Strike at San Fransisco State College
In the meantime at San Francisco State College, students in the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), a coalition of African-American, Latino, and Asian-American student groups, began demanding reforms that addressed the concerns of students of color and the surrounding community. After more than a year of negotiating with the school and organizing students, they called a strike on November 6, 1968, that became the longest student strikein United States history. When it was finally settled in March 1969, many of the students' demands were met, including the establishment of a School of Ethnic Studies.
San Francisco State College
The 1960s were turbulent years. The United States was unpopularly involved in the war in Vietnam, and political unrest ran high at colleges and universities across the country.
At the time, San Francisco State College had an enrollment of approximately 18,000 students. Characterized as an open campus, San Francisco State was known for its innovative approaches to teaching and the development of courses in conjunction with students.
Political turmoil on campus began in 1968 when a Black Panther member, George Murray, was dismissed from school, and student militants called a strike. Using terrorist tactics, these groups intimidated and physically threatened students and professors if they crossed the picket line. Some of their demands included the formulation of an autonomous black studies department, promotion to full professor of a faculty member who had one year's experience, the firing of a white administrator, and the admission of all black students who applied for the next academic year.
While sympathetic to student needs, Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa felt a...
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...co police department to maintain peace.
In March 1969, after two months of negotiations, an agreement was reached with the teacher's union. Hayakawa again conceded some demands but held firm on others. At the same time, militant student leaders relinquished some of their original demands and worked out a settlement. The cooperation Hayakawa had sought was finally being realized.
With the media coverage of San Francisco State, Hayakawa launched himself into the public eye. A Gallup poll conducted during the student uprising found S. I. Hayakawa to be the most admired educator in the United States. Among civic clubs and the lay public, Hayakawa represented a no-nonsense position that people identified with. Invited to deliver speeches throughout the country, he used this opportunity to launch a political career that would eventually lead him to the U.S. Senate.
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One of the first documented incidents of the sit-ins for the civil rights movement was on February 1, 1960 in Nashville, Tennessee. Four college African-Americans sat at a lunch counter and refused to leave. During this time, blacks were not allowed to sit at certain lunch counters that were reserved for white people. These black students sat at a white lunch counter and refused to leave. This sit-in was a direct challenge to southern tradition. Trained in non-violence, the students refused to fight back and later were arrested by Nashville police. The students were drawn to activist Jim Lossen and his workshops of non-violence. The non-violent workshops were training on how to practice non-violent protests. John Lewis, Angela Butler, and Diane Nash led students to the first lunch counter sit-in. Diane Nash said, "We were scared to death because we didn't know what was going to happen." For two weeks there were no incidences with violence. This all changed on February 27, 1960, when white people started to beat the students. Nashville police did nothing to protect the black students. The students remained true to their training in non-violence and refused to fight back. When the police vans arrived, more than eighty demonstrators were arrested and summarily charged for disorderly conduct. The demonstrators knew they would be arrested. So, they planned that as soon as the first wave of demonstrators was arrested, a second wave of demonstrators would take their place. If and when the second wave of demonstrators were arrested and removed, a third would take their place. The students planned for multiple waves of demonstrators.
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Success was a big part of the Civil Rights Movement. Starting with the year 1954, there were some major victories in favor of African Americans. In 1954, the landmark trial Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka Kansas ruled that segregation in public education was unfair. This unanimous Supreme Court decision overturned the prior Plessy vs. Ferguson case during which the “separate but equal” doctrine was created and abused. One year later, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. launched a bus boycott in Montgomery Alabama after Ms. Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat in the “colored section”. This boycott, which lasted more than a year, led to the desegregation of buses in 1956. Group efforts greatly contributed to the success of the movement. This is not only shown by the successful nature of the bus boycott, but it is shown through the success of Martin Luther King’s SCLC or Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The conference was notable for peacefully protesting, nonviolence, and civil disobedience. Thanks to the SCLC, sit-ins and boycotts became popular during this time, adding to the movement’s accomplishments. The effective nature of the sit-in was shown during 1960 when a group of four black college students sat down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in hopes of being served. While they were not served the first time they commenced their sit-in, they were not forced to leave the establishment; their lack of response to the heckling...
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Teachers’ strikes seem to occur whenever satisfactions are not met in the contract. Whether it happened in recent times or many years ago, salary improvement has always been the number one issue. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) think that teacher’s salaries are lower than other workers in other private companies, the service, or some of the organizations. Government reduced the budget of the education through cutting down the salaries and dismissing a number of employees.
Although the sixties were a decade in which the United States became a more open, more tolerant, and a freer country, in some ways it became less of these things. During the sixties, America intervened in other nations and efforts were made to stop the progress of the civil rights movement. Because of America’s foreign policy and Americans fight against the civil rights movement, it is clear that the sixties in America were not purely a decade of openness, tolerance, and freedom in the United States.
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