The following accounts of changes at Williams College, resulting from the Occupation of Hopkins Hall in 1969, are drawn from a student-authored research paper titled, BLACK WILLIAMS, dated May 1974.  The paper was given to Dan Perkins '78 by Mike Darden '74, one of the paper's authors.

BLACK WILLIAMS, Pg. 19-21

As to what was accomplished by the occupation, one can say that the school realized that it had to further act upon issues it long before knew existed in terms of black students on the campus.  Those students who risked their educational careers by instigating and participating in the demonstration were the ones who brought the issues to the forefront; they were the students who initiated and saw most of the needs for blacks at Williams resolved.

Though a residential house for blacks was opposed by the school, a section of Mears House, previously the Teta Delta Chi fraternity house, was reserved for a black cultural center.  No provisions for residing in the house were made.  Larger numbers of black men and, later, black women entered the freshman classes.  Black faculty members increased.  A black administrator was hired in the admissions department.  Black professors in the areas of English, History and Political Science were hired for either temporary or permanent positions.  Finances were granted to the WAAS (Williams Afro-American Society) on a yearly basis through which existed cultural activities, speakers and entertainment requested by the majority of the group's members.  A viable Afro American Studies Program was instituted.

Despite the benefit of the occupation, Preston Washington commented that "it was only short lived in terms of opening the campus up to new ideas and greater understanding."  White racism was not dissolved as a result of the demonstration by any means.  Blacks, for example, were requested not to eat in the Mark Hopkins dining hall by the members of that house.  Significant numbers of whites resented the existence of a segregated black organization.  They remain to do so today.