Research Guides: Ethnic Studies: History of Ethnic Studies

Podcasts

StoryCorps: National Guard Veteran Looks Back At 1970 Ohio State Riots
John was one of the soldiers ordered to patrol Ohio State and control students protests against the Vietnam War and racial inequality in 1970. When the StoryCorps booth visited Columbus, John sat down with his daughter, Elizabeth Cross, to recount his enlistment and the campus riots that spring.
Learning Liberation: The Ethnic Studies Podcast
Learning Liberation episodes feature Ethnic Studies practitioners across the U.S. to share reflections and best practices in the classroom and share lessons gained through their praxis, grassroots advocacy, and more.
Code Switch: The Long, Bloody Strike for Ethnic Studies
A history of ethnic studies, with specific focus on the University of California system. A discussion of how student activists in the bay area staged the longest student-led strike in US history to establish the Ethnic Studies system.

Movies

Agents of Change
Current struggles to make colleges welcoming and relevant for students of color continue movements which swept across campuses fifty years ago. AGENTS OF CHANGE tells the timely and inspiring story of how successful protests for equity and inclusion led to establishing the first Black and Ethnic Studies departments at two very different universities: San Francisco State (1968) and Cornell (1969).
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Agents of Change. Directed by Abby Ginzberg, Frank Dawson. California Newsreel, 2016. Accessed October 17, 2024.
Decolonizing the University
The idea of a Third World College called for epistemological, pedagogical, institutional, and social change, to be facilitated by the creation of departments of Asian Studies, Black Studies, Chicano Studies, Native American Studies, and any other Ethnic Studies programs as they developed. Since then, there is only one College of Ethnic Studies in the nation (at SFSU), and only some universities with ethnic studies departments or programs. The purpose of this conference is to have collective dialogues about fulfilling the dream of the Third World College and decolonizing the university at large.
On Strike: Ethnic Studies - 1969-1999
ON STRIKE! makes an encapsulated, incisive study of the context and events that led up to the Ethnic Studies demonstrations, hunger strikes, and student arrests that surprisingly roiled the UC Berkeley campus in May 1999. Opening with a quick historical study of the struggle that established Ethnic Studies in the late sixties, this record of modern-day activism soon moves into the urgent present-time, detailing the nineties' TWLF (Third World Liberation Front) movement and their pitched battle against the university administration.
The Legacy of the Third World Liberation Front at SF State
From November 6, 1968 to March 20, 1969, a diverse coalition of students from then San Francisco State College participated in what would become the longest campus strike in US history.

A History of Ethnic Studies

The Third World Liberation Front formed in 1968 - a bay area coalition between the Black Student Union and other multi-ethnic student groups at San Francisco State University (SFSU). These students united in response to unjust admission practices that favored white students and a curriculum that did not incorporate the histories of students of color. The group staged a five-month strike - what would become the longest student strike in U.S. history.

The coalition proved successful as the strike would result in the first school of ethnic studies at San Francisco State and ethnic studies classes at San Francisco State. Now there are programs in over 450 universities throughout the United States with classes dedicated to ethnic studies.

Ohio State University has its own Center for Ethnic Studies which brings together three units of study: Latinx Studies, Asian American Studies, and American Indian Studies. The interdisciplinary center speaks to a wide variety of fields and scholarship. From the CES website:

CES continues in this tradition by working to expand what all of us can know about the nexus of racial, ethnic, cultural, gender, and sexual difference through research and teaching. As interdisciplinary programs, we include faculty and students from many fields and colleges at OSU. In addition to research and teaching, our faculty and students are involved in community education and outreach efforts as well as collaborative projects in humanities and performance research, forging new pathways in higher education.

BiblíoPolitica
At the intersection of Chicana/o/x Studies, Digital Humanities and Library History, Bibliopolítica: A Digital History of the Chicano Studies Library chronicles the history of one of the first Chicana/o/x collections, the Chicano Studies Library at the University of California, Berkeley.

