How It All Got Started
African Americans and other ethnic minority groups—including Native Americans, Latino/as, and Asian Americans—fought for equal rights in the 1960s. These groups were tired of being marginalized socially, economically, and politically, so they started demonstrating, marching, and engaging in acts of civil disobedience in what came to be known as the Civil Rights Movement.
During this time, ethnic minority students also started protesting that they were being marginalized in the academy. They wanted courses and departments that took their views of the world into account, and they wanted the academy to deal with issues like race and racism, cultural marginalization, colonialism and neocolonialism.
And so ethnic minority students started striking. That's right: they went on strike against the university.
The first strike for an Ethnic Studies program took place at San Francisco State University in 1968. The second strike took place at the University of California at Berkeley in 1969. Both strikes were successful, and whaddya know? 1969 saw the first College of Ethnic Studies established at San Francisco State University and the first Ethnic Studies Department established at Berkeley.