Introducing What’s Happening: An Independent Student Voice Collection

By: Victoria Santamorena

Wednesday, Nov 6, 2024

Allow us to introduce the newest addition to the library’s archives, What’s Happening: An Independent Student Voice Collection. Documenting the founding, operating activities, and print run of the eponymous student publication from its first printing in 1965 to its final issue in 1970, the What's Happening Collection adds texture and depth to the student voice present in the Teachers College Archives and Special Collections. While much of the student-produced materials in the archives originated from students attending Teachers College and its affiliated experimental and demonstration schools, the What’s Happening Collection captures the voices of an eclectic group of teenagers living and learning in New York City in the late 1960s.*

Cover of the March 1968 issue of What's Happening

March 1968 Issue of What's Happening.

A Brief History

Founded in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, the War on Poverty, the Vietnam War and subsequent anti-war protests, What’s Happening?: An Independent Student Voice “began as an outlet for six black kids” who wanted to share their experiences with other teenagers (What’s Happening, Inc., 1968, section II). Frank E. Campbell, Sandra Fields, Ruth Brown, Catheryn Munnlyn, Otto Grant, and Patricia Gordon borrowed a typewriter and a mimeograph machine to start their modest ten-page publication. With an initial distribution of around 100 copies, What’s Happening quickly gained popularity. By 1966, the publication found readership across the United States as well as abroad, where the works of Arthur Gordon, Sandra Fields, and Marjorie Reed were republished in the Italian journal il Pioniere (What’s Happening Collection, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 4).

March 1966 issue of What's Happening

Volume 1, issue 6 of What's Happening, March 1966.

What’s Happening also attracted the attention of educators like Herbert R. Kohl, the founding director of the Teachers and Writers Collaborative. Working with the Horace Mann-Lincoln Institute at Teachers College and the Teachers and Writers Collaborative, Kohl helped provide What’s Happening with an office space at the Macy Annex 253. The office space helped What’s Happening expand its operations, growing the publication to a fifty-page magazine with a circulation of around 2,500 (What’s Happening, Inc., 1968, section II).

Student pasting portions of a magzaine together

A student working on the production of the magazine. (Folder 23, box 3).

In addition to its expanded circulation, What’s Happening members created their own programming and partnered with community organizations. Every Friday night, the staff of What’s Happening held writing workshops, where members read and wrote poetry, essays, and fiction. The staff held weekly business meetings, where the editorial board discussed logistical concerns. The magazine’s writing assistant Linda Boyd, alongside Columbia University MFA students, conducted writing sessions three nights a week. On Thursday evenings, the What’s Happening members held drama workshops for those interested in theater. Additionally, several members of What’s Happening worked with teachers at the Community Resource Center of East Harlem to assist in a journalism class for elementary school students.

Five teenagers seated around a table.

Image of five members of What's Happening seated at a table. Image depicts Maurice Jackson, Jamie Collazo, Ernestine Graham, Dewey Higgins, and Frank E. Campbell. Folder 24, box 3).

By 1969, several of the original members graduated from high school, moved onto college, or started their careers. The former editorial staff passed the magazine onto the next generation, who contended with a lack of funding and the loss of their office space, as the Macy Annex was torn down in the spring of 1969. The new staff secured a storefront in Tiemann Place, but the change in leadership, the loss of the original members, and continued financial difficulties threatened the magazine’s future. The winter 1970 issue was the last issue of What’s Happening ever printed.

In its five-year run, the staff produced twenty-two issues and published the writing of approximately 300 adolescents from across the country. Over 100 different students participated in the making of the magazine during its run. It reached readers in Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Ghana, Peru, and New Zealand. What’s Happening inspired teachers to include student-produced writing in their curricula and it inspired similar student-run publications in other states. In the years that followed the magazine’s run, the former members of What’s Happening went on to become teachers, doctors, and lawyers.

What’s in the Collection

The materials in the What’s Happening Collection document how the members of What’s Happening created an outlet to express their opinions, write their stories, and build a community. What's Happening?: An Independent Student Voice afforded its editors and writers an opportunity to meaningfully engage with civil rights, politics, and culture, and allowed them to make connections with students and educators across the United States and abroad. The materials in the What’s Happening Collection

give insight into the political, cultural, and personal realities of the staff throughout the magazine's run… The collection also evidences cultural and educational shifts taking place during the period. Researchers interested in student publications, adolescent writing and art, the Civil Rights Movement, anti-war demonstrations, non-authoritarian teaching, urban education, and educational change in the United States will find this collection a valuable resource. (Collection Scope and Contents, 2024).

The magazine’s advisor, Elaine Avidon, donated the collection to the library in May of this year. In early October, our Processing Archivist, Victoria Santamorena, processed, inventoried, and described the collection, which includes:

22 issues of What’s Happening?: An Independent Student Voice, including layout notes and the original layout for the March 1969 issue
Two poetry chapbooks
Ten handwritten drafts of essays, poetry, and prose by What’s Happening editors
Original drawings by Greg Rooks, Maurice Jackson, and Stephen Walker
Magazine memos, rules, and documentation
Approximately 350 hand-written and typed letters and correspondence (personal and business correspondence)
Flyers and programs for fundraising events, poetry readings, and workshops
Press materials, including newspaper articles, newsletters, and magazine articles
46 Photographs and accompanying negatives
32 color slides of a trip to Goddard College
Documents related to Elaine Avidon’s firing and subsequent court hearing
A glass medallion designed by Richard Avidon which features the What’s Happening logo

A pie chart showing the breakdown of materials in the collection.

The What’s Happening collection is fully processed. Series 1: Life at What’s Happening and Series 2: Life After What’s Happening are open and available for research. Portions of Series 3: Personal Correspondence are under embargo until 2044 to protect sensitive information. For more information about the collection, including a detailed historical overview, an item inventory, and information about use, access, and rights, see the finding aid.

*A copy of the March 1968 volume of What’s Happening was featured in the Summer 2024 exhibit Student Voices in Print and Perpetuity.

Additional resources