Bibliopolítica shares the stories of trailblazing library workers, students and community members who worked to preserve and make Chicana/o/x resources available. Featuring photographs, ephemera, archival documents, and oral histories, Bibliopolítica offers an original digital collection of primary sources and is the first audiovisual history of this special place that helped redefine what libraries could be.

Diversity and Ethnic Studies
This subscription collection includes academic eBooks related to diversity, anti-racism, ethnic studies, disability studies, gerontology & age studies, migration studies, gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, and religious studies. The collection utilizes outside resources and scholarship to ensure that the collection remains up to date and aligned with current research.
Ethnic NewsWatch [Selected Articles in Full Text]
Ethnic NewsWatch is a full text database of newspapers published by and for leading American ethnic groups, and provides information on topics not covered by the mainstream press. Additionally, it provides ethnic perspectives of topics of national interest that may vary from what is presented in the mainstream press.
Race Relations Abstracts
Race Relations Abstracts includes bibliographic records covering essential areas related to race relations, including ethnic studies, discrimination, immigration studies, and other areas of key relevance to the discipline. The index contains more than 49,500 records, which are carefully selected from the most important sources within the discipline, such as: Race & Class, Ethnic & Racial Studies, Journal of Social Issues, etc. EBSCO has digitized the full archive of this index, bringing coverage back to 1975.

Folkstreams
Folkstreams is a non-profit dedicated to finding, preserving, contextualizing, and showcasing documentary films on American traditional cultures.

The Reorder of Things by Roderick A. Ferguson
ISBN: 9780816672790
Publication Date: 2012-11-07
In the 1960s and 1970s, minority and women students at colleges and universities across the United States organized protest movements to end racial and gender inequality on campus. African American, Chicano, Asia American, American Indian, women, and queer activists demanded the creation of departments that reflected their histories and experiences, resulting in the formation of interdisciplinary studies programs that hoped to transform both the university and the wider society beyond the campus. In The Reorder of Things, however, Roderick A. Ferguson traces and assesses the ways in which the rise of interdisciplines--departments of race, gender, and ethnicity; fields such as queer studies--were not simply a challenge to contemporary power as manifest in academia, the state, and global capitalism but were, rather, constitutive of it.
Stand Up by Asian Community Center Archive Group
ISBN: 9780615279039
Publication Date: 2009-03-01
An archive collection of Asian American material focused on the Third World Liberation student strikes at San Francisco State College and University of California Berkeley campuses, the International Hotel tenants fight against eviction, and the establishment of the Asian Community Center in SF Chinatown-Manilatown.
Power of the People Won't Stop by Harvey Dong (Editor); Janie Chen (Editor); Douglas Wachter (Photographer)
ISBN: 9781734744002
Publication Date: 2020-07-01
This anthology includes essays, photographs, and reflections from individuals who participated in or were inspired by the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) student strike in 1969 that led to the establishment of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Multiracial solidarity was established through the coming together of African American, Asian American, Chicano and Native American students to form the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) along with support from white student allies. This anthology fills a historical void. In social movement histories, we hear about the historical importance of struggles such as the Free Speech Movement in 1964 and the People's Park conflict in 1969 but very little about the TWLF.
The Black Revolution on Campus by Martha Biondi
ISBN: 9780520269224
Publication Date: 2012-08-06
The Black Revolution on Campus is the definitive account of an extraordinary but forgotten chapter of the black freedom struggle. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Black students organized hundreds of protests that sparked a period of crackdown, negotiation, and reform that profoundly transformed college life. At stake was the very mission of higher education. Black students demanded that public universities serve their communities; that private universities rethink the mission of elite education; and that black colleges embrace self-determination and resist the threat of integration.
Chains of Babylon by Daryl J. Maeda
ISBN: 9780816648900
Publication Date: 2009-10-23
In Chains of Babylon, Daryl J. Maeda presents a cultural history of Asian American activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s, showing how the movement created the category of "Asian American" to join Asians of many ethnicities in racial solidarity. Drawing on the Black Power and antiwar movements, Asian American radicals argued that all Asians in the United States should resist assimilation and band together to oppose racism within the country and imperialism abroad. As revealed in Maeda's in-depth work, the Asian American movement contended that people of all Asian ethnicities in the United States shared a common relationship to oppression and exploitation with each other and with other nonwhite peoples.
From Black Power to Black Studies by Fabio Rojas
ISBN: 9780801886195
Publication Date: 2007-08-31
The black power movement helped redefine African Americans' identity and establish a new racial consciousness in the 1960s. As an influential political force, this movement in turn spawned the academic discipline known as Black Studies. Today there are more than a hundred Black Studies degree programs in the United States, many of them located in America's elite research institutions. In From Black Power to Black Studies, Fabio Rojas explores how this radical social movement evolved into a recognized academic discipline.

