Eyes on the Prize II; Interview with Tony Gittens

I'm going to say these are weird. Okay. Rolling. What's the first AD? Oh, my. What? Be telling. Yes. Go back in time. In 1967. When you first got on campus, what disturbed you so much about what you found here? The way they treated students. Incorporate my question like, what disturbed me so much? Okay. When I got to Howard back in 1965, what disturbed me so much was the way they treated students, the way the Howard administration tended to treat students like children, as though we couldn't take care of ourselves. And their job was to make us more cultured black people that they felt that we were these knee grows from the field, and that we were to be treated

like kids. And I found that absolutely insulting. I found the whole idea of this the largest, most prestigious black institution in the country, wanting to view itself as the black Harvard, as opposed to setting out its own identity. And in general, I just found their whole attitude condescending toward students, and it was insulting and just something that, you know, I just thought it shouldn't be stood for. What got was known as the black Harvard, it's ultimately had this proud tradition of civil rights. What, you know, what would you not find in there then? Well, what the whole civil rights history of Howard, first of all, was carried out by a few individuals. And as we looked at a little closer, there were always people who were thought of as a bit unusual there. And there were people in the law school attorneys and such. And then there were some students like Stokely Carmichael and Courtney Cox and other students who had gone there. But they left Howard out of resentment for the fact that Howard

wasn't following them along and taking a more progressive stand. So the civil rights tradition that Howard seemed to carry was more an individual kind of tradition that Howard just sort of hooked on to. The other thing is that around that time, the whole attitude of the civil rights movement was shifting and Howard wasn't shifting with it. The attitude was that one of integration of assimilation. And the whole movement was beginning to shift towards one of self-identity and self-empowerment. And Howard was resisting that as opposed to carrying that forward. Now, why did you and other students begin to get into this Vietnam protest? What was your personal feeling, connection? Well, we were totally against the war. We were against the draft. We felt that the Vietnam War was totally unjust, and that especially black people should have no role in the war. And Howard at that time had compulsory ROTC. That was another aspect of it that most men there found just absolutely appalling.

We felt that Howard should not be a factory for black officers to go into the war, and that we were not going to just participate in it. As a matter of fact, we were going to say no to it. And so there were protests against that, and to let the world know that black people were not going to participate in the war, or at least we're going to be strongly opposed to it. Were there friends of yours, or people who knew who had been going, would gone over and then draft it, and that was a personal connection? Well, between the time I got out of high school and when I came to Howard, I went to school at night and I worked. And so I had a lot of friends in Brooklyn who were not, didn't go to college either. And I did have friends who were drafted and wanted to, who were killed in Vietnam. So there was that kind of personal attachment, an identity I had with how terrible the war was. And you talked a little bit about the black consciousness stuff that was going on outside of campus. How did that infect the campus?

And was there a ten-five administration stop that from coming on campus? There were demonstrations, as you know around that period. Yes. Don't say as you know if you can just start again. OK, tell me what you said. There were demonstrations just to leave out the as you know. OK, so you're not supposed to be there. Oh, good. OK, Brad. The whole Howard movement was impacted by what was going on outside of Howard. There was a lot of activity in the South. There were black colleges in the South where students were taking very militant, very firm stance against discrimination. And here there were the students of Howard who were considered to be very middle class and sort of away from a lot of that. So there were some students at Howard who believed that that should not be the case. And that in fact that Howard, if it was to be a leader amongst black universities, should take the firmest of stands. And we pushed to make Howard do that.

And the resistance to that took the form of, for example, there were people who would come to Howard. The organizers who wanted to have demonstrations here in Washington, and they would come to Howard to try to get Howard students to participate. And there was always resistance on the part of the administration to such people coming on campus. There were speakers who we wanted to bring to Howard towards the earlier days, not so much during the later days. And there was always resistance to these speakers being brought to Howard. And so the university as a whole felt that it should not be in a controversial position and it stated in documents that they felt that good deal of money was coming from the federal government to support Howard. And that Howard therefore should not, and Howard students therefore should not be antagonistic towards the government. We on the other hand felt that where Howard got its money was its own business and we were adults and able to make our own decisions and take our own stands on things.

