This is our glass. On this American life, one thing we like is a good mystery. Sometimes about really big things, but most times, the little mysteries are the best. Our lost and found is currently filled with pants. I don't know. I've never seen this happen. This is true. Mysteries have every size, each week, this American life. Wherever you get your podcasts. What's good is Gene Demby, and somehow, we are almost at the end of 2025. We did it, y'all. We did it. But not gonna lie, it's been a pretty challenging, that's one word for it. Challenging year for NPR and local stations. But despite the loss of federal funding for public media and despite the attacks on the free press everywhere, we are still here for you. We're still exercising our first amendment rights, and with your support at NPR and at Coatswitch, we're planning to stick around. We're not gonna wear. We're gonna keep bringing you the independent, fearless reporting and conversations you count on us for. If you're already an NPR plus supporter, we are so grateful for you. Thank you for rockin' with us. If not, I mean, which way of forward? Please join the community of public radio supporters right now for the end of the year at plus.mpr.org. Sign up for NPR Plus, unbox a bunch of perks like bonus episodes, and more from across NPR's big spectrum of podcasts, plus you get to feel good about supporting public media while you listen. So end the year on a high note and invest in a public service that matters to you. Visit plus.mpr.org today. And thank you. Just to heads up, there's some salty language in this episode, including some racial slurs. Alright, on to the show. Hey, everyone. You're listening to Coatswitch, the show about race and identity from NPR. I'm Jeanne Parker. And I'm Jeanne Demby. Jeanne? It's been a heck of a year. Heck, uh, she says what understatement. President Trump's National Guard deployments have been blurring the lines between violating the ceasefire agreement in Gaza and Russia's war against Ukraine. We'll protect the status for then as a way we'll make it sex-fender, jeopardy, a fire that have devastated park school shooting, going disruptions and federal front tariffs, and jewel highs to the loop on transgender minors. Six, seven, woof. And there's almost like a real-time manipulation of history that has caused a lot of confusion and unease. Like, do you see when the National Park Service deleted a photo and quotation from Harriet Tubman? I did not see that, but story checks out. It was an informational web page about the underground railroad. Get this woke freedom nonsense out of here, Harriet. I mean, bye, but I mean, then a few months later, they put it back. And with all this chaos in mind, Jeanne and I thought we might carry the load and spend a few weeks revisiting some stories about the history of this country that have really shaped where we are today. We're calling it Code Switch History Class. Yep, yep. We are highlighting stories from our archive that we feel just as much relevance now as they did when those episodes first dropped. Case in point, there's a story you guys did before my time on the show about the student strikes in 1968 that amongst other things basically created the academic disciplines that we call ethnic studies. Oh, yeah, that was. And is the longest student strike in history of the United States? It lasted like 115 days. It's an episode that feels particularly resonant today with ethnic studies programs once again under threat. And the Trump administration having cut funding for public programs that include words like diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, along with other select buzzwords. Not to mention the fact that since January, the White House has filed lawsuits or started investigations into dozens of colleges and universities and frozen billions of dollars in their research funding. And students at many universities have spent years involved in high profile protests at their schools. So the debates over what higher education looks like in this country are not new, and they don't seem to be going anywhere. This episode originally aired back in 2019, around the time of the 50th anniversary of those strikes, you're going to hear my voice in the voice of my former co-host, Shireen Marasal Miraji. Public media count on your support to ensure that the reporting and programs you depend on thrive. Make a recurring donation today to get special access to more than 20 NPR podcasts, perks like sponsor-free listening, bonus episodes, early access, and more. So start supporting what you love today at plus dot NPR dot org. This week on up first, more violence in Minneapolis Democrats say they will block a spending bill in the Senate after another deadly ice shooting. How will Republicans respond? And could the Trump administration rethink its strategy on immigration? Will keep you posted every morning with three stories you need to know to start your day up first. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts. For 47 years, Iranians have lived under a dictatorship many no longer want. Now the country may have reached a breaking point. Iranians have recognized that they need to take matters into their own hands, pushing back against authority. We ask three central questions about how Iran got here and what comes next. Listen to Thurline on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. 