ABSTRACT
IN 1993, the bookstore at Swarthmore College, where I teach political science, created a display commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of student involvement in the civil rights movement here at the college. The display featured huge blowups of pages from the school newspaper the Phoenix, and other local newspapers containing articles about the campaign against discrimination in the schools in the nearby city of Chester. On November 16, 1963, for instance, the Phoenix reports that the Chester school board has agreed to the major demands of the protestors, following two weeks of demonstrations in which 240 people were arrested, including fifty-seven Swarthmore students. Looking back almost thirty years later, these pages seem quaint; the front-page articles on the local civil rights movement nestle up to more conventional pieces on the college's plan to build a new library, and on a botany lecture which is part of “the recent movement to make Swarthmore students more aware of ‘the trees and flowers.’” 1 The following week, on November 23, 1963, the Phoenix juxtaposes an editorial denouncing the administration's threat to discipline student protestors, with an account of a survey to be distributed to students in the dining hall to determine their food preferences. 2
