As a U.S. college student in the 1960s, Eva Jefferson Paterson found her place in the world of activism and spent her life prioritizing social justice, across decades and various avenues. Now 76 years old and still fighting, Eva shares her reflections on a life of resistance and creation.
A civil rights champion, lawyer, and activist, Eva Paterson has spent her life fighting for justice—a fight that has taken many forms across the years. During her time at Northwestern University, Eva was a student activist involved in the historic 1968 Bursar’s Office Takeover that marked the first major student-led protest in Northwestern’s history. Shortly after, she became the first Black student body president in 1970. “She entreated us to embrace the nonviolence that we sought in the world,” fellow student Caren Van Slyke shared. Eva went on to become a civil rights champion and litigator for more than four decades, later co-founding the Equal Justice Society and serving as its President for 22 years. In 2024, Paterson received the American Bar Association Thurgood Marshall Award in recognition of her 40 years of legal dedication to civil rights in the U.S. “By all accounts, Paterson is the civil-rights leader of the Bay Area.” (San Francisco Chronicle).
In conversation with Ella Harris Perin, Eva Paterson shares her experience with university organizing, political change and stagnancy, and the hope brought by youth movements of today.
Ella Harris Perin: Could you please tell me a little bit about your experience with the bursar office takeover at Northwestern? I’m wondering how that unfolded and what were your thoughts as a participant. What are your takeaways from that experience?
Eva Paterson: I was a freshman who came from a military family and grew up in a very integrated, predominantly white environment in France and England. I went up to Northwestern in the fall of 1967 and there was a black student organization called FMO, For Members Only. We weren’t allowed to meet on campus, so we had to go off campus to meet, and there I encountered black radical thinking for the first time. When I got there, I was in a room with two other girls, and the first girl was already there. And then the third girl came in, took one look at me, left, spent the night in a hotel and got a single the next day. And so, I’m in a black women’s reading group, and in one of our meetings, all of us had stories about this. Either they would put the black girls together in a room, or many people had the same experience of white people just going, “Oh my God, living with a black person?” So here I was at Northwestern, and I was exposed to black radical thought.
There was a vice president for student affairs, Jack Hinz, who had been responsible for recruiting a lot of Jewish students and black students to Northwestern. Many of the black students were from the West and South sides of Chicago and had grown up in predominantly black environments, so they had a very different perspective on race than I did. So over time, going to all the meetings, I was convinced that we needed to do something to improve the lot of black students at Northwestern, to get a Black Studies department and more. At this time, I was a freshman—I was not a leader, but I went into the bursar’s office. When I got there, I called my parents and said, “Guess where I am?” As you might imagine, they were not amused. They said, “Get out of there,” and I did leave. The leaders said you shouldn’t be in here if this is going to cause you a problem, because my parents said we’ll cut off your money. Northwestern cost an exorbitant $1,800 per year, which is just laughable now. After I left the office, I was out there gathering blankets and thought, no, I need to be in there. So, I went inside the office and that’s when I became independent.
Ella Harris Perin: And then, can you tell me a little bit about the shift from being in predominantly white spaces, and then finding this black community and this organizing community. How did that grow into becoming a student leader at the university?
Eva Paterson: In high school, I was in Student Council and all the clubs, as most people were at Northwestern, so I was in the Student Senate, and then a bunch of us ran to run the student government my junior year. So here I was, student body president in 1970 and about one month after I was elected, the students were killed at Kent State and Jackson State. Many student body presidents all went to Washington, DC to figure out what we wanted to do nationally. When I came back to Northwestern from DC, there were rallies on Deering Meadow with about 5,000 students every day. We had a student strike which I led, and we shut University down for about five days. I was part of a group of people that stopped a building from being burned down. We let people talk who were in favor of the war, but mainly people were anti-war. Running for office, I went around and got to know a lot of people and gained trust. That’s kind of how it happened.
