ANNOUNCER: Funding for The Five Demands is provided in part by...

The National Endowment for the Humanities...

The Harnisch Foundation...

The Levine/Ken Burns Prize for Film...

The PSC CUNY Research Award Program...

The New York State Council on the Arts...

The National Endowment for the Arts... and The Puffin Foundation.

Support is also provided in part by these individuals... A complete list of funders is available at APTonline.org.

(Crowd singing, "Power to the People") ♪ Power to the people, power!

♪ ♪ Black power for Black people ♪ ♪ Puerto Rican power for Puerto Rican people ♪ ♪ Power to the people, power!

♪ ♪ Power to the people, power!

♪ (African drumming) (Majestic music) FILM REEL: The City College of New York was founded more than 100 years ago, as the first free, public university in the country.

None of the 20,000 students lives at the school.

Traditionally, the college has served highly motivated children of immigrants.

The school, in Harlem, has a high level of academic excellence.

HENRY ARCE: So, I came in September of 1966 into City College.

And well, the first thing that struck me was coming through Harlem on the 101 bus and getting off and being surrounded by Harlemites, my folks, and then entering the college and finding that um, there weren't any of my folks.

This campus is located in Harlem, and so few people from Harlem actually come here.

It didn't seem to make sense, because it was a free university, it was a great education.

Why aren't we adequately represented in number?

FRANCEE COVINGTON: One summer, my mother hosted, uh two young women, who were students at a traditionally Black college.

And she would introduce them to her friends and she'd say, "They're college girls."

And everybody would go, "Oh!

College girls."

And I said, "I want to be one of those."

CHARLES POWELL: I actually grew up not too far away from here.

I grew up in Harlem, in what we used to call "The Valley."

So, when we wanted to dream, we would walk up on the hill.

We knew that we could make it into one of the best colleges in the entire country.

We were going to be able to make it individually.

So, coming in the city, it was like a dream.

ALLEN BALLARD: CCNY was an elite school, academically.

These students were outstanding students.

It was a privilege for the students to be there.

And it was a privilege for us to be teaching there.

And I was happy.

Except for this one problem, which was, we were in the center of Harlem, and looking down on Harlem.

And it was something kind of incongruous about the location of CCNY being where it was, and the lack of African American students all together.

(Drumming on trash cans) ROSALIND KILKENNY MCLYMONT: No, not many Blacks were on campus.

And those that were, a majority of them were in the S.E.E.K.

Program.

ALLEN BALLARD: What's that mean?

"Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge".

FRAN GETELES: It's a corny name, as far as (laughs) I'm concerned.

But the idea was that there were a lot of, uh, poor Black people and Latino people who were not getting a chance to get an education, which they wanted.

SHELDON WEINBAUM: S.E.E.K.

was a revolutionary idea for democratization of the college.

And I think a lot of credit goes to Allen Ballard.

(Typewriter keys pecking) BALLARD: One day I put things together and I went and set up an appointment.

And the President invited me to his house.

You know, I was a young professor.

You're not supposed to be going to the President with things.

But he was gracious.

I gave him my little written proposal.

He read it.

And he said, "Good."

He said, "I want you to go ahead with this."

HON.

SHIRLEY CHISHOLM: The moment of truth has finally arrived in America.

BALLARD: Then, the African American and Hispanic legislators got behind the program.

HON.

DAVID DINKINS: We went in to see the Assembly Speaker.

We explained to him that there would be the inability for him to be re-elected speaker, if our votes were not available.

So, that night, the S.E.E.K.

Program was born.

COVINGTON: Well, my first day at City College, I was amazed.

I had never been on the City College campus before.

And the architecture, the size of the campus, I really felt that it was... the vision I had in mind of an Ivy League university.

And I felt so fortunate, to be among the chosen few for this new program to come and be at City College.

(Jazzy music) LOUIS REYES RIVERA: S.E.E.K.

was the way in which the city of New York attempted to make up for its racist doctrines, prior to the arrival of S.E.E.K., right?

Again, the free school was mostly for Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants from Europe, right?

The earliest City College was never for the non-white population.

COVINGTON: People were not pleased with this influx of brown and Black people to their hallowed halls.

GETELES: The faculty, even after they saw how smart so many of them were, didn't want them in their classes.

COVINGTON: In one class, one instructor asked all of the S.E.E.K.

students to stand.

And she proceeded to tell the other members of the class that we had not done the hard work and gotten the high SAT scores, and here we were now.

I was amazed.

I had never been singled out in that way before.

Uh, just to satisfy someone else's, um, idea of what lesser people look like.

(Classical piano music) BALLARD: You walk through their hallowed halls, and you'll see, you know, all these portraits of white men all around the walls.

It was an uninviting environment for African Americans.

WEINBAUM: When it was conceived, they knew they had to have support structures in place.

They had to have remediation to get the students ready.

HENRY ARCE: I come from Harlem.

I was born in Harlem Hospital.

Educated in the public school system.

I remember taking the test, what I was going to go to high school for, um, uh, Stuyvesant High School.

Uh, my mother insisted that I take this test.

