Last week we brought you a show about the New Haven’s Black Panther trials and the 1970 May Day rally, fifty years ago now this month, when tens of thousands of protestors gathered on the New Haven Green and the campus of Yale University--in  support of Black Panther Party leaders Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins, who were on trial in New Haven. Many New Haven residents feared violence would break out during the May Day protests. And yet on that day, New Haven remained relatively peaceful.

On Yale’s campus, black student leaders played a critical role in making sure that peace held. In this Where We Live Extra, we wanted to share a conversation with one of those student leaders, Ralph Dawson, a member of the Yale Class of 1971 and the moderator of the Black Student Alliance at Yale (BSAY) at the time. Connecticut Public Radio spoke to Dawson about his recollections of the weeks leading up to May 1, 1970.