Changing Academia Forever

"The primary strength of Changing Academia Forever is that its interviewees and authors, who were directly involved in the 1968 strike, are able to give a longitudinal perspective to recount how the movement developed and changed over time. Its explanatory style makes it suitable as a resource for Black student activists as they make meaning of their own experiences and transformations. The book’s qualitative approach allows the reader to appreciate the particularities and complexities of the San Francisco State movement. The San Francisco State strike is not representative of the cascade of Black student movements that it sparked across the country in the 1960s and 1970s and that it continues to inspire today. Yet, the authors have presented a methodological approach to investigating Black student movements that can provide deeper levels of insight that are useful and instructive not only for scholars of Black student movements, but for leaders of Black student movements as well."

Serie McDougal, III, California State University, Review excerpt from Journal of Black Studies, March 2020

"Changing Academia Forever explains how we in the Black Student Union were able to fundamentally change universities in America. We organized a strike, we worked closely with our communities, and we made a coalition with students of every racial group. This is the kind of organizing we need now to save humanity and the planet."

Danny Glover, American actor, film director, and political activist

"Told in the voices of those who made it happen, Changing Academia Forever provides a vivid and fascinating account of a campaign to bring racial equity to college campuses."

Julia Sass Rubin, Associate Professor, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University

“What Epstein and Stringer have accomplished with Changing Academia Forever in narrating the San Francisco State College strike of 1968 provides us all an opportunity to cherish, reflect upon, and learn from this seminal moment in organizing and coalition building history. With so many consequential issues impacting humankind in these days and times, this book is timely and urgent.”

Keith E. Benson, Ed.D., President of the Camden, New Jersey teachers union

"[Changing Academia Forever] answers some questions that contemporary historians have raised. Why did the longest and most successful strike occur at a little-known California college? How was it possible to win most of the 15 demands made by the BSU and other Third World students on a campus where only 4 percent of the students were Black. How were so many white students engaged in a campaign which had Black empowerment at its core? How were the strong alliances with Latino, Asian and indigenous organizations created? How did the faculty react? What is the significance for the modern-day movement? Among the book’s intriguing conclusions is the idea that many of today’s movements could use more of the disciplined approach adopted by the BSU leaders. They studied the revolutions of the period and adopted a centralized leadership which engaged in hours of debate concluding with unified action at the end of the debate.

Gay Plair Cobb for Post News Group, January 2020

Acknowledgements

1. Introducing the Struggle and the Authors

2. The Vision, the Visionaries, and the Early Years of Struggle

3. Organizing Before the Strike, the Development of Black Studies, and the Stories of Bennie Stewart and Don Smothers

4.  The Demands Are Set, The Strike Begins, and The Story of Terry Collins

5. The Strike Coalition and the Story of Danny Glover

6. What Came After the Strike?

7. Trying to Live by the Black Studies Philosophy

8. Analysis

Kitty Kelly Epstein

Kitty Kelly Epstein is an academic, an author, the host of a radio show, and an urban activist. She taught high school; earned a doctorate at U.C. Berkeley; then taught teachers and graduate students. Kitty led a thousand-person participatory action process for the incoming mayoral administration of Ron Dellums, and then served on his Oakland policy staff. She has worked on successful efforts to diversify the teaching force, prevent the takeover of the Oakland school district, and construct innovative educational programs. She was the winner of the Urban Affairs Association-SAGE Marilyn Gittell Activist Scholar Lecture Series and Award. Kitty has written two books and presented academic papers and workshops in Norway, South Africa, Nicaragua, Jordan, Ethiopia, China, Poland, the Czech Republic, and elsewhere.

Bernard Stringer

Financial analyst and political activist Bernard Stringer is a lifelong advocate of educational empowerment as an instrument for change. A political activist since his student days, he became a member of the nation’s first Black Student Union at San Francisco State College in 1968, and participated in the movement that led to the founding of the first Black Studies Department and School of Ethnic Studies in the country. He received the college’s first Bachelor’s degree in Black Studies in 1970. He later earned a Master’s Degree in Business Management from Golden Gate University in 1980. He has worked as a college classroom teacher, youth counselor, and program planner, and recently retired as an inventory manager/financial analyst for the City of Atlanta. Born in Bogalusa, Louisiana, he grew up in Fresno, California, and was a football player in high school and college. He remains dedicated to the principle of empowerment through education and training, and often speaks to youth groups on the subject. He is presently working on a book about his life and the student activist period of the 1960s. He lives in Atlanta.