50 years ago, a bitter strike upended one of America's biggest cities. It wasn't a standoff between workers and bosses, though. It was a standoff between college students and college administrators. It was a multi-racial fight. Hundreds of students at a mostly white commuter college in San Francisco, California refused to go to class until more people of color were admitted. Strikers were also calling for a radical innovation at the time. A college of ethnic studies where all students could learn about brown and black communities in the United States. And I think it's fair to say things got ugly. They just started beating him and they didn't even bother with him to arrest him. He wasn't doing anything. They just left him to lie in the corner here. You can see his blood. The police were angry that the white students would even support us. Everybody was under attack. I just saw brutality I never want to see again. I spent my 19th birthday in jail. All for what? Black studies, ethnic studies. This is Co-Switch. I'm Jean Demby. I'm Jean Marisol Maraji and a lot of our listeners have probably taken an ethnic studies class in college. They look different everywhere, but they're usually a deep dive into the history, sociology, and literature about all the people usually relegated to a single chapter in a high school history book. If that, right? Sometimes just a few paragraphs, a few chapters apart. Right. And while there are ethnic studies courses everywhere today, what made that possible was this month's long, bloody struggle at my alma mater San Francisco State University back when it was called San Francisco State College. And today, we're talking about what student organizers and activists did there that changed higher education forever. Okay, goodie, goodie, goodie, goodie, goodie. I have a lot of questions for you, Sharon, about the student strike. Like for starters, why does this stuff always happen in the Bay? Like what is it about the Bay? Yeah, every day. And why, in particular, did this student strike pop off? I haven't said this on the podcast recently, but Jean is complicated. You know, what is it? The short answer is it popped off because of the suspension of a grad student named George Murray in the fall of 1968. Murray was teaching intro-English classes to incoming freshmen at San Francisco State. And many of his students were black on a campus that was decidedly very white. Okay. People point to a whole bunch of reasons for why George Murray was suspended, but his stance on the Vietnam War was a big one. Our statement was that the war in Vietnam is racist. It is the war that our crackers like Johnson are using black soldiers and our poor white soldiers and Mexican soldiers as doaps and fools to fight against people of color in Vietnam who have never called black people nigger. Crackers like Johnson. I mean, so he's referring to LBJ, right? That's right. And that audio we're listening to is from a televised press conference. George Murray is rocking an Afro. He's got very dark sunglasses on. And what I haven't told you yet, Jean, is that he was a member of the Black Panther Party, which was founded about two years prior to the San Francisco State Strike across the Bay in Oakland, California. And George Murray is the Black Panther's Minister of Education. Okay. Okay. Here's his story in Jason Fedetta. Summer of 1968, he travels to Cuba, participating in a very famous conference and with a very famous organization called the Organization for the Solidarity of the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America, Ospal. And he basically there gives the Panther analysis, you know, that the struggle of black people is tied to the struggle of all third world peoples. Jason's been researching this strike for years. He's done about 50 oral histories of the people involved and he's writing a book about it. And he told me that George Murray talked about supporting the national liberation front, also known as the Viet Cong. And that got the attention of the Republican governor of California, Ronald Reagan, who I don't know if I have to say, but he was already not a fan of the Black Panther. That's a whole another code switch episode. But anyway, Reagan and the Board of Trustees at San Francisco State, they wanted Murray out. And this press conference we're listening to is George Murray defending that statement he made in Cuba supporting the Viet Cong. We are calling for victory of the national liberation front because of our political stand, which is our right, our constitutional right. We're being attacked by the power structure of this college and the state of California. Okay. So, all these students went on strike because this one dude, this one teacher got fine. From what I understand, that was the final straw, but tension had been building between students of color on campus and the administration for many, many months. And the early agitators were members of the Black Student Union. Hello. I'm Shrine. You didn't see my door, but do you want it like the knocking? No, I've known my one else. I want to have to the bay to speak with some of the original strikers and organizers. That's Jerry Vernardo opening the door to his home in Oakland, California. I'm Jerry Vernardo. And he was there with James Garrett. You used to be called Jimmy Garrett, or sometimes I still am. Jimmy ended up at San Francisco State in the spring of 1966. He had family in the bay, and he was looking for a college to enroll in to avoid the draft, as we know, the Vietnam War is ongoing. He left campus before the strike kicked off, but he was instrumental in organizing the student group that started it, the Black Student Union. I've been involved with the sit-ins and freedom rides, and most of that student movement had come out of historically Black institutions. Question then became, could you do the same thing at predominantly White institutions, which