Interview With Tony Gittens (1988)

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.