Dawson Making Documentary About ’69 Pivotal Black Student Protest – Which He Was Involved In

In April 1969, Frank Dawson was a freshman at Cornell University who got swept up in a pivotal protest that would captivate the nation and bring major changes to the Ivy League school.

Frank Dawson, at 35, when he was with Universal Television

The 36-hour, tension-filled black student occupation of Willard Straight Hall would be a turning point in the life of Dawson, who would go on to be a pioneering television executive and current chair of the SMC Communication Department.

Forty years later, Dawson is looking back at that historic event and, with co-producer Abby Ginzburg, is making a documentary film about it. He has shot a trailer and is seeking funding to complete the film.

“For me, being part of the takeover was a coming-of-age moment, it was having a commitment to making changes to better the lives of others,” Dawson said.

Dawson’s path to Cornell had laid the groundwork for his involvement in the Willard Straight occupation.

An inner-city kid from New York who was bored by school much of his young life and was anything but a scholar, Dawson got his ticket out of the housing projects by being recruited as the second black student at a white boarding school in affluent Westchester County outside the city. The young Dawson graduated with the athletic director’s trophy as the most outstanding athlete in the school and was captain of the basketball, football and baseball teams in his senior year.

But more importantly for him, Dawson felt he had something to prove, that he was not considered by his classmates as just one of the “black kids who were dumb but great athletes.” He focused on his studies and graduated third in his class of 26.

When he got to Cornell in the fall of 1968, the university was beginning to show signs of seeking diversity. For example, in 1965 it had started a program to recruit aggressively in inner cities throughout the nation.

But progress was slow, and racism on the mostly-white campus and town of Ithaca in upstate New York was palpable.

“Cornell had a huge fraternity life, and often black students would be the targets,” Dawson recalled. “We’d walk by a frat house, and beer bottles would come raining out of the windows and there would be racial epithets thrown at us.”

In addition, the black students felt the university was dragging its feet in demands for an increase in hiring black faculty and for reexamining a curriculum that was largely Eurocentric.

But the incident that set off the takeover was a cross burning on the front lawn of the black women students’ residence hall.

About 50 students entered Willard Straight hall, ejecting parents who were visiting for “Parents Weekend” from the hotel rooms on the upper floors. Subsequently, white students from Delta Upsilon fraternity unsuccessfully attempted to retake the building by force, prompting some of the occupying students to leave the building and return with firearms in case of a further attack.

Dawson said when he saw the firearms, he remembers thinking, “This is now serious.” But, he added, “As freshmen students, we were not as politically astute, but we trusted each other and we were down to do whatever was necessary, we were like the infantry.”

Meanwhile, the Students for a Democratic Society – led by C. David Burak, now an English professor at SMC – formed a protective cordon outside the building.

Tensions mounted as then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller called in state troopers, but ultimately, the Cornell administration negotiated an end to the takeover. The photos of the students marching out the hall carrying rifles and wearing bandoliers made the national news and won a Pulitzer Prize for Associated Press photographer Steve Starr.

The takeover led to changes on campus, including a new campus judicial system and the establishment of the Africana Studies and Research Center.

“I came into Cornell as a good student,” Dawson said. “But I really became more aware of the world around me and the responsibility I had to make a positive contribution to my community.”

Aside from raising his political awareness, his participation in the takeover also got him interested in communications.

As part of the occupation, the black students also took over the campus radio station that was in the building. Reading distorted news off the Teletype machines of the takeover, and talking to his mother about what she was seeing on television, he realized that the media had “serious power in shaping the truth.”

The next semester he was working at the Cornell radio station and soon had his own show. Graduating from Cornell with a degree in sociology, Dawson went on to Syracuse University and received a master’s degree in radio and television.

That launched him into a long career in television production, most of it in Los Angeles. He worked in development and production at CBS and at Universal, supervising the production of such shows as “Alice,” “Cagney & Lacey,” “Simon and Simon,” and “Miami Vice.” He also was responsible for developing “He’s the Mayor,” a predominantly black sitcom, and getting it on the air on ABC.

But despite his success in an industry that had very few black faces at the executive levels, Dawson felt that he hit glass ceilings both at CBS and Universal. So, he turned to independent producing and in 1998, came to SMC to teach broadcasting. Dawson succeeded Barbara Baird – also a Cornell alum – as department chair in January.

“I believe the story of the Willard Straight takeover is an important one to tell,” Dawson said. “Race is still an issue in this country, and documentaries are powerful tools for discussion and negotiation on race and other important social and political issues.”