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A GLANCE AT CIVIL RIGHTS IN SYRACUSE Sept. 18, 1963
July 13, 1961 Martin Luther King Jr. visits campus and speaks in Sadler Hall.
Sept. 20, 1963
Eight students are arrested during a CORE protest in the 15th ward on the corner of South Townsend and Madison streets for willful trespassing.
Sept. 23, 1963
CORE protesters enter classrooms asking for picketers to join the protests. The administration threatens that if this continued, police officers would go into classrooms and remove the picketers.
TAKING SIDES In a separate move later that year, the Syracuse University Committee on Equality sent a request to the Athletic Board that all athletic ties with segregated schools be severed. SUCE wanted the university to immediately cancel all games scheduled with segregated schools and not schedule them in the future. The Athletic Board rejected SUCE’s request. “Boycotting is essentially an unfriendly act and tends to raise barriers to the elimination of racial differences,” the board said in a statement. “It severs communications and relationships which may not easily be reinstated and fosters enmities which may never be assuaged.” Many white athletes supported playing segregated schools. According to a May 4, 1964, Daily Orange article, 24 of 30 white student-athletes opposed SUCE’s request. The following September, Chancellor William Tolley released a statement saying the Athletic Board decided not to schedule games with segregated or Southern schools.
daily orange file photo
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Urban Renewal affected 75 percent of the local population, or 488 families, to be relocated. Of those families, 326 were black families.
April 15, 1963 A team of SU educators releases a report saying African-Americans face discrimination in Syracuse and have a low representation in many occupations.
April 30, 1964 SUCE plans a non-violent action at a football game in protest to the administration’s decision to reject the organization’s claim. SU dedicates this game to the memory of Ernie Davis.
CIVIL1 RIGHTS from page
role SU’s faculty and students, both black and white, played in speaking up and addressing the racism that existed in the city. Congress for Racial Equality, which consisted of professors, students and local residents, was one of the more aggressive civil rights groups in Syracuse in terms of protests and marches, said Dennis Connors, a history curator at the Onondaga Historical Association. The group mainly protested that blacks were not allowed to integrate into better parts of the city. “I think some of the faculty were very passionate about these civil rights issues, and that sort of communicated to some of their students,” Connors said. “Individuals associated with the university, both faculty and students, were a catalyst for motivating some of the African-Americans in the community and to get them worked up about civil rights.” He said SU faculty tended to have a wider appreciation and understanding of the national civil rights movement. Because of this, many faculty members wanted to bring the activism in the South up to Syracuse. “They were really saying ‘We’re not Birmingham or Selma, Ala., but that does not mean that there is not discrimination going on in Syracuse,’” Connors said. ••• When Clarence “Junie” Dunham was growing up in Syracuse in the 1950s, his grandmother warned him never go to the north side of the city. It wasn’t safe for blacks to be in that part of town, she said. “That’s what Syracuse was like at the time. It was very, very prejudiced at the time,” Dunham said. Part of this prejudice was manifested in Syracuse’s Urban Renewal. The project called for the area between State Street and the university to be re-developed as a government complex, cultural center and high-rise residential neighborhood. But standing in the way of city planners’ vision was the 15th ward, which some city residents considered an overcrowded slum. When the planners decid-
May 5, 1964
SU Vice President Eric Faigle speaks on behalf of the administration and says any graduate or undergraduate student arrested or detained by police in a legal action would immediately be placed on “disciplinary probation.”
405 graduate students issue a demand to Chancellor William Tolley to stop scheduling “intercollegiate competition with those institutions practicing racial discrimination.”
The Joint Student Government releases a statement about the CORE pickets, saying if university rules and regulations are violated, that should be “judged in accordance with present policies.”
ed to eliminate the ward to make room for the new buildings, 75 percent of the local population, 488 families, were relocated, according to the Onondaga Historical Association Archives. Of those families, 326 were black. “Urban Renewal devastated the black areas,” said Dunham, who grew up in the 15th ward. Dunham said a majority of the black families struggled to find new housing because few areas in Syracuse allowed blacks to rent or buy property. A newlywed with two young daughters, Dunham said he called dozens of different places to rent a house in Syracuse. When he told the landlords he was black, each landlord then told him there weren’t any houses available. “Blacks really couldn’t do too much,” he said. “They couldn’t own anything.” In addition to housing, Dunham said it was extremely hard for blacks to find jobs in the city. According to a 1963 report by a team of SU educators, there was little black representation in many occupations in Syracuse. “One must either assume that the employability of the Syracuse Negroes in these jobs is less than in other cities or that discrimination against the Negro is more widely practiced in this city than elsewhere in upstate New York,” stated the report. It also stated that 2.7 percent of black income-earners in Syracuse made more than $6,000 per year in 1960. In New York City, this percentage was 4.5 percent; Buffalo, 5.2 percent; Rochester, 3.7 percent; and the Albany-Schenectady-Troy area, 3.5 percent. Various civil rights groups advocated for better employment for African-Americans. Marshall Nelson, a Syracuse resident and member of the Catholic Interracial Council, worked with Congress for Racial Equality to picket the Niagara Mohawk Corporation, the only power company in Syracuse at the time. Protesters argued the company had an intentionally low representation of blacks. The company had about 16,000 employees in the state of New York, Nelson said. Twenty were black.
May 7, 1964 Joint Student Legislature passes its bill to bar scheduling athletic competition with segregated schools.
Sept. 26, 1963
Sept. 24, 1963
May 14, 1964 The SU Athletic Board releases a statement saying athletic teams will continue to play segregated schools.
The American Association of University Professors release a statement saying professors involved in the protests should not face any penalties from SU.
Greta Jones, a Syracuse resident who also grew up in the 15th ward in the 1960s, said the racial tension that existed in the city became a part of life. “I guess when you live with it for so long, you start to hardly pay attention to it,” Jones said. “You just sort of … endure it.” ••• The civil rights movement was also active at SU, particularly with CORE protests, said Connors, the history curator. The white leadership in Syracuse pressured the university to crack down on controlling the students involved. The CORE protests also created financial consequences for SU. During the time of the pickets in 1963, the university was in the middle of a $76 million fundraising campaign. Several local businessmen who donated money in past years said they wouldn’t contribute money unless the university did “something about its personnel involved in demonstration,” according to a Sept. 18, 1963, article in The Herald Journal. On Sept. 23 of that year, SU Vice President Eric Faigle spoke on behalf of the administration, saying any graduate or undergraduate student arrested or detained by police in a legal action would immediately be placed on “disciplinary probation.” At the time, 51 students, nine faculty members and 18 community members had already been arrested. About one month later, the number totaled 100 people. To retaliate, 150 students protested the policy by picketing on the Quad. On Oct. 7, the Joint Student Government issued a statement to Faigle, asking that the automatic disciplinary probation policy be withdrawn. That same day, Faigle told The Daily Orange the policy would be withdrawn immediately. ••• But as to why students participated in the civil rights movement, Ronald Corwin, an SU CORE student organizer, told The Daily Orange in 1963 that it was their right as citizens to speak up. “The worst thing is not hate; the worst thing is not prejudice,” Corwin said. “The most appalling thing is silence.” mhnewman@syr.edu @MerNewman93
Sept. 24, 1964 Tolley releases a statement saying the Athletic Board “will schedule no more games with segregated or Southern schools where there is a question of systematic exclusion.”