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A curated selection of films that provides insights into the TWLF strike. This collection offers a wide range of perspectives on the origins, impact, and enduring legacy of TWLF, highlighting its significant role in shaping discussions on Ethnic Studies, social justice, and educational reform.

Agents of Change

"From the well-publicized events at San Francisco State in 1968 to the image of black students with guns emerging from the takeover of the student union at Cornell University in April, 1969, the struggle for a more relevant and meaningful education, including demands for black and ethnic studies programs, became a clarion call across the country in the late 1960's. Through the stories of these young men and women who were at the forefront of these efforts, Agents of Change examines the untold story of the racial conditions on college campuses and in the country that led to these protests. The film’s characters were caught at the crossroads of the civil rights, black power, and anti-Vietnam war movements at a pivotal time in America’s history. Today, over 45 years later, many of the same demands are surfacing in campus protests across the country, revealing how much work remains to be done."

AOKI: Full Length Richard Aoki Documentary (2009)

"AOKI chronicles the life of Richard Aoki (1938-2009), a third-generation Japanese American who became one of the founding members of the Black Panther Party. Filmed over the last five years of Richard’s life, this documentary features extensive footage of Richard and exclusive interviews with his comrades, friends, and former students.

Viewers will learn about Richard’s childhood in a WWII Japanese American concentration camp, growing up in West Oakland, and serving eight years in the U.S. military. The film explores previously unknown facts about the formation of the Black Panther Party such as how Richard became intimately involved in its founding and contributed the first two firearms to the Party.

AOKI highlights how Richard’s leadership also made a significant impact on individuals and groups in the contemporary Asian American Movement. Richard’s contributions to the groundbreaking organization Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) and its involvement in the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) student strike led to the formation of ethnic studies at U.C. Berkeley."

Black Panther / San Francisco State: On Strike

“This two-part program begins with the actual film the Black Panther Party used to promote its cause. Shot in 1969 in San Francisco, it’s an exemplar of 1960s activist filmmaking, featuring an interview from jail with Black Panthers cofounder Huey Newton, as well as footage of cofounder Bobby Seale explaining its Ten Point Program and Eldridge Cleaver discussing the Panthers’ appeal to the black community. The program’s second part, shot by students and their supporters during the San Francisco State University strike of 1968–1969, documents the groundbreaking protest that led to the establishment of the first ethnic studies department at an American university.”

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. Through interviews with past and recent student leaders and faculty juxtaposed with footage of campus demonstrations over the course of a generation, "On Strike" offers a historical and political overview of what it took to establish and sustain ethnic studies at one of the nation's leading universities."

The Fight for Ethnic Studies | Asian Americans

"With the struggle for civil rights and the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, students were expressing an interest in classes that explored black history and culture. San Francisco State University (SF State) was a college with a mostly white student body and the Black Student Union began to question whether their own education was failing them. They started to demand curriculum that reflected their lives and a better representation of faculty of color. And with these demands from the Black Student Union, Asian American students took note."