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The concept of rights stretches back centuries, if not millennia. Whether the natural rights of the Ancient Greeks or their Enlightenment descendants, the Rights of Woman in the Age of Revolution, or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after World War II, ideas about, and claims for, rights have accompanied many of the major events and developments in world history.

Organizing and advocacy around rights played an especially important role in the course of U.S. history. The early twentieth century experienced an efflorescence of movements agitating for women’s rights, African-American rights, the right to protest and free speech, among many others. The decades after World War II saw a similar flowering of activity around rights, whether revitalized versions of the aforementioned movements or subterranean currents rising to the surface as with movements for LGBTQ and disability rights.

Later decades also saw the emergence of movements around consumer protections and human rights, in the United States and abroad. But whatever their subject, individuals and organizations dedicated to expanding rights help us to understand how people throughout history have contested authority, protested discrimination, and secured official recognition.

Archives & Special Collections of the University of Connecticut Library holds a wealth of materials for those interested in exploring the history of rights in greater depth, especially the history of local movements in Connecticut. Among the relevant collections are:

Connecticut Commission on Civil Rights Collection. Founded in 1943, the Connecticut Civil Rights Commission aimed to help the State of Connecticut overcome problems of racial discrimination and prejudice. The organization focused its efforts on gathering information about racial discrimination in the state; investigating incidents of discrimination and filing legal sanctions when appropriate; and educating the public about the state’s diverse population and the problems of racial and ethnic discrimination. The collection consists of pamphlets distributed to state offices on the commission’s work and related issues, as well as bulletins and pamphlets related to state and federal civil rights legislation. https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/951

Connecticut Civil Liberties Union Records. The Connecticut Civil Liberties Union, a local affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, was founded in 1949 as the New Haven Civil Liberties Council. The CCLU is a non-partisan and non-profit organization dedicated to upholding the rights of Connecticut residents. The collection consists of archival materials documenting the CCLU’s work and history. The records contain the administrative files of the New Haven Civil Liberties Council (1949-1958), the administrative files of the CCLU (1958-1990), as well as material relating to some of the CCLU’s major court cases, such as Women’s Health Services v. Maher (1979-1981), Doe v. Maher (1981-1990), and Sheff v. O’Neill (1989-1998). These latter records consist of court documents, trial transcripts, correspondence, and research materials. https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/292

Connecticut Citizen Action Group Records. Founded in 1971, the Connecticut Citizens Action Group was the state’s first consumer advocacy organization. Created by Ralph Nader and led by Toby Moffett, the CCAG directed its efforts at informing, organizing, and mobilizing the citizens of Connecticut to take action on issues relevant to their everyday lives. The group helped lead local residents in campaigns against illegal business practices, consumer fraud, utility-rate increases, and environmental pollution, among many other issues. The collection consists of significant archival materials documenting most of the major consumer and public interest issues taken up by the organization. It also contains records on the organization’s history, structure, chapters, and other institutional information. https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/860

Phyllis Zlotnick Papers. Phyllis Zlotnick was a pioneering disability advocate from Connecticut. Born in 1942, Zlotnick had muscular dystrophy, an inherited disease that causes the loss of muscle mass. Using a wheelchair to get around, Zlotnick spent most of her early life and education facing obstacles to accessibility. In response, she dedicated much of her professional life to advocating for people with disabilities. She worked as a legislative liaison for Connecticut Easter Seals and later for Connecticut General Assembly member Ernie Abate. She also served on the National Council on Disability and helped to draft the Americans with Disabilities Act, a landmark piece of legislation passed in 1990. Zlotnick was an expert on issues of accessibility and a fierce advocate for disability rights. The collection consists of newspaper clippings, photos, personal records, advocacy literature, and other media related to Zlotnick’s life and work. https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/1016

