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Cornell University

Student & Campus Life

A campus takeover that symbolized an era of change

Cornell students emerging from Willard Straight Hall after the takeover
The Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of Cornell students emerging from Willard Straight Hall after the takeover (Associated Press Images/Steve Starr)

By George Lowery

The first in a series of articles about the four-decade legacy of the 36-hour student takeover of Willard Straight Hall that began April 18, 1969.

Early in the morning of Parents' Weekend, 40 years ago this Saturday, 11 fire alarms rang out across the Cornell campus. At 3 a.m., a burning cross was discovered outside Wari House, a cooperative for black women students. The following morning, members of the Afro-American Society (AAS) occupied Willard Straight Hall to protest Cornell's perceived racism, its judicial system and its slow progress in establishing a black studies program.

The events that were to prompt decades of social, cultural and political change on campus were in play.

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