San Francisco State University is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the student-led strike that brought about the creation of the College of Ethnic Studies.
In the early 1950s, Dr. Joseph White lived in the Fillmore District in San Francisco and attended San Francisco State College, now called San Francisco State University. His life was relatively simple; he took the number 22 bus to school, hung out with friends in jazz clubs, and studied courses in psychology. But something was missing.
“Now, when I was an undergraduate student at SFSU, Black folks were invisible in the curriculum,” says White. “They were invisible in the administration and invisible in the faculty. And the same was true for when I was there for the master’s program, so I never had a Black teacher in all of my higher education.”
Fast-forward to 1968, when a new generation of students walked the SFSU campus, and White was the dean of undergraduate studies. The political and cultural climate in the United States was at its boiling point. There was the Vietnam War, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy. The students were not only fueled with the desire to end the social and political injustice of their time, but also to gain equal rights to a college education.
T heir demands for the admittance and enrollment of more students of color, the hiring of more minority faculty members and the creation of a School of Ethnic Studies resulted in a formation of alliances among racial and ethnic groups, mainly the Black Student Union and the Third World Liberation Front. Their combined efforts made it possible for their voices to ring loud and clear — for five long, tumultuous months.
From Nov. 6, 1968 to March 21, 1969, the students led a strike that made an enormous impact on the higher education system in the United States and resulted in SFSU’s becoming the first and only university to establish a School of Ethnic Studies, now called the College of Ethnic Studies.