And when I took the test, I was astounded by, by the many things that were never covered in my, in my education.

I said, "What?

How could this be?"

ESPERANZA MARTELL: I grew up very poor and very working class.

Um, and the schools, they didn't know what to do with us.

I wasn't really taught how to read, how to write.

And they had specific programs where they tracked us into.

So, the program I was into was to be a nurse's aid.

You know, learn how to take care of people.

So, I didn't even think about going to college.

JAMES SMALL: You weren't left out of college because you were dumb or, or because you couldn't learn.

You were left out because the way society is structured, okay?

And you weren't structured into that process.

♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, do the Harlem Shuffle ♪ ♪ Oh, do the monkey shine ♪ COVINGTON: It's actually quite un-American.

You have people who have been here for 400 years.

They are paying the same taxes, they're riding the same subway, and they have the same dreams for their children which is to be well-educated, to be well-spoken, to be in a career of their choice, and not forced to do menial tasks for everyone else.

TEACHER: Now sit down, Sharon, and (inaudible).

Okay, now, what did you do?

COVINGTON: In the 50's, and even in the 60's, in predominantly Black and Puerto Rican schools, the curriculum was very... soft.

And the books were very old.

The teachers were newly minted, coming out of college, who had the most inexperienced teachers, uh, teaching in the ghetto schools.

(Talking in background) TEACHER: Stop that right now.

Get over here!

Get over here and sit down.

Sit down!

Wayne!

CHILD: Five, ten, twenty, twenty-five, thirty.

Thirty-five, fifty.

TEACHER: Everybody settle down.

Katrina?

Katrina.

Sit down.

(Kids talking in background) Sarah, sit down.

Katrina, sit down.

(Kids talking in background) (Sighs) COVINGTON: So, for someone to say that... Black and brown people are arriving at CCNY without a proper foundation, who caused that to be?

Who kept that in place?

BALLARD: So, Dr. Gallagher put the weight of the presidency behind the S.E.E.K.

program and what he did was now, he said, "All right, you need teachers of English?

I'm going to give you some folks."

And who did he give us?

♪ Respect yourself Na na na na-na ♪ ♪ Respect yourself Di di di di ♪ ♪ Respect yourself Na na na na-na ♪ ♪ Respect yourself Di di di di ♪ ♪ If you don't respect yourself ♪ ♪ Ain't nobody gonna give a good cahoot, na na na na ♪ ♪ Respect yourself Na na na na-na ♪ ♪ Respect yourself Di di di di ♪ ♪ Respect yourself Na na na na-na ♪ ♪ Respect yourself Di di di di ♪ ♪ Da da da da da da ♪ ♪ If you don't respect yourself ♪ ♪ Ain't nobody gonna give a good cahoot, na na na na ♪ ♪ Respect yourself ♪ BLANCHE W. COOK: Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich actually met at City College in 1968 and became the very best of friends.

And their, their incredibly powerful visions for the future, for a non-racist, non-sexist, non-hierarchical future really changed the role of literature.

AUDRE LORDE: And we were nappy girls, quick as cuttlefish, scurrying for cover.

Trying to speak.

COVINGTON: If the people who are teaching us are totally brilliant and they're listening to what we have to say, then our opinions matter.

MALE STUDENT: I feel that uh, Africa is, at this present time is not, not our home.

I think my forefathers have died in this country.

And I claim this country as mine.

And I think that this is what our fight is for.

To, to be able to function in the mainstream, all of American life.

Because we are Americans.

And we did build this country.

COVINGTON: And that's what they gave us.

They let us know that our opinions matter.

DOROTHY RANDALL GRAY: These people were already on the faculty here.

Just um, major people who were, in a sense, leading a sort of cultural revolution.

A literary revolution.

KILKENNY MCLYMONT: We would participate with The Last Poets.

You know The Last Poets?

POET: Poetry is Black.

Poetry is Black people.

(drumming) Running when it's- FELIPE LUCIANO: The Last Poets performed at CCNY numerous times.

These students, they could recite our poetry better than we could.

Poetry was becoming a revolutionary tool.

And we were offering concrete solutions to sociological, political, and cultural problems, and racism.

We were hitting it hard.

POWELL: Everything that was going on during this particular period of time had political implications.

(Protestors chanting) ♪ People moving out People moving in ♪ ♪ Why, because of the color of their skin ♪ ♪ Run, run, run... ♪ BALLARD: We're talking 60's.

Mid to late 60's.

Well, you have a lot of major things happening in American society.

(Chanting from protestors) BLANCHE W. COOK: It was the height of the war in Vietnam.

It was the height of the civil rights movement.

I mean, what we did in Vietnam was so despicable and there was tremendous opposition.

JANE FONDA: It should be our first priority to stop the genocide in Southeast Asia.

POWELL: This campus is a hot bed.

You had SDS over there.

You had Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee there.

You had the Onyx Society.

COVINGTON: I was a member of what was called the Onyx Society.

You know, Onyx being the Black stone.

DOROTHY RANDALL GRAY: The Black students came together to socialize, to foment change, and uh, things of that nature.

