Q&A With Marc Arsell Robinson

Connecting Local Black Student Organizing in the '60s to Campus Politics Today

by Adam Willems

Where universities once occupied public imagination as finishing schools for a storied elite, fora of higher education have, over time, been treated by reactionary members of political and civil society as threats to national stability fueled by ignorance and immaturity. But what happens on campus doesn't stay on campus: The forms of punishment and surveillance developed on college campuses in reaction to this perceived threat have spilled into the ways police and governments clamp down on other movements. This is by design, according to Dr. Marc Arsell Robinson, author of Washington State Rising: Black Power on Campus in the Pacific Northwest.

Washington State Rising charts the establishment and political activities of Black Student Union (BSU) chapters at the University of Washington (UW) and Washington State University in the 1960s. Framing on- and off-campus political issues as two sides of the same coin, BSUs in Washington State organized university, high school, and junior high students — as well as their parents — to catalyze material institutional changes in the name of Black Power and confronting white supremacy in educational systems. Encountering significant challenges to their efforts, and preceding other Black Power organizations in Washington, such as the Black Panthers, BSUs changed campuses in the image of their mission: They poured attention and campus funding into the recruitment of students of color to state universities, helped establish Black Studies departments and other academic programs to buck against eurocentrism, and secured other significant gains.

Underlying structural inequities and oppression didn't go away. But, as Robinson outlines in his conversation with the Emerald, the history of BSUs furnishes concrete, if previously obfuscated, lessons for present-day organizers, especially as they enter a still-contentious collegiate environment in the fall. In particular, despite the redoubled forms of surveillance that affect organizers today — legacies of the political backlash to campus politics in the '60s and '70s — BSU history suggests that trial and error, negotiation with bureaucratic figures, persistence in the face of state violence, and a holistic and internationalist appreciation for multiracial organizing can deliver substantive concessions from institutions otherwise invested in the status quo.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Adam Willems: A lot of the institutions core to your book are spaces that you either were near or inhabited growing up in Seattle. How much of the history of these spaces did you already know prior to initiating this project, and how much was that history something you felt like you discovered?

Marc Arsell Robinson: It was a journey of discovery for the most part. I grew up near Franklin High School, and for various reasons ended up at West Seattle High School, but I have family that went to Franklin; my mom went to Franklin. Family, friends, and community members would offer snippets of information about what happened in the '60s. Someone might reference a protest here, or an organization like the Black Panthers, but it was never really explained in a very clear or comprehensive way.

The research began as a way of trying to find out whether those family stories were really true, and then to get a sense of what the full story was. Even at the University of Washington, where a lot of the history that I write about takes place, there really wasn't a lot of recognition of that history when I was an undergrad. I think some of that has changed since then, and I think the university has done a better job of really trying to celebrate that history, a lot of it under the leadership of Emile Pitre, a longtime administrator there [leading the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity after helping lead the BSU as a student]. At the time when I was there, Emile was there, but a lot of people weren't listening to him.

The Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity (OMA&D) is arguably a descendant of a lot of the institutional work the BSU did at UW in the '60s. I'm curious how you experienced those institutions: whether they functioned, in your view, as a sort of conduit for student organizing, or more like an off-ramp.

That's a good question. I think that in my time as a student there, there's one answer, and the other answer is what I've observed more recently. When I was a student there, it was at a time of a fairly, in my view, low level of political engagement. There was a perception that college students were apathetic. The BSU itself was more of a social organization geared around community building — which is important, so not to knock that. In the context of that time period, the Office of Minority Affairs, too, was very much focused around fitting in institutionally, so I didn't see them as a source of activism or a place that encouraged it. They were focused on trying to get students graduated, that kind of stuff.

More recently, I've had the pleasure of meeting some BSU officers in the last year. Post-George Floyd, post-Breonna Taylor, they are very engaged and very focused on political and social injustice, in addition to whatever social activities that they may do. I see a difference. They are engaged with the Ethnic Cultural Center, engaged with the OMA&D, and other things on campus. It seems like there's much more activist-oriented and progressive political awareness among the students and on campus. They're even confronting campus officials and demanding changes and so forth.

To what extent have you seen student organizers today look to the precedent set by student organizers in the '60s to understand the demands that administrators will say yes to?

It's hard to say exactly. I got to have this joint event with the Black Student Union's current-day officers and members, and many of them said the book provided them with information they didn't have easy access to. My sense is that for activists today, students today, they may not have the full grasp of the history, but even if not in a detailed way, I think the history that I write about is in the DNA of our own moment. As students are responding to national organizations or national movements around criminal justice reform, or they're responding to mobilizations around electoral politics, or they're responding to pop-culture-related historical references, I think those larger movements, those pop culture references, those kind of influences in the national electoral politics are themselves reflective of, or shaped by, the 1960s historical moment.

One can try to be strategic about what they ask for. But I think on the other hand, grassroots activism by people who don't really have easy access to power is always a matter of trial and error. You know, there's always a certain element of, I don't know if this is going to work, but let's try it out. And, you know, sometimes you're pleasantly surprised to say, Wow, we got this demand met, and other times you get disappointed. I always want to give space for that creativity and that innovativeness, because I think that's also part of any movement or any time period: That push for justice has to have a certain amount of imagination and willingness to push for things that may or may not be strategically likely.

The reader sees some of that trial and error at play in the book. There's constant internal negotiation among student organizers about the kinds of goals they're trying to set. There's a tension between prioritizing campus politics or off-campus politics, or between multi-racial versus intra-racial organizing. I imagine those discussions then influenced the strategies the BSU eventually deployed.

