A mostly forgotten recent racist incident

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Up until the late 1980s population of the small city of Oneonta and the State University of New York College there was mostly white. At the end of the 80s the State University system implemented a program to integrate the system with inner city students. The program on the Oneonta campus seeme to be going well. For the blacks coming from the dangerous inner city the campus in “The City of the Hills” was a panacea, a friendly place where they could finally figuratively breathe, or so they thought.

In the wee hours of the morning of September 4, 1992 an elderly white women reported to police a black man attempted to rape her. She was cut up. She said during the struggle she cut the assailants hand. Oneonta Police would say a dogs scent led to the campus. In 2002 CBS News would report the dogs scent led to the business district not the campus. Also the women reported she was assaulted by a black male not a young black male. Oneonta cops asked the campus for a list of all black males and the school gave it to them. This list would be called the Blacklist. Over the next five days Oneonta police gave all the black male students a “choice” show your hands or we will take you down to the station. All the victims showed there hands. They pulled people out the shower as their dormmates asked “what did you do?” They checked all black members of soccer team who were out of town at the time of the reported assault.

During the following weeks there were a number of protests involving students from SUNY Oneonta with support from other State University of New York campuses. At one point Oneonta protesters had to reject offers to f**k up the administration building. Despite that they had just been victims of an attempt to harass them out of town(racial cleansing light)they still somehow felt this was their campus. The school official who gave the Blacklist to the cops was fired but otherwise the students were stonewalled. They attempted legal redress. Their claims of civil rights violations were repeatedly being rejected. The students who were attending SUNY Oneonta when the incident occurred graduated. The media storm as well as a significant drop in enrollment ended. The pro bono lawyer to his credit got the case to SCOTUS. Bad timing. It was days after 9/11, with the country in a profiling mood SCOTUS refused to hear the case. Long since graduated and forgotten about the victims persisted. In 2006 the longest litigated civil rights case in American history came to an unsatisfactory end with two of the 125 victims receiving compensation and the person who attempted to rape the women getting away with it.

In 2008 Sean Gallagher a SUNY Oneonta student found out about what had happened, outraged he had no clue about what had happened he did something about it by creating a documentary Brothers Of The Blacklist that was screened on campus. In 2012 the campus did hold a 20th anniversary commemoration, none of the alumni victims were invited.

Today the campus is holding 30th anniversary commemoration activities. These include opening of The Center for Racial Justice and Inclusive Excellence, opening of an exhibit about the events, teach ins/outs, screening of the documentary Brothers Of The Blacklist with after screening Question and Answer with the director and seven of the profiled.

Brothers Of The Blacklist final 2014 edition is available to rent and buy on Youtube and Amazon Prime Video.

Personal Notes:
The school in question is my alma mater. My time at that campus was the most I felt I fit in during my life. When I was a student there I was aware that the north despite knocking the south for being rednecks were more segregated including both my hometown and my campus. I only saw one example of open bigotry which was students checking out and gossiping about people going a “gay” club meeting. That contrasted with the anti semitism I was a victim of and the casual use of bigoted slurs in my hometown. I can not speak for what it was like for the few black students attending SUCO(that is what we called it when I attended) at that time.

In ‘92 when this went down I was long graduated and working. My reaction was what one would suspect. “They did what!!?”. It was tough to see a place I had so many positive memories of being described in such negative terms. It is unfair but a fact of life there is guilt by association so there was shame and embarrassment.

This anniversary is occurring as I and us are constantly debating racism issues. I was unsure weather to post about this. Am I overestimating the importance of this event because I went there? Don’t know. Racial profiling sweeps are known about. This was not cops firing on an unarmed black man with his hands up. Nobody was physically injured. It is notable as the longest litigated civil rights case. There is always debate about how much race vs class is involved in these type incidents. These were college students so class is not involved. That the soccer team whom were away was checked leaves no doubt this was an attempt to start racial cleansing.

Is this commemoration too much that will that will cause guilt by association and unnecessary fear or is it still whitewashing what happened then and sanitizing what is happening now? Today I see images of a much more diverse campus. 43 years after graduating I am in no position to judge. All I know is that commemorating this anniversary is necessary. I just hope they got it mostly right, and hope my minute part was mostly right.

Thanks for posting this.

I've been fortunate, myself, that I haven't been subject to too much anti-Jewish bigotry.

I've been called "Hebe," even before I knew what the word meant.

I've also been stereotyped as being cheap, and as being not athletic and not able to fight----because of me being Jewish.

I believe APOM has had more severe incidents.