ARCE: We just had initial meetings, just getting together.

We didn't even have the name yet.

Ultimately, we agreed that it would be the uh, Puerto Rican Students Involved in Student Action.

♪ Revolution is the only solution ♪ ♪ If you want to be free ♪ ♪ Revolution Resolution Sing a song ♪ ARCE: We were striving to do, uh, acts of civil disobedience.

Many of us were also impacted by the works of Martin Luther King, who was always, uh, non-violent.

Civil disobedience in a non-violent manner was the best way to bring about change.

Ongoing and lasting change.

Um, uh, many of us believed that.

Some of us did not, to be perfectly honest with you.

But many of us did and certainly that was something that I was striving for.

LUCIANO: The Young Lords was the most exciting, the most vibrant, the most revolutionary group that existed at that time.

We were for the independence of Puerto Rico.

We were for the independence and liberation of all communities of color.

("Que Bonita Bandera" plays) TOMAS SOTO: The most prominent of the organizations, in my opinion, were the Black Panthers.

They influenced us, profoundly.

POWELL: As a teen, I ended up meeting many of the people who were the initial organizers of the Harlem Branch of the Black Panther Party, so I joined.

There was the government perception of the Blank Panther Party versus the reality.

MAN: Open the bag.

The number one thing we had was a free breakfast program and it was responsive to the needs of the community.

COVINGTON: There was a shift in the civil rights movement.

A number of things uh took place, that required... younger people to think of how they were going to respond to, the terrorism that Black people faced.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR: I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.

NEWS ANNOUNCER: Dr. Martin Luther King, the apostle of non-violence and the civil rights movement has been shot to death in Memphis- NEWS ANNOUNCER 2: Sniper's bullet cut down Dr. King as he stood on a hotel balcony in Memphis.

Within an hour- NEWS ANNOUNCER 3: After the murder of Martin Luther King, in more than 100 cities, violence broke out.

(Sirens blaring and fires burning) LUCIANO: When I heard that he was shot...

I just couldn't believe that they would kill this man.

When I heard that this guy, he's like our Daddy, was shot and killed.

For me, it was the end of the romance.

It was the end of it for America.

RANDALL GRAY: All I could say was, "Martin Luther King.

Martin Luther King.

Martin Luther King" and everybody started chanting, "Martin Luther King" and we realized, "Oh my God."

♪ Through the storm... ♪ RANDALL GRAY: And we marched down the street chanting, "Martin Luther King.

Martin Luther King."

We got down to 126th Street and there was a barricade of of policemen standing there saying, "You can't go to 125th Street because there's a riot going on there."

(Flames roaring) And we went through and the sound of breaking plate glass was horrific.

As we got to 125th Street, this white, blonde god rose from the subway.

It was Mayor Lindsay, and he came, in the middle of the riot, to talk to us.

♪ Precious Lord ♪ We took our rage with us.

We decided, "Okay."

We went home.

That weekend, people changed and people came back to school that Monday, with a different attitude.

BALLARD: These students, they would come into my office, and they'd talk about all their concerns, about things going on outside.

The assassination of Martin Luther King, in particular, stimulated a lot of anguish and protests in these kids.

They were looking for, for, for something, something, something.

Anything.

(TV static) DAVID BRINKLEY: At American University in Washington, a group of students stormed the administration building today, protesting a campus program they didn't like.

(TV static) At Dartmouth, the SDS demanded that military training be removed from the campus, and threatened trouble if it wasn't.

(TV static) At MIT they were picketing a lab.

♪ Freedom Freedom ♪ ♪ Each and every man wants freedom ♪ REYES RIVERA: By 1968 into '69, we are attempting to be an integral part of a national student movement.

♪ Free at last Free at last ♪ ♪ Good God Almighty, I'm free at last ♪ COVINGTON: We decided we had to have a plan and that we had to have a strategy on how to open the doors of City College for more people like us.

ARCE: We created, uh, a committee of 10.

Uh, I was one of those that was, uh, elected to be on that committee.

POWELL: It was known to be the negotiating body for the Black and Puerto Rican student.

You know, a community.

I do recall that there was only one woman.

COVINGTON: Most of the men had already been selected.

I think there were nine.

Had already... the entire nine had already been selected.

When somebody said, "What?

We don't have any women so far."

And so, I was pushed forward.

"Francee, you do it," (laughs) And that's how I became the only woman on the committee of 10.

BARBARA CHRISTIAN: There's sexism within our own communities, as well as without.

In the 1960's, there was a tremendous emphasis on manhood in Black movements.

Very often when we were talking about the term "race," in the 1960's, we all thought it meant women and men.

And what we discovered, or to a large extent within the movements, was that it meant maleness.

KILKENNY MCLYMONT: We saw that.

The way that Black American women were treated by the Black American men in the struggle.

And it was something that was totally unacceptable to... it, it, it was an affront.

MARTELL: Some of the... men, the brothers, were sexist and there was struggle within the leadership and the organizers around the equality of women, because women pushed back.

COVINGTON: There were a number of meetings and people talked.

