San Francisco State on Strike
20 minutes. Archival series, 1969. Thurs., Oct. 9. 7 p.m. Calhoun Hall 100.
Ethnic studies courses are common today, but that hasn't always been the case. In
many ways, multicultural education can be traced back to San Francisco in one of the
most high-profile student actions of the 1960s, Students at San Francisco State went on
strike in early November 1968, resulting in what amounted to a shut-down of the campus
for six months. University president S.I. Hayakawa called in the police, who attacked
students with clubs, injuring more than 80 and arresting more than 700 in an attempt to
restore control of the campus. But the strike didn't end until the school acceded to
student demands and created the first recognized, accredited ethnic studies department
with full-time professors at a U.S. university, pledging to admit hundreds of new black
and third world students and to hire paid, full-time black and other ethnic minority
professors.
This film, shot by the students and their allies, is a classic primary source document of
the 1960s. An especially moving moment comes when the college president attempts to
end a demonstration in the name of the people of California and the demonstrators
shout, “We are the people” over and over. The film is filled with student chants and
songs.
Students at San Francisco State had already founded their own experimental college in
1965, making student-directed education a reality, and the first Black Student Union
(BSU) in the country was organized there in March 1966. Now several ethnic-based
student groups, including the BSU, joined together as the Third World Liberation Front,
with the support of radical Euro-American students in Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS).
In 1968 only 3% of the college’s students were black, having dropped from 12% in 1960.
The students stated that this was the direct result of a tracking system that began in
public school by putting most Euro-American students in the college track and most
students of color as well as students from low-income families in the vocational track.
Student goals included increasing participatory democracy and self-determination in the
admissions and academic credit programs, and they asserted that their demands were
non-negotiable.
Progress in admissions and hiring for the ethnic studies programs they had requested
was not rapid enough for the students, so in March 1968 the Third World Liberation
Front took over the YMCA office at the university. Other sit-ins, teach-ins, rallies, and
marches followed, addressing the issue of the Vietnam War as well as ethnic studies
programs. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in April increased student
distrust of the institutional culture in the United States.
A series of college presidents had resigned, beginning in February 1968, before S. I.
Hayakawa became president. When students walked out of class in November 1968, he
shut down the campus. When it re-opened, he confronted student demonstrators by
ripping the wires out of the speakers in a sound truck at a student rally. By early January
Hayakawa had banned all gatherings on the central campus and limited access for nonstudents. At this point the local teachers’ union joined the strike, demanding removal of
police from the campus, agreement to student requests, and a collective bargaining
contract for such issues as teaching workload. When a San Francisco court ordered
them back to work the next day, they refused.
Students at City College of San Francisco and Oakland City College supported the
struggle, and U.C. Berkeley started their own strike for Black and Ethnic Studies
departments. The mayor of San Francisco appointed a citizen committee to work out an
agreement, which was signed by the San Francisco State protestors and by university
administrators (not including Hayakawa) in March 1969. Although the university did not
give up control over admissions and hiring, most of the demands of the strikers were
met, including the foundation of a School of Ethnic Studies which housed a fully staffed
and funded Black Studies Department. Although the Third World Liberation Front did
not receive the requested funding for the separate departments of Asian, Latino, and
Native American Studies, they and the SDS claimed victory along with the BSU.
Additional Reference:
Rooks, Noliwe M. White Money/Black Power: The Surprising History of African American
Studies and the Crisis of Race in Higher Education. Boston: Beacon, 2006.
This film will be shown in
Celluloid for Social Justice: The Legacy of 1968 in Documentaries
Mini-Film-Series Honoring the 40th Anniversary of California Newsreel;
http://www.newsreel.org consisting of documentaries provided by California
Newsreel
The film series precedes 1968: A Global Perspective -An Interdisciplinary Conference at the University of Texas at Austin
October 10-12, 2008; http://www.1968conf.org