I can’t give up, and I’ve seen a lot of things. When I was born, separate but equal was the law in Texas. Women couldn’t sign their own contracts. They couldn’t take out loans on their own. I’ve seen a lot of change over time. I think most Americans are decent. I don’t know how we’re going to undo what Trump is doing.
Ella Harris Perin: Definitely. I’m just personally curious, how did you stop a building from being burned down? What was that situation?
Eva Paterson: So, there’s something called ROTC, or Reserve Officers Training Corps, which students could join as a precursor to going into the military. ROTC was seen as a pro-war institution, housed in a building called Lunt Hall, and some of the more radical students went over to burn the building down. What I said in response doesn’t make any sense, but it worked. I said, “Well, those torches remind me of other times,” referring to torches in the south and the Ku Klux Klan, and they didn’t burn the building down. Years later, I was speaking at an alumni event in San Francisco, and a woman came up to me and said, “You saved my career because I was a math major, and I don’t know what would have happened had that building burned to the ground.” It would have very dramatically changed how things went at Northwestern because we were peaceful. It seems ludicrous to casually say that I stopped a building from being burned down, but that truly happened.
Ella Harris Perin: That’s a very powerful parallel to draw. You touched on this briefly, but one of my next questions was going to be about the decision to continue with on campus organizing even though your family was not supportive. I feel like it’s a very commonly felt struggle for youth activists, especially in college. Being dependent on your family, financially or otherwise, is a factor in decision making about your personal future, which, for many, interferes with activist involvement and risk taking. I’m wondering how you navigated that complication, and how you made the decision to keep organizing on campus and putting yourself at risk in that way.
Eva Paterson: Well, it’s even more complicated because my father had served in Vietnam my senior year of high school, so when he came back in the summer, I actually supported the war. I was arguing with students about it waiting to get dinner in the dining hall line and people left to go work for Eugene McCarthy. I finally turned against the war when Robert F. Kennedy senior came out against the war. But before, I said to my fellow students that we have to support the war because the President says it’s the right thing to do, and we have to do what the President says, which is astounding now to think that that’s what I said.
Now, raising $1,800 to cover my expenses is very different from the amount of money you would have to raise now to cover your tuition. How can students do that? I know students come out with just horrible debt, and I think it must be difficult for students to defy their parents and be able to stay in school. That’s a real problem for current students.
Ella Harris Perin: Yeah, that’s a big decision. I know many people are making that decision now, but the impact is definitely very different. I’ll come back to that in a bit and ask you how you’ve noticed student organizing change over the years. But I have one more personal question for you first. After your involvement on campus, your activism seemed to grow and evolve with your life, which is something that I’ve been thinking a lot about as I’m thinking about graduating, my future, and how I want to stay involved. For you, that was law school and becoming a civil rights attorney.
So, as you built your life and made decisions about your future, how did your understanding of justice and change evolve over time? Further, I’m wondering if there have been times when you’ve had to unlearn or rethink something from your earlier activist days as an adult with different knowledge.
Eva Paterson: Well, let me just tell you what comes to mind. When you’re young, you have a sense of being invincible and immortal. You also have the ability to take more chances because you’re not working, although now with Trump coming after activists… Well, Nixon had an enemies list. There have always been authoritarians who don’t like dissent. But I think when you’re young and in college, you have more time and more psychic ability to protest injustice, and so I think it’s a wonderful time of life. You’re a little bit freer, you don’t have to pay bills, you don’t have a family, you don’t have a job to lose. I think that is a wonderful time of life to resist. I have been very fortunate in that I’ve always been able to have a job that allows me to try to make the world better. I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of great teams of people, through litigation or working on initiatives in the California political system or helping create a shelter for women in Oakland. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to fight for justice.
As for your question about unlearning things, this circles back to the movie that I’m making. As a young person, I thought if you made a good case in federal court, you could win, and that there would be judges who would be impartial and follow the law. But, in 1971 there was a move to appoint judges who, to put it plainly, would come up with certain outcomes. That is, the President is above the law. A woman doesn’t have a right to choose. We don’t want to enforce the Voting Rights Act. We don’t want to try to minimize the harm of racism—people were appointed to the bench to undo the goals of the Civil Rights Movement. I thought if you just argued, you could win, and that is not the case, and it certainly is not the case now. It’s very heartbreaking.