What finally happened was, we came up with five demands.

(R&B music plays) POWELL: Demand number one: a separate school of Black and Puerto Rican studies.

COVINGTON: I think you can say that just about any human endeavor, uh, in America, the concentration has been on those people of European descent.

POWELL: So, where is our history?

And there was none there.

(Music continues over typewriter keys pecking) KILKENNY MCLYMONT: A separate orientation program for Black and Puerto Rican students.

POWELL: I'm sure they still do your freshman orientations and orientations for folks.

We didn't feel like it spoke to, to us.

(Typewriter dings) COVINGTON: A voice for S.E.E.K.

students in the setting of all guidelines for the S.E.E.K.

Program, including the hiring and firing of all personnel.

KILKENNY MCLYMONT: Of course, these are all sensible, aren't they?

We were college students.

(Typewriter dings) POWELL: That the racial composition of all entering classes reflect the Black and Puerto Rican population of all of New York City's high schools.

SMALL: How does the City University, starting with its flagship, City College, the senior college, reflect the graduating population, ethnically, of the city of New York?

That's what we were talking about.

(Music continues over typewriter keys pecking) COVINGTON: That Black and Puerto Rican history and Spanish language be a requirement for all Education majors.

KILKENNY MCLYMONT: Yes, if you're going to be part of this community and instruct this community and teach this community, you must try- you must at least have some understanding of that language, where it came from, and not view it, in a pejorative way.

ARCE: We presented Buell Gallagher with the demands.

He did not respond.

POWELL: When we first put these things together, we felt that all you needed was well-intentioned people sitting down and having conversation.

There was no budging on any of it.

None of the demands were even considered as being valid enough to sit down and negotiate.

KILKENNY MCLYMONT: You take action if your words are falling on deaf ears, if nothing is happening.

If you see no movement in something that you've been talking about.

And so, I was not in the upper echelons of planning or anything like that.

I was a foot solider, essentially.

All I knew, it came down to, "We got to plan this thing" and we planned it.

(Sound of rainfall) POWELL: So, we decided that we'd get there around six o'clock in the morning.

ARCE: We had purchased chains and locks and whatnot.

COVINGTON: There was a feeling of excitement, tension, and empowerment.

POWELL: We took the chains and we decided to lock those gates.

DAVID BRINKLEY: Black and Puerto Rican students chained the gates to City College of New York, closing it.

They wanted minority groups to have 50 percent of the enrollment.

SMALL: At that moment in history, the City College, the Mayor, and the police was faced with the largest student takeover in history.

Yet it rarely ever gets discussed.

You got 17 buildings in your hands.

ARCE: All the entrances were closed down.

We went into each building, emptied it out.

Advised the students.

Took some time to get everything rolling, but say by about 10 o'clock in the morning, the campus was officially under our control.

(singing) ♪ So, Power to the People, power!

!♪ ♪ Power to the people, power.

♪ ♪ Black power to Black people, Puerto Rican power ♪ ♪ to Puerto Rican people, Power to the people, power!

♪ So...yeah.

♪ A brand new day A brand new way ♪ ♪ Brand new way Oh yeah ♪ ♪ Brand new day ♪ ♪ Brand new way ♪ ♪ We gotta put our heads together ♪ ♪ and see where we go from there ♪ ♪ We gotta fight for what we believe in ♪ ♪ 'Cause something's in the air ♪ ♪ And it's a brand new day Brand new day ♪ ♪ It's a brand new way ♪ JEFFREY GUROCK: My brother and I pulled up in our car and parked on St Nicholas Terrace.

Waiting for the alternate side of the street parking regulations to go off at 11 o'clock.

And I'm going to rush to my class in Wagner Hall.

We get out of the car and we get to the gate and we are stopped by a handful of African American students.

They handed us a flyer, telling us why we were not allowed to be on campus.

We didn't know what was going to happen, but we were stopped.

We were stopped from coming into our campus.

Our campus, I didn't think in those terms, was a white campus.

And now, we're being turned away, because we are white.

SMALL: We never said this is just about Black people.

We were just saying, we're left at the bus stop and the bus just took off, okay (laughs).

Either bring the bus back or send another bus.

But we didn't say don't pick up the other students at the bus stop.

GUROCK: It was quite a shocking moment, for the first time being told, "You can't go here."

And I think back in time, there were times where Jews were told in this country, "You can't go here."

Whether it's a hotel, or a resort, or a school.

Now, City College, with its great reputation for openness, to all groups, but I have to define as all white groups.

For the most part, now it's off limits to us, uh, as part of this strike.

So, it's very unsettling and made me start to think about, where do we fit in to this moment in time?

NEWS ANNOUNCER: At City College, the faculty called an urgent morning meeting in an effort to resolve the problems that caused the first shutdown in the college's history.

Here, Black and Puerto Rican students would air their grievances.

A large delegation marched into the meeting.

GETELES: I myself was a little bit ambivalent.

If you're going to shut down the campus and these are students who are struggling to make it, uh, I didn't think it was such a great idea.

