The Howard University protests from the perspective and worldview
of its participants
We Are Worth Fighting For is the first history of the 1989
Howard University protest. The three-day occupation of the
university’s Administration Building was a continuation of the
student movements of the sixties and a unique challenge to the
politics of the eighties. Upset at the university’s appointment of
the Republican strategist Lee Atwater to the Board of Trustees,
students forced the issue by shutting down the operations of the
university. The protest, inspired in part by the emergence of
“conscious” hip hop, helped to build support for the idea of
student governance and drew upon a resurgent black nationalist ethos.
At the center of
this story is a student organization known as Black Nia F.O.R.C.E.
Co-founded by Ras Baraka, the group was at the forefront of
organizing the student mobilization at Howard during the spring of
1989 and thereafter. We Are Worth Fighting For explores how
black student activists—young men and women— helped shape and
resist the rightward shift and neoliberal foundations of American
politics. This history adds to the literature on Black campus
activism, Black Power studies, and the emerging histories of African
American life in the 1980s.
