For seven days in April 1968, students occupied five buildings on the
campus of Columbia University to protest a planned gymnasium in a nearby
Harlem park, links between the university and the Vietnam War, and what
they saw as the university's unresponsive attitude toward their
concerns. Exhilarating to some and deeply troubling to others, the
student protests paralyzed the university, grabbed the world's
attention, and inspired other uprisings. Fifty years after the events,
A Time to Stir captures the reflections of those who participated in
and witnessed the Columbia rebellion.
With more than sixty essays from members of the Columbia chapter of
Students for a Democratic Society, the Students' Afro-American Society,
faculty, undergraduates who opposed the protests, "outside agitators,"
and members of the New York Police Department, A Time to Stir sheds
light on the politics, passions, and ideals of the 1960s. Moving beyond
accounts from the student movement's white leadership, this book
presents the perspectives of black students, who were grappling with
their uneasy integration into a supposedly liberal campus, as well as
the views of women, who began to question their second-class status
within the protest movement and society at large. A Time to Stir also
speaks to the complicated legacy of the uprising. For many, the events
at Columbia inspired a lifelong dedication to social causes, while for
others they signaled the beginning of the chaos that would soon engulf
the left. Taken together, these reflections present a nuanced and moving
portrait that reflects the sense of possibility and excess that
characterized the 1960s.
