Just a heads up, there's some foul language in this episode.

Fifty years ago, a bitter strike upended one of America's biggest cities.

It was a standoff between workers and bosses, though.

It was a standoff between college students and college administrators.

It was a multi-racial fight, hundreds of students at a mostly white commuter college

in San Francisco, California, refused to go to class until more people of color were admitted.

Strikers were also calling for a radical innovation at the time.

A college of ethnic studies where all students could learn about brown and black communities in the United States.

And I think it's fair to say things got ugly.

They just started beating him and they didn't even bother with him to arrest him.

It wasn't because he wasn't doing anything. They just left him to lie in the corner here.

You can see his blood.

The police were angry that the white students would even support us.

Everybody was under attack.

I just saw brutality I never want to see again.

I spent my 19th birthday in jail.

Offer what? Black studies, ethnic studies?

This is Code Switch. I'm Gene Demby.

And I'm Shireen Marisol Maraji.

And a lot of our listeners have probably taken an ethnic studies class in college.

They look different everywhere, but they're usually a deep dive into the history, sociology, and literature about all the people usually relegated to a single chapter in a high school history book.

If that, right? Like sometimes just a few paragraphs, a few chapters apart.

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