"Do you want to die?" two white men asked Ron Antonevich as they cracked branches over the rocks of the Little River in Durham. Antonevich was enjoying an afternoon in the sun when he was approached by the men threatening him and calling him homophobic slurs. Believing Antonevich was gay, they beat him with fists and clubs and held him under the water. It was the group's third attack of the afternoon. Antonevich died from his injuries three days later.
Hatred and discrimination fueled many other painful events, such as the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. It fueled police to attack student protestors after the 1969 Allen Building Takeover at Duke University, and racism allowed the university leaders to dismiss any responsibility for the violence against its students.
Activists often experience pain because they take risks to call out this injustice and go against the status quo. Pain is a response to physical, emotional, and systemic suffering. Feeling pain is a part of the process of activism. As these stories show, the suffering Durham's activists experienced was a catalyst to creating meaningful change.
As you read, think about:
How did activists respond to pain?
Duke's Allen Building Takeover
On the morning of February 13, 1969, around 40 Duke students walked into the Allen Building, Duke’s main administrative building, barricaded themselves inside, and issued a letter with 11 demands.
The students were members of Duke’s Afro-American Society who had been fighting for over two years to get the University to address the needs of its Black students. Their demands included an African American Studies department, an increased percentage of Black students, a Black student union and dorm, and an end to police violence against Black students. In their statement, the students wrote that they seized the building because they had "exhausted the so-called proper channels” of negotiation with the school.
The students' occupation became one of the most well known protests at Duke and was a pivotal point in Duke's history of student protest.
The students entered Allen building at 8am and remained barricaded inside for most of the day. Students remembered the energy, fear, and frustration they felt that morning at taking direct action after years of inaction from Duke leadership.
Duke's administration met for hours to discuss their response, but never seriously considered addressing the students' demands. They made few attempts to talk with student leaders. Instead, within one hour of the takeover, Duke leaders took a hard line and declared the Black students trespassers. They threatened police force to get the students to leave, despite calls from inside and outside the university to prioritize the students' safety. Seeing their protest as nonviolent, the students were shocked and upset at the university's readiness to use force and violence against their own students, particularly as police were not called for a similar occupation by white students several months earlier.
The administration issued an ultimatum: the students leave the building in one hour. Meanwhile, police were mobilized to the university and Mayor Grabarek called in 240 National Guardsmen.
Image: Members of the Afro-American Society look out from a window of the Allen Building during the takeover. They communicated with supporters, news outlets, and attempted to negotiate with Duke administrators through the window and via phone calls while locked inside.
As the threat of a violence grew, the mood inside Allen became tense and some students left the building via a window. Durham activist Howard Fuller spoke to the students left inside Allen, warning them the gathering police were armed for combat and if they entered Allen, the students could lose their lives. Another warned the students not to let the police catch them behind closed doors because “they will bludgeon you. They will crack your head.”
A large group of mostly white students and faculty gathered to support the Black students, joining arms to create a human shield around Allen. The Black students left the building around 5:00pm, protected and flanked by supporters.
Images: Black student protestors leave Allen building holding coats over their heads to avoid being photographed, while white students shield them (top center). Meanwhile, police in riot gear and gas masks march past student crowds towards Allen (bottom left and right).
Despite the end of the occupation, police violently confronted students standing in front of the building entrance and over 1,000 students gathered in the quad. Police launched tear gas into the crowd, shot riot guns, and beat protestors with billy clubs, brutally charging at students for over an hour as some ran and some fought back.
Duke administrators refused to take responsibility, with President Knight saying “It’s out of my hands.” 45 people were hospitalized.
Images: Police stand in riot gear as they release tear gas (top left), while students run from the gas fumes (top right). Police hold billy clubs menacingly over students knocked to the ground (bottom left and right).
Despite the University taking legal action against them, The Afro-American Society continued their advocacy after the Allen takeover. They began boycotting classes and established the Malcolm X Liberation School. A few months later, Duke established an African and Afro-American Studies program. But it was not until 1983, 14 years after the protest, that the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture was established, finally meeting the students’ demands for a Black student union.
Many of the other demands of Black students were never met. In the wake of the protest, student activists were disciplined, placed on year-long probations, and excluded from administrative decision-making.
However, the bravery of the Allen Takeover protestors and the support of the Black community in Durham laid a foundation for Black student activism at Duke that continues today. Black students continue the fight today for more Black faculty members, increased funding for scholarships, and expanded influence on Duke administration’s decision-making about issues affecting students.
Image: After leaving the Allen building, Black student protestors march down Chapel Drive holding the Malcom X Liberation School banner they had hung in the windows of the building. They and around 250 supporters cheered and chanted "hell no, it ain't over."
