NARRATOR: The year was 1968.
The Vietnam War raged on.
Liberal uprisings took hold in Czechoslovakia.
The civil rights movement intensified.
Across the globe, people cried out for radical change.
In the US, these cries rang out across many college campuses
as students pushed for civil rights
and demanded an end to the Vietnam War and the draft.
These sentiments translated into activism
and demonstrations, many of which ended in violence.
Such was the case at Columbia University in April 1968.
In February 1968, Columbia University began construction
on an $11.6 million gymnasium in Morningside Park, part
of the Harlem neighborhood that houses Columbia's
main campus in New York City.
Almost immediately there was objection.
Students and activists argued the gym discriminated
against Harlem residents by evicting and displacing
them to build the structure.
The gym would be built with a main entrance
that catered to students and university affiliates.
But local Harlem residents, many of whom were black,
could use part of the facilities but would
have to enter through a back door in the basement.
Many interpreted this as segregation and racism.
Among the gym's fiercest opponents
was Columbia's student Afro-American
Society founded in 1964.
Members of the SAS labeled the construction project "Gym Crow"
and enlisted help from other black activists
in the Harlem community and throughout New York.
While the SAS work to halt construction of the gym,
another campus organization, Students
for a Democratic Society, or the SDS,
was building a case against the university's apparent
involvement in the Vietnam War.
In 1967, one SDS member, Bob Feldman,
found documents in the school library showing ties
between the university and a think tank involved in weapons
research for the US Department of Defense,
known as the Institute for Defense Analyses, or IDA.
Many saw this as the university directly
supporting the war in Vietnam.
In the spring of 1968, the SDS, led by then Chairman Mark Rudd,
organized a rally against the university.
Their rallying cry?
Students would not attend a university
that exploited black people and developed weapons designed
to kill the Vietnamese.
On April 23, 1968, several hundred Columbia students
gathered in front of Low Memorial
Library, the university's main administrative building.
They attempted to take their message inside to university
president Grayson L. Kirk, but the administration
locked the building down.
So the group marched to the gymnasium construction site
and tore down part of the fencing that surrounded it.
The police moved to disperse the crowd,
arresting one student in the process.
Then protesters staged a sit-in at an administrative building,
preventing dean Henry Coleman from leaving his office.
They presented a list of six demands.
Two included stopping construction on the gym
and severing ties with the IDA.
The students promised not to leave
until their demands were met.
The students eventually released Dean Coleman the next day.
But their numbers had grown upwards of 400.
They took over the Low Library and three additional buildings
on campus.
Students and community members sympathetic to the cause
brought food and other supplies.
The university tried to negotiate an end
to the standoff over the next several days,
but the administration refused to promise
amnesty to the protesters and no agreement was reached.
Over the course of the week, the numbers of protesters
grew until finally, on April 30, police, acting on orders
from school president Kirk, moved in
and forcefully cleared all five buildings.
Amid the chaos, more than 100 students, faculty members,
and police were injured, and 712 students were arrested.
Motivated by the actions of the police,
thousands of Columbia students went on strike,
and the campus shut down for the rest of the semester.
The university's June commencement ceremony
was held off campus instead of at its traditional location
on Low Plaza.
More than 300 graduating students
walked out in protest to hold their own counter commencement
ceremony.
Eventually, Columbia University met
the protesters' major demands.
Gym construction was permanently suspended
and the school ended its relationship with the IDA.
Columbia also began to revise long-established
and long-criticized policies and formed a university senate.
And after resisting numerous requests for his resignation,
university president Kirk announced
his retirement before the beginning
of the next school year.
In 1968, the Columbia protests were just one
example of our nation grappling with injustices at home
and abroad.
And others caught on.
Validated by what many saw as legitimate and successful means
of expressing grievances, demonstrations
spread to hundreds of schools and cities around the world.