| The student "strike" over the dismissal of John Hatchett as head of the NYU King Center and called by the Radical Coalition, reveals tensions within and between these student protest groups. The majority of the white student coalition (composed of Peace and Freedom Party, the Independent Socialist Club, and a group called the Independent Radicals) is accused by SDS members of selling out revolutionary politics by accepting black students’ demands that the white radicals support the Hatchett strike without attempting to link the incident to a larger anti-imperialist critique. | 
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| b/w photograph of student protesters, October 1968. NYU Archives Photo Collection. |
| SDS members also point out difficulties in attempting to recruit the overwhelmingly white student body into supporting a strike in favor of a man who many students view as a racist and an anti-Semite. White student groups eventually end up framing the Hatchett controversy as a student power issue rather than focusing on the thornier aspects of black nationalism and the average white student’s fear or ambivalence regarding black nationalism which lay at the heart of the issue. This stance causes tensions between the black and white student coalitions.
Several attempts to rejuvenate the strike through various tactics culminate in an occupation of Kimball Hall by 150 students on Friday, October 18, an action which lasts a mere three hours before university officials threaten the students with mass arrest. That same evening, Eisner Lubin auditorium is set on fire in an action disavowed by the radical groups. SDS had the previous day dropped out of the Radical Coalition and thus managed to save itself from the general opprobrium leveled at the other white student groups once the strike was canceled and declared a failure. |
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| b/w photograph from Washington Square Journal. October 1968. NYU Archives Collection. |
Front page of the student publication Cerberus. October 21, 1968. NYU Archives Collection.