On Strike at the University of Michigan

Finally, a list of eleven demands was submitted to the administration:

Ten per cent black enrollment by fall, 1963.

900 new black students by fall, 1971 (450 freshmen, 150 transfers, 300 graduate students).

An adequate supportive services program including financial aid to finance black students' education.

Graduate and (nine) undergraduate recruiters to recruit blacks.

A referendum on the March Student Government Council ballot to have students vote on assessing themselves $3.00 for one year for the Martin Luther King Scholarship Fund.

Tuition waived for minority group students who are residents of the State of Michigan and admitted under special programs.

The establishment of a community-located Black Student Center.

All work of a permanent nature on the Black Studies Program is to be halted until a community-university forum and effective input is established.

The creation of a university-wide appeal board to rule on the adequacy of granting financial aid grants to students.

A revamping of the Parents' Confidential Statement.

One recruiter for Chicano students to assure 50 students by fall, 1970.

These demands seem quite moderate, but there are special circumstances at Michigan which must be kept in mind for an understanding of the conflict that followed. The University of Michigan is a state school, supported and run by state taxes and tuition charges, which are higher for out-of-state students than for residents of Michigan. The governing body of the university is a Board of Trustees, an eight-member body elected by the voting public of Michigan on a state-wide basis for staggered terms of four years each. The Regents are mostly businessmen, directors of corporations; seven are white and one, as a young faculty member explained, is colored, not black.

Although considered liberal among Big Ten schools, Michigan's student body is largely infected by Midwest conservatism. There are 36,700 students, with about 20,000 of those undergraduates, primarily in the college of Literature, Science and Arts (LSA). There are seventeen other schools and colleges in the University of Michigan.

Black students from the various schools joined together to form the Black Action Movement (BAM) in order to present their eleven demands to the university administration. After receiving vague responses from university president Robben Fleming, BAM presented the list of demands to the Regents at their bi-monthly meeting on Thursday, March 19. The Regents' response was very unsatisfactory. They promised an admissions goal "aimed at ten per cent enrollment of black students and substantially increased numbers of other minority and disadvantaged groups" by 1973-74. The problem with this promise was that the Regents allotted only three million dollars to the program at the end of four years, an amount which would allow, as Fleming admitted, five or six per cent black admissions. Other additional funds to reach the "goal" of ten per cent were to be solicited from outside sources. In other words, the university had committed itself only to five to six per cent black enrollment while superficially announcing a goal of ten per cent. Most of the other BAM demands were left unanswered; they were to be referred to a committee which would be set up under the Regents' decision.

THE BAM response was to call a student strike. A mass demonstration at about 800 students on Thursday after the Regents' ruling ended in a violent confrontation with state and local police. Some windows at the administration building were broken by thrown rocks and police moved in to arrest four persons.

Friday, March 20, was the first full day of the strike. It was marked by the beginnings of an amazing coalition of white student groups pledged totally in support of the BAM demands: International Socialists, SDS, New Mobe, Student Mobilization Committee, Young Democrats, and Phoenix Anarchists formally backed the BAM demands and joined the call for the strike. Women's Liberation and ENACT (Environmental Action) also organizationally backed the strike and the demands, though less formally. The official Student Government Council, the representative student government, voted support for the demands, joined the strike, and gave BAM some $2,200 worth of duplicating materials and supplies.

Leaders of all these groups joined together and formed the Coalition to Support BAM, a group with incredibly broad-based support among the white students. At no time during the twelve day strike did the Coalition make any attempts to lead the strike or take part in the negotiations over the demands. The white students throughout provided the massive manpower and organizational work necessary to shut down the university but let the strike be completely BAM-directed.

Over this first weekend, further support for the BAM position was announced by groups of teaching fellows, all the black faculty, and several other faculty groups, including the New University Conference (mostly young radical faculty), and by the Ann Arbor Tenants' Union. This community support was part of a continuing alliance between black students and the Tenants' Union that had been active in a rent strike in the Ann Arbor area.

By the first part of the next week, the strike was about 50 per cent effective in the LSA student body, but the Regents refused to reconsider their previous decision. Then the disruptions started. On Tuesday, Women's Lib blocked traffic in major intersections in support of BAM. On Wednesday, classrooms in the central part of campus were disrupted by groups of BAM supporters numbering up to 2,000.

Most disruptions involved a group of about twenty demonstrators entering a classroom, asking to be allowed to speak, and preventing the class from continuing its course work. Some were more militant, including a group of about 75 blacks who entered the chemistry building, broke windows and flooded the floor. Throughout the day, student pickets stood in front of the classroom buildings, verbally urging fellow students to stay away. Estimates of the effectiveness of the strike on Wednesday ranged from 90 per cent in the School of Social Work to 60 per cent in the big LSA to ineffectual in the School of Engineering.