But I went to this meeting and the students were so brilliant in the way they presented their arguments about everything, that I, I was totally won over.

NEWS ANNOUNCER: The first Black student speaker took the floor.

But his shouts for power caused dozens of faculty members to walk out.

NEWS INTERVIEWER: Well, Mr. Gardener, would you tell us your reasons for leaving this meeting?

PROF. GARDENER: Well, the meeting has just begun.

But when this kind of, uh, tone and language are employed, uh, I feel that the meeting as a civilized dialogue hasn't really begun.

It has ended.

And there just wasn't any point in remaining.

GETELES: For the most part, the faculty was very hostile.

They had such stereotypes of who the students were that would be coming in.

Um, and so I got up and talked about my experience with S.E.E.K.

students and how much they wanted to learn.

And, you know, I was very scared when I got up to talk.

But anyway, I did it.

POWELL: We thought we probably could stay, maybe, two hours, three max.

If we can get through the morning, you know, it would have been a victory.

Because the takeover really started as, it was more symbolic than anything else.

So, here's what happened.

We had security.

They were ordered to remove us and they refused.

COVINGTON: All of the guards on campus were Black.

They were instructed to clear us out and the word went back to the administration that the guards have decided as a whole, that they will not touch the students.

POWELL: And so, they fired all of the security officers that were on duty.

So, the sixth demand became the first demand and that was, we would not negotiate on anything until all of those security guards were reinstated and rehired in their jobs.

So, Gallagher took care of that.

RANDALL GRAY: On the south campus, there is the house of the President.

And we basically kidnapped him.

So Buell Gallagher was held captive on the campus.

POWELL: Gallagher lived on the south campus.

So we were locking him out.

So he came out and, you know, and he says, "Okay, we just need calm.

I'm not calling the police."

SMALL: President Gallagher was a very nice man.

And I know, because I was the one guarding him in his house during the takeover (chuckles).

And we would talk all the time.

ARCE: But he was not going to condone the takeover of the college.

He refused to meet with us.

He refused to even consider the demands.

ALAN YOUNG: The five demands did not miraculously appear a month ago.

They were first formally presented to President Gallagher in October, at which time there was no response from the administration.

Again, in January, the Black and Puerto Rican community presented President Gallagher with the demands.

He was asked to agree in principle, to the validity of the demands, and to set up the means by which negotiations could take place.

Again, there was no response.

No structure was set up for negotiation until the Black and Puerto Rican students closed down south campus and declared themselves on strike.

BUELL GALLAGHER: The basic purposes of all five of the demands were accepted by me-- more than three months ago.

I was at work on two of them more than six months ago.

And what has happened now is that the, the public demands and agitation have interfered with the processes of achieving the goals we all want to achieve.

INTERVIEWER: It's just a question of bad timing, you're suggesting?

BUELL GALLAGHER: Well, I'm not talking about, uh, putting any blame anywhere.

But I'm answering your question as to whether or not, uh, progress is made without disruptive activity.

And I'm indicating that disruptive activity only slows down the process we already had underway.

HON.

BASIL PATERSON: The strangest thing, uh, I was one of those who was asked to come mediate it.

I was a state senator, they all knew me.

The students were more sophisticated than the professors.

I always thought Buell Gallagher was one of the great men of our time.

They ran rings around him.

Uh, he was a progressive guy.

But he didn't understand what they were pushing for (chuckles), all right?

Didn't understand it.

RANDALL GRAY: As President of a college that had been taken over by a bunch of Black and Latino students, he could have had the cops come in immediately, call out SWAT team, and had everybody kicked off.

That's not what he did.

POWELL: And then it turned from one day, into the next, into the next.

♪ Well I wish I knew how it would feel to be free ♪ ♪ Just to break all of the chains, ♪ ♪ that kinda keep binding me ♪ ♪ And I wish that I could say- ♪ COVINGTON: My mother did not know anything about what I was doing.

And I knew that if she knew, she'd say, "You didn't go to college for that."

(laughs) And actually, I did go to college for that.

I went to college to get an education (chuckles) to help change the world.

KILKENNY MCLYMONT: My parents were furious, of course.

Um, "This is not what we came to America for."

But my parents, my mother, after screaming at us, showed up at the gate with her sister, my aunt, with food for us.

ARCE: Local community people came.

They brought us blankets, they brought us food, they brought us funds.

RANDALL GRAY: And the people in the community started connecting with us, because this was like a little Ivy League island in the middle of this, this Black community.

And folks from the community had never been on the campus before.

It was there, but not there for them.

♪ I'm talking about freedom ♪ ♪ I'm talking about freedom ♪ ♪ Oh what a wonderful world this would be ♪ ♪ if everybody could live free ♪ PROTESTERS: On strike, shut it down.

On strike, shut it down.

On strike, shut it down.

On strike, shut it down.

POWELL: That was a radical time for white students, too.

PROTESTERS: Shut it down.

On strike, shut it down.

POWELL: A lot of the white students stood in front to protect us and enable us to continue to be there.

So, they were our comrades, our allies, and they had our back.

PROTESTERS: On strike, shut it down.

