The student protests against the Vietnam war discussed in last week’s post are documented in numerous photographs and records in the University Archives, but none were captured on film. The Historical Audiovisual Collection, however, contains live recordings of several protest assemblies that were broadcast by Princeton’s student-run radio station, WPRB. Featured here is part of a broadcast from Jadwin Gym on Monday, May 4, 1970, when nearly 4,000 students, faculty, and staff voted for a “Strike against the War,” four days after President Nixon announced the US invasion of Cambodia. Taken from a four-and-a-half hour meeting, this four-minute audio clip is accompanied by a selection of photos from the Historical Photograph Collection (presented in random order) that were shot during the event. Many photos were scanned from contact prints and have not been published before.
On Thursday, April 30 at 10 pm, half an hour after the conclusion of Nixon’s televised announcement, 2,500 students and faculty had gathered in the University Chapel and voted for an immediate university-wide strike. According to Peter Brown ’70 in the Princeton Alumni Weekly (May 19, 1970) the word “strike” was used to mean “not a closing of the university but rather a redirection of Princeton’s energies.” How people would strike and against what precisely was decided during the assembly in Jadwin Gym on May 4th, where three proposals were discussed. The first, which was submitted by the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) and included a statement of opposition to the war and the recommendation to suspend final exams (a summary of the proposal can be heard at 1:08), won with a majority of 2,066 votes. The second, more strongly worded proposal from the “Princeton Strike Committee” (summarized at 2:38) gained 1,522 votes. The audio clip does not capture the counting of the votes for the third proposal from the “Anti-Strike Committee,” which only got 181 votes. “Resolution One urges a strike against the war. Resolution Two is a strike against the university,” said Harold Kuhn, professor of mathematical economics, at the meeting, who added that the more radical proposal from the Strike Committee would “tear apart this university by adopting simplistic solutions to complex problems.”
During the $53 Million Campaign (1959-1962) a 13 x 10 foot scale model of the Princeton campus toured 19 major cities and displayed at meetings of the regional leaders of the fund drive. To keep Princeton alumni further informed about progress and developments on campus, the Alumni Council sponsored two “Princeton Newsreels” in 1960 and 1961. The two 30-minute films are interesting to watch, not only because they feature new facilities, achievements in sports and science, and notable events (from Hurricane Donna in 1960 to the donation of $35 million for the Woodrow Wilson School in 1961), but because they also document the University’s first attempts to reach out to its donor base through the medium of film. Contrasting the two films, one cannot help but note that the second film is much smoother in its presentation than the first.
The first newsreel opens with an introduction by the 41 year-old president Robert F. Goheen ’40, and a freshmen lecture about the honor system by Walker Stevenson ’35, president of the National Alumni Association (1:30). The scale model of the campus, mentioned above, is featured at 6:41, when administrative vice-president Edgar M. Gemmell ’34 explains the expansions planned for the next three years. The footage following captures the Hibben and Magie faculty apartments under construction (6:41) as well as the five new dormitories of the New Quad (Class of 1937, Class of 1938, Class of 1939, Dodge-Osborn, and Gauss Halls), the first buildings to be finished since the start of the $53 Million Campaign (7:27).
“Examples of Research” opens with a bird experiment on the roof of Guyot Hall (7:55), followed by the Princeton-Pennsylvania Proton Accelerator, a particle research facility on the Forrestal Campus since 1957 (8:59). In addition, the newsreel includes a demonstration of the thermoheliodon and the heliodon, developed by the Architectural Laboratory to determine the effects of sunlight, wind and radiation (10:19), and research at the Department of Aeronautical Engineering into problems that occur with low speed flight (11:29; footage includes “air car” shown above). In addition, the newsreel features faculty who won an award in 1960: the later Nobel Prize winner Eugene Wigner, Professor of Physics, who received the “Atoms for Peace Award” (15:02) and History Professor Robert Palmer, who won the Bancroft prize for his book Age of the Democratic Revolution (15:25).
