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Courtesy of the Friends Historical Library

Swarthmore students protest at a 1982 football game.

BY HANNAH PURKEY

In print | Published March 5, 2009

During her time at Swarthmore, Miriam Feingold Real ’63 was no stranger to the county jails. An ardent activist who was involved in organizing many of the demonstrations against segregation in Chester, Pennsylvania and Cambridge, Maryland, Real believed that sometimes sacrifices had to be made in the name of social justice. “Some of the activities we were involved in ended up with us being arrested,” Real said. “I remember spending several days in jail with my school books from Swarthmore, attempting to do my homework and study.”

Real is only one of many students in the history of the college who have translated their concern with social justice into explicit activism. This dual dedication to academics and social change has been a mark of Swarthmore’s reputation for years, but few have questioned to what extent it is a part of the College’s history. “Swarthmore for years has had the reputation of the Kremlin on the Crum [US Vice President Spiro Agnew’s supposed description of Swarthmore],” said Christopher Densmore, Curator of the Friends Historical Library. “To what extent that is deserved or to what extent it is reflective of students as a whole, I don’t know.” Yet those who have been a part of activism on campus over the years remember the school as one of the most prominent vehicles for social change in higher education.

“The thing I have always loved about Swarthmore, even when I was angry at it, was that it always wanted to be a better place than it was at the moment,” Maurice Eldridge ’61 said. “Every generation has had its share of people both pushing the institution forward and looking at society and trying to push it forward too.”

The Early Years

Activism in the first few decades of the college focused on social movements for women’s suffrage as well as on the Quaker heritage of peace. Although the college had a long history in the peace movement, the men’s student government, an association of male students on campus providing a form of self-government, sponsored a petition requesting the integration of a compulsory military program to provide military training to all those who wanted it when the U.S. became involved in World War I. The petition was signed by almost all of the men on campus, and the program was ultimately granted by the Board of Managers, according to Richard Walton’s “Swarthmore College: An Informal History.”

The college also expressed resistance to the war, however. College President Joseph Swain denounced the conflict in several prominent forums, including one in the House of Representatives in 1914. Other professors participated in resistance to the war, including William Hill in his work as a trustee of the New Peace Union as well as Benjamin Battin, class of 1892, who worked as an organizer for the World Alliance of Churches for Promoting International Friendship, according to Walton.

Alice Paul, class of 1905, and Mabel Vernon, class of 1906, were key leaders in the national women’s movement both while at Swarthmore and afterwards, according to Phoenix archives. Swarthmore students involved in the women’s liberation movement fought for suffrage in several ways, including participating in picket lines at the White House with representatives from several other colleges. In the ’30s, the women’s liberation movement continued with the abolition of women’s fraternities.

The anti-war sentiment was felt at Swarthmore during World War II when an astonishing 10 percent of students of the class of ’42 registered as conscientious objectors, according to Isabel Logan Lyon ’42 in “Swarthmore Remembered.” The unprecedented number of objectors was put in even starker relief due to the placement of 300 Navy men on campus. These military men not only clashed with the campus’s anti-war leanings, but also indirectly integrated the college, as three of the 300 Navy men were black.

Post-WWII Swarthmore

Swarthmore, like so many other colleges, saw significant changes in its student body and general campus atmosphere after the conclusion of WWII. “Vets returning had little patience for the Joe-college mentality,” Densmore said. “Some of these guys had been off fighting in the jungles or leading troops in Europe, and the idea that they were going to go pledge a frat now and act like a college freshman didn’t go over well.”

This changed attitude contributed to humanitarian efforts, seen in the late ’40s, when students voted to give up milk twice a week to help purchase food for war-ravished Europe. But it also showed in the increasingly left-wing movements students became involved in and brought to campus. A poll of students’ political views on the election of 1948 in The Phoenix demonstrated the growing radicalism of student sentiment. The poll showed that of the students who participated, 19 percent supported the Socialist candidate, 16 the Democratic candidate, and 11 the Progressive candidate. An initial manifestation of post-war activist politics can also be seen in the establishment of a committee to push Swarthmore towards non-discriminatory admissions in 1946. Integration issues were brought under more scrutiny when The Phoenix accused the administration of discriminatory admissions standards for Jews and blacks in 1947.

Issues of integration and civil rights for African Americans would continue to be a focal point of activism over the next two decades. “Once you have answered the simple questions, voting rights and no legal segregation, then what?” Densmore said. “Does that solve the problems of race and class in the country? No, so students were involved in trying to solve those next questions.”