was a kind of a trickling in of more and more Black students? And he told me that he was shocked by the tiny clusters of Black activism that were already at San Francisco State. He figured, you know, he'd have to start his organizing from scratch. But no, there were Black fraternities and sororities, Black Panthers, a Negro Students Association that Jerry Vernardo was a member of. Jerry's originally from Mississippi, but also had family in the bay, and was at San Francisco State on the GI Bill. Jerry, people who knew him trusted him, they didn't know me. He had already been there for several years when I got there in spring of '66. Jimmy and Jerry helped organize these disparate groups into the first Black Student Union in America. The first? Yes. Ever? So he like grabbed all these groups and created like a Negro Voltron and no one had ever done this before. They would have said Black Voltron. Oh, yeah, you're right. Sorry, oldest. And they rallied members of the Black Student Union around this idea of using their education to not only help better their circumstances, but those of the entire Black community. BSU members went out to Black neighborhoods in San Francisco, they went to Hunter's Point, they went to the Film War, and they recruited high school kids to come to San Francisco State. They wanted to create what Jimmy referred to as a critical mass of Black students on campus to change the campus. To change really all of San Francisco to change the world, they had like these very big ideas. But Jerry says it was really hard convincing parents that this was a good idea. People were scared to go out to a white college campus. You were not welcome and see we could be identified by color and you had to convince them that they're not nothing bad is going to happen to your children. We don't take care of them. So members of the BSU, Jerry and Jimmy, they're out recruiting in Black neighborhoods, they're tutoring kids in those neighborhoods, and they're tutoring students they recruited once they got on to campus. Right. Okay. And on campus, they're doing more organizing. They're demanding work study jobs. They're getting the Black fraternities and sororities access to the same campus amenities that white fraternities and sororities had access to. Here's Jimmy. All of those things, many Black students didn't see they had a relationship to. So then we had to show people that they could have an ownership relationship, not to the institution, but to whatever the institution used as support mechanisms for other students. All right. So just to make sure I follow, you got Jerry, you got Jimmy, you got all these other Black students organizing, you know, other Black students on campus, then they're organizing in a local Black community. And they're also pushing the administration to treat those Black students equally to the white students who make them most of the campus. And on top of all that, they're also pressing hard on campus administrators for more Black students to be admitted. And they are winning. They get the president at the time to guarantee admission to about 400 more Black students. That's crazy. That's amazing. Here's Jerry again. That meant that you gave us your name, your telephone number, and your address, and maybe a so security number. And that was the application process. And you would send a letter of admission. You know, all this getting a letter from your high school instructor and all that is trash. Danny Glover was one of the people we brought in. All right. So two questions there. Danny Glover, Danny Glover, like I'm getting too old for this shit, Danny Glover. Famous Danny Glover was a San Francisco State alum. He was also very involved in the strike. Sadly, he did not respond to our request for an interview. Okay. And so the other thing I was saying is that you didn't have to like go through the whole rigging of a role of applying with the government now, no SATs, no like none of that stuff. None of that. You give them your name, your social security number, your address, and your name. Wow. Okay. Amazing. I know. It's crazy. Back to Jerry. So Jerry says this happens. And then they get 200 more admission slots for another semester. And when the Latino and Asian American students hear this, they want it. So they go to the administration and they ask for admission allotments too. Right. And according to Jimmy and Jerry, they're told by the administration to ask the black students to share theirs. So wait, wait. The administration is like, okay, all your brown kids. We gave you awesome slots. Just give you them joins up. That's how the story goes. Oh man. And Jerry and Jimmy, they weren't having it. Right. We're not in a position to be giving away anything. You know, we're not the administration. Everybody got to carry their own weight up in here. You got to go into battle. Leaders of the Black Student Union suggests that the other students of color, Third World students get together in a solidarity group to go into battle alongside the Black Student Union. And this group calls itself the Third World Liberation Front. And for those of you who are rolling your eyes, the term Third World. Uh-huh. This is how activists back then refer to oppressed communities. And the term Liberation Front is directly from the Vietnamese National Liberation Front. So if you put those two things together, you get Third World Liberation Front. Okay. So now all of these brown students, obviously you're like, let our powers combine at this point. Yes. It is black and brown. Voltron. And we know there's power in numbers and black students made up about 4% of the campus back then. So they