Joanne Grant research files, 1963-1968

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
Bib ID:
6892009 View CLIO record
Creator(s):
Grant, Joanne
Repository:
Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Physical Description:
1.44 linear feet (3 document boxes)
Language(s):
English .
Access:
You will need to make an appointment in advance to use this collection material in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library reading room. You can schedule an appointment once you've submitted your request through your Special Collections Research Account.

This collection is located offsite. You will need to request this material at least three business days in advance to use the collection in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library reading room.

This collection has no restrictions. Some personal material may be restricted due to the presence of personal names and information.

Description

Summary

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.

  • 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.

Arrangement

This collection is arranged in three series.

Using the Collection

Restrictions on Access

You will need to make an appointment in advance to use this collection material in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library reading room. You can schedule an appointment once you've submitted your request through your Special Collections Research Account.

This collection is located offsite. You will need to request this material at least three business days in advance to use the collection in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library reading room.

This collection has no restrictions. Some personal material may be restricted due to the presence of personal names and information.

Terms Governing Use and Reproduction

Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. The RBML maintains ownership of the physical material only. Copyright remains with the creator and his/her heirs. 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.

About the Finding Aid / Processing Information

Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Processing Information

Collection, processed by Megan French GSAS, 2013.

Finding aid wittten by Megan French, June, 2008.

Revision Description

2009-03-05 File created.

2009-04-16 xml document instance created by Carrie Hintz

2019-05-20 EAD was imported spring 2019 as part of the ArchivesSpace Phase II migration.

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.

Subject Headings

The subject headings listed below are found in this collection. Links below allow searches for other collections at Columbia University, through CLIO, the catalog for Columbia University Libraries, and through ArchiveGRID, a catalog that allows users to search the holdings of multiple research libraries and archives.

All links open new windows.

Genre/Form
Articles CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Clippings (Information Artifacts) CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Correspondence CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Ephemera (general object genre) CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Handbills CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Newsletters CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Press releases CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Name
Black Panther Party CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Columbia Daily Spectator (Organization) CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Columbia University -- Administration CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Columbia University -- Alumni and alumnae -- Societies, etc. CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Columbia University -- History CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Columbia University -- Student strike, 1968 CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Columbia University -- Students CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Columbia University -- Students -- Political activity CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Columbia University. Students' Afro-American Society CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Columbia-Barnard Citizenship Council CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Committee for the Defense of Property Rights CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Community Action Committee CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
December Fourth Movement CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Employees for March 25th CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Faculty Peace Action Committee CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Grant, Joanne CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Kirk, Grayson L. (Grayson Louis), 1903-1997 CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Morningside Housing Committee CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Progressive Labor Party CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Radical Faculty Group CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Rudd, Mark CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Student Coordinating Committee CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Student Mobilization Committee (U.S.) CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam a.k.a. SMC CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Students for a Democratic Society (U.S.) CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Students for a Free Campus CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Students for a Reconstructed University a.k.a. SRU CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Subject
Civil rights movements -- United States -- History -- 20th century CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
College students -- Political activity -- New York (State) -- New York CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Draft resisters -- Vietnam War, 1961-1975 CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Peace movements CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Social movements CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Student movements -- New York (State) -- New York CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Student-administrator relationships CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID
Vietnam War, 1961-1975 CLIO Catalog ArchiveGRID