From the Vault: Bowie State students stage “study-in” at the State House
ANNAPOLIS, April 4, 1968 – Governor Agnew closed Bowie State College tonight “until I find that conditions there have returned to normal.”
The Governor acted two hours after State Police, on his orders, arrested 227 of the students and a civil rights leader who has refused to leave the State House by the 5:00 p.m. closing time.
The peaceful arrests of more than one third of the full-time student body of the predominately African-American college came after the students demanding to see the Governor and discuss their complaints about decrepit dormitories and underpaid faculty, sat down in the State House lobby, opened textbooks and conducted a 3 1/2 hour “study-in.”