Staff Pick: The 10 Demands and ECU Student Activism
Collection: Records of Leo Warren Jenkins’ Tenure as President and Chancellor, 1960-1978 (University Archives Collection #UA02-06)
Staff Person: Patrick Cash
In honor of Archives Month and this year’s theme of Activism and Social Justice in North Carolina, today’s staff pick features the 10 Demands from the Society of United Liberal Students (SOULS).
On March 3, 1969, students representing SOULS presented Dr. Jenkins with a list of ten demands from the African American students. The demands were presented to administration alongside a letter from SOULS members that explained the rationale behind their demands. In this letter, the students stated that they believed their demands were necessary due to “existing unfair and obsolete racial practices on campus” and that they believed their demands to be “reasonable and totally fulfillable,” and that they were willing to take ‘every opportunity for discussion and planning,” but they would “undertake any and every action necessary to obtain their reforms.” The student demands soon became public knowledge as the East Carolinian published the full list two weeks later and students across campus were writing into the paper to express their opinions on the issue at hand.
Signed by 67 students of East Carolina, the document demanded that the university’s administration; hire more African-American instructors, create an African-American studies program, an increase in financial aid for African-American students, the recruitment of more African-American students including the recruitment of African-American athletes, the ending of practices deemed negative including the playing of “Dixie” at campus events, improvements in working conditions for many of the campuses African-American staff members, inviting African-American speakers to campus, the ability to demonstrate in Civil Rights demonstrations without fear of punishment, and funds for African-American students seeking to attend academic conferences.
Following the presentation of the demands to administration and the publishing of the document in the East Carolinian, Chancellor Leo Jenkins and his administration responded to the student’s concerns in writing, providing a detailed response to each of the ten demands. In this response, Jenkins remarks how several of the demands have been passed along to the appropriate campus office or committee for consideration. The university’s administration and the students of SOULS would continue to meet and negotiate answers to the issues raised by the ten demands document. Ultimately, Chancellor Jenkins would convene a campus wide convocation on March 31, 1969 to publicly address support for the student demands by stating that any form of prejudice or racism would not be tolerated on campus.
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