According to Real, the activism around these issues had cooled off in the late ’50s. “When I arrived at Swarthmore in the fall of ’59 there was relatively little if nothing going on as activism on campus,” Real said. “Swarthmore was always outspoken on issues as a Quaker college with strong feelings about the peace movement, but there was not much activism as we would call it today.” Not only was there a lack of activism, but there was also less of a left-wing bias in the ’50s, according to some alumni. “There wasn’t this automatic assumption that there is today that this place is really left leaning and there are barely any conservatives or Republicans who dare speak their names, which is probably a distortion too,” Eldridge said.

The increased diversity of students arriving at the school helped to revive feelings of activism on campus, especially with the arrival of students with previous experience of radical movements. “We had a pretty broad spectrum of people involved on campus,” said Daniel Pope ’66, one of the student protestors arrested in the Cambridge Demonstrations and a current professor of history at the University of Oregon. “Some of those involved had personal experience with the movements as children of parents who had been involved in the old left during the depression.”

The left-wing backgrounds of Real and a group of other students encouraged them to start the Swarthmore Progressive Action Coalition.

“SPAC was what spearheaded activity,” Real said. “In starting it up, we lit the fire at Swarthmore.”
SPAC at this time supported the NAACP’s nationwide boycotts of non-integrated stores like Woolworth’s and picketing of de facto segregation in Chester and other nearby neighborhoods, according to Real. “We mobilized the campus so that we would have a good number of people out picketing at any time,” Real said. “Whenever there was an opportunity to do anything, we did it.”

As civil rights movements began to spread across the South, the eastern shore town of Cambridge, Maryland became a center of activity and one that was close enough for Swarthmore students to be involved in. Coverage in The Phoenix for the 1962-63 school year featured stories almost every week in April of students and professors alike being arrested for sit-ins and demonstrations held in Cambridge.

These protests, focused outside of Swarthmore, were supported by more academic activism back on campus. “Activists, maybe, but academics we were,” Real said. “So we would have a Marxist discussion group and occasionally bring in a speaker to discuss some left-wing topic, but it was always very academic.” This academic as well as social approach to activism in the ’60s was one reason SPAC remained independent of any nation-wide organization. “We did not want to be beholden to anyone else’s agenda,” Real said. “There were a number of organizations we could have been a chapter of, but we chose to go our own path so we could be very open to taking on social issues.”

Even though many students focused on combating discrimination outside of Swarthmore, the student body did not ignore discrimination occurring on the campus itself. Many of these concerns focused on admission of black students, specifically those considered “risk students,” or students whose academic qualifications were not as high as those of other students admitted. “Swarthmore as well as a lot of other colleges had gotten into the position where it didn’t discourage students of color from coming but it was not encouraging them either,” Densmore said. “It was not going out and trying to find diversity of the student body, and that really becomes an issue in the ’60s.”

The Swarthmore African-American Students Society’s fight for the admittance of more black students came to its crux in 1969 with the occupation of the Admissions Office and ended in what many alumni refer to as the most traumatic week in the history of Swarthmore. In its explanation for the occupation of Parrish Hall, SASS claimed, “the College suffers from a white liberal mind set” which was partly responsible for the lack of recruitment of black students, according to a statement issued by SASS during the sit-in called “Why We Can’t Wait” available in the College Archives. A week after members of SASS began the occupation, the college’s president, Courtney Smith, died of a heart attack at the age of 52. SASS soon after ended its occupation amid accusations that the stress of the demonstration had contributed to the death of the president.

1970s and beyond

After Smith’s death, activism at the college continued to be dominated by campaigns against discriminatory practices, as well as those against the Vietnam War. “The spring of 1970 was when things really started going berserk,” Edward Levy ’71 said. “Students went on a sort of strike with the sympathy of the faculty. We stopped going to class and having exams; it was a very intense time.” SASS continued to fight for more opportunities for black students, and the anti-war sentiment grew on campus as anxiety over the Vietnam War continued. “There was this feeling that we were in this country that was destroying the world and attacking innocent people,” Levy said. “What was going on in people’s minds was that you weren’t just tacitly involved but that you were going to be sent over to murder people. That was what was most disturbing, and if you got out of it somehow it was because of some white skin privilege which black kids didn’t have the option of.”

