1969 Harvard Rent Strike Poster

Price: $1,750.00

Silkscreen Poster. [Cambridge, MA]: [Harvard University], [1969]. Very Good.

Original black and white silkscreen poster, with an image of a monstrous figure with dollar signs as eyes stealing a house from Harvard University, with the phrases "No Expan$ion," "No Eviction$!," "Roll Back Rent$," and "Strike". Very good, with some edgewear including a few small closed tears, and multiple creases to upper edge, bright and unfaded. Overall, a commanding protest image, on a rare protest poster in excellent condition. This poster centers the rent related demands of the 1969 Harvard strikers, including opposition to Harvard's expansion into working class neighborhoods and a call for a rent freeze on university owned housing. The 1969 Harvard strike centered on a number of concerns by Harvard students and members of the Harvard chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), most notably rent increases and Harvard expansion, the prominent role of the ROTC on campus (and, more generally, Harvard's involvement in the Vietnam War), and the lack of a Black Studies department at Harvard. On April 9th, 1969, several hundred protesting students occupied University Hall. Harvard president Nathan Pusey called in the police to remove the protesters, and a violent clash ensued, which resulted in many student arrests and injuries. This event was followed by an eight-day strike by students and faculty. In the wake of the strike, the ROTC was demoted to an extracurricular activity and eventually phased out of Harvard completely for the remainder of the Vietnam War, and a Department of Afro-American Studies (later re-named the department of African and African American Studies) was established. Item #HARV003