Summary Information
Abstract
This collection consists of the working materials Joanne Grant, a journalist and activist, collected for the research and publication of her 1969 book
Confrontation on Campus: Columbia Pattern for the New Protest
(New York: New American Library, 1969).
At a Glance
| Call No.: | UA#0141 |
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| Bib ID: | 6892009 View CLIO record |
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| Creator(s): | Grant, Joanne |
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| Title: | Joanne Grant
Research Files,
1963-1968.
|
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| Physical description: | 1.44 linear feet (3 document boxes).
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| Language(s): | In English
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| Access: |
This collection is located offsite.
This collection has no restrictions. Some personal material may be restricted due to
the presence of personal names and information.
More information » |
|---|
Arrangement
Arrangement
This collection is arranged in three series.
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Description
Scope and Content
This collection is a repository of Joanne Grant's research materials for her 1969
book Confrontation on Campus: The Columbia Pattern for the New Protest. The
collection contains both Grant's notes taken throughout the Columbia revolt, as well
as collected research materials. These materials consist of Strike Coordinating
Committee fliers, agendas, leaflets and official statements. In addition, the
collection includes the responses of faculty, administration and community members
to the strike. The collection also contains materials from the Independent Committee
on Vietnam at Columbia University, student protest files against Columbia's
involvement in the war. The materials consist of fliers, letters, telegrams and
pictures.
Series I: Columbia University Student Uprisings, 1963-1968
This series contains materials that document the issues leading up to the uprising and provides a chronology of student, faculty, community and administrative involvement in the 1968 strike. The folders within each subseries are arranged alphabetically.
Subseries I.1. Pre-uprising, 1963-1968
This subseries provides early documentation of anti-Vietnam War sentiment on Columbia University’s campus including the official documentation of the Independent Committee on Vietnam as well as student responses to Columbia’s class ranking and draft policies. Finally there are five spiral bound notebooks of handwritten notes taken before and during the student strikes.
Subseries I.2. Uprising,
1966-1968
contains a compilation of fliers, SCC memoranda, meeting minutes, and statements, press releases, correspondence, and public statements documenting the student uprisings. A full chronology is followed by the materials of various student groups: the Strike Coordinating Committee, black students and students from Barnard College. Many of the student newsletters are addressed to Morris Grossner, a Columbia University student at the time and a leader in Columbia’s chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). These materials are followed by letters of support and various other responses of those involved in the strike, as well as plans for the restructuring of the University. Also included are submissions, addressing racism, black students and the labor movement, by Columbia University students to the magazine
China Features
in Peking.
Series II: Materials Collected from Laura Foner,
1968
This series contains research materials collected from Laura Foner, a Columbia University graduate student and member of SNCC. The papers that were contributed by Foner are marked in the top right hand corner of each page with her initials: LF.
Series III: Photographs, 1968
Photographs used by Grant in her 1969 book on Columbia University student uprisings
Confrontation on Campus
. Most of the images are annotated on the back.
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Using the Collection
Offsite
Access Restrictions
This collection is located offsite.
More information and link to off-site request form
This collection has no restrictions. Some personal material may be restricted due to
the presence of personal names and information.
Restrictions on Use
Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. Permission to publish material
from the collection must be requested from the Curator of Manuscripts and University
Archivist, Rare Book and Manuscript Library (RBML). The RBML approves permission to
publish that which it physically owns; the responsibility to secure copyright
permission rests with the patron.
Preferred Citation
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Joanne Grant Research Files, Box
and Folder; University Archives, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia
University Library.
Finding aid in repository; folder level control.
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About the Finding Aid / Processing Information
Columbia University Libraries. Rare Book and
Manuscript Library; machine readable finding aid created by Columbia University
Libraries Digital Library Program Division
Processing Information
Collection, processed by Megan French GSAS, 2013.
Finding aid wittten by Megan French, June, 2008.
Machine readable finding aid generated from MARC-AMC source via XSLT
conversion March 5, 2009
Finding aid written in English.
2009-04-16
xml document instance created by Carrie Hintz
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Subject Headings
The subject headings listed below are found in this collection. Links below allow searches at Columbia University through the Archival Collections Portal and through CLIO, the catalog for Columbia University Libraries, as well as ArchiveGRID, a catalog that allows users to search the holdings of multiple research libraries and archives.
All links open new windows.
Genre/Form
Subjects
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History / Biographical Note
Biographical Note
Joanne Grant, born in 1930 in Ithaca, New York to a
biracial mother and white father, graduated from Syracuse University with a degree
in history and journalism. At 27, Grant traveled throughout the Soviet Union and
China, defying state bans on travel to Communist countries, seeking alternatives to
an American political system that perpetuated segregation and class divides. Grant
was deeply interested in finding organizing and mobilizing tools through which to
address the racial and economic inequities of American democracy. Upon her return,
the young journalist briefly assisted W.E.B. DuBois, noted black scholar,
intellectual, and activist. DuBois, who had left the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an organization he had founded, as the
leadership became more mainstream, sought increasingly more radical alliances for
his activism. Undoubtedly, DuBois' mounting frustrations with the unfulfilled
promises of equality through integration and his profound interest in creating
international Communist alliances, influenced Grant.
With DuBois' referral, Grant took a position as a
journalist at the Leftist New York weekly
The National
Guardian
in 1960 and traveled throughout the South to detail Civil
Rights struggles for the paper, writing on Freedom Summer, the Citizenship School
movement, marches and voter registration drives. Her reporting connected to her to
the folks of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a militant
student organization that used direct action to protest segregation, and to SNCC's
founder, Ella Baker. Baker, who had gotten her start as an activist in the NAACP
some twenty-five years before, had persuaded Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to hold a
college conference in 1960, on the heels of sporadic youth action to desegregate
college campuses. The symposium birthed SNCC, and Baker left the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC) to become the young organization's advisor. Impressed
by the expansive direct action program SNCC was implementing, Grant joined the
organization, both as a journalist and activist. Her journalism for
The Guardian
provided a platform for SNCC to
publicize their work and the repressive responses of politicians, law enforcement
and white citizens.
She married Victor Rabinowitz in 1967, a New York lawyer
and activist who defended many Leftist organizations throughout the various freedom
struggles of the 1960s including leaders of the Weather Underground, SNCC, and
high-profile communists. Grant's experiences with SNCC and the Black freedom
movement informed her comprehensive document- based history of the black struggle
against oppression entitled
Black Protest: 350 Years of
History, Documents, and Analyses
(New York: Fawcett, 1968). Her
involvement with SNCC also led her to cover and participate in the student uprisings
at Columbia University in 1968. The result was her history and analysis of the
strike in
Confrontation on Campus: The Columbia Pattern
for the New Protest
. Evident in her writings is Ms. Grant's overwhelming
desire to find new means through which to fight oppression and inequality within the
American democratic system.
Grant and Rabinowitz traveled extensively, including a trip
to Cuba where Grant charmed Castro into allowing them to accompany the Cuban
president on a leg of a speaking tour throughout the country. Her later work, a film
entitled
Fundi
(1981) and later book,
Ella Baker: Freedom Bound
(New York: Wiley, 1998),
were both dedicated to exploring the life and grassroots activism of SNCC founder
Ella Baker.
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