Do You Know the Third World Liberation Front?

A Black Students Union leader addresses a crowd of demonstrators in December 1968. AP

A coalition of Latino, black, Asian, and Native American College students formed the Third World Liberation Front in the Bay Area. It was founded in 1968. These students were angry after working for admission and paying expensive tuition. There was little or no connection between their classroom instruction and their experiences or communities. They chose their name in order to draw parallels between marginalized American communities and global resistance to imperialism.

When San Francisco State parted with several of its few professors of color, student groups called for strikes in savings accounts buildings. The students demanded equitable admissions, more faculty of color, and the removal of armed forces recruiters from campus.

Here’s the List of the Demands

1. That a school of Ethnic Studies for the ethnic groups involved in the Third World be set up with the students in each particular ethnic organization having the authority and control of the hiring and retention of any faculty member, director and administrator, as well as the curriculum in a specific area study.
2. That fifty (50) faculty positions be appropriated to the School of Ethnic Studies, 20 of which would be for the Black Studies Program.
3. That in the Spring Semester, the college…