Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Spring 2006 The uiB lding of a New Left onC glomerate in the City of Ann Arbor: VOICE, the Black Action Movement, and the Human Rights Party (1965-1975) Terrence Restivo Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Restivo, T. (2006). The uiB lding of a New Left onC glomerate in the City of Ann Arbor: VOICE, the Black Action Movement, and the Human Rights Party (1965-1975) (Master's thesis, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/1096 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Building of a New Left Conglomerate in the City of Ann Arbor: VOICE, the Black Action Movement and the Human Rights Party (1965-1975) A thesis presented to the Faculty of the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Terrence R. Restivo March 22, 2006 Director: Joseph Rishel, Ph.D. First Reader: Perry Blatz, Ph.D. Name: Terrence R. Restivo Title: “The Building of a New Left Conglomerate in the City of Ann Arbor: VOICE, the Black Action Movement and the Human Rights Party (1965-1975)” Degree: Master of Arts in History Date: March 22, 2006 Approved: ________________ Joseph Rishel, Ph.D., Director Approved: ________________ Perry Blatz , Ph.D., First Reader Approved:_________________ Jean Hunter, Ph.D., Chair of History Department Approved: ________________ Dr. Franseco Cesareo, Ph.D., Dean of McAnulty College and School of Liberal Arts ii iii Table of Contents Introduction …………………………………………………………………………….1 Literature Review……………………………………………………………………….6 Historical Background – Pre-1965 Radicalism……………………………………………………………………………...14 Chapter 1 – VOICE-SDS: 1965-1970………………………………………………....17 Chapter 2- BAM Strike………………………………………………………………..50 Chapter 3 –Human Rights Party: 1970-1975………………………………………...58 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...75 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………80 iv 1 Introduction In April 1972, two, twenty-something members of the fledgling Human Rights Party (HRP) were elected to the Ann Arbor City Council, shocking the local political establishment. However, within a year, the bright future that once seemed inevitable for the burgeoning independent party began to fade. In June 1973, in a violent act unprecedented in the city of Ann Arbor’s history, HRP demonstrators decided to throw placard signs at Republican council members who had voted against recognizing Gay Pride Week for the city in a council meeting.1 The party, the leading advocate for gay, lesbian and transgender rights in the area since its founding in 1970, was now slowly self- destructing largely due to its rigid idealism. The Human Rights Party would never be able to duplicate the electoral success experienced in early 1972. The student radicalism that had been a strong element of the local area since VOICE’s anti-war activism on the University of Michigan (U-M) in the middle 1960s, and its ideological child, the Human Rights Party, would slowly fade from the local arena after 1973. The end of the New Left movement both in Ann Arbor and throughout the United States has allowed historians to decipher the meaning of the most recent leftist movement. The historiography of the New Left has largely focused on national developments within the 1960s movement. Traditional scholars have emphasized that organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) went from reforming society through deep ideological concern over the inequality of all races and production of nuclear weapons by the United States, to a more militant approach as U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War escalated. Revisionist historians have emphasized the continuity of the New Left regarding its relationship with the Old Left of the 1930s and 1 Eve Silberman, “Bringing the Revolution Home,” Ann Arbor Observer, May 2005, 53. 2 1940s. In the late 1990s, many scholars turned their focus to specific developments within the New Left movement, referred to as the post-revisionist interpretation. Other historians who emerged during the 1990s emphasized regional developments of the New Left, although with a similar argument adhered by the traditional school; known as the neo-traditionalist interpretation. This paper will champion the neo-traditionalist historical interpretation by examining the developments of what is customarily considered part of New Left, although with a new emphasis on areas often not relegated to the movement, although within the confines of Ann Arbor, Michigan specifically at the University of Michigan. The major organizations that made up this movement were the VOICE Political Party -- Students for a Democratic Society affiliate (unclear if the name is an acronym), the Human Rights Party, and to a much lesser extent: the Black Action Movement. In the early years, the VOICE Political Party was quite popular with both students and faculty as it predominately focused on anti-war tactics against U.S. involvement