The Allen Building Takeover ended with unmet demands for the students, but created a foundation of activism for others to build on. The students were disciplined and painted as militants, while the police officers involved were never given any consequences. This painful disparity was repeated all over Durham, as police officers lashed out at protesters who were becoming frustrated with the slow pace of progress. As national events brought news of the assassination of MLK and murders of student protesters in South Carolina home to Durham, activists had to decide how to respond to seemingly perpetual grief.
Responding to the Orangeburg Massacre and Assassination of MLK, Jr.
By 1968, the Civil Rights Movement had been ongoing for nearly 20 years. As protestors became tired with the slow rate of progress, activism began shifting into more confrontational civil rights and anti-war protests. Young activists, led by organizers such as Howard Fuller and the growing Black Power movements, challenged the moderate and incremental approach of the old guard of the Civil Rights Movement as well as the white establishment.
In response to national tragedies, such as the Orangeburg Massacre and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., protests in Durham provided a chance for public mourning, as well as an opportunity to hold white leaders accountable for the deaths caused by white supremacist policies.
On February 8th, 1968, the police shot and killed three unarmed Black student protesters and injured dozens of others at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, SC. On February 15, student protesters gathered at Five Points Park in downtown Durham for a sympathy service. During this protest, demonstrators held up signs reading, “They have replaced sheets with badges,” connecting the racial violence and terror of white supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan to government authorities and the police.
The gathering quickly escalated when protesters lit a fire inside a coffin as part of the memorial and the police got involved. Instead of simply hosing down the fire, the Durham Fire Department turned the hoses onto the crowd as policemen moved in with batons. In response, protesters began smashing store windows along Main Street.
Image: Comparing police violence to Klan violence, a protestor holds a sign saying "They Have Replaced Sheets with Badges" with words drawn inside a star, during Durham's Orangeburg Massacre protest.
As a white police officer poised to hit a restrained Black protester in the head, local civil rights leader Howard Fuller intervened. Instead of seeing Fuller as defending against police violence, the police arrested him and charged him with assaulting an officer. Fuller denied the charges, but the police report read that he hit an officer in the mouth with his elbow, which Fuller called “a goddamn lie.”
Most newspapers were critical of the demonstration. An editorial in The Morning Herald the following Saturday blamed the violence on demonstration leaders. Even The Carolina Times, a black owned newspaper, condemned the protesters’ behavior.
This represented a fracture in the civil rights movement. Some activists thought that non-violent and respectful protests were the key to achieving equity, while others felt that respectful actions didn’t prevent racism and injustice, and they challenged a slow-moving moderate approach to civil rights. These actions demonstrated the pain, anger, and frustration of many activists at the slow progress of the movement and continued fight for equity.
Image: Young Black men protesting the police violence of the Orangeburg Massacre hold signs with phrases like "End Police Brutality Now!" in downtown Durham.
Just a few months later, this question of how to respond to events would be asked nationally. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on the balcony of his hotel room while in Memphis on April 4, 1968. King's murder immediately ignited debates about nonviolence, protest, and civil rights activism. It became a turning point, highlighting the differences between moderate non-violent movements and progressive Black Power movements.
Protests and riots broke out across the country. In Durham, the pain and shock of King's death was felt deeply. Many mourned together. Angry and hurt students gathered at North Carolina College the night of King's murder. Howard Fuller and other local leaders urged nonviolence, convincing the students to march the following morning. Fuller recalled asking the students to wait, saying, “I didn’t think it was the way to respond to King’s death given who he was.”
Image: A huge crowd of mourners who had marched from the NCC Chapel attends the prayer service for MLK, Jr. held at city hall.
The next day's peaceful march was attended by thousands of mourners. It began with a memorial service at the NCC chapel before marching from Fayetteville Street to City Hall where a brief prayer service was held and eulogies were given. The crowd issued Mayor Grabarek a list of demands, including the lowering of the flag to half-mast, a city council proclamation honoring King’s memory, and a cancellation of public school on the day of King’s funeral.
The next day, 13 fires broke out across Durham. The National Guard was mobilized and the city imposed a 7pm - 6am curfew, and 7 more fires were set the next night. At Duke, students organized a massive silent vigil first at the President's home and later on the main quad. After 7 days, 1,500 protestors who had sat in protest 24 hours a day, finally had some of their demands met by the university board.
Image: Walking with protestors in downtown Durham after the assassination of MLK Jr., activist Howard Fuller looks up, unsure whether two men holding rifles on a rooftop were Klan members or police.