The second half of the film features particular places and events, including alumni in the “Princeton Today” program who visited the new C-site at the “Matterhorn Project” (renamed the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in 1961), a project for magnetic fusion research funded by the Atomic Energy Commission that had only been declassified in 1958 (15:47, with more about the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in the second newsreel). This is followed by the appointment of three new trustees (17:15), the foreign language laboratory (18:57), achievements in sports (track, squash, and lacrosse at 20:06; football (with coach Dick Colman) at 25:04), and Reunions (20:54, with the Class of ’35). In addition, the film includes footage of Triangle chorines during a performance of Breakfast in Bedlam, which toured various military bases and hospitals in Europe during the summer (18:05). The newsreel also documents Hurricane Donna, the only hurricane on record to have struck every East Coast state between Florida and Maine, which hit the campus on September 12, 1960 (23:38).
The second newsreel that was produced during the $53 Million Campaign is more crisply presented, with a clear division into five chapters. The first chapter, “New Facilities,” shows new campus edifices: the Engineering Quadrangle (1:42), the John Foster Dulles Library of Diplomatic History (2:11), the Hibben and Magie apartments at Carnegie Lake (2:22), the new playing fields (2:37), and the dormitory quad with Wilcox Hall (2:48). It is followed by images of students moving into their dormitories (3:44), Class of 1965 freshmen, the new Dean of the College J. Merrill Knapp with Dean Ernest Gordon (4:36), and keycepts “in operation” (4:57).
“Sports” (6:26), the subject of the second chapter, features basketball (6:28), swimming (7:04), track (8:11), and football (8:24), with brief footage of important games and closeups of athletes. In the next chapter, “The Search for Knowledge” (11:32), the number of research project previously featured is reduced to two. The first concerns the new Model C Stellarator at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), the new name of “Project Matterhorn” discussed in the earlier newsreel. The large stellarator, for which facilities had been built in 1960, replaced previous models that had been used in the 1950s. As a second example of Princeton’s achievements in science the research of biology professor Arthur K. Parpart is discussed (14:21).
The fourth chapter, “Going Back” (15:43) includes footage of the Class of 1936’s 25th and the Class of 1911’s 50th reunion, with Joseph Cashman and Dr. William H. Hudnut from the Class of 1886 as members of the Old Guard. (Footage of President Robert Goheen ’40, Grant Sanger ’31, Harold Helm ’21, and Walker Stevenson ’35 is at 16:43). The “major Princeton event of 1961” is saved for last: “Princeton in International Affairs” (19:29) features the $35 million anonymous gift from a foundation (initially called the “X” Foundation, later known as the Robertson Foundation) to establish a professional school for public service at the Woodrow Wilson School. The newsreel ends with a statement by Gardner Patterson, who was the director of the Woodrow Wilson School and of the new program (20:35).
Harvard offered its first degree to an African American student in 1870, with Yale following in 1874. At Princeton, however, the first two black students graduated only in 1947 and 1948, after arriving on campus as members of the Navy’s wartime V-12 program. Historically the “Ivy League school for Southern gentlemen,” Princeton was a little “tardy,” according to Cornel West (then director of the Center for African American Studies) in the documentary featured here (32:01). In the words of Shearwood McClelland ’69: “If you had a segregationist attitude or would like to cherish that attitude a little longer before real life hit you after you graduated, this was the place to come to.” (31:35).
The first two black graduates, John Howard ’47 and James Ward ’48, are among the 35 alumni who were interviewed for the documentary Looking Back: Reflections of Black Princeton Alumni, which was written and directed by Melvin McCray ’74 and produced by McCray and Calvin Norman ’77 on the occasion of Princeton’s 250th anniversary in 1996. Most of the alumni interviewed are from the 1960s and 1970s, when the administration started to make diversification of the student body a priority. In the documentary Robert F. Goheen, president between 1957 and 1972, explains how the racial riots of 1963 in the South made him realize that Princeton, which counted only seven African American undergraduates in 1962, should provide more educational opportunities to qualified blacks (20:52). Goheen’s successors William G. Bowen (President 1972-1988) and Harold T. Shapiro (President 1988-2001) are also interviewed, as well as Carl Fields (Assistant Director of Student Aid 1964-68 and Assistant Dean of the College 1968-1972), and the aforementioned Franklin Moore.
