Third World Liberation Front

In 1968, the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), a coalition of the Black Students Union, the Latin American Students Organization, the Pilipino American Collegiate Endeavor (PACE) the Filipino-American Students Organization, the Asian American Political Alliance, and El Renacimiento, a Mexican-American student organization, formed at San Francisco State University (SFSU) to call for campus reform. Another Third World Liberation Front formed at University of California, Berkeley in January 1969. These coalitions initiated and sustained the longest student strikes in US history.

Student actions began in June of the 1967-1968 school year, when students protest administration’s practice of providing students’ academic standing to the Selective Service Office in June 1967. When students returned from summer break, tensions escalated. On 6 November 1967, James Vasko, Gater editor, was assaulted by black students who were offended by the content and tone of one of his articles. Students began to protest both the charges the students were facing and the Vietnam war. As a result of the campus unrest, Dr. John Summerskill, the president of the college, resigned in February 1968, effective in September. On March 23, 1968, the twLF occupied the YMCA office on campus and moved the YMCA out. Student actions continued throughout May, calling for an end to Air-Force ROTC on campus, the need for programs to admit 400 students from the ghetto in the fall semester, and the hiring of nine minority faculty members to help the minority students. 26 people were arrested.

In June 1968, Dr. Robert Smith was hired to replace Summerskill as the President of San Francisco College. In the following September, George Mason Murray, a graduate student in English and Black Panther Minister of Education, was hired as a teaching assistant to teach special introductory English classes for 400 special students admitted to the college. President Smith also announced the creation of a Black Studies Department and named Professor of Sociology, Dr. Nathan Hare, Acting Chair. At the end of the month, California State College Trustees voted to ask President Smith to reassign George Murray to a non-teaching position after he reportedly made controversial statements at Fresno State College and at San Francisco State. President Smith refused.

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