Roberto (Robin) Romano Papers. U. Roberto (Robin) Romano was an award-winning photographer, filmmaker, and human rights educator. Through photography, film, and educational activity, Romano documented the lives, poverty, and rehabilitation of children around the world. His work focused, in particular, on the issue of child labor, and his papers contain material on carpet making in South Asia, resource extraction in West Africa, and migrant farm labor in the United States, among other topics. His extensive collection of papers consists of photographic prints, digital video, educational publications, research files, correspondence, and much more. Much of this material is available through our online collections as digitized or born-digital materials. https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/199

Marriage Equality and LGBT Activism in Connecticut Oral History Collection. In 1991, Connecticut became one of a few states to pass a comprehensive anti-discrimination law concerning sexual orientation in employment, housing, public accommodations and credit. The state also helped lead the way in advancing LGBTQ rights with laws around adoption, civil unions, and same-sex marriage. The Marriage Equality and Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Activism in Connecticut Oral History Project was a pilot project of Archives & Special Collections. The collection consists of eleven oral histories with leading activists in Connecticut who have been a part of the marriage equality movement and involved in other forms of LGBTQ activism in the state and beyond. The interviews were conducted by Valerie Love and transcriptions for some are available through our online collections. https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/925

We invite you to view these collections in the reading room at Archives & Special Collections. Our staff is happy to assist you in accessing these and other collections in the archives.

This post was written by Shaine Scarminach, a UConn History Ph.D candidate who is a student assistant in Archives & Special Collections. 

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In 1893, after an act of the Connecticut General Assembly, the rustic Storrs Agricultural School was remade into Storrs Agricultural College, a first step on its way to becoming the major research university we know today as the University of Connecticut.

Along with a new name, the college expanded its course offerings, hired new faculty, and admitted new students—most notably, it officially opened its doors to women. Some members of the General Assembly initially tried to bar women from attending, only to be defeated in the end. Even so, it would have been a belated effort. Records indicate that by 1893 about twenty women had already taken classes at the school, either because of the forward-thinking president Benjamin F. Koons or simply because no law existed to discourage them.

Either way, women’s presence at UConn continued to expand in subsequent years. More and more female students attended classes, played on sports teams, and engaged in student activities in and around the campus, while female faculty and staff assumed a greater number of academic and administrative positions. Today, women account for a slight majority of students at UConn, and the evolution from that first twenty students to women’s prominent role on campus today is amply documented by the university archives.

Archives & Special Collections holds a wealth of materials for those interested in exploring the integral role of women at UConn. Among the relevant collections are:

• President’s Office Records. The collection comprises extensive material relating to each presidential administration at UConn. The records from Glenn W. Ferguson’s presidency (1973-1978) are especially relevant. They contain significant material on attempts to include women’s concerns in the university’s affirmative action plan, and the controversy and activism around the denial of tenure to English professor Marcia Lieberman. The finding aid can be found at https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/606
•  UConn Women’s Center Records. The collection comprises books, correspondence, notes, fliers, clippings, publications, legal records, and transcripts relating to the University of Connecticut’s Women’s Center from 1970 to 1989. The UConn Women’s Center was founded in 1972 after concerted student activism and continues to exist today. It provides a range of social services, educational opportunities, and community outreach at the University of Connecticut around a host of issues relating to women and beyond. The finding aid can be found at https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/187
•  UConn Women’s Studies Program Records. The collection comprises grant files, administrative records, announcement, fliers, and publications. The University of Connecticut’s Women’s Studies Program began in 1974 and was the first official program for women’s studies in Connecticut. Similar to UConn’s Women Center, the Women’s Studies Program formed after concerted efforts by students, faculty, and staff to include women’s interests and issues on campus, especially amid a renewed wave of feminist organizing in the 1960s and 1970s. The finding aid can be found at https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/754
• One Hundred Years of Women at UConn Collection. The collection comprises the contents of a scrapbook created to document the 100 Years of Women activities at UConn during the 1991-1992 academic year. The scrapbook contained photographs, clippings, programs, announcements, memoranda, correspondence, flyers, brochures and posters. The scrapbook was created by a committee formed by President Harry J. Hartley in 1991, and then led by Professor Cynthia Adams, to develop a year-long program of activities to celebrate the role of women in UConn’s history. The activities included a convocation, lectures, presentations, awards and an exhibition. The finding aid can be found at https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/580
• Athletic Communications Office Records. The collection comprises materials concerning the full range of UConn athletics, including basketball, softball, field hockey, tennis, swimming, and many other sports. Records for individual sports contain publications, media guides, statistics, correspondence, press releases, newspaper clippings, and other materials, many over long periods of time. The collection also holds a significant archive of press releases and other general materials. Overall, the collection represents some of the most extensive coverage of UConn athletics and provides a detailed portrait of women in sports at UConn. The finding aid can be found at https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/796
• Student Newspapers. The collection comprises digitized issues of student newspapers from multiple UConn campuses. The most significant collection comes from the Storrs campus, including extensive runs of early to contemporary student newspapers like the Lookout and the Daily Campus. These newspapers provide some of the most far-reaching and wide-ranging coverage of student life at UConn. Both the student newspapers and the student yearbook supply a useful means to chart the history of women at UConn. Many of the publications can be found in our digital repository at  http://hdl.handle.net/11134/islandora:campusnewspapers
• Nutmeg. The collection comprises digitized copies of UConn’s student yearbook from 1915 to 2008. Similar to the student newspapers, the student yearbook provides a useful means of understanding the evolving place of women at UConn. The yearbooks contain information on individual students, clubs, sports, campus activities, academics, and information on particular academic years. The yearbooks furnish an especially useful means to survey the expanding presence of women at UConn, both in terms of faculty and students. Issues of Nutmeg from 1915 to 1999 can be found in our digital repository at http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:02653871
• University of Connecticut Photograph Collection. The collection comprises digitized photographs from throughout UConn’s history. The extensive collection of photographs documents women in all aspects of university life, from sports and academics to university clubs and social life. The finding aid can be found at http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:MSS19880010

We invite you to view these collections in the reading room at Archives & Special Collections. Our staff is happy to assist you in accessing these and other collections in the archives.

This post was written by Shaine Scarminach, a UConn History Ph.D candidate who is a student assistant in Archives & Special Collections. 

This post was written by Sarah Morin, a Simmons University graduate student who completed a digital stewardship and metadata internship in Archives & Special Collections. Ms. Morin received her MLIS degree in December 2018.

For over two decades, the Litchfield County Writers Project (LCWP) has endeavored to support, preserve, display, and celebrate the writers of Litchfield County in ways that further enrich UConn and our community’s creative life.

This program was originally created by Adrienne Lyon, a former director of UConn Torrington, and further developed by Davyne Verstandig, a gifted interviewer, poet, and lecturer at UConn. From 1993 to 2014, the LCWP hosted a range of rich and fascinating lectures, interviews, dramatic readings, and performances by writers and artists of all types and genres. In the earliest days of the program, Lyon spoke of her dearly held dream of making these presentations accessible to the world. Today, over 100 of them are now available online for public viewing.

There is such a wide and wonderful variety of topics that everyone is sure to find a presentation that piques their particular interest. Notable luminaries who gave moving and memorable presentations include Frank McCourt (author of Angela’s Ashes), Madeleine L’Engle (author of A Wrinkle in Time), Tom Schiller (writer for Saturday Night Live), Paul and Linda Fusco (creators of ALF), Candace Bushnell (author of Sex and the City), Barbara Parsons (wrote her memoirs in prison under the tutelage of Wally Lamb), and Gina Barreca (acclaimed academic and humorist). And this list is by no means a comprehensive or complete accounting of all the distinguished writers, artists, musicians, poets, scholars, reporters, filmmakers, and documentarians who presented in the program.

The LCWP presentations can be viewed at the Connecticut Digital Archive

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In the University of Connecticut’s early years, the only thing that passed for organized sports was the mandatory practice of picking up rocks from the fields around campus for three hours each day. Much resented by the students, this “instructional labor” was soon abandoned as football, baseball, and other teams began to form around the turn of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, many of these early teams performed about as well as the aforementioned rocks (though the Board of Trustees proudly reported that the 1900-1901 women’s basketball team was undefeated).

