The Long, Bloody Strike For Ethnic Studies

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2020

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The largest public university system in the country, the Cal State system, just announced a new graduation requirement: students must take an ethnic studies or social justice course. But ethnic studies might not even exist if it weren't for some students at a small commuter college in San Francisco. Fifty years ago, they went on strike — and while their bloody, bitter standoff has been largely forgotten, it forever changed higher education in the United States.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Fifty years ago, a bitter strike upended one of America's biggest cities.
0:05.0	It wasn't a standoff between workers and bosses though.
0:08.0	It was a standoff between college students and college administrators.
0:17.0	It was a multi-racial fight.
0:19.0	Hundreds of students at a mostly white commuter college in San Francisco, California
0:24.0	refused to go to class until more people of color were admitted.
0:29.0	Strikers were also calling for a radical innovation at the time.
0:33.0	A college of ethnic studies where all students could learn about brown and black communities in the United States.
0:39.0	And I think it's fair to say things got ugly.
0:44.0	They just started beating him and they didn't even bother with him to arrest him.
0:48.0	He wasn't because he wasn't doing anything. They just left him to lie in the corner here.
0:51.0	You can see his blood.
0:53.0	The police were angry that the white students would even support us.
0:57.0	Everybody was under attack.
0:59.0	I just saw brutality. I never want to see again.
1:02.0	I spent my 19th birthday in jail.
1:05.0	All for what? Black studies, ethnic studies?
1:08.0	I'm Jean Demby.
1:10.0	I'm Shireen Marisol Maraji and this is Code Switch.
1:13.0	From NPR.
1:15.0	Big news on our beat, Jean.
1:17.0	If you attend the largest public university system in the country, the Cal State system here in California,
	...

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