally unacceptable and that we had to take nonviolent direct action and occupy Morrill,” Wright said.
Wright said students were frustrated with the administration.
“At that point in time in this country, higher education was still segregated across the country, even though it’s in the so-called ‘Jim Crow free north,’ there were tiny pockets of black students in even these public universities all across the country,” Wright said. “Black students all across the country, confronting these institutions, public and private, north and south, for the long history of discrimination or white supremacy, in the academic world.”
The occupation lasted from 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 14 until 1 p.m. on Jan. 15 and led to the arrest of five individuals. In the end, protesters met with Moos and discussed their demands.
The University’s African American and African Studies Department (AA&A) was founded post-occupation. The AA&A department was founded in the fall of 1969, following the end of the occupation. Rose Brewer, who worked in the department since 1989, said the 1969 occupation had a lasting impact.
Brewer said Black students were not well represented on campus and “I’d say the curriculum was quite Eurocentric. Part of it was that universities had been disconnected from what was happening in communities, it was an ivory tower dynamic.”
AA&A offers a Bachelor of Arts in African American and African Studies and a graduate minor in Africa and the African Diaspora. Beyond those programs, one key element of the department is the language offering, which teaches Swahili and Somali.
“The language program is an outstanding one, throughout the history of the department,” Brewer said. “Languages represent the student population. We have a large East African student population, and we offer Somali, which is an Eastern African language.”
The program has managed to maintain its presence on campus, an accomplishment that most programs of the same origins have not managed, Wright said.
“Of the departments of African American African Studies and Black studies that were developed over the course of the two decades, and there were more than 400 of those programs, two-thirds of them died out,” Wright said.
The presence of the department is due to support from the University and its roots, Wright said.
“It’s part of the inherent legacy of the department and it informs what we do,” Brewer said.
Brewer said the legacy of the 1969 occupation is seen in today’s political climate and the recent Morrill Hall occupation on Oct. 21.
In October, Wright received the University’s Outstanding Achievement Award, for his activism throughout the years. He said this fight did not begin in 1969 and certainly did not end in 1969.
“The department is grounded in the history, we’ve certainly extended beyond that, but we are very aware of the political moment,” Brewer said. “Our department has students who have been involved in the political struggle currently. Just four or five years ago there was an uprising surrounding the George Floyd murder, so these issues are not just in a historical context, the legacy continues in the current moment.”
