The report says since 1959 a consortium of ten U.S. banks has made a $40 million revolving credit loan to the South African apartheid regime every two years. Cornell owns $3.5 million in stock in four of these banks: Chemical Bank of New York, Continental Illinois Bank and Trust Co., First National City Bank of New York, and Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co. Cornell President James Perkins sits on the board of a fifth, the Chase Manhattan Bank. SDS researched and planned a program aimed at disengaging Cornell from these banks. The goals were: 1) to release lots of information to the campus about South African apartheid, with an analysis emphasizing that the U.S. economic system, motivated by...
The report says since 1959 a consortium of ten U.S. banks has made a $40 million revolving credit loan to the South African apartheid regime every two years. Cornell owns $3.5 million in stock in four of these banks: Chemical Bank of New York, Continental Illinois Bank and Trust Co., First National City Bank of New York, and Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co. Cornell President James Perkins sits on the board of a fifth, the Chase Manhattan Bank. SDS researched and planned a program aimed at disengaging Cornell from these banks. The goals were: 1) to release lots of information to the campus about South African apartheid, with an analysis emphasizing that the U.S. economic system, motivated by profit, will always support racism ; 2) to force the university to sell the stock publicly and President Perkins to resign publicly from the board of Chase Manhattan; and 3) to increase student awareness of the university's role as an integral part of society in order to dispel the myth of university autonomy. A petition circulated to students got about 1,200 signatures in five days. The petition was presented to the trustees at their parents' weekend meeting, along with letters informing them of the SDS demands. The Afro-American Society (AAS) decided to co-sponsor the SDS demands. It was decided that SDS and AAS would not sit in or block the trustees unless we received an unequivocal "no" in reply to our demands. About 150 people turned out for the trustees meeting to wait for their answer. James Stewart, chairman of the Executive Committee of the trustees, V-P Stephen Muller, and V-P Barlow came out of the trustees meeting to announce the trustees' answer. First, Stewart read the response to the AAS' demand that Cornell give land to Ithaca for housing. They attempted to stall the South Africa demands by saying these demands would have to be referred to both the faculty and a joint student-faculty-administration commission. [Note: the report was apparently written by Alan Snitow, then a member of Students for a Democratic Society at Cornell University.]