Project STAND
Project STAND is a radical grassroots archival consortia project between colleges and universities around the country; to create a centralized digital space highlighting analog and digital collections emphasizing student activism in marginalized communities. Project STAND aims to foster ethical documentation of contemporary and past social justice movements in underdocumented student populations. STAND advocates for collections by collaborating with educators to provide pedagogical support, create digital resources, hosts workshops and forums for students, information professionals, academics, technologists, humanists, etc. interested in building communities with student organizers and their allies, leading to sustainable relationships, and inclusive physical and digital spaces of accountability, diversity, and equity.

Ethnic Studies & Ohio State University

1969: Black Studies at OSU was established as an academic discipline. Ohio State recognizes Black Studies as an academic division and grants it department status in 1972. In 1970, OSU students pushed for reform. Students demanded increased services for minority populations as well as a place in the university's governing bodies - where they had no representation.

May 4, 1970: A student demonstration Kent State University protesting the Vietnam War, the draft, and the presence of the National Guard on campus turned deadly. This protest ended four student demonstrators at Kent State University were killed by the Ohio National Guard and nine other students were wounded. The event sparked student strikes nationwide.

May 7 - 19th, 1970: Ohio State administrators proactively closed campus to stymy any potential student dissent. This worked, for the most part, but conversations resumed surrounding increased student representation in university governance and an increased commitment to diverse students.

2000: Asian American Studies Latina/o Studies Minors are established. Efforts first began to create Asian American and Latino Studies programs in the late 1990s; the Division of Comparative Studies (no Department) established AAS and LS minors in 2000.

2002: The Ethnic and American Studies Comparative Studies Concentration is created. The Division of Comparative Studies became a Department in 2001 and developed a BA program, featuring a concentration in Ethnic and American Studies shortly after.

2000s: The Diversity and Identity Studies Collective at OSU (DISCO) is founded. The organization's goal is to promote innovative and intersectional research on issues of diversity, identity, and social difference and power.

2018: The Center for Ethnic Studies is formed. Three programs formerly organized under DISCO and Comparative Studies – AIS (formed in 1911), LS, and AAS – were brought together to form the Center for Ethnic Studies.

2024: Center for Ethnic Studies today. The Center today offers three minors and a Latinx Studies GIS (with plans to add more GISs) and several courses each semester

*Special thanks to Asia Adomanis for their research contributing to this timeline.

Project STAND: Ohio State University
OSU submissions also contain significant materials related to African-American student concerns, including the Black Studies Broadcast Journal Collection, a civil rights issues oriented radio program done by an OSU professor, and Our Choking Times, an African-American student newspaper. OSU submissions include 11 total collections, representing over 100 cubic feet of manuscript materials, as well as significant audio-visual and born digital content.
University District History
A community member's narrative experience doing research around the 1970 unrest on Ohio State University campus.
Our Choking Times @ OSU Archives
Our Choking Times sought to provide a community forum and address frustrations of Black students across The Ohio State University. The first issue’s manifesto set the tone for the paper’s activist ethos, holding Ohio State accountable for its lack of black professors and students, its lip service to diversity, and later, its investment in companies doing business with apartheid-era South Africa. Many of the issues the student-writers addressed, such as Columbus police offers shooting unarmed black citizens, continue to be serious problems today. This digital collection represents some of the papers held at University Archives.
University Archives: Spring of Dissent
This digital exhibit highlights the "Spring of Dissent" when protests hit university grounds during 1970. It is hosted by University Archives.