‘Seven Days of 1961’: Activists recall ‘read-in’ at public libraryOn March 27, 1961, nine Black college students staged a “read-in” at the Jackson, Mississippi, public library designated for white patrons.Jasper Colt, USA TODAYIn the fall of 1968, students at San Francisco State University went on strike, trading their classrooms for picket lines and demanding a university where, for the first time, students of color could see themselves in the curriculums.“On strike! Shut it down!” students yelled as they marched by the thousands. Speakers raised their fists. Reporters from Esquire Magazine to The New York Times swarmed the campus.“The campus was buzzing,” said James “Jimmy” Garrett, a student activist at SF State from 1966 to 1968. “It was being transformed within its own self.”The strike lasted from November 1968 to March 1969 after SF State students drafted 15 demands, among them a school of “Third World” or ethnic studies, a Black studies department and degree, and more students and faculty of color. The movement, which united students across racial groups, was led by the first-ever Black student union and another group whose name still rests on a plaque at SF State’s ethnic studies building: the Third World Liberation Front.The movement spread not only to nearby campuses, including University of California, Berkeley, but also across the country as students demanded curriculum changes.Today, the battleground has moved to the K-12 level, where the echoes of this movement in the 1960s and ’70s can be heard in the rallying cries of student activists as they push for equitable curriculums and oppose an onslaught of critical race theory bans limiting how teachers can discuss race in classrooms.Many young activists who spoke to USA TODAY said they feel they are walking in the footsteps of the student activists before them.“Just knowing that I am contributing to a continuation of their legacy is empowering,” said Okalani Dawkins, a senior at Mission Vista High School in Oceanside, California. “The work that we do evolves with every year and every generation. It builds on history.”
‘A surge in student activism’
When sisters Ekene and Nene Okolo of West View High School in San Diego created the Instagram account Black in PUSD to raise awareness of racism in their community, they received almost 1,000 submissions from people of color sharing their experiences with racism.Since then, Poway Unified School District hired more Black teachers and a vice principal, created equity task forces, and brought ethnic studies courses to every high school.Students across the country have asked the sisters for tips on how to duplicate their efforts, said Nene Okolo, 20. They are facing challenges, from immovable school boards to angry parents labeling any teaching of race as critical race theory to nervous principals hesitant to make waves.Mina Anochie, 20, organizes at her former high school, Riverside Preparatory in Oro Grande, California, through Diversify Our Narrative, a student-led nationwide initiative to diversify curriculums. Most students at the school are Black and brown, “but they still weren’t teaching us our history,” she said.In September, she made that argument to the school board, and in response it started an after-school equity book club. But she believes curriculum changes at the K-12 level are needed to make a difference.“Not everyone decides to go to college, so we want to make sure (students) leave high school with this knowledge and that it’s accessible,” she said. “K-12 is the space where we need to do this work.”CRT AND HISTORY: Critical race theory debate recalls Ebonics, LGBTQ, Spanish language controversiesAt Central York High School in Pennsylvania, students last year organized protests and spoke at board meetings after the school district banned books, documentaries, videos and resources on race and equity.“They said these books made parents and students uncomfortable, but really it was making white parents and students feel uncomfortable,” said Christina Ellis, 17, vice president of the school’s Panther Anti-Racist Student Union. “No one asked how it made anyone else feel.”Renee Ellis, 16, said most students didn’t know what school board meetings were before now.“It has been a surge in student activism,” said Ellis, 16, PARU’s director of communications. “Now, all over there are kids who are standing up against their school districts.”In moments where they feel ignored, she said they remember a conversation their team recently had with Bernice King, a celebrated civil rights activist and youngest child of Martin Luther King Jr.“She told us that the struggle is never-ending,” she said. “There’s always a struggle.”’Solidarity is the answer’: Amid a rise in hate crimes, Black and Asian Americans are standing together
‘They were going to crush this movement’
Decades ago, police officers in full riot gear flooded SF State.The bloodiest day of the strike came in January 1969 when hundreds of officers surrounded unarmed students to “crush this movement by violence,” said Garrett, a veteran activist who helped create the first Black student union, or BSU. Students were beaten with rifles. Many were arrested and some permanently maimed, he said. “They were going to crush this movement, turn it to dust,” Garrett said.Police also had a heavy presence at Berkeley, said Amy Sueyoshi, a historian and dean of SF State’s College of Ethnic Studies. Garrett said protesters knew there would be “some reaction from white supremacy” but never expected the extent of the violence.“It almost ended us,” Garrett said, adding that they learned from that day by rotating spokespeople, emphasizing decentralized leadership and planning “escape hatches” and safe houses. Many of the movement’s leaders, including Garrett, were arrested around that time, and protesters raised money for bail.Student activists also leaned into other methods of protest, including Experimental Colleges, where students taught one another about their histories and experiences. They did outreach to communities of color surrounding the campus. And they traveled from campus to campus encouraging universities to launch similar efforts.Their work paid off.“Black studies programs exploded” in the 1970s, Garrett said. Students of color began flooding onto predominantly white campuses and demanding change. SF State and Berkeley created their own ethnic studies departments, among other changes, though not all of each movement’s demands were met. And they began “seeing themselves at the center of the narrative.”“We had clearly knocked this huge system off-kilter, and they were readjusting,” Garrett said. “There was movement.”The story of the Bay Area reverberated across the country, serving as a model for other universities in the 1970s and beyond, Sueyoshi said.
