Series I: Columbia Strike Materials, 1966-1969

Scope and content:

This series contains hundreds of original documents collected by Columbia College student Stuart Gedal that analyze social issues and the Vietnam War, announce meetings, rallies, and demonstrations, and reflect the sometimes fractious internal debates among student movement activists. The materials reflect Gedal's slow but steadily growing enthusiasm for anti-war, civil rights and "Black Power" organizing. It also marks his own personal journey from aspiring attorney and liberal Democratic politician to full-time student movement organizer and militant activist.

The documents trace a nearly two-year long crescendo of activism that burst into the Columbia Strike of Spring 1968. Documents of note include a transcript of Columbia President Grayson Kirk's appearance on an hour-long national news broadcast during the Strike, a "subpoena" and questionnaire sent to student strike leaders by the official "Fact-Finding Commission" (The Cox Commission), counter-commencement and liberation school documents. The documents also trace the fracturing of the Columbia Strike into three separate movements – Student Afro-American Society's (SAS) focus on Black admissions, curriculum and human rights issues at the University; Students for a Reconstructed University (SRU) focus on the creation of student-faculty bodies they hoped would become part of University governance; and students involved with Society for a Democratic Society (SDS) focused on continuing the militant spirit of the Strike by linking demands and activism of SDS at Columbia to SDS groups across the country, and transforming SDS into a national movement for all out social change.

Materials were re-housed from individual sleeves in binders into acid-free folders and boxes. The original order provided by Gedal was maintained as closely as possible, but some individual materials were grouped together into subject-specific or publications specific files while others were re-housed at the item level as originally received.

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