View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Aquila Digital Community The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Summer 8-2013 Telling Their Own Story: How Student Newspapers Reported Campus Unrest, 1962-1970 Kaylene Dial Armstrong University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the Civic and Community Engagement Commons, Other American Studies Commons, and the Peace and Conflict Studies Commons Recommended Citation Armstrong, Kaylene Dial, "Telling Their Own Story: How Student Newspapers Reported Campus Unrest, 1962-1970" (2013). Dissertations. 156. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/156 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The University of Southern Mississippi TELLING THEIR OWN STORY: HOW STUDENT NEWSPAPERS REPORTED CAMPUS UNREST, 1962-1970 by Kaylene Dial Armstrong Abstract of a Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2013 ABSTRACT TELLING THEIR OWN STORY: HOW STUDENT NEWSPAPERS REPORTED CAMPUS UNREST, 1962-1970 by Kaylene Dial Armstrong August 2013 The work of student journalists often appears as a source in the footnotes when researchers tell the story of perhaps the most significant period in the history of higher education in the United States – the student protest era throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. Yet researchers and historians have ignored the student press itself during this same time period. This dissertation considers how the student reporters and editors did their job during major protests that occurred between 1962 and 1970, and tells not only the story of reporting protest but the individual stories of the student journalists. The key protests considered are integration in 1962 at Ole Miss, the Free Speech Movement beginning in 1964 at Berkeley, building occupations of 1968 at Howard and Columbia universities, and the 1970 shootings of students at Kent State and Jackson State that touched off violence at more than 500 campuses nationwide. These protests are not meant to be inclusive of all the protests that occurred in this timeframe, but rather represent the major underlying issues for which students were demanding change throughout the period. The three key issues included race and civil rights, student rights and administration control, and the Vietnam War and the university’s role in supporting it. The student newspapers reporting these protests also confronted several of the challenges student journalists often face: maintaining freedom of the press, understanding ii the role of the student newspaper, defining personal positions as journalists, and developing journalistic skills. The research found student journalists considered themselves as professionals who worked hard to get at the deeper issues behind the protests. Though the student newspaper staff might support the cause of the protest, none of the staffs in this study condoned violent behavior that injured people or caused property damage. Many went on to be professional journalists who credited their student newspaper experience as being a major training ground for their careers. iii COPYRIGHT BY KAYLENE DIAL ARMSTRONG 2013 4 The University of Southern Mississippi TELLING THEIR OWN STORY: HOW STUDENT NEWSPAPERS REPORTED CAMPUS UNREST, 1962-1970 by Kaylene Dial Armstrong A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved: Dr. David Davies Director Dr. Christopher Campbell Dr. Fei Xue Dr. Kim LeDuff Dr. Cheryl Jenkins Dr. Susan A. Siltanen Dean of the Graduate School August 2013 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author would like to thank dissertation director, Dr. David Davies, and the other committee members, Dr. Kim LeDuff, Dr. Christopher Campbell, Dr. Cheryl Jenkins, and especially Dr. Fei Xue, who stepped in just days before the dissertation defense, following the death of committee member Dr. Gene Wiggins. A special posthumous acknowledgement goes to Dr. Wiggins, who played a major role in bringing the author to study at the University of Southern Mississippi. A special thank you goes to Debra Fortenberry for her patient help in editing and her long-suffering friendship and general support. Several individuals must be recognized for special help in providing research materials: Allison Hantschel, who wrote It Doesn’t End with Us and generously shared a 47-page bibliography she obtained from researcher Owen Johnson; Ashley L. Till, archivist at South Carolina State University, who wrestled with a scanner to provide PDF copies of The Collegian; Ainsley Powell, library specialist at the University of Mississippi archives, who copied stories from bound volumes that were unreadable on microfilm; and Joellen Elbashir, curator of manuscripts at Howard University, who was able to bend some rules in order to provide photocopies of The Hilltop. No words can adequately thank the most important supporter through this entire process: Dr. Robert J. Armstrong, D.C. What pun we will have as a paradox. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iv CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................1 Rationale Literature Review Method Chapters II. IN THE BEGINNING – DEVELOPMENT OF STUDENT NEWSPAPERS IN THE 1800S, ANDTHE KANSAS STATE COLLEGIAN FROM 1900 TO 1960..................................................................................................................19 Why Start a Student Newspaper Newspaper Design in the 1800s The Cost of Doing Business Filling the Pages – Content Which is Oldest? That Depends . Kansas State Collegian – 1900-1960 Roles of the Student Newspaper Conclusion III. 1962: THE MISSISSIPPIAN: NOBODY TOLD US WHAT TO WRITE – COVERING INTEGRATION AT OLE MISS ...............................................48 The Mississippian Reporting the Riot Editorials: Taking a Stan Against Violence Reporting Integration Repercussions Do Student Newspapers Do a Good Job? Conclusion IV. 1964: THE DAILY CALIFORNIAN: CAMPUS CONSCIENCE OF THE FREE SPEECH MOVEMENT AT UC BERKELEY .....................................91 University of California, Berkeley The Free Speech Movement The Daily Californian Student Newspaper The Editorial v News Coverage Getting Along Conclusion V. 1968: ADVOCACY OR OBJECTIVITY? TWO FACES OF JOURNALISM; HOWARD UNIVERSITY HILLTOP: PRACTICING ADVOCACY JOURNALISM; COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY DAILY SPECTATOR: TRYING TO BE OBJECTIVE ......................................................................................131 Advocacy vs. Objectivity The Year of Protest and Violence The Howard University Protest Writing for the Hilltop The Columbia Protests Columbia Daily Spectator The Editorial Position Writing about the Protest Conclusion VI. 1970: LESSONS FROM CRISIS: REPORTING CAMPUS PROTEST AFTER KENT STATE AND JACKSON STATE ........................................183 Shootings at Kent State Shootings at Jackson State Framing Tragedy Reporting the Shootings After the Shootings Discussion: Comparing Ohio and Mississippi Schools Discussion: Illinois, Texas, and Utah Conclusion VII. TELLING THEIR OWN STORY: CONCLUSION .....................................222 Freedom of the Press and Role of the Student Newspaper Becoming Journalists Conclusion END NOTES ...................................................................................................................238 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................254 vi 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A story about four students gunned down by national guardsmen at Kent State the day before, probably the most significant event of the entire protest era, was one of the smaller stories on the front page of The Daily Collegian at Pennsylvania State University on May 5, 1970. After all, the University Park campus had plenty of its own troubles to fill almost the entire front page that day. The same action that had students at Kent State protesting the previous day – President Nixon’s announcement of expanding the war in Southeast Asia by sending troops into Cambodia – had sparked reactions at Penn State as well. A student committee had called for a two-day strike, according to the lead story on page one, while another Collegian story explained that a panel was reviewing the cases of 40 students charged with disrupting the campus in previous weeks. In all, six of the eight stories on the broadsheet’s front page were centered on campus unrest. It was the same story being told in campus newspapers across the country that day and the days that followed. Many of the campuses, such as Ohio State University, had already been embroiled in protest before the Kent State shootings occurred. For several days The Ohio State Lantern had been plastered with stories of student strikes and protests. National