Black Students Matter: Taking Over Allen in '69

Inspired by the Afro-American Society's actions on February 13, 1969, a group of student activists staged a takeover of the Allen Building in April 2016, and made their own list of demands to the administration.

Over the past fifty years, the racial and institutional legacies of the Allen Building Takeover have become memorialized within the University narrative. Partly as a result of the efforts of Duke’s Afro-American Society, an African American Studies department—one of the original thirteen demands of the Takeover—was formulated in 1969. Today, black students comprise about 10 percent of the undergraduate population at the University: a nearly 10-fold increase from the late 1960s. Nonetheless, remnants of Duke’s institutional past as a historically white, segregationist institution continues to affect race and labor relations on campus to this day. This part of the online exhibit examines the multiple legacies of the Allen Building Takeover.