needed some help. Here's the story in Jason Fetteta again. These other students of color, Chicano's, Asian Americans. We're dealing with the same issue that Black students had been struggling with, you know, four or five years prior, before Black Power, before Black Consciousness, right? They were running around trying to be white, looking in the mirror and wishing they looked different. My name is Lorraine Chiu. And being involved in the Third World Liberation Front opened up a whole new world in terms of explaining my sense of belonging and becoming in this country. Lorraine Chiu grew up in San Francisco's Chinatown. By the time I got to college at San Francisco State, I was angry. You know, angry at my parents, not wanting to share stories, and angry with the fact of how they dealt with racism when they were confronted with it. Particularly, I think my father, you know, he had, because they grew up in an era where, you know, during Chinese exclusion, your whole thing was about survival and never, never being caught, you know, losing somebody's sock at the laundry that we had. And he would get cussed out by being caught at stupid Chinaman, whatever. And I would be in the back trying to listen to how he dealt with that. And he usually basically laughed it off. And that's how I entered the Third World Liberation Front with that mental friend. I am pissed off. I don't get this. So before this strike started at San Francisco State, the longest student strike in US history, you've got the Third World Liberation Front pushing the administration to admit more students of color, fighting for courses that reflect their experience in this country, taught by people who are not white. And then the BSU, which is a step ahead, they have a few black studies classes, and they're pushing for an entire black studies department. On top of that, Jean, you have white anti-war organizers and activists on campus too, affiliated with the SDS, students for a democratic society, who end up joining forces with the BSU and the TWLF. So you got all this activist energy churning on campus and off campus? Right. The BSU and members of the TWLF are volunteering, they're tutoring, they're organizing where they live in Chinatown, the mission, which was predominantly Latino, the film war and Hunters Point, which are black neighborhoods at the time. And Jason says it's also really vital to remember the backdrop that this is all happening against. The Vietnam War was ongoing. Dr. King had been assassinated. Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. Malcolm had been assassinated. Panthers were being shot and killed all over the country, thrown into jail. And speaking of black Panthers, it's time for a reminder that the party's minister of education, George Murray, a grad student teaching freshman English at San Francisco State, is suspended in the fall of 1968. Jerry Bernardo remembers him as a soft-spoken, thoughtful guy who just put on a tough act. He says George Murray like to keep his Afro a little unkempt to make people uncomfortable. That was supposed to reject the image that he was an unruly person and he would pull it in here to make it more provocative. He's the very first person that I ever met when I came to San Francisco State. We were standing in line behind each other. The very first black person that I ever met and I felt lonely. I was out here by myself. George Murray was well liked on campus, especially by the students active in the BSU and they wanted him reinstated. When that didn't happen, the strike kicked off. Wow, so it's about to go down then. After the break. Stay with us. 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Sources and methods is NPR's National Security podcast. When world news changes by the hour, we help you zoom out to understand shifting alliances, global flashpoints and what is really happening in places like Iran, Venezuela, Greenland. Our reporters on the ground connect the dots to explain a world order changing beneath their feet. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Parker, just Parker here. We're back and we're going to dive right back into the story of the long bloody strike that unfolded at San Francisco State. Just a reminder, this episode originally aired in 2019, so you're going to hear references to the fact that the strike ended 50 years ago, but it's really 56 years ago now. Anyways, back to Gina Shrene. Alright Shrene, let's just remind everybody what we left off. So there's all this activism happening on campus prior to this explosion. It's a black student union and they have a coalition with other groups of ethnic and racial minorities, other people of color. They call themselves the third world liberation front and they're pushing the administration really hard to change the climate on campus. And all of this is happening against the crazy aspect drop of the Vietnam more, a bunch of high profile political assassinations and just general social upheaval in America. The strike started on November 6, 1968. The BSU had 10 non-negotiable demands and the third world liberation front had an additional five and here are some of the highlights. The BSU demanded that a black professor named Nathan Hare head up a Black Studies Department and that George Murray be reinstated. They also wanted 20 full-time teaching positions in Black Studies and normal admission requirements waved so more Black students could get into college. The third world liberation front demanded the College of Ethnic Studies that would provide relevant education to the communities it represented and they wanted it to have four departments. American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, La