STUDENT PROTEST IN THE 1960'S
Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr.

In the 1950's students for the most part were agreeing their way
through life. Instead of using their education they were trading on it.
Pledged more to security and comfort than to truth, they were for the most
part silent, and in this they were only imitating the vast majority of their
parents.

The majority of their professors too were silent, silent in the face
of McCarthyism and silent in the face of the massive resistance that arose
to the 1954 Supreme Court decision. On November 15, 1954, when the Virginia
"Commission of Public Education" held open hearings to determine whether the
it is clear now, in 1965, that the bars of segregation are coming down, although
public schools should remain open, in the commonwealth of Thomas Jefferson's
so slowly as to engender more bitterness than hope. It appears equally clear
birth not one professor was on hand to voice his belief in Jeffersonian principles.
however, that when the once barred door is opened, most Negroes are going to
The incident was typical. I can still remember one student's sour comment:
finds Howard Zinn's words, "that all the furniture in the room is occupied, and
"We were called the 'Silent Generation'. But can you blame us? After all we
sit at the feet of those who make a fetish of their silence."

But the national complacency of the '50's has been shaken in the 60's.
Part of the credit must go to the Soviets. But the Soviets may actually be
such as our own, many unskilled Americans, white as well as black, may soon be
scaring us to death. More of the credit, I think, must go to the Negro students
free only to sleep in the cold water tentement of their choice, free only to
who in the early years of the decade scared other Negroes and whites to life.
Martin Luther King, to be sure, was the spokesman. But it was the Southern
of the decade have forced students to probe more deeply and to ask: What is
Negro students who set off the wave of sit-ins, stand-ins, wade-ins, and kneel-
freedom from oppression if it is not accompanied by freedom from want? What
ins, and who persuaded a sufficient number of their fellow white students to
is equality of opportunity if access to this opportunity is denied in an automated
join them to make the struggle in essence not black against white, but black
age to those of inferior education?
and white against injustice.

The first student demonstrators were not protesting against the American
students their parents' lives look pretty meaningless. "My old man's caught up
way of life as a whole. They were only demanding of America what America
in a rat race." And the trouble is that even if you win a rat race you're still
claimed already to have given. They were only claiming rights which presumably
had been secured a hundred years ago. These students believed in America as
giving meaning to life. And students are puzzled by the paradox of a middle class
the "cradle of liberty," as the "land of equal opportunity:" and they believed in
that is so well cared for yet has so many cares, the paradox of a nation of joiners