Nevertheless, athletic teams continued to grow and flourish at the university, expanding from those early staples to a wide range of sports whose teams have both achieved great victories and suffered stunning defeats. The growing importance of athletics in university life sometimes produced controversy and concern, but also healthy rivalries and an endless amount of school spirit. All throughout, the story of UConn athletics has been filled with colorful personalities, extraordinary events, and incredible performances.

Archives & Special Collections holds a wealth of materials for those interested in the rich history of UConn athletics. Among the relevant collections are:

• Athletic Communications Office Records. The collection comprises materials concerning the full range of UConn athletics, including baseball, basketball, rugby, archery, rifle marksmanship, and many other sports. Records for individual sports contain publications, media guides, statistics, correspondence, press releases, newspaper clippings, and other materials, many over long periods of time. The collection also holds a significant archive of press releases and other general materials. Overall, the collection represents some of the most extensive coverage of UConn athletics. The finding aid can be found at https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/796
• President’s Office Records. The collection comprises broad materials relating to each presidential administration at UConn. Among these materials are files relating to athletics in general, as well as specific athletic directors. Much of this material consists of correspondence with outside groups or details internal deliberations on athletic issues. Topics include everything from athletic cheating scandals to television contracts to outside sponsorships. The finding aids to the Presidential records can be found beginning at https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&op%5B%5D=&q%5B%5D=presidents+office&limit=&field%5B%5D=&from_year%5B%5D=&to_year%5B%5D=&commit=Search
• Athletic Publications. The collection comprises digitized versions of athletic press guides and programs. The focus is on football and basketball, and the most extensive collection is the University of Connecticut Football Press Guide, which has issues covering the period 1950–1979. Many of these publications can be found in our digital repository at http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20004:AthleticsPublications
• University of Connecticut Memorabilia Collection. The collection comprises ephemera and artifacts associated with UConn that add a material depth and diversity to the textual collections on university life. While covering a wide range of subjects, the collection features significant athletics-related material from throughout UConn’s history. Examples included basketballs and footballs, tickets, clippings, programs, and other materials. The finding aid can be found at https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/528
• University Scrapbook Collection. The collection comprises scrapbooks that document programs, activities, events, and individuals associated with UConn. Similar to the memorabilia collection, the scrapbooks add another useful supplement to the official textual materials from university offices. While they cover a range of subjects and time periods, some are dedicated to university athletics. The finding aid can be found at https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/648
• University of Connecticut Trophies Collection. The collection comprises trophies, awards, photographs and other materials related to the placement of individuals and institutions at UConn in various competitions. Most of the competitions are athletic, though some awards were received by poultry-related departments, reflecting the university’s early focus on agricultural science. Recent trophies have been transferred directly from sports teams, while older awards arrived after department offices were moved. The finding aid can be found at https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/92
• Student Newspapers. The collection comprises digitized issues of student newspapers from multiple UConn campuses. The most significant collection comes from the Storrs campus, including extensive runs of early to contemporary student newspapers like the Lookout and the Daily Campus. These newspapers provide access to daily updates on UConn athletics, covering everything from game listings and scores to general coverage and in-depth analysis. Many of the student newspapers can be found in our digital repository at http://hdl.handle.net/11134/islandora:campusnewspapers
• Nutmeg. The collection comprises digitized copies of UConn’s student yearbook from 1915 to the present. The yearbooks provide useful information about teams, such as rosters, images, and scores, along with information about related athletic clubs on campus. They also provide some information about unofficial athletic activities that take place on campus each year. Volumes from 1915 to 1999 can be found in our digital repository beginning at http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:02653871
• University of Connecticut Photograph Collection. The collection comprises digitized photographs from throughout UConn’s history. The extensive collection includes photographs of teams, individual players and coaching staff, games, practices, and a host of other subjects related to university athletics. Some of the most notable photographs were taken by Jerauld Manter, a UConn graduate who also played on the basketball team. The finding aid can be found at http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:MSS19880010

We invite you to view these collections in the reading room at Archives & Special Collections. Our staff is happy to assist you in accessing these and other collections in the archives.