Raza Studies and Black Studies. And they demanded that all applications of non-white students be accepted in the fall of 1969. Okay, that is a very radical list. And that is the short list that I gave you. Right, I mean the stuff they're asking for is like, I mean, it's saying like change the way you admit people entirely. Yes. And also add a much of new curriculum to the college and do that by next year. That's right. That's a lot. Oh yeah, and they went hard on day one. According to local news accounts, 400 students gathered in front of the administration building, calling for George Murray to be reinstated. Students paraded through buildings chanting on strikes, shut it down. BSU members interrupted classes to discuss their demands and encourage other students to join the fight. So they went into one of my classrooms. And what I thought was a very moving speech or two about why it was important that everyone support them. That's Lisa Ray Gutierrez. Guzman now, because I married later and I added his name, but my maiden name is Lisa Ray Gutierrez. She was 18 and a freshman when the strike started. She said she was shy and quiet and kind of confused about her identity. Her dad was Filipino and Black and her mom was white and she came from a pretty conservative working class family. Her grandma saved money to pay for her first semester at state. So I started going to all the demonstrations that were on campus, but I didn't stop going to class right away because there were enough demonstrations that were held at noon, under Speaker's platform, or picketing around the campus that I kept myself busy and I was supporting the strike. But then a week later, there was a demonstration to march up to the administration building. The president at the time was the sky named Smith, Robert Smith. We must have been at least three or 400 people that day. Multiracial. His representative came out saying that he had more important things to discuss. He convinced me to go and strike the president. When he said he had more important things to do, I thought maybe I don't agree with all the demands of the strike because I still was searching it out myself. But I know that this is important. I know that minority students need to get into college if they want to have jobs that require college. Lisa remembers being very put off by the aggressive police response. Police were on the scene from day one. The tack squad is what she called them. The tactical squad. They wore face shields and they wielded batons. I mean, I saw cops beating people and I saw cops on horses chasing after people. Just a few weeks into the strike. The president of San Francisco State, Robert Smith, is confronted by protesters using loudspeakers and a striker asks him why they're beating students and here's a part of his response. There have been more police brought on campus as the concern for safety and personnel. Jane, can you hear what they're saying there? Who's safety? Who's safety? Yes, they're yelling. Who's safety? Yours are the students. You can hear someone repeating bullshit over and over again in the background. The police would just wait into crowds and just start beating people with their nightsticks. Jerry Bernardo told me if the police were so brutal, they turned A political students into strikers. They sprayed mace on people. They kicked people. This went on day after day after day after day. And it went on both on whites, blacks and other ethnic groups. Now, Jean, there are news accounts of students throwing rocks, carrying lead pipes, cursing out police officers and administrators kicking over chairs in classrooms, breaking windows. So it was just chaos. On the first day, there was an account of a stack of school newspapers being lit on fire and a bomb going off under a stairwell. But nobody getting hurt. I'm sorry. So like one of the things, I mean, you see this in like op-ed pages or like in columns and essays all the time about how uncivil college campuses are today. Because somebody shouted down some person who was saying black people or stupid or something. I'm just like, if you look back then, okay, you had a bomb going off on this campus. There were bombings at the University of Wisconsin at Bluefield State, which you and I visited once. There were unarmed students getting shot by soldiers at Kent State and shot by police at Jackson State. It's just weird to hear people talk about how wild college campuses are now and how uncivil they are today. When back then, people were literally almost at war. All the strike vets I spoke with said some version of those were crazy times. You're never going to believe what happened. And it's really hard to believe. Yeah. It's really hard to believe that things were that nuts. Wow. But one thing they also told me is that they were really disappointed with the way the media portrayed them as violent militants without reporting on the issues they were fighting for and really without reporting on how violent the police were toward them. And all of this, all of this was way too much for Robert Smith who resigned less than a month after the strike started as president of the college. And he was replaced by a man named Samuel Echie Hayakawa. He went by Si Hayakawa. He was born in Canada to Japanese parents and he was an English professor at San Francisco State. So these students are now squaring off against a person of color. Yes, that is right. And Hayakawa made it very clear to these students that he was not playing around. Until these demonstrations, strikes, raids and other disruptive acts are ended, I will continue my policy of asking police