Similar pushback, decades later
Charles Henry, a Berkeley professor, remembers hearing about SF State’s movement when he was a student at Denison University in Ohio. Inspired, he helped create a BSU and Experimental College at Denison.Henry said recent student protests in response to critical race theory bans brings back memories of the Third World Liberation Front and BSU’s effort.”Now K-12 is the next battlefront in the culture wars and the fight for more inclusive teaching of history and more inclusive curriculums,” Henry said, adding that many of the same arguments against the teaching of race today are the same as the teaching of ethnic studies when he was in college.“Just like before, they’re saying we want to turn everyone into militants, that we want to throw out Western civilizations and replace it with African studies, that it’s at the expense of white people, when none of that has ever been true,” he said. “So I think we’re better prepared for those arguments having had this discussion before.”A CRITICAL TIME: Small handful of educators losing jobs for lessons linked to race, not CRTDozens of states have introduced legislation restricting how educators teach about racism as parents claim such lessons create harsh learning environments for white children. Yet experts say the decades-old legal framework is not taught in K-12 schools nationwide and instead has become a demonized catchall phrase for any teaching of race and equity.In many ways, white reaction against the teaching of race today may be tied to the progress the Third World Liberation Front helped create in the ’60s and ’70s, said Berkeley sociology professor Troy Duster, who joined the faculty in the 1960s.“Again, we’re at a point in this debate when the white backlash against the transformation of American society is strong and real,” he said. “The very bold successes of the Third World Liberation Front from college students years ago is generating a pushback among whites who feel now pushed aside.”HISTORY OF PROTEST: Police violence ‘enforced white supremacy’ in 1960s. Similar tactics are still used.
Passing the torch
Dawkins, 17, a communications director for Diversify Our Narrative, said she feels as if she is walking in the footsteps of those before her.”Acknowledging the strides that student activists have made in the past in order for us to be able to do this work, it makes this work feel a lot more fulfilling and our goals feel more possible,” she said.Anochie, who is studying public affairs at UCLA, took a class on social movements and nonviolence, where she learned about the history of the fight for ethnic studies. She took notes on the tactics advocates used.“They teach us to make our voices heard, even if that means spamming people again and again like I did with my school board,” Anochie said. “They teach us to seek resources, ask questions and not be afraid to be the first one to do it. Sometimes it means standing alone.”Ekene and Nene Okolo spent their summer working on a new project: Ethnucation, a website of resources to teach people about ethnic studies. One section of the website, titled, “What is Ethnic Studies,” pays homage to the initial struggle for ethnic studies.“We’re using the knowledge they gave us, acknowledging their footsteps and seeing their path,” Ekene said. “But we’re also creating our own path.”Zines’ roots in marginalized communities: Zine-makers worry those origins are being forgotten.Garrett, 79, said he is proud to see young people “confront and challenge white supremacy both in the streets and in the intellectual arenas, in the school board meetings, the city council, in the workplace.”“I’m giving up the heart to the young people,” he said, smiling. “I give them all my support. I’m pleased by both their successes and their failures. I don’t expect them to be perfect, just as I didn’t expect myself to be perfect. But I’m proud. How can I be anything other than proud?”Contact News Now Reporter Christine Fernando at cfernando@usatoday.com or follow her on Twitter at @christinetfern.