in Vietnam -- both with the first teach-in and the Ann Arbor Draft Board sit- in. In late 1966, the organization battled the university administration on several fronts: the release of VOICE names to a congressional committee, police spying, and grade submissions to local draft boards. By 1967, the organization weakened as it increasingly focused on war research on the Ann Arbor campus and the leadership within the organization was increasingly viewed as too “bureaucratic.” VOICE split in 1968 as the Jesse James Gang gained control of the group and overthrew the “old guard;” these new members advocated more militant tactics in combating the university. The takeover of VOICE by the “gang” led to several violent confrontations between student and local 3 authorities, and the eventual crackdown by the Michigan administration, under the leadership of Robben Fleming, the president of the university from 1968 until 1979. The combination of both the division within VOICE and the rhetoric spewing from zealous, anti-establishment new members of SDS calling for a student revolution, ultimately led to the fall of the SDS chapter at Ann Arbor. The early 1970s at the Ann Arbor campus were also marked by the emergence of other leftist or activist movements that filled the void left in the wake of SDS’s declining presence. For example, the Black Action Movement (BAM) emerged at U-M in 1970, in an effort to increase Black student enrollment to 10 percent. This organization led a peaceful, three-week strike that eventually forced the university administration to cave in to its demands. The Black student collective ultimately won its grievances against the University of Michigan by building support primarily among those members of the university community who had supported VOICE in the past, the students and faculty of the LSA (Literature, Science, and Art). Furthermore, BAM’s non-violent nature and its lack of any anti-establishment rhetoric, which had characterized the later years of SDS, allowed BAM to be embraced by a larger community, both inside and outside the university, and not necessarily immersed in radical politics. The Radical Independent Party and later the Human Rights Party, unlike BAM, was a leftist political entity, bent on dramatically changing, or “radicalizing” the local political structure. Emerging in 1970, this loosely based socialist party attempted to build a base by focusing on U-M students as its core constituents. Its limited successes within the city of Ann Arbor resulted from the ratification of the 26th amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the continued U.S. military engagement in Vietnam -- an issue still 4 provoking anger from students on many of the nation’s university campuses, including Michigan. However, by the middle 1970s the party was in complete disarray and would never successfully reemerge. This paper will argue that the SDS chapter at the University of Michigan from May 1965 to December 1966 was an influential organization when both the general student population and faculty supported its aims, such as protesting the war in Vietnam and combating the university’s draft deferment policy. However by 1967, as the Ann Arbor leftist organization began to focus on issues of less significance to their constituents, such as war research, VOICE became weaker at U-M. Eventually SDS-Ann Arbor became more aggressive in its approach against military recruiters at the university by 1969, after new members had taken over SDS - Ann Arbor. The revived chapter advocated anti-establishment rhetoric rather than reform, as it attempted to broaden its scope beyond university issues. Nonetheless, the organization never regained its once important place on the U-M campus after 1968; although VOICE’s radical rhetoric throughout the 1960s allowed for the tradition of student protest and political involvement to thrive, both at the University of Michigan and in the city of Ann Arbor, well in the 1970s. BAM, a U-M organization made up of primarily African-Americans, battled the administration in 1970 over its low enrollment of fellow Black students. Unlike VOICE, even in its heyday, BAM won against U-M officials because the overwhelming majority of faculty and students supported their cause particularly for their non-violent, reform-minded approach, which originally emerged with VOICE in the middle 1960s. Furthermore, the 1968 division within VOICE inadvertently allowed some of the misplaced members to help create a local political party in 1970: the Radical 5 Independent Party (RIP), which later became the Human Rights Party (HRP), in an attempt to give radicals a voice against the political establishment, made up of the pro- war Democratic and Republican Parties. During HRP’s tenure of existence, it elected members to the Ann Arbor City council and helped pass legislation decriminalizing marijuana and banning discrimination based on sexual orientation.