![\"In](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/librarypolice-244x300.jpg\")
Stinnett started working on this project in 2017 as the archives began to digitize photographs of the student unrest for the 50th<\/sup> anniversary of UConn\u2019s H. Fred Simons African-American Cultural Center, which took place in 2018.<\/p>\n The take-over of the Wilbur Cross Library, which became the Wilbur Cross Building in 1978 when the Homer Babbidge Library opened, came after a number of peaceful protests and demands from Black students, which were led by the Organization of African American Students.<\/p>\n One of the most powerful parts of the display is the back wall, where copies of letters from Black students that were presented to President Glenn Ferguson are shown. The typed form letters are identical, except students signed their own and many wrote personal messages. Students presented the letters to Ferguson one morning when he arrived at his office, and they ended with the phrase \u2013 \u201cPlease Respond Personally\u201d \u2013 which gave the exhibition its name.<\/p>\n The exhibition also has stark photos of Black students being arrested and removed from the Wilbur Cross Library after they refused to leave when the building closed at midnight.<\/p>\n \u201cThese photographs are a very curious part of our student unrest collection, as there was basically no provenance of where they came from at first,\u201d says Stinnett. \u201cThey are from the perspective of inside the library when the state police started removing the students, but they are not journalistic and have a more surveillance look to them.\u201d<\/p>\n Stinnett believes he has identified the photographer, who was under contract for the Connecticut Chronicle, which was a faculty and staff newspaper at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cHe must have been called in the middle of the night and told what was going on,\u201d says Stinnett. \u201cThey wanted to document these students and know who they were.\u201d<\/p>\n A key contact for Stinnett in creating the exhibition was when he identified Rodney Bass \u201975 (CLAS) \u201976 MA as one of the students being arrested. Bass was co-chairman of the Organization of African American Students, a member of the men\u2019s basketball team, and involved in Black Voices of Freedom choir and other student activities.<\/p>\n Bass, who later went on to become a school principal in his native Stamford, read a statement that explained he and his fellow Black students would not leave the library when it closed at midnight. The students stayed there until 6 a.m. the next day, when police arrived. Charges of criminal trespass were levied against 219 students.<\/p>\n Another protest at the library occurred later that same day to support the Black students, which was conducted largely by white faculty and students.<\/p>\n![\"In](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/librarycarry-243x300.jpg\")