A pragmatic and efficient university administrator, Perkins seemed to have all the right instincts about providing America's black students with an opportunity for a fine education at an elite institution. Though a book that I would urge that everyone interested in this period read, Cornell '69 is also a book that tries unsuccessfully to be two at once. Downs wants us to learn the more general lessons of the Cornell experience, but he also wants us to know the detail of what happened at Cornell. The fluid uninterrupted telling of the chronology and the larger lessons simply cannot be conveyed intelligibly between the same two covers. Any astute student of political conflict knows, to the contrary, that such conflicts are never battles over abstract meanderings on justice and freedom.
Political conflicts come down to power, authority, fear, and compromise, and finally to a decision.
Only later are they reconstituted into grand abstractions by great scholars. 3 Cornell was, indeed, a watershed. American higher education has not been the same since. Thanks to Donald Downs we can now be reminded of what set all of these matters into motion. 4 Anthony M. Orum University of Illinois Chicago, Illinois Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only.