I think so, and I appreciate you for mentioning that. I'm glad it does reflect through [in the book], because it shows for folks today that we can be encouraged by the fact that we don't necessarily have to have all the answers when we begin the struggle. We can find answers as we go. If we are debating and disagreeing with each other, that can be a strength as well as a challenge.

The book also emphasizes how debate and discussion can be perceived as a political threat by incumbents. What comes to mind is when Larry Gossett, Aaron Dixon, and Carl Miller were arrested and sent to King County Jail the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. They started organizing incarcerated people there and then got kicked out of jail because of the threat they posed to how things were run in the jail. That's another instance where people having a platform for alignment and disagreement functioned as a really powerful tool.

Yeah, it was. I really appreciate Larry Gossett for sharing that story with me, and I put it in the book because it's such a powerful story. And I think you're right. It shows the way in which discussion and little-D democracy — as in, ordinary people working together and addressing their problems — can be powerful. I think there's this element of the process of building a community, building a society, and how that in itself is a political act at times.

Look at this particular day: King's assassination on April 4, 1968. I have this story [in the book] about what's happening in the jail. But there are also things happening on the streets: protests and other things happening in Seattle on that day. This is just one of many strands that I really hope others — students, scholars, writers, creative artists — will maybe run with, maybe pick up on. My book scratches the surface. It's one of many things that I think there's more historiography, more work that needs to be done to fill in the history of these various times.

There was a lot happening at the community colleges, there was organizing around the building of the I-5 freeway and I-90, as well as the Kingdome. I think more could be written about how communities connected to each other and how they collaborated in reaction to these projects, mentioning the Gang of Four: Larry Gossett, Bernie Whitebear, Bob Santos, and Roberto Maestas. More could be done to remember and celebrate and really tell that story.

You make a crucial point that in Washington State, the Black Panthers came around after the BSUs were founded. In many states, it was the other way around. What are the implications of that?

I'm trying to make clear that the Black Student Union was an important organization in its own right. It was really influential and had its own philosophy and leadership and so forth. I think it also does help to show that Seattle and the Pacific Northwest in general were a visible contributor to the Black Power movement and had some unique characteristics that make it worth studying.

I think it shows how the divide between radical politics and campus politics is not as clear as we may think it was, or even the difference between on-campus and off-campus politics, or between racial justice and civil rights, or these other analytical tools that are boxes that we have now. In that moment, there was quite a bit of overlap and quite a bit of interconnection. Things don't always fall into these clear areas: One of the things that we see with the Black Student Union is that it was under FBI surveillance from its very beginning, which I think reflects how there was this perception that even students on campus demanding changes to the curriculum were considered a threat, were considered radical.

It is striking that UW President Charles Odegaard contributed to the defense of some BSU students when they were under trial for their mobilizing at Franklin. I don't see UW's current president ever doing that. Maybe that's conjecture, and I don't mean to glorify Odegaard, but the preponderance of that power rested on the president of the University and affected how BSU's interventions played out. I sense dynamics have really changed on campuses, and I'm curious what organizers in 2024 should make of that.

You're right. So Odegaard is this interesting figure who at times is an ally, you might say, maybe hesitantly, of the BSU — in some ways, also like President [Glenn] Terrell at Washington State University. They show up in constructive ways at times, they are willing to hear the grievances of the BSU and support some of the reforms. I think, specifically for the University of Washington, the faculty senate also deserves credit for accepting or embracing certain BSU demands and also contributing to the success that came out of it.

I think one clear connection is that, in the aftermath of student anti-war protests during the Vietnam War as well as racial justice protests, there was definitely a shift on campuses to have more punitive policies. The regulations around conduct, the ability to suspend or expel students, all those things — there was much more infrastructure put in place. I think we see that infrastructure being used with the Gaza encampments in ways that are striking, and ways that reveal the degree to which this punitive apparatus and law-enforcement-oriented, authoritarian, and militaristic approach being used against students is also a connection to adjustments that were made in the aftermath of the '60s. For those who are invested in the status quo, be that for financial reasons or ideological reasons or political reasons, there's a recognition that college campuses and students can be catalysts for broader movements and broader social critiques. And if you don't want that, you should clamp down as soon as you see one little movement. I think that's what we're seeing in recent news.

What do you anticipate happening in the fall as students return to campus?

I think there's a greater awareness of gender issues and recognizing a diversity of gender identities and sexualities and presentations. That kind of inclusivity and openness is also a lesson learned from the more patriarchal patterns of the '60s. So I think that's a good thing, and I imagine that will continue. I think there's a greater awareness of how mental health and self-care are also important to sustain a movement. I see conversations around those issues as much more prevalent among activists today.

In the fall, we have this presidential election coming, and there's turmoil in the Democratic Party as we speak. I'm sure that that's going to be a focal point with a lot of campus energy. The Gaza war seems to be continuing, sadly, and it appears it may still be going in the fall. I'm sure that will focus people's attention. I think it promises to be a quite tumultuous and eventful fall. I imagine students are planning, as we speak, for how they're going to mobilize and continue to speak out. As a historian, I tend to see things happening in these trends or what I call historical moments, which can last for years or decades. I think we are very much in this post-George Floyd, post-Breonna Taylor moment where a generation of young folks have come of age in the last few years; there's this sense of an important moment to be engaged in and to continue to speak out on, so I imagine that will continue for the foreseeable future.

Marc Arsell Robinson is an assistant professor of history at California State University, San Bernardino, and he teaches courses on U.S. and African American history. He earned his doctorate in American Studies from Washington State University, and a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Washington.

Featured Image: Dr. Marc Arsell Robinson, author of "Washington State Rising: Black Power on Campus in the Pacific Northwest," takes a look at the political activities of Black Student Unions at Washington universities in the 1960s. (Photo courtesy of Marc Arsell Robinson.)