As the war began to wind down, students became more involved in pushing for the school’s divestment of its assets in South Africa, according to Densmore. Although petitions and student council resolutions had called for divestment as early as the late ’70s and early ’80s, pressure for divestment intensified in 1985.

Students spent weeks on information campaigns aimed at students and faculty as well as holding sit-ins of the Admissions Office and the President’s Office. A few groups of students also marched into the December meeting of the Board of Managers to demand complete divestment. According to Phoenix records, the meeting was adjourned when board members refused to continue the meeting unless the students and faculty members left, which some refused to do. Divestment was achieved, however, in 1986.

Students at this time were also involved in social activist movements closer to campus. “Our thinking became more refined in the sense that we began to think and turn the ideas we had about justice to ask about what was happening right under our noses,” Real said. Students got involved in the Chester Community Improvement Project, a group organized by local clergymen to help improve housing and other areas of concern in nearby Chester, and other projects that worked to improve areas in proximity to the school. Some of these projects, like the Swarthmore-Chester Volunteer Program, offered stipends to students willing to volunteer fulltime for community groups, according to Walton.

In the ’90s, there was a revival of conservative student activism, according to Richard Valelly ’75, a professor of political science at Swarthmore since 1993. The administration supplied conservative student groups funds to bring in speakers like William Buckley Jr., a conservative author and commentator who founded the political magazine National Review, and Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative political activist. “Al [Bloom] thought it was just great,” Valelly said. “It showed that what we mean by activism is students from all kinds of views speaking their minds.” However, this movement did not last long, and Valelly described it as more of a blip in Swarthmore’s history.

Activism today

The extent to which activism today mirrors Swarthmore’s rich past is a matter of opinion. “The activism now is not the type where you are standing in front of troop trains saying don’t come here,” Densmore said. “It is the type of activism that recognizes the problem, says let’s look at the problem and get some information about it and put that information out there. I think there is something really Swarthmorean about that type of activism.”

With the national and international successes of programs like War News Radio and the Genocide Intervention Network, Swarthmore activism today utilizes new technology to evolve with the changing issues of social justice. “Web organizing is the big way we see a lot of change in the way that activism is done today,” said Nick Gaw ’09, the executive Director of STAND, the student-led division of the GI-Net working to achieve a world without genocide by giving individuals and communities the tools to fight it.

STAND is using the development of these new technologies to organize a national campaign to elicit international change. According to Gaw, STAND’s efforts in the first 100 days of President Obama’s administration have relied on electronic organizing. For example, electronic organizing allowed students across the country to sign up to call the Secretary of State every minute on Day 25 to help put pressure on the administration to appoint a new special envoy for the Sudan.

“For an organization that is focused at national policy levels, it is really important for us to have a large national constituency which wouldn’t be possible if we were just doing face to face interactions,” said Katherine Ashmore ’11, a member of the Swarthmore leadership of STAND. However, face-to-face tactics are not completely forgone in today’s activism. “Different moments call for different responses by activists,” Gaw said. “We’ve done civil disobedience last April in front of the White House, we have broken fax machines; those are important tools of the trade. But when dealing with something that is a foreign policy issue like this we also need to work through the government and develop those relationships so we can leverage them to create change on the ground in Darfur.”

Swarthmore activists have also expressed the feeling that large-scale demonstrations are not as effective today. “I just think that its been very done in the past, and that protests and mass demonstrations can be effective but they can also just as easily be non-effective,” said Neena Cherayil ’11, a leader in many activist organizations at Swarthmore including STAND. “It really has to be a big thing because they happen so often.”

The administration has found the longevity of Swarthmore’s activist groups particularly impressive. “The sophistication students have come to have about a succession plan so that the club or whatever they have created has a life going forward beyond the four years of the current students is a significant change even in the last ten years,” Eldridge said. “Also with WNR and STAND, you see the spreading across the country and spinning off into an independent non-profit which exists with a broader scope. Those things are a mark of a really more informed activism that gets beyond the moment and looks longer term, which is a significant change.”

Eldridge is confident that the interest students have shown in making the world a better place will continue in generations to come. “If the world continues to present us with the problems and issues it has, the college and its students and faculty will rise to confront those issues,” Eldridge said. “I really think it is quite embedded in the character of this place, that people want to use their intellectual and artistic talents and ring them to their fullest fruition not for their sake alone but for the sake of the effect they can have on the world.”

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