When you talk about the student demonstrations, when you talk about going down to Orangeburg, and maybe give you a little bit about how you went first to allow his county to somebody before and then go into Orangeburg on the fact that he. It was the summer, I believe, of 66 that I first went down south. And it was a SNCC project, and they had come up and asked some students if they would come down and work in the south. I think it was during the spring. I can't recall. I have to check my calendar and such. And so some of us organized and took a yes. Could you just start with when I was county again? Go back to the start with last guy. I would just refer to the fact that she went down to it. And talk maybe about the strength you saw in the people. And then go very quickly. Got it. Okay. So when we were in Lowndes County, it was incredible to me to see this determination on the part of rural Black people who had much less than we at Howard had.

And then to see the determination and the strength on the part of the SNCC organizers that were there who had left college, who had decided that this was what they were going to do with their lives. And it was just incredible to me that people were willing to put their lives on the line, you know, day after day for this. And it just had a tremendous impact on me. This was in Lowndes County. Then later some students had been killed in at Orangeburg at a university there. And I went down with some other journalists to look at that. And there met these students who, because of a demonstration, the same kind of demonstrations that we were having, actually people had been killed in shot. Again, it had a tremendous impression on me, because these people had been willing to give their lives for something. It was not a game for them. It was not a media event for them. And the impact that it had on me and other people,

whom I related it to when I got back was just incredible. And then what we were doing at Howard and the dangers, they're seeing minimal compared to what other people were willing to face for the same kind of reasons. And those were experiences that just totally changed my view about the role of a student, my role of a student, and what I began to define as the role of other students. Why did you start manifesting on me? What was it that they'd just say, we'd come to do something now? Well, there was no, there was no real clarity at that point. There was an emotional kind of resentment towards the way we were treated and the lack of role students were black students were playing in changing society. And the manifesto was a way to put into words to codify what it is we were about, what specifically we wanted, what it is that we wanted,

and what if we did not get, we were going to further, we were more active about getting. So we demanded in a symbolic way the resignations of the president of the university and some of his lackeys. And it was totally, it was specifically we wanted these people gone because they represented a school that had been more in the way than it was progressive. We demanded that ROTC be compulsory ROTC be abolished. It's a matter of fact we got everything we wanted after many, many months and years of struggle. And there were about 10 of these demands that we had. And the reason was to codify exactly what we wanted and to have people rally around these causes. Can you talk about going into Dean Snowman's office? First of all, talk about why we had such a problem with Dean Snowman. What was it that is added to the students that were represented? Dean Snowdon, he's a chap I never, I can't say I know him,

but he represented this total black Harvard mentality all the way through. There was nothing nationalistic or really black about him. Now, I know, I hate to like pick him out, but at that time he was the person who personified everything that we did not like about the university. He had all of his degrees from Harvard. Now, this is not to say that that's bad. It's not to say that's bad. I want everyone to get an excellent education. And his expertise was in the Greek are the Roman classics. And he was Dean and he had a snobbishness about him that just rubbed not only the students but a lot of the faculty the wrong way. Well, I truly swell, kid. One, two, three, four, five. Let's go back to the snowman's.

Tell me again what was it about snowman? That was most irritating. What did he represent? Snowdon, Dr. Snowdon, represented a whole attitude that civilization meant white civilization. He was a very educated man. He had all of his degrees from Harvard which we had no personal problem with. However. If I can recall. Okay. Talk again about what Dean Snowdon represented. What was it about it so upset people? Well, Dr. Snowdon represented the whole attitude that civilization was white civilization.

