BOS Members Unfurl Their Banner on Conklin Hall

Marvin McGraw, Bill and Howard Kinchelow, members of the Black Organization of Students, unfurl a banner from Conklin Hall’s roof top renaming the building Liberation Hall. Members of BOS had entered the building before dawn on February 24th, 1969 and secured it within minutes. It was the first time a Rutgers building had ever been occupied by students. BOS members were responding to the Campus’s failure to remain in step with the city. African American students made up just 4% of the population with very few coming from Newark. There were no African American faculty and very few staff members of color. –Credit: John Cotton Dana Library, Rutgers University-Newark