On April 19, 1969, about 80 Cornellians led by the Afro-American Society occupied Willard Straight Hall, the stately Collegiate Gothic student union building, during Parents’ Weekend. White allies organized by the Students for a Democratic Society ringed the building in support. Associated Press photographer Steve Starr captured the end of the protest, when armed students, with leaders Ed Whitfield and Eric Evans out in front, emerged from the building. The photo appeared on the front page of newspapers across the country and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970, becoming an iconic image of the 1960s. The presence of armed protestors on a university campus—a first for the nation—shocked the local community and the world and embroiled the faculty in acrimonious debates about academic freedom and the threat of the use of force as a political tactic.

The protest was a culmination of specific events at Cornell but was also linked to the national Black Power and Black Campus movements. Inspired in part by the “Toward a Black University” conference at Howard University, in the fall of 1968 black students at Cornell continued to press for an independent Black Studies department and grew frustrated by the administration’s slow progress. They organized a series of protests in mid-December, after which demonstrators were threatened with expulsion by Cornell’s judicial council.

With tensions already escalated, another event pushed the students to further action. The women of Cornell’s Wari House cooperative woke up in the early hours of April 18 to find a wooden cross burning on their front porch. “It was a very frightening kind of symbol to have at the black women’s residence,” recalled author Irene Smalls, who was a second-year Cornell student at the time. Although the police could not determine who was responsible, cross burnings had long been associated with white supremacists threatening violence against African Americans. “That was the coup de grâce in terms of taking us to a higher emotional level,” noted Evans.

The next day, students took over “the Straight” and ejected parents staying in the building. In response, a small group of white fraternity members tried to enter the building and clashed with the protestors. Fearing further attacks from opposing students and from the hundreds of state and local law enforcement mobilized downtown—and distrustful of campus police—the Straight occupiers decided to bring in weapons to protect themselves.

Campus administrators began negotiations with the students to end the occupation. “I had a strong fear that if we went through another night . . . somebody was going to get killed,” recalled Dale Corson, the Cornell provost who would become campus president after President James A. Perkins resigned in 1969. After a day and a half, the standoff ended with Cornell officials agreeing to student demands, including dismissal of the disciplinary actions against the December protestors and amnesty for the students who took part in the occupation.

There was widespread opposition among the faculty to the concessions wrung, they felt, by the threat of violence. A “Committee of 41” faculty members organized by American studies and literature professor Cushing Strout worried that “the published arrangements for hiring in the black studies program were too likely to favor political rather than scholarly considerations.” Strout later recalled the Straight Hall occupation as an injury that divided colleagues over their stance on the occupation and its resulting changes. “The scars of ’69 lasted a long time,” noted Strout. For conservative critics this expansion of academia beyond a focus on European influence on American culture represented a weakening of academic scholarship and authority.

By contrast, some black students involved in the Willard Straight Hall occupation viewed the results of their action in positive terms. “The thing that I was fighting for was an Africana Studies Center to create a broader scope to the knowledge that was taking place at the university,” remembered youth development leader Jackie Davis-Manigaulte, who took part in the occupation as a first-year student. “I felt a sense of pride that I had stood with my peers and stood up for something that we believed in.” (The powerful 2016 documentary, Agents of Change, interviews Davis-Manigaulte and other student activists from this period.)

Indeed, the Willard Straight Hall occupation marked the acceleration of changes that had begun in 1963, when Cornell President Perkins started the Committee on Special Educational Projects (COSEP) to recruit more African American students. With growing numbers—a more than tenfold increase between 1963 and 1969—black students demanded institutional changes that ultimately ushered in a more inclusive academic environment. In addition, Cornell instituted reforms to its judicial process and gave a greater voice to students in governance. In perhaps a prescient statement, Perkins observed in 1969 that “it is reasonably clear that the social revolution in which this country and the rest of the world is involved has changed our game.”

Nothing specifically marks the tumultuous events of the 1960s at Willard Straight Hall. It continues today as one of the central gathering places for students and visitors to enjoy a meal, view a film at Cornell Cinema, cram for exams, and hold student organization meetings.

For a rich compilation of images and other source materials related to the occupation, see the Africana Studies and Research Center’s Willard Straight Occupation Study Guide compiled by John Henrik Clarke Africana Library Director Eric Kofi Acree.