This post was written by Shaine Scarminach, a UConn History Ph.D candidate who is a student assistant in Archives & Special Collections. 

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In recent years, the University of Connecticut has seen ever-larger classes of students arrive on campus each fall, swelling the school’s already overburdened facilities. But it was ever thus. Around the turn of the twentieth century, an expanding student population at what was then called the Connecticut Agricultural College similarly overwhelmed classrooms and dormitories.

A 1904 issue of The Lookout, an early version of the student newspaper, reported that laboratories once built for soil physics were being outfitted with rows of beds. And even the president’s residence was overtaken by nine students and two instructors. The president and his wife had to relegate themselves to two small rooms in another building on campus.

In response, the Connecticut General Assembly appropriated funds for new construction in 1911. One building to emerge out of this appropriation was Koons Hall, built in 1913 as a men’s dormitory at the cost of $75,000. The building was almost an exact replica of Storrs Hall, built just a few years before in 1906. Koons Hall was named after Benjamin Franklin Koons, an early faculty member and the first president of what would become the University of Connecticut.

Koons was born in Sulphur Springs, Ohio, in 1844. He was one of twelve children in a typical farm family, and his parents sent him and his siblings to the local school. In 1862, Koons enlisted in the Union Army and fought in several major battles, including Cedar Creek and Appomattox. He escaped major injury, and his regiment even received special praise from General Ulysses S. Grant.

After the war, Koons returned to his education, enrolling in Oberlin College in 1870. He graduated in 1874, and then spent several years teaching in schools across the South. He returned to Oberlin in 1878 to continue his education and then went on to study at Yale University. He graduated from Yale in 1881 and took a job teaching at the Storrs Agricultural School, which opened in the fall of that year.

Koons was hired as a professor of natural history, and taught classes as well as published research in a range of fields. He dedicated much of his career to the kinds of research that would serve the school’s initial focus on agricultural education. But he was also drawn into administrative work early on, and when the Board of Trustees voted to change the school’s name to Storrs Agricultural College in 1893, they appointed Koons as its president.

Yet Koon’s time as president would prove short-lived. He resigned from the position in 1897 and stepped down the following year. Although the reasons for his resignation are largely unknown, some have speculated that Koons rankled the Board of Trustees by allowing professors too free a hand on campus. Still, the school grew significantly under his direction. During the Koons years, the number of students and faculty multiplied, female students were admitted for the first time, and educational activities grew along with state funding.

After he left the presidency in 1898, Koons retained an appointment as professor of natural history and political economy. He was also appointed curator of the Natural History Museum, and his family moved into a newly-built cottage on campus. Koons died on December 17, 1903. The ceremony began at his home before moving to a local Congregational church for public services. He was finally buried in Storrs cemetery. In a final symbol of his influence on campus, former graduates served as coffin bearers while students in uniform led the procession from the church to his grave.

This post was written by Shaine Scarminach, a UConn History Ph.D candidate who is a student assistant in Archives & Special Collections. 

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In 1934 the football rivalry between Connecticut State College (as the University of Connecticut was known then) and the Rhode Island State College (now the University of Rhode Island) was white hot. As these two institutions of higher learning looked forward to the showdown of the game in Storrs on November 10, their rivalry was jolted by what is now known as the infamous Ramnapping Incident of 1934.

In the early hours of Friday, November 9, intrepid students of the CSC drove east to Kingston, Rhode Island, stole into one of the campus barns, kidnapped the RISC’s mascot, a two-year old ram with the regal name of Rameses II, and brought him back to the Storrs campus. Rameses was briefly paraded, wearing a Connecticut banner and hat, before the students during a pep rally that evening but was otherwise hidden in various buildings, including fraternity houses. It was said that while Rameses was hosted in Storrs he feasted on oats, alfalfa and cabbages and seemed quite content.