He was a very accomplished scholar. He'd gotten all of his degrees from Harvard. His expertise was the classical civilization Greek or Roman classic civilization. And he had the snobbishness about him that tend to just rub a lot of people, not only students but also faculty in the wrong way. And so in everything he said and did the way he carried himself is attitude towards people, the way he dealt with people. He just personified this whole, the attitude that the only way to be considered a civilized cultured person was to be as white as possible. And so that's what he represented. He represented that as long as I was at Harvard and most people felt that way about him. So he became this symbol, this focus for us to sort of key

and on to say that no, that's not the way it is. There are a lot of other civilizations that are very developed as how about your own African civilization that was very developed and good music need not be classical or European classical music. That acceptable civilized rest need not be both eyes which he wore daily. That it could be Dashiqis and women could cut their hair in afro styles and men could allow their hair to grow out. And these were things that he tended to oppose. So he became sort of our focus for confronting that whole attitude. When you mentioned the afro, was there a problem when people were wearing afro? Well, the first woman, the first person who cut her hair into an afro she did that, she was very involved in the civil rights movement. She did that and reports all kinds of animosity

on the part of the dorm mothers as they like to call themselves and her faculty, people who said, you know, Charlie should just go straight in your hair again. Then there was, there were always problems with women especially with afro. And then there was the whole issue of when Robin Gregory was chosen homecoming queen. And Robin had an afro and that brought about all kinds of few are in the parts of people who felt that, you know, that was just totally inappropriate. Then in fact, it was ugly. And as a result, she took a lot of heat for it. Okay, talk back to things, talk about the describe the day when you go in and you throw this American flag in this manifesto on Dean Snowman's desk. Well, it was, we had planned to, after we developed the manifesto to make a statement and we held a rally on campus. And we went, we took down the American flag. And then there was this fence, there was this fence that the university had built around the girls dormitory.

That was just a second. Forget about the fence. Can't do anything with the fence. When I get into the fence. Okay, so right from the rally, answer the way into his. Okay, skip the fence, we didn't go to the fence. Okay, ask me the question again. What, describe the rally and going into Dean Snowman's office when you throw the manifesto on his desk? Well, we decided to have, after we developed the manifesto, we decided to have a rally and to tell the students to state to them what our demands and our stand was. And we went and we lowered the American flag that was on campus. And then we took the flag and the manifesto over to Dean Snowman's office. We just walked in and his bards into his office. There were about, there were a number of us, 20, 25, 50 students there. And we put it on his desk. He was quite shocked. And he was absolutely shocked. And he was shaking. He was trembling. And then we just told him that his time had come. That people like himself. And again, focusing on him not as a person,

as a personality, but as a symbol that people who had the attitudes that he had that their time had come. That they had just spent, they'd done their do and it was time for them to sort of move on and make room for more progressive attitudes towards what black people should be doing in this country. And we did that. I remember shaking by finger at Dean Snowdon and him just sitting there, traveling quite an experience with both of us, I'm sure. And then just leaving. Just walking out and leaving him there. Did he say anything to you? Not a word. He did not say a word. He sat there smoking his pipe. He didn't say a word to us. He didn't say a word. He sat there smoking his pipe in bewilderment, not really understanding. See, they all had this bewilderment. They didn't really know what this was all about. They never really sort of understood what it is we wanted. That's one reason we made the manifesto. Never knew how to really respect. I never took it seriously.

I mean, their Achilles heel was that they really thought we were children. They really thought we were these kids from the fields and their job was to keep us in line. And as a result, they took a lot of damage for it. They would just never took us seriously. Talk about charting, and what it was like going into the auditorium there were all these people in the ask, will there there? What was it like? Well, charted day was a day at Howard that where they celebrate the fact that the university, the chart of the university was signed. And we wanted to make a point there too that that need not have been in auspicious day that Howard was there and its history was spotted. And so I remember the night before we planned. We planned the demonstration. And I remember the meeting. And no one was really quite sure how that was going to go off. And we decided that we were going to go into

cramped an auditorium. And we seated ourselves in different plot spots around the university, around the auditorium. And I can't remember the signal. The signal was something I could give to myself for somewhat standing up. And I remember I was sitting next to Adrian Mann's and we were sort of looking at each other saying, get them to say, get them to. We really don't have this quite together. We were saying, we've got to do it. And we just said, well, it's time. We stood up. And all these people stood up and started going towards a stage. And Dr. Neighborhood was there and there was someone getting some kind of award I can't recall who she was. And I remember walking up on the stage and just saying, this is all over. This is over. And then people gave speeches and students would stay there and many people left and a lot of students stayed there and listened to the speeches. And we just totally disrupted the whole thing and left to make a point, to make a point that Howard just had to change.

