Black Student Unions are currently present throughout the nation due to efforts of past struggles. San Francisco State College (now University) was the first official campus to coin the name BSU as well as the first University to open up its own College of Ethnic Studies department. This came out of the Black Studies Department formed due to the Student Strike of 1968 to 1969. The College to this day continues to celebrate its forty years of functioning and stands proud on the fact that is is the only academic department of its kind throughout the country. Within a later conference held in California, other campuses took up the name and Black Student Unions became widely accepted. James Garrett is one of the founding members to kickstart the Black Student Union at San Francisco State. He is sixty-seven and a retired lawyer/dean of instruction at what is now Berkeley City College. As a member of the SNCC as well as CORE for six consecutive years, he originally arrived as a student upon the campus but had hopes for a greater change. Garrett hoped to move the Black Student Movement from the larger community to a more focused, younger group within a campus setting. He made a bet with former members of the SNCC that his ultimate goal was to build a Black Student Movement on a predominately white campus. Through his work, within two years Black student demonstrations occurred as sit in demonstrations on ninety percent of college campuses. Within his first …show more content…
Varnado worked as the on-campus coordinator and when the two forces got together in unison towards the movement, it spread through the nation through Universities, community colleges, high schools, and even elementary schools as they asked personally for the help of the two to create their own BSU on their local campus. It became a