Towson State College community members gather outside Linthicum Hall to protest the killings of students at Kent and Jackson State Colleges in 1970.
From Peyton Cleary, creator of this resource guide and member of Towson University Class of 2021:
Over the course of the semester as a student research assistant for Unearthing Towson’s History, I had the opportunity to work with a wide range of resources regarding student activism at Towson University. Using these resources, I developed a series of blog posts exploring the evolution of student activism at TU and the administrative response to student activism at TU in the late 1960s and 1970s. My research ranged from browsing the project’s holdings in Zotero, a digital resource management system, to diving into past Towerlight articles and Yearbook editions via our Special Collections & University Archives collections, especially within the digital collections. The rich history of student activism at TU incorporates many different voices and perspectives that are worth exploring so that we can understand how student activism has evolved at TU and the reasons why TU students have participated in social movements for decades.
This resource guide is an accumulation of various resources that can be used as a jumping off point for anyone interested in studying student activism at TU with an emphasis on the following themes: The Vietnam War, the experiences of Black students at TU, the work of Students for a Democratic Society, the administrative response to student activism in the past and present, and modern day activism at TU. In addition, for each year referenced, you will find a link to the corresponding Tower Echoes yearbook in order to explore the visual history of certain events.
