black student movement at NIU

black student movement at NIU

“A Racist Institution:” The Black Student Protest Movement
at Northern Illinois University, 1962-70

Jeffrey R. Hart
History 491, Dr. Schmidt
Fall 1997

















1.   NIU and Dekalb: The Corn Cob Community
Northern Illinois University, a medium sized four year public university, is located in the small city of Dekalb, sixty miles west of Chicago on Interstate 88.   Thirty miles from what is referred to as the western edge of the suburbs, Dekalb seems in some ways to be caught between two worlds:   the world of Norman Rockwell’s idyllic “Small-town, USA,” and the world of the encroaching suburbs.   Recently, the city has seen the telltale signs of the encroaching world: the line of large department stores, home improvement stores, and fast food restaurants along its highway on the edge of town, drawing business away from the downtown area, and the explosion of   modern single family housing development in constructed neighborhoods, or “estates.”  
This encroachment is best symbolized by the plan approved by a former mayor and city council to develop and build a modest sized shopping mall on the southeast edge of town, located on another highway.   The plan calls for the developer to receive the city sales tax (presently 1 percent, added to the state sales tax of 6.25 percent) received by the merchants located inside and immediately adjacent to the planned shopping mall.   Former Mayor Greg Sparrow said that the tax plan was essential to luring the developer.   He and others feel that the new shopping mall will bring Dekalb into the service-based economy, and provide much needed jobs and tax revenues for the city.
Unfortunately for Mr. Sparrow and a few council persons, the voters rejected his bid for re-election to office in the spring of 1997, instead voting in favor of council person Bessie Chronopoulis, who attacked not only Mayor Sparrow’s enticement plan, but also the seemingly rapid rate of change.   To her and many of the...