Therefore, their campuses often delete all mention of conflict. The University of Mississippi's historical landmarks make no mention, for instance, of the institution's notorious ban, put into force after the 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation, on speakers who espoused integration. The ban divided the campus until a suit by Charles Evers, brother of the slain civil-rights leader Medgar Evers, overturned it in 1970. Not telling that story demeans the efforts of people on the campus like the college's chaplain, Will Campbell, who staged silent vigils to protest the ban. It also robs students and townspeople of the opportunity to understand how a basic American freedom was lost for a time.
Some institutions do better.
Berkeley does have a plaque about Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement in its Sproul Plaza, where the movement began in the 1960's. South Carolina State University and Jackson State University also have memorials to their students killed during protests in the 1960's. But if no one died, a campus protest rarely gets remembered. Perhaps the biggest mass arrest in the history of American higher education, at least in terms of the percentage of the student body taken into custody, happened at Mississippi Valley State University in February 1970. Students were boycotting classes and demonstrating for more library books, better facilities, and better-trained faculty members.