In the early hours before the game on November 10 several carloads of RISC students hightailed it to Storrs, intent upon rescuing their beloved mascot. Connecticut students surrounded their cars and forced them to return to Kingston without the ram.

As it is written in the November 13, 1934, issue of the student newspaper, the Connecticut Campus, before the game commenced “while the grandstand strained its collective ear, the ram was brought around in an automobile to the Rhody side of the field and presented to Rhode Island with due ceremony and the snapping of camera shutters.” The heist failed to help the Connecticut team with their efforts on the field, for Rhode Island won the game 19-0.

Also as written in the student newspaper, “Rumors as to who had a hand in the odd disappearance of the Rhody ram have been flying thickly and furiously around the Connecticut State campus. Thousands of solutions have been put forth by would be Philo Vances, but it is likely that the Rhody ramnaping [sic] will remain forever unsolved in the annals of Connecticut crime.”

This post was written by Shaine Scarminach, a UConn History Ph.D candidate who is a student assistant in Archives & Special Collections. 

The students filed into the building, one after the other. They made their way to the east wing, where they fanned out among the tables and chairs. Some pulled pen and paper from bags, others opened books carried under arms. “Right on, this gives me a chance to tighten up on my studyin’,” someone said. Most stayed silent.

For the staff on duty, nothing seemed amiss. It was April 22, 1974, an ordinary day at the Wilbur Cross Library on the University of Connecticut campus. Masses of students moved in and out of the building, and the staff served them as usual. The trouble came at closing time.

Just before midnight, an employee asked the 200 or so black students gathered in the library to leave. The students stayed put. They had come to study—in part.

But they had also come to protest.

The early 1970s were a turbulent time for the University of Connecticut. The social awakenings of the 1960s had taken their toll on the university and its beloved president, Homer D. Babbidge.

Toward the end of his term, Babbidge had to contend with a series of high-profile protests against the U.S. war in Vietnam.

In 1967-68, demonstrators led by the local chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) disrupted on-campus interviews held by recruiters for Dow Chemical Company and the Olin-Mathieson Corporation. At the time, both companies produced munitions and chemical weapons for the U.S. government.

UConn President Homer Babbidge in “Diary of a Student Revolution,” 1969.

During the demonstration against Olin-Mathieson in November 1968, President Babbidge sent in 200 local police to disperse crowds and arrest protesting students and faculty. These events were later chronicled in a television documentary, Diary of a Student Revolution.

In 1970, Babbidge faced continued actions on the part of SDS and other student groups. During the spring semester, students continued to protest the U.S. involvement in Vietnam with an occupation of the ROTC hangar and a general strike against the war. In need of a respite, President Babbidge retired from his position in early 1972.

After a long and torturous search for a replacement, Glenn W. Ferguson became university president in May 1973. His tenure would at times be just as rocky as his predecessor’s.

Demands made by UConn’s Black Students, April 22, 1974.

Ferguson faced a tangle of difficult issues from his first day in office: the coming of collective bargaining for faculty and staff, discontent over the campus bookstore, upheavals in the Anthropology Department, and the rising demands of women and minority students.

The latter concern pushed the group of black students to occupy the library. It also brought them into sharp conflict with their new president.

On April 11, a few weeks before the library sit-in, 300 black students marched to Gulley Hall, home of the university president’s office, to deliver Ferguson a list of demands.

Among other things, the students demanded that the university reunite the recently divided Anthropology Department; conduct an investigation into two professors the students accused of producing racist research; support the construction of an Afro-American Cultural Center; and provide greater recruitment and support for black and other minority students.

President Ferguson responded to the list of demands in a letter to Rodney Bass, Chairman of the Organization of Afro-American Students, on April 16, 1974, five days after the initial protest.

Local police enter Wilbur Cross Library to remove protesters, April 23, 1974.