assistance to maintain the security of this campus. If any of the dissenting groups really want to talk about the issues or about anything else, all I have to do is to knock off the trouble. Si Hayakawa had the support of the Chancellor's Office. He had the support of California Governor Ronald Reagan, the chief of the SFPD, and there were also students on campus too who really did disapprove of the strikers approach. There was a group on campus called Smart, the silent majority against revolutionary tactics. So I guess that kind of makes a lot of sense, right? So it's November in 1968 when this whole thing starts, the strike starts, which is the same time that Richard Nixon is a elected president of the United States. He ran as the so-called candidate of the silent majority. And we tend to forget this now, but you know, there were all sorts of white protestors on college campuses around the country who were protesting from the right and facing off against groups like the Third World Liberation Front. But there was a ton of white student support on campus for the strikers who were out there getting beat up by the police, too, as you heard from Jerry Bernardo. So Hayakawa was also facing hard core opposition. And not only from the striking students who like to call him a puppet and a Japanese Uncle Tom, but also from faculty who were members of the American Federation of Teachers Union, who also joined the students out there on the picket line. And if that wasn't enough pushback, Hayakawa also got major pushback from the Black community in San Francisco. Here's Ruth Williams, a community activist from Hunters Point at a rally right in front of the college. When I rise up, just about the masses of Hunters Point rises up to, so I am so pardoned the black students union, the Royal Liberation Group, 100%. Eloise Westbrook also from Hunters Point told the crowd she's a grandmother with 15 grandchildren and wants a college she can be proud of. All right, so at this point, the BSU, the Latinx students, the Asian American students are all joining forces, but the white students who are against the Vietnam War, and you got the instructors on campus who don't like Hayakawa, like they're processing too. So basically, everyone is an open revolt at San Francisco State. Even a group of black police officers from the SFPD calling themselves officers for justice refuse to work the San Francisco State strike. Wow. Yeah, but Lorraine Chews says this did not sway Si Hayakawa from his law and order stance. He made it clear. He'd hit back hard if they staged another rally on campus. The student strikers organized an on-campus rally anyway. On January 23rd, 1969, the strike was in its 79th day and Lorraine remembers being in the library, hiding books to make it harder for students who refused to go on strike to study. I went out of the library and I was at the fringe of this huge hundreds of people gathering for this rally. And all of a sudden, out of like, I didn't know where there were these horses that were huge. And like they just in a split second surrounded the entire group. And because I was at the edge of the crowd, I just saw brutality I never want to see again. Some people I knew were getting hit by bayonets with their heads bashed in blood all over the place. They fell, pushed through the ground and still getting hit when they were in the ground. And they were pushing back. So I was just kind of numb, you know, because I was just waiting to be arrested. But then after that, I started to worry about what my mother was thinking. In fact, the policemen who who booked to me looked at me. And the first thing that came out of his mouth with a smile was, "Young lady, what is your mother going to say?" Lisa Ray Gutierrez was arrested on that day too. She said she was charged with three misdemeanors. Illegal assembling, disorderly conduct, I think. And failure to disperse, I think, with a three if I remember right. My dad had to pick me up with the bail bondsman. Don't Paris and Jail call bearish for bail. His name was bearish. He was the one that's in charge. That very night, my mom had a car accident because she was so traumatized by the fact that her little daughter had gotten arrested for her firstborn and didn't see a car that came out of her and she got hospitalized. So I got blamed for the accident. 483 students were arrested that day, including Black Student Union leader Jerry Vernardo. Lorraine, Lisa, and Jerry all ended up doing time. Lorraine Chew pleaded not guilty, was found guilty, appealed, and was ultimately sentenced to 20 days. I spent my graduation going to Jail. Lisa Ray Gutierrez told me she, quote, "copped a plea and did 30 days." And that was really traumatic because I spent my 19th birthday in Jail. And Jerry Vernardo took a deal too. I did a year, other people didn't more. Here's his story in Jason Ferreira again. This is the other element of the strike that I think people need to realize. The level of sacrifice that this generation that they went through, you know, people did time. Relationships were stressed to the point of crumbling. Word would come back to members of the Thorough Liberation Front or the Black Student Union particular. From the police saying, "We have bullets with your name on it." This is the type of stress, this is the type of pressure that was put on student leaders. Offer what? [Music] Two months after that mass arrest, the strikers reached a deal with the administration. The strike calls by the Black Student Union and other members of the Third World Liberation Front and strongly supported by the revolutionary Black White students ended today March 20, 