In 1969, Chicana/o/x activists came together at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and published El Plan de Santa Barbara, a document that united diverse activists from around the state of California and laid out a roadmap for Chicana/Chicano Studies, as well as programs to increase the retention, engagement, and success of students from minoritized backgrounds

Strikers called for a Third World College, but the administration ultimately formed a Department of Ethnic Studies.

After he was fired on November 1, 1968, student leaders from the BSU and Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) started a strike. The TWLF was a multi-ethnic coalition of students that were awoken to the fact that they were being taught in ways that were dominating and irrelevant to themselves (Maeda, 2012), and included a coalition of the Black Student Union (BSU), Latin American Student Organization (LASO), Intercollegiate Chinese for Social Action (ICSA), Mexican American Student Confederation, Philippine (now Pilipino) American Collegiate Endeavor (PACE), La Raza, Native American Students Union, and Asian American Political Alliance.

Native and Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (a name for North and Central America used by various Indigenous peoples of the western hemisphere) have practiced educational pedagogies that center resistance, justice, and equity long before the introduction of Ethnic Studies as a phrase or academic field. Traditional knowledge that has been sustained and carried forward in the face of settler-colonialism provides key insight into the importance of activism and strategies of resistance against oppressive systems (Jacob et al., 2018).

The Governor of Arkansas called in the Arkansas National Guard to prevent students from entering the campus, which eventually prompted President Eisenhower to send National Guard troops to escort the students to school. In Figure 2.3.22.3.2\PageIndex{2}, Elizabeth Eckford is shown walking to school in sunglasses while she is surrounded by an angry white mob, with Hazel Bryan Massery behind her, shouting hateful comments.