On strike- GUROCK: During the strike, my concern was, "What in the world's going to happen to our semester?"

We were careerists.

We wanted to make sure the, uh, the semester continued as it was, because we have our mundane aspirations, just to advance ourselves another step further, uh, and hopefully someday to be a uh, college professor.

MALE STUDENT: We don't want a small group of troublemakers to take over the campus.

MALE STUDENT 2: We want the school, the racial composition of the City College of New York to be, um, representative of that of the high schools of the city of New York, which is 57 percent.

NAOMI C. SMITH: You can check this with the Board of Ed, 57 percent of the public school students are Black and Puerto Rican.

The thing is that racism is hurting everybody here and re- and... discrimination is hurting all people.

STUDENT: Why don't you join the majority?

SMITH: I am joining the majority of Americans who want a better life in this country.

STUDENT: Well, the majority around you doesn't seem to support that.

What does the majority say?

CROWD: We want in.

We want in.

STUDENT: That's what the majority says.

SMITH: The people standing around here are not the majority.

Because- (Crowd continues to yell and shout) SMITH: Wow, I think I held my own there.

It's funny, you know, I don't remember, that.

But now, seeing it, I feel like, you know, I knew what was important and I stood up.

And you notice, I don't see any women yelling at me.

It all seems to be, like, it's just all these big men, like (laughs), uh, converging on me.

So, um, they were not the majority.

Um, and even though they said they were, but don't... that's... it's part of history that, that white men often feel like they are the majority.

Like what they say is truth.

And they try to erase everything else that is said.

WEINBAUM: Gallagher was having a lot of difficulty with the student protesters.

This must have been a very frustrating situation for him.

RANDALL GRAY: By that time, we had renamed all the buildings.

That was a way of making the college buildings more relevant to the Black and Latino population that was here.

Having all these buildings named was another way of empowering the students.

POWELL: We declared it Harlem University.

We were in south campus.

There was a pool there, they had showers.

So, we were able to shower.

We had already collected sleeping bags, blankets.

COVINGTON: We were sleeping on, (laughs) on the cold floor.

SMALL: And there was a lot of babies that was born nine months later.

We all joked about it.

I said, "So, that's what you all were doing while we were up.

We weren't sleeping, you know, we were patrolling."

COVINGTON: And all the time, we're thinking, when are the police going to storm?

When are we going to be billy clubbed?

That was always in the back of our mind.

POWELL: We were holding our own classes, by the way.

ARCE: We had political education classes.

We had English as a Second Language classes.

We had child care.

POWELL: And everyone who was not part of the takeover had to leave by 9:00 PM.

ARCE: We invited local, as well as national leaders, to come and speak with us.

RANDALL GRAY: Stokely Carmichael came and he talked.

He was a very powerful speaker.

STOKELY CARMICHAEL: We have to move as a people in our neighborhood.

Listen close.

We have to stop reacting and we have to become aggressive.

We can no longer stand up and beg anybody for our victory or our concessions.

Because I'm here to tell you that if you beg a man for a victory, he gives it to you, it's his victory, not yours.

(Cheers) NEWS ANNOUNCER: Confrontation has been the order of the day today at the City College of New York, where education limps along on a campus half open and half closed.

ABC's Peter Jennings reports from New York.

PETER JENNINGS: City College is physically divided into what they call a north and south campus.

The north campus opened today for the first time in 12 days.

The south side remains occupied by Black and Puerto Rican students.

At noon, a rally call by students supporting the Black occupation, turned into a shouting match on who was right and who was wrong.

Those in favor of seeing the Black students leave their sanctuary, weren't always well received by some of the more militant.

The rally became quieter and more reasonable when radical students took their PA system and left.

The man in the middle is still the President of City College, Buell Gallagher.

Yesterday, he agreed to three of the students' five demands and immediately ran into resistance from his faculty.

Today, he was ordered to open the campus and was commended by most students for refusing to bring police on campus, saying he would rather go to jail himself.

But as optimistic as he is about the Black students leaving voluntarily, they show no signs of doing so.

If they don't, they will soon face a court order themselves.

This is Peter Jennings, ABC News, City College, New York.

GALLAGHER: I have this morning requested the Board of Higher Education to relieve me of my duties and responsibilities as President of the City College.

My own functions as a reconciler of differences, and a catalyst for constructive change have become increasingly difficult to carry out.

A man of compassion must stand aside for a time, and await the moment when sanity returns and brotherhood based on justice becomes a possibility.

WEINBAUM: President Gallagher resigned because Rockefeller is the Governor at the time and instead of trying to bring the college along towards the dreams of these students, he was doing everything he could to oppose it.

MARLENE SANDERS: President Gallagher is moving out of City College, after his resignation, effective yesterday.

This is Marlene Sanders, ABC News, at City College in New York.

BALLARD: It was sad to see his departure from the college.

One of the casualties of the whole event.

(Crowd shouting) LEM TUCKER: What Dr. Gallagher did not say was that the Board of Higher Education removed him from the negotiations on Black and Puerto Rican student demands, just as a partial settlement appeared near.

