At the start of what was then known as “Negro History Week” in February 1967, members of the Black Student Union, then known as Harambee, lined Bruin Walk in silent protest.
They stood quietly, not taking questions from reporters or passers-by for one week, letting only the slogan on their shirts speak for them. The shirts read “Why one week?” and encapsulated the feeling of many of the black students on campus at the time, who believed it inadequate that their history be commemorated in only one week.
“We believed that the injustice that we experienced was particularly based on the lack of knowledge, on the ignorance of the white students at the time,” said J. Daniel Johnson, a UCLA student and activist who helped lead the push for the formation of an academic study center, what would eventually become the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. “So, we requested that instruction be provided and that all students be required to take it.”
With that, the movement had gotten underway among committed black students to form a center for the academic study of African American history and culture.
By fall of 1967, the administration, under then-Chancellor Franklin Murphy had allowed for the teaching of the course on African American history. Students from across the campus and from a variety of backgrounds enrolled in the course, taught by Professor Ronald Takaki.
Yet, for the student activists, a singular course was not enough. The movement continued, utilizing campus publications, including content in the Daily Bruin and the creation of the African American special interest paper NOMO to push their cause among the campus community.
“We felt we could use the column (in the Daily Bruin) as a bully pulpit to lobby for an academic study center,” Johnson said of the effort.
The effort was not in vain. During the summer of 1968, the decision was made to create not only an African American studies center, but also a broader Institute for American Cultures, which could eventually encompass all ethnic study centers on campus.
The question that remained, however, regarded who would lead the organization in its inaugural term.
For the students, the choice was clear. Professor Charles Hamilton, an African American professor of political science was the obvious choice. Yet, as it would turn out, Hamilton’s chairmanship would not come to fruition due to contract disputes.
Thus, the search continued to find a leader for the new center.
To this end, meetings were then held in January to determine who would head up the new center.
But the selection was far from seamless.
On Jan. 17, 1969, Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter and John Huggins, two UCLA students and members of the Black Panther Party, were murdered in Campbell Hall in what was an act of violence that served as a great setback to the center’s progress.
“It’s alienating to have an experience of violence in your midst, and it made people wonder where this center was going,” said Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, vice chancellor and dean of the graduate division, who served as director of the center from 1976 to 1989.
And yet, despite the setbacks, the center continued. By 1974, it had helped create the independent interdepartmental studies program in Afro-American Studies, and throughout the decade, was gaining national and international prestige.
“By the 1980s, we were thought of as a real model in the country, with people visiting from around the world, holding major symposia and conferences on academic issues, and hosting forums on prominent contemporary issues,” Mitchell-Kernan said.
And, despite its title, the program’s initial class was as diverse as its aims.
In 1980, during the inaugural year of the interdepartmental master’s program, two students graduated: one black, one white.
Since that time, not much has changed in this regard, with students from throughout the campus community enrolling in courses offered through the Afro-American studies program.
“In spite of periodic and severe budget cuts and lack of funding, the Afro-American Studies Interdepartmental Program has maintained a consistent, vibrant enrollment not only of African American students but students from across the campus who wish to be well-informed about issues of race and ethnicity,” said Dr. Lisbeth Gant-Britton, student affairs officer of the Afro-American Studies Interdepartmental Program.
But, for those original founders and leaders of the program, there remains work to be done.
“I think we are a better society today than we were 40 years ago in terms of inclusiveness, but we still have issues surrounding the treatment of African Americans, Mexican Americans, other immigrant groups ““ now gays and lesbians with the passage of Proposition 8. These are enduring issues for complex societies such as our own, so I see the issues that were the impulse for creating the center as enduring issues,” Mitchell-Kernan said.
For Johnson, who still remembers the conversations, protests, meetings and proposals surrounding the creation of the center in the 1960s, the sense of pride at the accomplishment of forming the center is met with disappointment regarding its unmet potential.
“I’m very proud of what we did. (The Center) is stronger, but not as strong as it could have been.”
For him, the loss of some of the early programs and research interests championed by the Center, such as the High Potential Program, are painful to bear.
“If we look at the problems that plagued, and increasingly continue to plague the African American community, we need it more than ever,” said Johnson.