The Orangeburg Massacre and the assassination of MLK, Jr. deeply impacted Durham. Activists reacting to tragedy nationally and at home demonstrated that by the late 60s, civil rights actions had evolved away from a moderate approach towards a more organized Black Power movement.
Image: Howard Fuller (on wall) leads protestors past National Guardsmen on July 20, 1967 on their way to a civil rights rally in front of City Hall.
The events of the late 1960s sparked debates in the Civil Rights Movement about the appropriate ways to respond to devastating losses. Twenty years later, the LGBTQ+ community responded to local hate crimes with transformative political activism.
Our Day Out and LGBTQ+ Vigil
Durham’s LGBTQ community used political activism to propel their fight for liberation into the public eye in the early 1980s. They were moved to action after a string of hate crimes, including the anti-gay assault and murder of Ronald “Sonny” Antonevich in April 1981.
The community’s response defined the LGBTQ movement in Durham for decades to come.
Ronald “Sonny” Antonevich and three others were sunbathing on the banks of the Little River near Johnston Mills Road on April 12, 1981 when two men approached the group. Yelling anti-gay threats, they began to assault the four sunbathers. According to his personal account, the two men approached Antonevich and finding him unable to move due to a physical handicap began to beat him and asked him, “Do you want to die?” After three days spent in Durham and Chapel Hill hospitals suffering critical injuries to his head and kidney, Antonevich, who was only 46, died. In the week following the assault, police charged two men in their early twenties with the murder.
The next Friday, 125 men, women, and children held up signs as an act of protest in front of the Durham County Judicial Building. Their presence publicly denounced this violent hate crime in their community.
Image: 1981 Poster for the Little River Vigil held after the death of Ronald Antonevich at the Durham Courthouse.
As the courts began their hearings after Antonevich's murder, the LGBTQ community and its supporters took a public and unified stance.
Debbie Swanner and David Ransom organized “Our Day Out,” North Carolina’s first gay and lesbian march. On June 27, 1981, three hundred marchers courageously stood together as a community. They started at Five Points Plaza in downtown Durham, traveled up Chapel Hill Street, looped around the courthouse, and marched back down Main Street, singing, chanting, making speeches, and picnicking along the way.
Image: Protestors stand in support of the queer community holding signs with phrases like "He was just enjoying the river" and "Little River, Atlanta, Greensboro, El Salvador... End all oppression NOW!" in reference to hateful acts committed against queer people.
Attendance at the march was risky. Being an out queer person could lead to the loss of a job, housing, even the custody of children. The looming threat of Klan violence led to an intense police presence, and some marchers wore paper bags over their heads to avoid recognition. Many of the LGBTQ marchers were experienced political activists who had been engaged in social justice movements before, so when Antonevich was murdered, it became a catalyst for advocating for their community.
Despite the risk, the march turned out to be a fully peaceful celebration of Durham’s LGBTQ community. “Our Day Out” paved the way for future LGBTQ pride events in Durham, evolving into Durham’s first annual Pride March in 1986—a tradition that continues today.
Image: Poster spreading the word about the first 'Our Day Out' March for Lesbian and Gay Rights in June 1981.
In 1968, the police murder of South Carolina State students in the Orangeburg Massacre and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr caused national outrage. Locally, Durham’s Black community responded to the pain of these injustices with public mourning, protest, and disrupting the status quo of the city. Black students at Duke University in 1969 took bold direct action in fighting for equal rights by taking over the Allen building. But university leaders responded by calling in police to campus who attacked student protestors, in a display of racism and complete disregard for Black lives. The homophobic murder of Ronald Antonevich in 1981 by two white men who thought he was gay spurred an outpouring of grief, protests about hate crimes against the queer community, and a local LGBTQ rights movement that continues today.
The unjust deaths of community members, students, and civil rights leaders were painful, but activists’ pain was about more than those deaths. The violence of police toward marginalized people was painful. The injustice of a system built on white supremacy and homophobia was painful. The reluctance of others to advocate for their marginalized neighbors and create meaningful change was painful. This pain fueled activism in 1968, 1969, and 1981, and it still fuels activism today. Pain is a part of activism and responses to suffering can be catalysts for change. Just as it did over 40 years ago, protests today over national events such as the deaths of Trayvon Martin and George Floyd have ignited wider social justice movements and inspired local communities to fight for change.
'Do you want to die?' they asked. We do not. Nor do we intend to live in fear. We call on all people of good conscience to speak out with us against these and other acts of violence and government persecution. - Newsletter from the Papers of Allan Troxler
After learning this story and reflecting on your own experiences, how would you answer this question:
How did activists respond to pain?