There is bitterness here about that.

POWELL: When Gallagher was here, you know, he was so sensitive to our needs and, you know, and really, really took an approach, which is why the, the takeover lasted as long that college was a sanctuary place.

He refused to allow the police to come on campus and so forth.

So, when he was replaced by Copeland, the first thing Copeland did was to look up all of our academic records and see who he could get rid of.

ARCE: Soon we heard that there was going to be a police presence.

POWELL: And they going to take anybody and everybody out off of this campus, by whatever means of force.

KILKENNY MCLYMONT: They were coming in to declare, officially, the end of this occupation.

POWELL: So, we left that Sunday night.

About two weeks and three days into the takeover.

♪ We shall be free yeah ♪ ♪ We shall be free ♪ ♪ Everybody want to get together and walk like you and me ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ We shall be free yeah ♪ ♪ We shall be free ♪ ♪ Everybody want to get together and walk like you and me ♪ ♪ ♪ POWELL: While there was no violence during the takeover, the aftermath of the takeover is where the violence occurred.

NEWS ANNOUNCER: Classes were resumed today at City College of New York, but the troubles which have assailed the institution reached a new peak.

INTERVIEWER: What happened here this morning?

MALE STUDENT: Well, about 10:30, the student demonstrations which had taken over the campus the last two weeks, uh, arrived again and people started being beat up and, uh, this is the result of it now.

INTERVIEWER: Well, now, who beat who?

MALE STUDENT: Well, the Black and Puerto Rican students, uh, were beating up various white students and throwing them off campus.

POWELL: There was some white students that trapped Black women students at the gate, and the word got out.

And we came and there was this major, major altercation.

(Crowd shouting) JAMES SMALL: Five Black women were being assaulted by about 200 white male students.

We just leaped into the crowd of all of these men and started swinging.

By the next day, they're talking about Blacks chasing down white students, which it was just the opposite of what occurred.

JOSEPH COPELAND: The City College, while shaken by the present events, is not going to be overturned.

We will have a restoration of law and order on the campus.

(Poem "Black Is" is recited) Black is so terrible, it's terrifying Black is a thousand black faces writhing And a million white faces asking, "Oh my God, what do they want?

Black is such a shock, it's electrifying (General mayhem from crowd) PETER JENNINGS: There are those students at City College who said that violence was inevitable here.

Black students would want to fight against white students.

NEWS ANNOUNCER: Fights between Black and the Puerto Rican students and those who wanted to return to their studies.

NEWS ANNOUNCER: Days of violence among its Black and Puerto- NEWS ANNOUNCER: The City College of New York ringed by police in a frenzy of fear and violence.

BETTY RAWLS: There was no attack by Black and Puerto Rican students.

No onslaught.

There were perhaps 20 to 30 students, who were Black and Puerto Rican who went over that gate.

There were about 100 white students on the other side to 200.

With hammers and chains.

(Applause) INTERVIEWER: How do you feel about the Black and Puerto Rican students' position at CCNY?

HON.

SHIRLEY CHISHOLM: They're not doing anything different than many of the white students are doing at Princeton, Harvard, and some of the other places.

It's only that it's been advertised much more and it's been played up much more in the media.

But they're not doing anything different than many of the other students are doing.

INTERVIEWER: You're suggesting then that they're getting more attention because they're Black?

HON.

SHIRLEY CHISHOLM: That's part of the reason.

It evokes a feeling of hostility, resentment.

"These are the kinds of students you have going to campuses?

Disrupting campuses?"

But nobody spoke about what happened before those students got to that particular point.

This is what I say we do not do things in perspective.

You give the public what you want to give them.

♪ Said you better let my... ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Let my people go ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Said you better let my... ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Let my people go ♪ ♪ ♪ POWELL: We were considered to be criminals, by the way.

I myself was arrested.

A number of other kids were arrested.

We were all brought down and held by the red squad and interrogated and things of that sort.

(Siren wailing) NEWS ANNOUNCER: Then, on the south campus, a serious fire started.

A two-alarm blaze in the chapel of the student center assembly hall.

Fire officials said it was definitely suspicious, meaning they're sure it was set deliberately.

(Sound of fire crackling and more sirens) SMALL: Our position was that you don't burn down what you have come to use.

We came to inherit this.

We didn't come to destroy it, but we never found out who set that fire.

LEM TUCKER: City College sits in the middle of Black Harlem.

And there is worry that violence on the campus will spread to the nearby community.

That is why it is vitally important for City College to solve its latest problem as quickly as possible.

Lem Tucker, NBC News, City College of New York.

BALLARD: At the core of all these problems is access to the university by minorities.

DAVID BRINKLEY: Professor Oscar Lumpkin feels that opening City College's doors to ghetto children is necessary.

OSCAR LUMPKIN: It is not our intent to lower the curriculum.

It is our intent to raise the academic qualifications of these students to a level commensurate with their ambitions, their desires, and their motivations.

POWELL: All we wanted was that opportunity, you know, to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off.

Compete with the best.

None of us wanted a handout.

