A Black Student Union leader addresses a crowd of protesters in December 1968.access point hide title
switch tracks
access point
A Black Student Union leader addresses a crowd of protesters in December 1968.
access point
Ethnic studies are now an accepted part of academia. Many, if not most, college students have taken a course or two. But 50 years ago it was considered radical to study the history and culture of non-white western people. Then came the longest student strike in US history at San Francisco State College, which changed everything.
The groundwork for the strike had been laid a few years earlier when black students organized to push for a black studies department and the admission of more black students.
One of those organizers, Jimmy Garrett, was older and had worked in the Southern civil rights movement. He met a student named Jerry Varnado at a Black Student Union meeting, and the two helped bring together several Black groups on campus in the first Black Student Union.
organize change
BSU launched a two-pronged effort: lobbying the school to admit more black students, and convincing parents of black high school students to send their children to SF State (now San Francisco State University).
The administration responded by promising to give a little over 400 places to black students one semester and a few hundred more the next.
When Asian and Latino students heard about this deal, they wanted a similar deal. But the administration told them they had to ask black students to share some of their pocket money.
Varnado and Garrett said no. His stance, Varnado recalls, was, “We're not in a position to give anything away. Everyone has to do their part here, you have to fight!”
The BSU leaders suggested that the many ethnic groups unite among themselves and with the BSU to fight together against the government.
Jimmy Garrett (left) and Jerry Varnado helped organize the nation's first black fraternity in the state of San Francisco.Shereen Marisol Meraji/NPR hide title
switch tracks
Shereen Marisol Meraji/NPR
Jimmy Garrett (left) and Jerry Varnado helped organize the nation's first black fraternity in the state of San Francisco.
Shereen Marisol Meraji/NPR
Strength in numbers
The new group called itself the Third World Liberation Front. It was "a vehicle for politicizing black students," says SFSU historian Jason Ferreira, who is writing a book on the strike. "Chicanos, Asian Americans, were dealing with the same problems that black students were struggling with a few years earlier".
The black consciousness achieved by BSU members gradually seeped into students of other ethnicities, many of whom had conservative immigrant parents. For Latin American and Asian students, assimilation was the goal. "They ran around trying to be white... looked in the mirror and wished they were different," says Ferreira.
At the same time, the anti-war movement gained momentum. There have been weekly demonstrations at many universities against American involvement in Southeast Asia. The Black Panthers protested police brutality in the city's black communities; it was a turbulent time.
One of the most prominent organizers on the San Francisco State campus was George Murray, a popular graduate student who taught English to freshmen. Murray took a second job as Secretary of Education for the Black Panther Party. He was staunchly opposed to Vietnam, and his politics suspended him from campus in 1968. And that was it. "The strike has started," Varnado said.
KQED Youtube
On November 6, 1968, members of the BSU and the Third World Liberation Front invaded the campus. About 400 students gathered outside the administration building to demand Murray's reinstatement. They stayed away from class, and more students joined them every day.
The police were called to quell the demonstrations and disperse the protesters. They pulverized maces and brandished sticks. The protests grew.
"It was like this day after day," Varnado recalls, "atI've been attacked."
A new President takes office
A few weeks after the strike began, SF President Robert Smith resigned. His successor was S.I. Hayakawa, a cheerful and confident semantics professor who would be remembered for his no-holds-barred tactics and trademark: a hand-woven, multicolored tam o'shanter.
Hayakawa was born in Canada to Japanese parents. He became an American citizen after his family immigrated to the United States and was a Democrat early in his adult life (his first vote was for Adlai Stevenson in 1956).
After the strike, he became a Republican (and eventually a US Senator).
Hayakawa famously got into a speaker truck and ripped off the wires from the speakers, which the students used to amplify their demands. He had the support of Governor Ronald Reagan, who was fighting his own struggles with Berkeley students over free speech, and the San Francisco Police Commissioner.
But reports of students being beaten by uniformed police officers circulated, and the students were soon joined by outraged teachers and members of some of the city's black communities.
Lisa Rae Gutiérrez Guzmán was arrested in 1968 for going on strike at SFSU. She pleaded guilty and ended up spending her 19th birthday in prison.Shereen Marisol Meraji/NPR hide title
switch tracks
Shereen Marisol Meraji/NPR
Lisa Rae Gutiérrez Guzmán was arrested in 1968 for going on strike at SFSU. She pleaded guilty and ended up spending her 19th birthday in prison.
Shereen Marisol Meraji/NPR
Student Laureen Chew worked in the library and remembers going to one of the demonstrations. "I was on the sidelines of this huge [crowd], hundreds of people," when, he says, the mounted police showed up.
"Some people I know were killed with bayonets, their heads smashed in, blood everywhere." chew (whostarted teachingAsian American Studies at SFSU) was arrested that day, and her biggest concern: what her mother would think.
Lisa Rae Gutiérrez Guzmán was also arrested on the same day. "My father had to pick me up with a guarantor," she recalls with a laugh. He recalls the man's dictum: "Don't die in jail, call Barrish on bail!" Guzmán was charged with three counts and said she ended up serving 30 days in jail.
"And that was really traumatic because I spent my 19th birthday in prison."
Organizer Varnado spent a year in prison, but he's philosophical: "Other people spent more."
Historian Ferreira says that many people have no idea about the sacrifice these activists made: “People served time. the police say, 'We have bullets with your name on them.'”
Was it worth?
The strike ended on March 20, 1969. The administration established a faculty of folklore in response to student demands. The administration also agreed to accept virtually all black students for the fall 1969 semester.
And the striking studentsThose onesMake a Lasting Impact: Eventually, the founding of a College of Ethnic Studies by the State of San Francisco spawned similar departments across the country.