Series 1: The Conklin Hall Project: Inside the 1969 Conklin Hall Takeover, 1969-1970, 1991-2003, 2008

Series 1. The Conklin Hall Project, 1969-2008 The documents and audio recordings in Series 1 were compiled for a digital humanities project consisting of an oral history collection and a website in observance of the 40th anniversary of the Liberation of Conklin Hall, also known as the Conklin Hall Takeover.

Series 1 contains three issues of the newsletter Spotlight on Blackness, a publication of the communications committee of the Black Organization of Students of Rutgers-Newark (box 1, folder 3). The newsletter contains articles on current events on and off the Rutgers-Newark campus, and opinion pieces. These three issues contain bylines for the following contributors (in alphabetical order): Leon “Lee” Clark; Vicki Donaldson, the first BOS President; Willie Ellerson, Editor-in-Chief; Pat Lawrence; Ayesha Mwanadi (Rose Stewart); Tom Roberts; Kranston Walker; Simon Youngbey.

Series 1 also contains a report on the Conklin Hall Takeover prepared by New Jersey Chancellor of Education Ralph A. Dungan to the New Jersey Legislature (box 1, folder 3).

There is a set of transcriptions of recorded interviews which were conducted by Librarian Emeritus Gilbert Cohen from 1990 to 1991. The interviewees are Newark College of Arts and Sciences alumni, faculty and staff who participated in or witnessed the student occupation of Conklin Hall of 1969. The digitized audio interviews and their respective interview transcriptions are accessible in the digital repository of Rutgers University Libraries, RUCore..