Douglas Knight

The Duke Vigil was a weeklong silent demonstration that began on April 5, 1968 following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 450 students marched 3 miles to Dr. Knight’s home to deliver the following list of demands for a restructuring of the University into something less threatening to African-American students:

“(1) That he [Knight] sign an advertisement to be published in the Durham Morning Herald calling for a day of mourning; (2) That he press for the $1.60 wage for University employees; (3) That he resign from the then-segregated Hope Valley Country Club; (4) That he appoint a committee of students, faculty and workers to make recommendations concerning collective bargaining and union recognition at Duke.”

Knight invited students into his home and spent the entire night negotiating the terms of their demands. Knight faced criticism from the Board of Trustees over his “permissiveness,” but weathered the storm.[9][10]

The timing of the Allen Building takeover coincided perfectly with a week-long campus event known as Black Week. In the Black Week of 1969, Duke University's own African-American paper, the Harambee, made its debut, featuring many incendiary articles on the standing of the Black students at Duke. The debut was spurred by the administration's sham "involvement" in the activities of Black Week. Neither President Knight nor his staff appeared at events celebrating African-American culture and diversity. In a statement of purpose by the Editorial Board of the Harambee, the paper's message as well as the message behind Chuck Hopkins's abstract letter was summarized: "Blacks believe that the blatant racism, subtle bigotry, dehumanizing effects of shallow liberalism, and the belief that a white 'superior' culture is liberating the minds of Black people, generated our present mentality. Moving from this point, Blacks believe that if the university community recognizes their acts of indignation and the students' frustrations, we can solve the problem."[11]

This quite-constructive excerpt from the Harambee highlights a dying optimism that change at Duke would be possible without radical action. The majority of African-American students at Duke were of the belief that discussion could do no more for their complaints.[12] It was with this in mind that the group of seventy-some-odd students invaded the offices of the Allen Building and barricaded the doors. In their list of demands, included below in Figure 1, the “Malcolm X Liberation School,” as the group referred to themselves, cited additional reasons for the takeover.[13] Among these, two major points were the admission criteria for Black students and the rumored budget cuts to Black scholarships coming in the following Fall.[13] Declaring that the SAT was aimed at measuring the aptitude of the white middle class and that it failed when applied to students from different socioeconomic backgrounds, the students demanded that academic achievement in high school be the sole criterion for the admission of Black students.[13] They hoped that this would increase the number of African-American students at Duke, which at the time sat at a meager 100 students, to something more representative of the Black population of the Southeast.[14]

The response to the Takeover differed among the three main corpora of the school’s community: the students, faculty, and administration. The student body's response was largely supportive of the movement.[15] At the time of the expiration of the administration's one-hour ultimatum to the occupants, over 2000 white students surrounded the Allen Building to protect the black students inside.[15] These 2000 students battled the platoon of 75 police officers up and down the quad that night, enduring tear gas and baton beatings.[14] That night, over 1500 assembled in Page Auditorium to discuss the ensuing protests and a moratorium on classes.[16]