For twelve days the University of Michigan was on strike. 15,000 students stayed out of classes at the peak of the protest because of one basic issue: university racism. By the end of last week, the crisis had eased-demands were negotiated and students were back in class-but for a few days at the height of the disruption, culminating on Friday, March 27, a coalition of black student leaders, faculty, and a large white student body effectively shut down the university. At Michigan, a Big Ten State University of 36,700, such events were unprecedented, and came only after many months of attacks on the racism in the university.

Three per cent of the enrollment at the University of Michigan is black. Eighteen per cent of the college-age youth in Michigan are black. In 1963 the university started an Opportunity Awards Program which was supposed to help increase black and minority group admissions. Little was done, and in 1968 on the day of Martin Luther King's funeral black students occupied a campus building, receiving a promise from the university to increase black enrollment. This year black students began meeting with the administration and the state legislature to urge that these promises become commitments to increase black enrollment.