The 75 minute documentary, in which alumni describe contrasting experiences and feelings, is divided into several chapters: “The early history” (2:59), “Inclusion” (20:46), “Diverse backgrounds” (25:59), “First impressions” (28:44), “A matter of race” (31:57), “Academics” (43:51), “Nassau Hall Protest” (detailing the protest of April 14, 1978 over Princeton’s investments in South Africa, 56:40), “Graduation” (1:01:35), “One Word” (1:04:20), and “Parting thoughts” (1:05:20). In the first chapter Woodrow Wilson’s racism is discussed (6:16). The introduction of coeducation in 1969 is discussed at 48:43.
In addition to the interviews, the producers use historical footage and photographs (including materials from Mudd Manuscript Library and private sources) and renderings of “Old Nassau and “Going Back” by the a capella group “The Persuasions.” The documentary was produced under the auspices of the Steering Committee for Princeton’s 250th Anniversary, in conjunction with the Association of Black Princeton Alumni (ABPA) and the Alumni Council. It won a Bronze Medal from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (1998).
In the fall of 1941, preceding the attack on Pearl Harbor, undergraduate enrollment stood at 2,432. By November 1943, however, only 655 of the 3,742 students in residence were civilian. The footage on the two silent films shown here was shot a few years before and after the United States entered the Second World War. The first film captures Princeton students at an ROTC summer training camp off campus. In contrast, the later footage features military students marching on Princeton’s grounds. The Princeton campus, like many others in the country, had turned into a military training facility.
Princeton had maintained an ROTC Field Artillery Unit since 1919, when the First World War had ended. The primary objective of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) was to provide military training at civilian colleges and universities to quality them as Reserve Officers in the US military. As part of a four-year elective course in Military Science (leading to the rank of Second Lieutenant of Field Artillery in the Officers’ Reserve Corps) students attended a six-week summer training camp at the end of the junior year. The film, which was shot before 1942, captures activities at a summer camp at Madison Barracks, New York, including a medical checkup (1:01), mess (4:05), drills (5:29 and 14:58), artillery practice (7:48), and informal scenes. In 1942 the summer training camp was suspended and in the following year ROTC was integrated in the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), which arrived on Princeton’s campus in April 1943. The footage from 17:27 shows various military training units that resided on campus during the war. More information is provided with the next clip, which contains similar footage.
To compensate for dwindling resources during the war, Princeton hosted several military training schools on campus. In addition to the ASTP (known as the A-12), Princeton accommodated the Army Post Exchange School, the Naval Officer Training School, the Naval College Training Program (V-12) for Navy candidates and Marines, and the Navy Pre-Radar School. Dormitories provided barracks for the service groups, and fourteen of the largest halls were occupied by Army and Navy trainees. The trainees marched to meals and classes, as can be seen on this footage of various unidentified training units. The ROTC returned to campus with the reestablishment of the Army Unit and the introduction of a Naval Unit in 1946 and an Air Force Unit in 1951.
These silent 16mm films are part of the University Archives’ Historical Audiovisual Collection (item no. 0106 and part of item no. 0092).
Since it was posted on Princeton’s Campus Life channel, “An Undergraduate View of Princeton University,” produced by the Orange Key Society in 1962, has received unexpected attention. In the film, which is staged as an instructional meeting for Orange Key guides, Charles W. Greenleaf ’63, vice-president of the Keycept Program, discusses what distinguishes Princeton from other universities, with emphasis on teacher-student relationships and opportunities for individual growth. Created several years before rebellion and reforms swept the campus, the well-scripted film is an interesting artifact.
The film includes extensive footage of faculty and campus. Subjects discussed are: faculty and the preceptorial system (with professors John Turkevich (chemistry) and Eric Goldman (history) 3:30); independent research projects (with Professor D.C. Hazen (aeronautical engineering) 6:52); research at Firestone Library (9:13); freshman advisers (11:29 and 13:44); the honor system (15:33); financial aid (17:23); dormitories (18:02); extracurricular activities and sports (19:30).
Documents within the University Archives reveal very little about the context in which the film was produced. We therefore are calling on alumni who participated. Can you tell us anything about the making of the film? Who wrote the script? What was the audience, and how long was the film in use? We look forward to your comments!