They had a plan, and they executed it. I mean, think about Bush versus Gore. That decision basically stole the election from Al Gore. My friends who are constitutional law professors say that you can’t even teach that case because it makes no sense. They knew it was a coup, and that gave you Justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts, which led to the decimation of the Voting Rights Act and the Citizens United case which led to all this money flowing into elections. And Justices Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett all worked for George Bush in that litigation, which is fascinating.
That’s one thing we want to talk about in this movie: this is not an accident. There’s a wonderful comedian, W. Kamau Bell who said, when in dialogue about things feeling hard right now, he has to think about what Harriet Tubman would be saying to us. Like, “you think it’s hard now? Think about getting enslaved people out of the South up to the North.” So, it’s always been hard, and we have to just keep fighting, and it’s hard. And we can’t give up. Things look grim right now, but you just keep fighting.
Ella Harris Perin: Absolutely. I mean, that’s a big one. It’s always been hard. I think it’s easy to think about how this is an unprecedented time, and this has never happened before, and there are a lot of things that make it feel that way. But I think talking with people who have done this for a long time is very grounding, because people have been doing this forever.
Eva Paterson: Evil, I think, is something that’s always going to be in the world, and you’ve got to fight back. And we always do.
Ella Harris Perin: Yes, absolutely. I have just one final question for you, and you can take this in any direction. What gives you hope in this current generation of activists, and what advice might you have for young, engaged people who are looking to do good work for the world?
Eva Paterson: A couple things. A lot of young people came out to vote for Zohran for the mayor of New York. His progressive views really energized a lot of people. I think that’s very hopeful, that with new, progressive ways of looking at things, you can motivate young people. I also think we’ve got to figure out… How can I say this? I believe that not all people who voted for Trump are evil. We can’t demonize all the Trump voters, and people change—like I supported the war when I entered college. Enough people talked to me, argued with me, and I ultimately changed my position. We’ve got to figure out how to get those people who may not be fascist, to come back to the right side. Things that give me hope… I read a poll that said 79% of Americans are now in favor of immigration. I think most people are decent and kind, but I think Trump is not, and he clearly controls the Republican Party and controls by fear, and by appealing to greed.
I can’t give up, and I’ve seen a lot of things. When I was born, separate but equal was the law in Texas. Women couldn’t sign their own contracts. They couldn’t take out loans on their own. I’ve seen a lot of change over time. I think most Americans are decent. I don’t know how we’re going to undo what Trump is doing. I mean, he’s only been in office since January. I don’t know how the change is going to happen, but I know it will. What I do is share as much information as possible. I’m basically an optimist, but one of my best friends has bought a home in France. She had biracial grandchildren, and she’s afraid of what might be happening in this country. She said that in Nazi Germany, the people who were optimists are dead, and the people who got out of Nazi Germany are living here. So they say, I can go stay there if things get bad enough. I don’t want to, and I’m still an optimist.
Ella Harris Perin: Do you have any advice that you would give to engaged young people who will read and listen to this?
Eva Paterson: Get as much information as you can. Take action. Don’t give in to Trump. Speak out. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be stupid. But don’t be afraid. There are many, many people around the country doing positive things. Make sure you vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, make your opinions heard. Just don’t give up. Don’t give up. Just keep fighting. Because I think we can win. I don’t know what a win is going to look like. But I think most people in this country and in the world are good, and they don’t like what Trump is doing. He has a significant group of people who are racist and xenophobic, who like what’s happening, but I do not believe they are the majority.
Ella Harris Perin: Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for making time to speak with me. This has been incredible, and I’m so happy that I get to personally hear your experience and your thoughts and opinions, and also, I get to share them. I’m very thankful.
Eva Paterson: Keep up the good work, sister.
Image credit: Gary Todd, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
