Carbondale’s rich history of women’s activism and protest

daniel

The year is 1968, and you’re a female student at SIU. You must attempt to wrestle success and financial independence from a male-dominated academic environment only just beginning to give women and people of color the first inches of equal ground. You are also treated differently in school policy itself, which condescends to tell female college students and female college students alone when you must return to their dorms each night, whether or not you are allowed to stay overnight at other places, and when you are allowed to have visitors. Unlike male students, who have no curfews so long as they are over the age of 18, you are required to check in at your dorms every night before 11:30 pm Mondays through Thursdays, and after 2 a.m. Fridays through Saturdays. The only way for you to escape from being tucked away beneath society’s protective underskirts in the ‘60s was to do well in school; attaining a GPA higher than 3.3 as a sophomore or being a junior or senior of good academic standing, and getting permission from your parents (if you are under the age of 21) before being allowed to regulate your own hours. As women’s history month comes to a close, the rich history of SIU compels us to take a second look at our own efforts at reform, and acknowledge the generation that helped lead us to the freedoms women on campus have today.

Steve Falcone, a young teacher, sent that late ‘60s administration an open letter, pleading for an end to women’s hours: “What you are not paying attention to is that the old clock is broken. Its springs have burst themselves trying to keep up with the shrinking day of industrial America. What is needed is a new generation who will not be clock-oriented [...] Be grown men and now consider what freedoms you can grant this new generation under your guidance to cope with the problems of tomorrow. Don’t train them in your lifestyles, they’ve got to live far different lives from the age you grew up in. Free the students to work out a lifestyle which will be meaningful in their futures.”

Although the generation which strove for reform so single mindedly in the ‘70s now occupies most positions of power today, whether they be corporate, academic, or political, their work remains unfinished as the struggle for broad freedoms continues, with same sex marriage and women’s reproductive rights recently reentering the political arena.

Civil rights leader, and professor, Julian Bond spoke in the SIU Arena in May of 1969 at the invitation of student government.

“The oppressed ought to be more than the poor and the black. The oppressed ought to be students whose schools do not teach them, workers whose unions do not represent them, voters who want more than an echo…that ought to be the goal of politics,” he said. “To gather together the oppressed and discover the limits of their endurance. For our young people, those who are currently restructuring the American university, there is a job waiting…outside of the Ivy colored walls of American education.”

The issue of women’s hours, as well as other issues, such as administrative censorship of the Daily Egyptian, administrative discipline of students independently of the student government, and the overall superfluous nature of the student government in campus affairs galvanized students to organize the school’s biggest political movement, know as the Action Party. It quickly became notorious for its propaganda, and relentless political activism without the use of any form of violence, a merit the upcoming riotous war protests of the ‘70s could never lay claim to. It featured its own propaganda production arm, which constantly produced pamphlets and news briefs to be handed out to as many students as could be reached, as well as a host of affiliated student organizations and a contingent of thousands of sympathetic students.

Members of the Action Party, and its precursor, the Student Movement for Rights and Progress (RAF) even had dedicated roles focused on touring SIU’s campus, giving speeches at halls and apartment complexes to anyone who would listen.

Combining this effort with the Women’s Liberation Front (WLF), a feminist student organization which had a strong core of female students organizing the massive protests against women’s hours and negotiating with the administration, the Action Party was responsible for various compromises from the administration.

“This honest and progressive step will better not only the individual in his attempt to educate himself in both his group and personal relationships, but will also enhance the university’s image as a serious academic institution. No university can seriously ask anyone to choose a major field of study, a life philosophy, a vocation, or any other meaningful goal and, at the same time, deny basic daily freedoms of choice,” said a RAF press release in April, 1968.

