The Fall 2009 issue of the URI Alumni Magazine Quadangles features a look back to the 1992 takeover of Taft Hall and interviews Talent Development Alumnus Malcolm Anderson.
In 1992, more than 200 students led by a newly-formed Black Student Leadership Group unhappy with a truncated Malcolm X quote carved into the façade of the URI Library took over Taft Hall. The students claimed the ellipses in the quote: “A good library…I could spend my life reading,” purposely left out: “If I weren’t out here every day fighting the white man.”
“We felt the quote was a blatant sign of disrespect,” recalls former BSLG member Malcolm Anderson ’94. “We coordinated a retreat to get away and vent. Our job as a core group included research, maximizing the strengths of group members, and crafting a 14-point plan directed toward the administration. We returned to campus focused and unified.