By Thursday, the disruptions had become more violent. Numerous classroom buildings were closed down by chanting, banging on improvised noisemakers, butyric acid stink-

bombs, and bomb threats. President Fleming and the Regents held a secret meeting designed to work out ways to meet the demand for a ten per cent commitment to black enrollment.

On Friday, the strike groups added a new ???tic. Student strikers formed picker lines at 4:30 a.m. to dissuade university employees, including dorm food service workers, from reporting to work. All dorm food services were effectively shut down. BAM then supplied free "liberation" food at distribution centers. A modest estimate of the strike's effectiveness at this time was that 15,000 students stayed away from classes. Operating under the slogan. "Open it up or shut it down." BAM and the Coalition had effectively shut down the university. LSA was operating at less than 25 per cent of normal.

MEANWHILE, support for the strike continued to build. The university union of non-academic workers voted support for the BAM demands and the fraternities and sororities began passing petitions pledging support. YAF, on the other hand, called for Fleming's resignation because of "hooliganism unchecked."

Finally, on Friday, BAM and Fleming met in negotiations over the eleven demands. Partly to show good faith in the negotiations and partly because state police had been on campus looking for legal violations. BAM issued a call for a moratorium on picketing and disruptions over the weekend, although the strike was still in effect. To maintain the spirit of the strike during the tactical slowdown. BAM sponsored twice-a-day rallies, which included the singing of improvised lyrics:

I've got a feeling,

I got a feeling, brother

I got a feeling

BAM's going to shut this mother down

A?n't going to be no shitting around

By Sunday night, at a rally of about 2,000 whites and blacks. BAM leaders began stressing the need for-nonviolence. The negotiations were proceeding generally slowly but well, and BAM leaders, aware of the presence of several police agents among the crowd who had been identified in previous demonstrations, did not want any violent actions. BAM desperately wanted to avoid any pretext the university could use for calling in the National Guard to squelch the strike, and specifically warned "police provocateurs" to go home. Just as it appeared that the university was about to settle the issue rationally. Sunday evening's negotiation session ended-and returned the situation to crisis.

President Fleming emerged from the Sunday session and released a press statement, listing those demands to which the administration had agreed but ignoring those demands which weren't agreed upon, and implying that the strike was now over, since the crisis was resolved. The BAM leadership was furious, particularly since both sides in the negotiations had agreed not to make any public statements until the negotiations were over. BAM broke off negotiations with Fleming, reiterated its eleven demands, and issued a call for a renewed effort to continue the strike.

Monday provided a tense situation, with BAM fearful of police being called on campus. Selections from a BAM leaflet indicate their insistence on non-provocation:

-Picketers are NOT to have ANY OBJECTS (e.g., sticks, pipes, clubs, etc.) which could be defined as weapons. The law states that "a gathering of five or more people with weapons constitutes a MASS RIOT."

-Non-amplified chanting is permissible, EXCEPT during early morning picketing. (No megaphones, no bullhorns, etc., are permissible.)

Late Monday, March 30, Fleming apologized to BAM for his press statement. Negotiations resumed, another moratorium on picketing was announced, and tensions eased. Most students returned to class, although the strike was still officially in effect until Wednesday night, April 1.

Most of the BAM demands had been satisfactorily negotiated. The university had committed itself to the ten per cent black admissions requirement and had agreed to the other demands with the exception of some disagreement on the location of the black community center and on tuition waivers.

AT A news conference given for five radical publications, BAM spokesmen explained some of their thinking involved in the management of the strike:

Questioned about the timing which led to the successful gradual buildup of pressure through increasing disruptive tactics at the peak of the strike, a BAM representative attributed the decisions to close contact with the administration. Following the theory, "If you know a snake well enough then you will know when he is going to strike and you can get out of the way," BAM maintained skillful liaison with the administration. "We have been doing our homework."

BAM also consciously avoided adding ancillary demands to its original list of eleven. Although Michigan earlier this year had a large anti-ROTC demonstration leading to the loss of credit for ROTC courses. BAM did not add any anti-ROTC demands to its list. BAM spokesmen explained that they were careful to avoid an anarchist situation, such as happened at San Francisco State, where the administration did not know who to work with because of the profusion of student groups, demands, and voices.

Observers of the events at Michigan were intrigued by the fact that the

large numbers of white supporters were content to support the demands massively and submissively; that is, whites manned the picket lines at 4:30 a.m., they mimeographed daily announcements on the status of the strike, and they managed the news offices. They made no attempt to speak for the demands as official representatives of BAM or even to have a voice at any of the mass rallies. The BAM spokesmen explained that the white student help was essential and "greatly appreciated." "The Coalition has done a lot of busy work for us" with mimeographing and food supplies, BAM explained; the Coalition work "allowed us to function in planning and negotiation; we have been made more effective and functional." This strictly separate type of working arrangement between whites and blacks was maintained throughout the strike: its tactical success provided powerful and lasting support for the eleven BAM demands.