1969. Strike concessions included a College of Ethnic Studies. The administration also agreed to accept, quote, "virtually all non-white students who applied for the 1969 fall semester." George Murray was never rehired though. He ended up having to leave the Black Panther Party and is now a minister in Oakland. Jason Ferreira told me he doesn't give interviews about the strike and the professor who the BSU wanted to chair the Black Studies Department, Dr. Nathan Hare. He was fired by acting President Hayek Howe during the strike and he never became the chair of the Black Studies Department. Jerry Vernardo, he didn't return to campus for 30 years. Such a bitter experience. Really? You suffering from post-traumatic stress. Even though you won. We didn't see it as a victory. You know, we saw it as a coming to an arrangement. Too many people busted. Too many people beat up. You know, I don't know whether there is any victory in violence and warfare for anybody. After he did his time, Jerry went to law school and he's a retired attorney living in Oakland, California. His eldest son created a scholarship in his name at San Francisco State's College of Ethnic Studies. Lisa Ray Gutiérrez went on to become a teacher in the San Francisco Unified School District. She was active in the Teachers Union until her retirement. My three children also went to San Francisco State and I remember one time that my daughter had an assignment to talk about the San Francisco State Strike. So who did she get to talk to? It was myself. So it has affected even me personally rather than me politically but also personally. And even though now I'm 68 years old, I still try to do as much as I can when I can, not to watch grandkids, but to help continue the struggle. Yeah, it changed me forever. Lorraine Chu became a professor in the Asian American Studies Department at San Francisco State and she was associate dean at San Francisco State's College of Ethnic Studies from 2006 to 2012. She's happily semi-retired and historian Jason Ferreira fought for a Latino studies department on the campus of the University of Illinois in the late 80s when he was an undergrad, those student activists won and he went on to get his PhD from UC Berkeley in Ethnic Studies. He's now an associate professor at San Francisco State in, you guessed it, the College of Ethnic Studies. When people ask me what the strike was about and what the struggle at San Francisco State was about, I say what was bigger than a syllabus, right? It's bigger than the reading list that we do in our classes, right? That it is tied to that very same impulse of what W.E.B. Du Bois might call abolition democracy, a more transformative emancipatory understanding of education. That's what black studies, that's what third world studies was intended to be. This episode you just heard originally aired in 2019, it was reported by Coatswitch's original co-host, Shereen Marisol Baraji. Jerry Vanardo, the organizer in attorney, died in 2021. He was 77. And that's our show. You can follow us on Instagram @NPRCoatswitch, that's all one word. If emails more on your thing, ours is
[email protected]. And subscribe to the podcast on the MPRF or, you know, wherever it is, you get your podcast. You can also subscribe to the Coatswitch newsletter by going to mpr.org/coatswitchnewsletter. Just a reminder that signing up for Coatswitch Plus is a great way to support our show and public media. And we get to listen to every episode sponsor-free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org/coatswitch. The original episode was produced by Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sammy Yenigan, and Kumari Devorajan. Maria Paz and Kat Chao interviewed Lorraine Chu, that episode was edited by Sammy Yenigan. The music this week is from Jay Daniel and special thanks to Jayde Africa Rivera. The update was produced by Jess Kang and edited by Leah Denella. And a big thanks to the rest of the Coatswitch massive. We're seeing Akala, Xavier Lopez, Dalian Martata, and Violin Williams. As for me, I'm Gene Debbie. I'm BA Parker. Be easy. Hydrate. Okay, hey Gene. What's good? One last thing. Jerry Bernardo taught me how to make an old school cocktail, so I thought I'd share the recipe. You know, because you can't just fight all the time. They had such a thing as house part if you've made out of heard of such a thing. I guess I have. Jayde had house parties and people would come through and they'd bring stuff. Maybe a bottle of ripple. And that's the ripple is a really cheap one. I just thought I'd let you know that. When you wanted to make what the Black Panther Party call a bitter dog, what you did is you took the ripple and you poured some lemon juice in it. And that was a bitter dog. They had all of this kind of stuff. All this creativity. On ye gods with Scott Carter here from The Faithful. I told my Mary Catholic mother that she needs to meet Jesus. The Faithless. I just so don't believe in God. And the fearless. Serve people, connect with people. That's how we thrive. If life's a mystery, we investigate who done it. I pray that you were God. Listen religiously to ye gods with Scott Carter or ever you get your podcasts. I'm Mary Louise Kelly, world news is changing by the hour. On sources and methods, and Pierre's National Security Podcast, we zoom out to explain shifting alliances, global flashpoints, and what's really happening in places like Iran, Venezuela, Greenland. Our reporters on the ground connect the dots to help you understand a world order changing beneath their feet. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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