In 1996, with a vote of 5,268,462 to 4,388,733, Proposition 209 was passed in California. The Amendment reads, “[California] shall not … grant preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.” Of any Proposition

In the last installment of 2020 Vision, I began recounting my interview with Esteem Brumfield — a thirty-two-year-old UC Berkeley graduate. He spoke to me about his life, from his childhood struggles with illiteracy to his forthcoming venture to Stellenbosch, South Africa.

This past week, a family friend of mine introduced me to Esteem Brumfield, a recent University of California, Berkeley graduate with whom I had the pleasure of speaking to last Sunday.

While classes like African-American History and African-American Literature have remained at Berkeley High School since the inception of the Black Studies Program in 1968, African-American Journalism hasn’t been as fortunate.

As bus integration in Berkeley’s elementary schools was taking shape in the fall of 1968, an equally bold effort was developing at Berkeley High School: the creation of an African American Studies Department.