Black History Month 2024 - Dana Library

African-Americans at Rutgers Newark: A selection of interviews with RU-N students from the 1960s and 1970

In the early 1990s, librarian Gil Cohen conducted interviews with former Rutgers students who had been members of the Rutgers community in the 1960s and 1970s.  The collection is called Inventory to the Rutgers-Newark in the 1960s and 1970s Oral History Collection, 1990-1992.  

Some of the interviewees were students who were members of the Black Organization of Students (BOS).  A number of these students had been involved in the takeover of Conklin Hall in February of 1969 following a year of demands and meetings with Rutgers administration and NJ Higher Education officials for curriculum and administrative changes.  Here are links to some of those interviews:    

An Interview with Vicki Donaldson:   https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/40843/

An Interview with Joseph Browne: https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/40871/

An Interview with Dr. Robert Curvin (Political Science department; active member of and advisor
to the Black Organization of Students, read more):
     https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/40827/

An Interview with Vivian Sanks King: https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/40868/

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Founding executive director of the Abbott Leadership Institute at Rutgers-Newark and official Newark Historian Junius Williams discusses his civil rights activism in the city of Newark. View the video and transcript via the Library of Congress.  Other videos featuring Junius Williams can be accessed via C-SPAN.
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Interested in more?  Members of the Black Organization of Students at Rutgers-Newark recount their roles in the Conklin Hall takeover.  Interview audio and transcripts are accessible via the Rutgers Special Collections/University Archives.

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