Explore Mercyhurst University's Involvement in the American Civil Rights Era of the 1960's
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History of College Involvement in the Civil Rights Era
An overview of the common themes seen within various colleges protesting racism during the 1960's in the United States as well as how Mercyhurst fits into this pattern.
The Black Student Movement: A nationwide force in the 1960s/70s. Black college students banded together to protest in the name of the greater Civil Rights cause.
Mercyhurst's Black Students for Unity
Mercyhurst's Black Students for Unity (BSU) had a strong presence in the 1960s/70s, as more Black students came to Mercyhurst.
Sister Carolyn Hermann Speech
March 1965-SIster Carolyn Herman led about 200 students and faculty in a prayer vigil in honor of the protestors in Selma, Alabama. Link to her speech
Faculty & Students Partake in Selma March
March 1965-Faculty members Joseph Cashore and John Lincourt, along with a few students, travelled to Selma to march alongisde protestors.
Association of Black Collegiates (ABC)
1968-Created by Alicia King, a Black student at Mercyhurst. ABC included Black students from Mercyhurst and Gannon. The colleges worked together on various events within Erie.
College Involvement in Civil Rights Protests
During the 1960s, we see a significant rise in awareness on college campuses regarding the Civil Rights Movements. Towards the beginning of the decade, sit-ins became a widespread way to protest the discrimination against Black individuals in America. On February 1, 1960 four African American students from the all-black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College conducted a sit-in at the Wool-worth store on Elm Street in downtown Greensboro to challenge its whites-only lunch-counter policy.[1] From this moment, we see a burst in the popularity of sit-ins across the nation. During this same year, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, commonly known as SNCC, formed, and thus brought about a youthful tone to the fight for equality. These students would time away from their lives as college students to bring voter registration drives to towns across the south.[2]
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With the unfair treatment of Black persons in the United States, many college-aged individuals felt they could not stand back and watch as their peers were actively discriminated against and harmed in front of them. Many students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, HBCU’s, were among the first to raise questions about and awareness of racial equity and social justice.[3] Efforts specifically focused on voter registration. As the fight continued, many Black students saw the necessity for inclusion on campus and reforming the ways they were treated as students. Student demonstrations within campuses worked to influence those in positions of power at schools to amend recruitment strategies and admissions policies, as well as treatment for Black students and other minority groups attending their schools.[4]
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Students at Mercyhurst took similar actions as those at other colleges and universities. The school itself is under the Sisters of Mercy, a community of religious sisters within the Catholic religion. Their work centers around care for the Earth, Immigration, Women, Nonviolence, and Racism.[5] With this as the basis for the school and its teachings, Mercyhurst has been a space for students to advocate for justice. Many students attended the March in Downtown Erie, Pennsylvania in support of the March on Selma. Alumni recall that the school saw the importance in this fight and supported their students endeavors within the Civil Rights Movement.
Notes
[1] Morgan, Iwan W., and Philip Davies. 2012. From Sit-Ins to SNCC: The Student Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. University Press of Florida, 1.
[2] Mary Lou Finley, Bernard LaFayette Jr., James R. Ralph Jr., and Pam Smith. 2016. The Chicago Freedom Movement : Martin Luther King Jr. And Civil Rights Activism in the North. Civil Rights and the Struggle for Black Equality in the Twentieth Century. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=1070353&site=eds-live. 292.
[3] Thelin, John R. 2018. Going to College in the Sixties. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=1779602&site=eds-live. 102.
[4] Thelin, John R. 2018. Going to College in the Sixties. 105.
[5] Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, 2021. https://sistersofmercy.org/about-us/.