Ferguson wrote that “the demands are timely, well-presented, and deserve a definitive answer.” After an introductory note, he spent three pages answering each point in detail. He finished the letter by thanking Bass for bringing the issues to his attention and affirming that the University of Connecticut had an obligation to support its minority students.

Yet the coalition of black students deemed the president’s response anodyne and evasive.

In a reply delivered to Ferguson the following day, the students characterized his letter as “middle of the road.” It signified what the students had come to expect from administrators on campus—“vague and ambiguous procrastination.”

Absent any real commitment from the president, the students felt compelled to take their message beyond the confines of Gulley Hall. Ferguson’s lackluster response had pushed the students to further protest.

Studying together in the library after hours on the night of April 22-23, the coalition of black students sought to increase the pressure on administrators to meet their demands.

Not long after the sit-in began, campus police and other university officials gathered outside the building. Someone informed the students that the library was closed and they would have to leave.

The students refused, instead reading a prepared statement. They planned to occupy the library until President Ferguson and other administrators met with them at 6:00 am to discuss their demands. If the administrators failed to show up, the students would remain in the library until they did.

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A tense stand-off ensued. Around 3:00 am, the students received a notice from Ferguson instructing them to leave in fifteen minutes or be in violation of university regulations and state laws. If they stayed, they would be subject to sanction and arrest. The students held firm, leaving the university administrators struggling to find a solution.

By 6:00 am, it had become clear that the students had no intentions of leaving the library, and President Ferguson and the other administrators had no intentions of meeting with them. By that time, around forty-five police officers had also amassed outside the library. After about an hour, the administration sent in the police to forcibly remove the students.

Police officers, sometimes four at a time, pulled and dragged the protesting students out of the library and then packed them onto waiting buses. They were brought to police stations in Mansfield and Stafford Springs, where they were charged with criminal trespassing and other offenses.

The protesting students reported being physically and verbally abused by police. One student was even admitted to the infirmary because of his injuries.

Ferguson’s decision to call in the police provoked an immediate uproar on campus and throughout the state. Praise and condemnation for both the students and Ferguson came from many quarters.

A number of individuals and groups offered their support for the students.

An editorial in Contact, the newspaper produced by the Afro-American Cultural Center on campus, described Ferguson’s decision to send in the police “an act of monumental stupidity and arrogance.” A student group at Trinity College went further, calling it “savage racism.” A letter from the parents of one UConn student wondered if Ferguson had considered how his “rash and callous action” would hurt the students’ future prospects.

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Most notably, a group of about seventy mostly white students and a few faculty members held an identical protest in the library the following evening. The solidarity protest was again broken up by university staff and local police.

Ferguson also received his fair share of support. One letter sent to the president’s office praised the “hard line” he had taken against the students. Another letter commended his “prompt and decisive action.”

Contact, a UConn Student Publication, May 1974

Although some of the supporting letters acknowledged that the students had a legitimate grievance, some reflected condescension or outright racism. One letter writer not only praised Ferguson’s decision to call in the police but offered his own assessment on the issue of an Afro-American Cultural Center: “I have been to Africa, and if what I saw there represents black culture, I think the world is just as well off without it.”

After intervention by local chapters of the ACLU and NAACP, among others, the president’s office helped get a nolle verdict for the arrested students. Instead, they faced internal discipline from the dean’s office.

April 24, 1974, issue of the Connecticut Daily Campus

The library sit-ins illustrate the dramatic changes underway at the University of Connecticut in the early 1970s. On the Storrs campus, students and staff strained under many of the same pressures felt throughout the United States at this time.

The letters in support of Ferguson’s actions signaled a growing backlash against radical protest, while the students’ actions highlighted the increased militancy of the movements for black and women’s liberation. The university, in short, had become one battleground in a wider conflict threatening to tear the nation asunder.

Many more photographs of this event are available in our digital repository, at http://archives.lib.uconn.edu/islandora/search/black%20student%20protests%20in%20Wilbur%20Cross%20Library?type=dismax