This statement, pronounced with all the gravity provided in the blazing civil rights movements of the ‘70s, which at one point culminated in a violent shootout between six members of the Black Panthers and Carbondale police, and the smog of riotous retribution and protest kicked up by the Vietnam War, strikes a profound note even through when pulled up through the decades and a deluge of modern issues. War was a leviathan on the scene of SIU’s campus culture, resulting in the 1968 bombing of the Agricultural building, the 1969 burning of the Old Main building, and 1970 riots which grew so intense that 400 students were arrested, and the entire campus was shut down for three weeks. Even up through the ‘90s, protests wracked the strip of Carbondale every Halloween, provoking police use of mace and tear gas, which eventually resulted in police brutality protests resembling those of the Black Lives Matter movement.

At the very beginning of this long avenue of activism and retribution, lies the Action Party. Startlingly and vigorously, the Action Party began to win over seats in student government quickly after its formation as a countermeasure against SIU administration’s somewhat successful attempts to “divide and conquer” RAF, writing its own constitution and holding its own meetings on subjects of importance to students. For perhaps the first time in decades, the issues of students were the subject of more than hallway rumors and disapproving professor reviews as students began to take matters into their own hands.

In one instance, the Action Party even became a detective in the case of a Floyd Crawshaw, a wellconnected public official in Carbondale who was reported to have drunkenly knocked a student cyclist into oncoming traffic with his car, killing a person, but was let off after only paying $100. The party used its influence to search for witnesses, asking students to bring evidence directly to the president of the Action Party in an attempt to make up for state evidence which was too sparse for a conviction.

One of the Action Party’s (in 1969 the most dominant of many new copycat parties) most public and transformative issues was that of women’s hours, which it pursued with advice and support from the Women’s Liberation Front, another student organization at the time.

According to the Daily Egyptian’s reporting at the time, the Women’s Liberation Front held several enormous rallies, which often attracted more men than women, reaching a 2 to 1 ratio at one memorable protest held on May 9, 1969, during which a massive walkout in protest of the current women’s hour rules was planned.

“The women are scared, it’s the job of every guy here to get the ball rolling!” said Bill George, an observer at the nearly 2000-person event. “Are you going to let the university carry on and treat us like dogs?”

“‘Go get your asses kicked in chicks, we’re right behind you’…you’re damn right you are, about 10 miles behind,” replied George V. Graham, editor of the Big Muddy Gazette, a somewhat infamous left wing paper at the time.

The walkout was to be staged in response to a Student Senate bill which unanimously abolished women’s hours completely, only to be blocked by higher levels of the university administration who argued that the policy kept up appearances for sake of enrollment, and prevented students from being distracted by relationships.

On May 17, 1969, Pat Hadlin, who represented the Women’s Liberation Front, presented to the board of SIU and President Delyte W. Morris along with 14 other students, several of which were from the Big Muddy Gazette, which was currently suing SIU in the U.S. District Court of East St. Louis, asking that the school be prevented from interfering with the paper by revoking its distribution permit. This, after the Big Muddy Gazette printed a nude caricature of President Morris, and a story critical of Chancellor Mac

Vicar.

Yet another massive protest was held on the 20th, drawing 700 women students from their dorms past the allotted women’s hours, as part of a crowd of 1500 thousand total. Students sat on the lawn and listened to speeches and folk songs broadcasted over a loudspeaker. John Taylor, a Black student who helped organize the protest called it “step number one in the liberation of all the students.”

“When we win, the student government will be strong on campus,” said Jane Voget, a WLF leader of the protest.

It was the first of several more protests, which drew reaction from the campus administration in the form of a committee composed of five students and two assistant deans of students. The committee was charged with determining parental and student opinion on the issue, eventually recommending that all students over the age of 18 be allowed to determine their own hours…with female students under the age of 21 still needing to obtain parental permission, much to the chagrin of the Action Party and the Women’s Liberation Front.

This happened despite the facts that a large majority of the female student body expressed clear disapproval of women’s hours, only 9.4% of parents believed their daughters to be too immature to regulate their own hours, and the faculty widely disapproved of the concept of women’s hours.