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Carefully Skeptical. Pushed by blacks on and off campus, who have long complained about the university's employment practices and building plans, the moratorium movement grew. At a rally of 4,500 students and faculty, Panther Milliard was jeered when he suggested "killing pigs." "All right, boo me, I knew you were racist," he replied. Black students cheered him on —and that was a turning point. Explained one white student: "When our black friends erupted in support of Milliard for calling us racist, I could feel the white students cringing [with guilt]. I know I did." The meeting shouted approval of the strike. Next day, class attendance was down to about one-third of normal.
A strike committee was formed and drew up several demands, all of which were drastically altered by the full faculty. The faculty urged the creation of a commission to guide Yale's relations with blacks in New Haven, as well as an agreement that the university must replace any housing facilities it displaces as it expands and a suspension of normal class requirements during the strike —an apparent luxury at the end of an academic year. Brewster, who had helped shape the faculty proposals, then approved them. He also indicated his sympathy for the students' concern about the trial. "I am skeptical of the ability of black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial anywhere in the U.S.," he said. As the furor over that sweeping and injudicious statement grew, Brewster explained only that he had "chosen the word skeptical very carefully."
The attack upon Brewster was led by Vice President Agnew, who claimed that Yale students cannot get "a fair impression of their country under the tutelage of Kingman Brewster," and that "it is clearly time for the alumni of that fine old college to demand that it be headed by a more mature and responsible person." Agnew also misrepresented the position of the Yale faculty as supporting "an organization dedicated to criminal violence, anarchy and the destruction of the United States."
Ironically, Agnew's blast only reinforced Brewster's high prestige on his own campus and among his presidential peers on other campuses. Some 3,000 students quickly signed a petition backing him. Yale Corporation Member William Horowitz, chairman of the Connecticut State Board of Education and a Democrat, showed how most of the university regards Brewster. Horowitz acidly complained in a letter to Agnew: "I frankly do not believe that your experience as a president of a P.T.A. chapter qualifies you to evaluate the contributions to education by the most distinguished university president in the U.S." Some alumni, however, thought Brewster had gone too far. Said one irate occupant of Manhattan's Yale Club: "I'm sure the governing board will act quickly to obtain his resignation. Instead of being a leader, he has stooped to the level of the students."