OK. Now describe. Can I add to that? Yes. Yeah. So I don't want to give and leave the attitude that this was a frivolous activity, that I just want to make the point that we were human beings and our activities came out of a stand that we took to make a difference at the university. And in that process, there were a number of times where we often weren't absolutely sure about what we were doing, how the demonstrations would go down. However, we knew that we were going to make that place change. You know, that we were going to make a change. That just was not functioning adequately and it was just going to have to change. So it's not frivolous at all. We talked at one point about the connection that they were trying to keep the university separate from the community. Can you say something about that? The University is located in a community

that parts of it are developed. But there's a whole strip along Georgia Avenue that's not very developed. And there's always been this confrontation, this conflict between what at that point were called these block boys or gangs, kids who lived in the area and Howard students whom they viewed as being middle class and snobbish. And our feeling was that the university had to relate to its immediate environment if it was going to live up to his mandate. I mean, you know, we couldn't be creating offices for ROTC to go fight wars thousands of miles away and then have a community that's, I mean, not even like right next door, but right at your door, that where there was all kinds of problems, economic problems and social problems and not really health problems and not really do anything for them.

And so a lot of things now that, if you could talk a little bit then. Okay, right. So we wanted the university to just what we call relate to the community, to have events that would be attractive enough for people in the area to come in, to have concerts and things. We wanted them to relate to all kinds of activities that were going on in the communities. There were social groups and church organizations that were doing things. And, you know, we had students and we went out and we tried to participate in them and bring speakers and from those communities. We talked about all kinds of things that never really took place but daycare centers for young mothers and med school doctors who would go out and spend some time working with people there. So that was what we were looking for. That was our utopia for what the university should do

for people who lived right there. Ask, take it fast. Stay in the past, there you go. Okay, talk about the take over and join them from the rally and you're really good because it was going to be a take over at that point and how many people join this rally. We had decided that we were going to have a sit-in and the administration building and we met the militant group Hujima and some of the student government people and the university was going to have hearings again to try students, some of the students who had been more active on campus. So we had a rally in front of Douglas Hall and we said that, you know, we were just tired of this, tired of the way we were being treated and that we were going to have a sit-in in the administration building.

And I remember different people gave speeches and I gave the last speech. That was part of the plan. And we had these bags of food that we were carrying in and we're saying, and I said, you know, we're going to go in. You know, we're going to go and we're going to sit down and we're just not going to get up until they just refuse to have these hearings. And I remember just walking off, walking away from the steps and going down. And I was out front and there were some people by my side. And then I remember turning around and just seeing all of these students and it was just so movingly incredible. I mean, we had never been able to get this response before I just realized that all these people were also tired and we just walked and we walked around and we went into the first floor of the administration building and everybody sat down, just sat down. And when we went in there, when we had planned us the night before, you know, we figured that, you know, we just sit on the first floor and that would be it. And we would just stay there. And then more students, people began to hear about it.

And then the whole first floor was filled and the whole second floor was filled. Then they went up to the third floor. And the whole building was just filled with these students who would come out of the dormitories, come out of their classes to just participate in this. And it was incredible. It was just amazing. I mean, after all that time, all that work that, you know, someone was actually listening. And so we just stayed there. It was then about noon and we stayed there and the newspapers began to hear about it. And reporters began to show up. And the university, the fact that people who worked there was left, they just left the building to us. And so then we said, well, we have to organize this. So we had meetings. It was this group that we call the Central Committee. And we met. And we started having a chairman of certain committees. It was a sanitation committee.

