A Spark: W. E. B. DuBois Club

Abstract

As the war escalated, antiwar feelings increased on campus, and the first SDS meeting of the semester overflowed its venue. The Illinois student movement was sparked by the creation of a campus W. E. B. DuBois Club, whose connection to a Communist Party youth group of the same name was ambiguous. The founders announced they would seek university recognition and access to meeting rooms, adding they would challenge the twenty-year-old Clabaugh Act by bringing a communist speaker to campus, putting the administration in a quandary. This would be the seed from which the Illinois campus movement would grow.