In 1985, Louis Farrakhan, minister and leader of the Black Nation of Islam, came to speak on campus—and was met with two different protests: one by students and one by the Ku Klux Klan.

Farrakhan, a proponent of black separatism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia, came to speak upon invitation from Ujamaa, the University’s black student group. He spoke to over 400 students in the hockey rink on April 26, 1985, which happened to be Holocaust Remembrance Day on the Jewish calendar that year.

While students were filing in for Farrakhan’s address, two very different groups were stationed outside of the rink. One was composed of students, faculty and community members—estimated at roughly 500 people—protesting the speaker’s well-known anti-Semitism. Next to them stood hooded members of the KKK of Meriden, Conn.

Annemarie Bean ’88, a visiting associate professor of African American Studies, was a freshman at the time. She was among the student protesters.

“The form of the protest was that once Farrakhan began speaking inside, the outside group of protesters were silent for the entire time Farrakhan spoke,” she said.

Jeremy Zwelling, professor of religion and director of the Jewish and Israel Studies certificate program, led the student protest against Farrakhan’s qualification of Judaism as a “gutter religion.”

“We all walked arms-length to the hockey rink, where some went in and some stayed outside,” Zwelling said, adding that the protesters didn’t attempt to block the students and faculty who filed past them and into the rink. “[We were] trying to alert them to the ways that some in the community saw him and his rhetoric as dangerous and inflaming and polarizing.”

Soon, however, the protesters were not alone.

“The word spread quickly among us that the KKK was in our midst,” Bean said. “As we were gathering outside the hockey rink, three KKK members in full-hooded regalia positioned themselves slightly away from the main group. They stood silently next to a large sign which said, ’We agree with you.’”

Though both groups were technically objecting to the same lecture, the student protest was aimed primarily at Farrakhan’s policies, not his presence, according to Zwelling.

“Farrkhan’s policy has a strong anti-white flavor to it, and particularly anti-Jewish,” he said.

Zwelling explained that allowing Farrakhan to speak wasn’t just an issue of freedom of speech, but of Wesleyan’s character.

“This is an open university,” he said. “Anybody should be allowed to come here.”

When the Jewish student organization, Havurah, first heard that Ujamaa had invited Farrakhan to speak, tensions ran high.

Zwelling explained that Ujamaa had invited Farrakhan without checking if it would offend others.

“They didn’t want to slap anybody in the face. That wasn’t their intention,” he said. “They just weren’t thinking in the same ways as Jewish student and faculty.”

Though not affiliated with either group, Bean distinctly remembers this initial friction—and its ultimate resolution.

“On the public level, I felt Havurah, influenced by the pacifist leadership of Jeremy Zwelling in the Religion Department, and Ujamaa, both conducted themselves with great dignity through the tension,” Bean said.

Ten to twelve students from the two groups soon began meeting to discuss their viewpoints, according to Zwelling.

“Both sides listened to the other. Both accepted the fact that there were differences on this,” Zwelling said. “[Our differing views] didn’t mean that we couldn’t enter into conversation with one another.”

When Farrakhan actually came to speak, Havurah and Ujamaa experienced a moment of solidarity, Zwelling noted.

“We didn’t want to allow this incident and [Farrakhan’s] rhetoric to split us,” he said. “It did just the opposite. It brought people together.”

After Farrakhan’s speech, Zwelling’s group of protesters proceeded to the North College lawn for a teach-in.

“It was a forum of sort of educating ourselves,” Zwelling said, likening it to Vietnam-era protests.

Planned by both Ujamaa and Havurah, this counter demonstration was originally supposed to include those who had attended the speech as well, since many of its organizers had still chosen to hear Farrakhan.

According to Zwelling, the timing didn’t work out, and many of the people inside missed the teach-in, which included speeches on the history of the civil rights movement at Wesleyan, as well as the history of African-American students’ and Jewish students’ presence at Wesleyan. Richard Slotkin, professor of American Studies, spoke to the 500 people who did attend the rally.

While Ujamaa and Havurah had worked through their differences to plan this counter-demonstration, other tensions persisted throughout the day.

Although Farrakhan made no explicitly anti-Semitic remarks in his speech, he did say about the protesters: “You have a nerve to be outside with a mocking demonstration against racism and your heart reeking with racism!”

Farrakhan did preach anti-Zionist views, however.

“My view is that Israel is not the fulfillment of divine prophesy, and my further view is that those who have suffered so much should not be callous and inflict the same suffering on the Palestinians,” he said.

Though there was no interaction between the students and the KKK, the Middletown police department was positioned between them, according to Bean.

Bean also noted possible tensions between the KKK and Farrakhan’s Fruit of Islam guards (bodyguards for the Nation of Islam).

“I for one was completely stunned that we were being ’supported’ by the KKK,” she said. “I was very fearful that there would be some sort of encounter between the Fruit of Islam guards that were stationed all around Farrakhan and the KKK and the Middletown police would not know how to handle it. The possibilities for violence seemed endless, and I thought of all of them during the silent period of protest.”