It was a communications committee. And there was a food committee and a security committee. There were all these committees. And we met. And there were just some incidents there that astounded me. Like the switchboards had to be manned. And so we just made an announcement. From somewhere, someone came up with a PA system. Someone went and got a PA system within an hour. And it was there. And we said, well, we need some people to man a switchboard. And all these women got up and went and took over the whole university switchboard. I remember looking into this room. And they were just very professionally and efficiently running the switchboard. And I said, you know, I said, you know, and they said, you know, these students work, you know, doing this kind of stuff, you know, part time. And everyone was saying, they were saying, on their own, the university is closed today. The students have taken it over. And that went on for days. And they developed a schedule for taking care of that. Then there was food. That all these people from off campus, this community, who the university up until then had very little relationship

with people who began to bring food. You know, with ladies would bring these bags of food and churches would take up collections and bring us all this money. You know, and they would give it to us. And then these cultural groups would come in and say, you know, we want to do something. You know, can we perform and they'd be plays and all kinds of things would go on. And people from around Washington would come and give all these supportive speeches and say, whatever you want, let us know. And then people who could not get into the building, they were all these students outside of the building who were just there. You know, just there. You know, just willing to participate in signs were made. The Howard University, the Black University, you know. And people then teachers would come up and they said, you know, what can we do? And we had classes that were going on. So because some students would be afraid they were getting behind. And these faculty members say, you know, don't worry about it. We'll take care of it. And people would come in and have, we have seminars. It was just quite, it was amazing.

It was amazing. You know, just, now we met every morning and we met periodically to take care of the issues. And it was just an incredible experience to just show that, you know, the administration, these people who thought that we were kids. You know, we're just so off key. Just so wrong about the whole thing. When you say they were off key, what was the university? What did it show the university? There was the way we defined what it is we're about. And the broadest sense was that the May, the first debate around the role of black education took, oh, I just want to say that. I guess I wanted to say that. I was going to give it. Why? I look good if you learned being done that. Berlin this way. Yes, well. Okay, thank you. Talk about, just briefly talk about what the organization

may be building, show the university in terms of your being at home. Well, I think that the demonstration showed the university, the administration there, that they were not dealing with helpless children, that they were dealing with people who were quite capable of taking care of themselves in a very serious organized fashion. It also showed them that there were not just these few militant minority students who had these grievances with them, that in fact there were thousands of students who were disgruntled and were willing to take a stand to put their education on the line to let them know that they were just off base with understanding who it is they were and what they wanted out of their education, out of Howard University. And talk about the fear you had, the police who I'd be calling him, because I wasn't with the context for that fear. I mean, they'd be calling them a university. The context, well,

if you were afraid that the police would be calling them. Well, that wasn't too true. Oh, okay. No, go ahead then. About what? However you want to answer. There was some concern that the police would be called in. However, we felt that we had so much community support that there was so much recognition on the part of the media who were covering this event in the nightly news that no force, that the university was not going to use any force to remove us. That so much community support had come to us that we felt pretty safe that no police were going to be called in. And if you could talk about the negotiating team, how did you decide that about the negotiating team if there would be so many women on that? At some point, the university trustees and administration, they wanted to negotiate. They wanted to sit and talk with us to find out what was going on. And so we put together a negotiating team.

And the team was headed by Adrian Mans and some other folks there. And it was quite interesting that a lot of women were on the negotiating team. And the reason was one is that people like Adrian and Carol were just so bright. I mean, they were articulate and bright and were able to go toe-to-toe with anyone in terms of debate or in terms of the discussion about negotiating something. And then another thing is that a lot of the men tended to like to be in front of the camera. And to get along with the work that needed to be done. So that's why we had a lot of women on the negotiating team. And all through the demonstrations and the organizations that we did. And why did you end the take-off? What did you accomplish? With the take-over, we just, a couple of things happened. That made us want to end the take-over. One was that we had gotten a lot of what we said that we came in there for.

And we told them what we wanted. And the negotiations were very successful in our regard. We had made a very strong point about it. We couldn't see a lot of reason to stay there outside of just being belligerent. And we thought that that would be immature to do that. And so we decided that as we chose to go in that we would be adult and mature and responsible enough to choose to go out. And we talked about it at length and came down one morning and just made the announcement that we felt that it was time to go. And we had an open microphone. There were no press there. We put all the press out as far as we know. And we had an open mic and anybody could come up and say whatever they felt about it. There were some people who felt that we shouldn't go. And then the vast majority said that we should go. We took a voice vote.

