As the number of enrolled undergraduate students of color increased at UC Berkeley, so did a demand for a curriculum reflective of “a people's history” of resistance and social movements.
In 1968, UC Berkeley students formed the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF). Building on the imagination, skills, and tools of radical liberation and collective study, TWLF created a list of demands, including the development of a Third World Studies College of African American, Asian American, Native American, and Chicanx-Latinx American academic departments. TWLF was critical to the eventual creation of the UC Berkeley Department of Ethnic Studies. At the heart of the insurgent movement, coalitions were being formed, coalitional politics and analytics that would foreground the eventual structure of the American Cultures requirement.
