A riveting story about the student strike that changed the face of higher education. In April 1969, a small group of Black and Puerto Rican students shut down the City College of New York, an elite public university located in the heart of Harlem.
The Five Demands airs Monday, December 30 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV.
Far more attention has been paid to white middle-class students in opposition to the Vietnam War, yet this protest had a more significant impact: the CCNY strikers were the vanguard of a national Black student movement that transformed the culture, mission, and curriculum of American higher education. Fueled by the revolutionary fervor sweeping the nation, the strike turned into an uprising, leading to the extended occupation of the campus, the cancelation of classes, the arrest of students, and the resignation of the college president. Told through the participants’ point of view, the film follows the students’ struggle against the institutional racism that, for over a century, had shut out people of color from this institution and other public universities.
Photo: Black and Puerto Rican students march through campus with the Puerto Rican flag/Credit: CCNY