BALLARD: There were meetings at which I sat down with the Chancellor and the Vice Chancellor where the... uh, hammered out what are we going to do about this?

How we going to solve the problem?

And the final way of solving the problem, right, which I did not agree with, was Open Admissions.

SMALL: We had gone through all of the negotiations with CUNY and with City College and the Mayor's office.

We felt that these demands would be implemented one at a time.

And indeed, most of them, I think, was implemented in some form or another, but a new concept arose, which was not a concept we were pushing and that concept was called Open Admissions.

MARLENE SANDERS: Could you define Open Admissions for us, please?

ALBERT BOWKER: Open admissions means that the only requirement for entrance to high s- to college, to one of the colleges of the City University of New York is a high school diploma and every student who graduated this June from...from any high school in New York City was offered a place in one of our colleges.

MARLENE SANDERS: How many took up the offer?

ALBERT BOWKER: Well, an alarmingly large number.

(laughs) GETELES: They were totally unprepared for what happened (laughs) Um, because they were just flooded.

BALLARD: This was against my advice, which was that they should simply increase the S.E.E.K.

Program.

Because what the university did when it took in everybody is they took on a situation it was not financially able to handle.

NAOMI C. SMITH: What people, I think don't realize that there was already a campaign to slash the budgets.

So, some people think that it was the Open Admissions that changed the nature of the college, but actually, it was Rockefeller's proposed budget.

It was really destroying the university by defunding it.

They were defunding it.

GETELES: But the students won a large battle in the sense that the campuses did reflect the population of the city.

So, that is a very major legacy.

♪ We need knowledge and education ♪ ♪ We need books with Black history ♪ JAMES SMALL: Probably the biggest education leap for Black Americans happened at City University, especially immediately after the takeover.

And I mean that nationally.

BLANCHE W. COOK: The really great result of Open Admissions, not only at the City University, but across the country, is that we've changed the story and the expectation is if you want to go to school, you can go to school and you can succeed.

(Classical "graduation" music, crowd cheering and applauding) ORUBBA ALMANSOURI: It is an honor for me to stand in front of you today, representing the graduating class.

(More applause) ORUBBA ALMANSOURI:I was born and raised in Yemen.

And before migrating with my family to the United States, I couldn't have imagined attending college, simply because we weren't allowed to.

My sisters weren't allowed to.

Girls before me weren't allowed to.

I fought to be allowed to pursue an education.

For the right to be here.

(Cheering) As I am sure all of you standing in front of me today fought for the same thing.

We earned the right to be here.

(Applause) ANTONOIS MOUDOUKOUTAS: When I was a freshman at this school, right, I remember hearing people talk about diversity all the time.

But I didn't really understand what it meant.

And I absolutely did not under- understand or appreciate what it's worth.

So, what I'm telling you is that diversity of people gives rise to diversity of thought.

Diversity of people allows us to be a stronger student body, go on to be a stronger workforce, economy, and a stronger nation.

And I say to you, esteemed First Lady, you can tell the President that his dreams for our nation have been alive and well at City College for decades and will be for decades to come.

(Crowd cheers and applauds) MICHELLE OBAMA: There is a reason why, of all of the colleges and universities in this country, I chose this particular school, in this particular city.

You represent more than 150 nationalities.

Just about every possible background, every color, and culture, every faith, and walk of life.

So, graduates, with your glorious diversity, you all embody the very purpose of this school's founding.

(African drumming) (Singing) ♪ So Power to the people, power!

♪ ♪ Power to the people, power!

♪ ♪ Black power for Black people, ♪ ♪ Puerto Rican power for Puerto Rican people, ♪ ♪ Power to the people- ♪ (Applause) SPEAKER: And this states therefore be resolved, April 22nd, 2019, be commemorated as the 50th anniversary of the 1969 takeover to honor the Black and Puerto Rican student community and supporting faculty, who courageously defended and fought social and educational justice, and for the sacrifices they made to create higher educational opportunities for all deserving students and the city of New York.

(African drumming) (Crowd chatter) ♪ We shall be free yeah ♪ ♪ We shall be free ♪ ♪ Everybody want to get together and walk like you and me ♪ ♪ We shall be free yeah ♪ ♪ We shall be free ♪ ♪ Everybody want to get together and walk like you and me ♪ ♪ People got to understand ♪ ♪ that a man ain't nothing but a man ♪ ♪ He may be Black and he may be white ♪ ♪ but he's still a man ♪ ♪ all right ♪ (Song continues) ANNOUNCER: Funding for The Five Demands is provided in part by...

The National Endowment for the Humanities...

The Harnisch Foundation...

The Levine/Ken Burns Prize for Film...

The PSC CUNY Research Award Program...

The New York State Council on the Arts...

The National Endowment for the Arts... and The Puffin Foundation.

Support is also provided in part by these individuals... A complete list of funders is available at APTonline.org.

(African drumming) You can learn more about this film and educational equity by visiting our website at thefivedemandsfilm.com A DVD of this film including materials not seen on public television is available online at MPT.org/shop or call the phone number on the screen.