And so we walked out. And we just left the place, cleaned it, put everything as much back in order as much as we could as we would call it. And we just walked out that day. And students went back to the dorm and we went back to doing what it is we did before we went in. How did you feel? I mean, how did you feel? You're now, you've gotten what you wanted. And you're presenting students in your bathroom. How did you feel? And what was the environment? What was it like? You can talk about what was playing on the loudspeaker. Well, let me say a bit about getting all that we wanted. We didn't get everything that we wanted. I'm thinking back on this. There were some issues that still had to be negotiated. I remember in leaving, though, that there was singing. Yeah. OK. Roll it. Look. What did you talk about? I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. OK. That's what I haven't looked as well. Is it? East or Sunday? That was a kid. What? OK. Talk about what you got and the feeling as you all left field. Don't you just describe as if we had no footage? What was it like? The negotiating team had come back. And we had gotten a lot of what we asked for. Students were there. We talked about it that night. And that morning we got up and we went down. We said, you know, it's time for us to go. And we gave our reasons why we should go. And we asked all the press to leave. We were there. And we had open mic so students can come up. And they could say whether they were for it, whether we're against it, whatever the reason that went on for about an hour and a half, two hours. We took a voice vote. And the agreement was that we should go. And as we went out of the building, people would be clean the building.

There was singing, people were singing. And what I felt best about was that no one got hurt. That we were walking out of there. We chose to go in. We were choosing to go out. We were enforced out. And that we'd gotten a lot of what we went in there for. And I think that experience changed the life of every single Howard student that was on campus. Everyone felt proud. And as we walked out, I felt very good. And the students tended to feel very, very good about themselves and about they just felt their whole self image of what they were as Howard students just changed. They felt part of the whole world of black progress. So it was quite a wonderful feeling to have ended by choice and in such a positive way. Perfect. Okay. Let me ask you, Dr. Steinstock yet. Is there anything else that you would want to say? Is it in the context of the table? I could tell stories, but I'm sure you don't want to talk about it.

I would. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Oh. Okay. So if you could talk about going down to Lance County with the snick effort and the strength of the people and the goal right into how you felt about Andre and why he went down. Okay. The, I went down to Lanceburg. Oh, I'm sorry. I went down. I went down to Lance County. With the snick effort, there were snick people there working. And I wanted, while I was there, I was just struck by the strength of the people who lived there and how they were willing to take a stand against discrimination. And also by the strength of the snick people, most of whom were about my age who had dropped out of school and were down there working around this issue. Then a little while later, I went to Andreburg where some students had been killed around demonstrating. And when I, both of those experiences began to make me see that there were people who were willing to give their lives for the same

things we were talking about up at Howard. And made me realize that what we were doing at Howard was small potatoes, compared to the kinds of issues that were going on in the South. And that we really had to do more at Howard. Was that good enough? Yeah. Okay. Lance County was in 60. Okay. Is it possible to keep going? Six. If you need to say, I would like to go to Lance County. Oh, I had went down to Lance County. I had gone down to Lance County. I had gone as opposed to I went. I've been, I've been done going down to. Yeah. I think I went to Lance County in 66 and in 1966, in 1966, in 1966, in 1966, I went down to Lance County. And there I was struck by.

If you could say I went down to Lance County's part of the SNCC effort there, I went down to Lance County as part of the SNCC effort in that area. And. If you get there. And the SNCC record. SNCC. I'm sorry. All right. Okay. All right. I went down to Lance County in 1966 as part of the SNCC effort there. And there I was just very struck by the strength of the people as well as the strength of the SNCC people, most of whom were around my age and their stand against discrimination. Then in 1967, I went to Orangeburg. And there some students had been killed as a result of demonstration they were having. And both of those experiences made me see that there were people who were willing to give their lives for what we were talking about at Howard. And if they could do that, then I'm sure that we could do even more than we had been doing at Howard at the time. Sam.

In 1966, I went down to Lance County as a result of the SNCC effort there. And there I was just taken by the determination and the courage, both the people there and the SNCC workers, most of whom were our age. In 1968, I went to Orangeburg where some students had been killed and other shot as a result of a demonstration. And as a result of those two experiences, I began to really see that what we were doing at Howard, that there were people who were willing to give their lives for it and that therefore, you know, we could take a firm a stand and demand more from the university. Thank you.