More than 46 years have passed since rival activists shot and killed UCLA students and Black Panther’s Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter and John Huggins in Campbell Hall.
Around campus, there are small reminders of these two men. A stone reading “Carter-Huggins 1969” sits in the garden near Campbell Hall’s east entrance, and friends and family commemorate them each year in Campbell Hall around the Jan. 17 anniversary of their deaths. But despite student interest in the lives and legacies of these two activists, UCLA has done little to formally recognize their impact on our campus’ fight for social justice.
There is plenty to take away, celebrate and remember from UCLA’s past activism, but Carter and Huggins merit permanent recognition by the university as symbols of this movement, including formal name recognition on Campbell Hall’s expansion and a more active role in the annual memorial for the two activists. The university has not announced plans to put the names on the building and has failed to take an active role in the memorial so far.
Huggins’ and Carter’s work helped organize Black Panther initiatives like the Free Breakfast for Children Program, which fed thousands of children across the country in the late 1960s.
They helped shape the future of the Southern California chapter of the Black Panther Party and the black power movement, and yet if students don’t know where to look on UCLA’s campus, it’s difficult to find anything that properly remembers this important moment in UCLA history.
Carter and Huggins were two of many students involved in the inaugural planning stages of the Center for African American Studies at UCLA. At the time of their deaths, they represented the heart of student activism, yet the story behind their 1969 killings is not mentioned in traditional tours of UCLA.
More must be done to formally remember this part of UCLA’s past, and Campbell Hall, whose Academic Advancement Program expansion is set to open this spring, is a great place to start. When the 2,000 square foot project is officially opened to students, the names of these two activists should be on the building.
Each year since 1999, friends, family members, colleagues and UCLA students and faculty have gathered in Campbell Hall to remember Carter and Huggins and speak on the power of UCLA’s radical history. Huggins’ widow, Ericka Huggins, has been a special guest at the event for years, including Friday night’s event, hosted by the Afrikan Student Union in Campbell Hall. It’s an event that matters to hundreds in the community, and it’s one UCLA should take a more active role in planning for years to come.
Carter and Huggins are also closely tied to the history of AAP at UCLA. Both registered at UCLA in September 1968 as a part of the school’s High Potential Program, which was combined with the Educational Opportunity Program in 1971 to form AAP. Since then, the two programs have operated as one joint effort to provide academic support to first-generation, low-income and historically underrepresented students at UCLA.
Carter and Huggins are a major part of activist history at UCLA. They will forever be linked with AAP, Campbell Hall and this campus as a whole. It’s high time UCLA appropriately recognized it.