William "Bil" Banks
Professor Banks joined UC Berkeley’s faculty in 1971 in what was then called the Afro American Studies Program. The Program, as part of the Third World College, had been created in response to the Third World Strike of 1969 specifically, and generally, the social movements that defined the 1960’s. Banks played a pivotal, and controversial, role in the direction that the Program took as he became its first ladder rank faculty person, then Director of the Program, and guided the program to departmental status in the College of Letters and Science. He was named chair of the department in 1974. In this interview he shares his perspectives on the birth and the evolution of the African American Studies Department, the culture of UC Berkeley as an institution, the social movements of the 1960’s and seventies, and higher education in the United States.

Robert H. Bragg
Professor Robert H. "Pete" Bragg came to UC Berkeley in 1969 from the private sector to serve as professor of Material Science and Mineral Engineering, one of six African American faculty on campus. His major areas of research were x-ray physics and applications to research on materials, electronic properties of carbon materials, and the mechanism of graphitization. This interview follows his trajectory from his early life in Tennessee and Chicago, through military service, graduate school and early professional experiences in the private sector, and finally, on to Berkeley.

Video Excerpts:
The Function of the University and Advice for Young Faculty of Color

Perceptions of Black Faculty on Campus; Anecdote about Harry Morrison

Troy Duster
Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Chancellor's Professor Troy Duster came to Berkeley in 1967 from UC Riverside, just on the heels of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement and in advance of the Third World Strike. At Berkeley, Duster played a central role in leading curricular innovation and in building structures to promote and sustain diversity among faculty and students on campus. He consulted closely with University and student leadership to work through major political struggles on campus, including the Third World Strike and the development of the American Cultures requirement, of which he was a Director. He served as Director of the Institute for the Study of Social Change and principal investigator for Berkeley's Diversity Project. Professor Duster's research and writing ranges across the sociology of law, deviance, knowledge, inequality, race, science, and education, and is bound by the common thread of interrogating the normative frames that create and organize taxonomies of information and power. Duster's contributions to the area of biogenetic research are critical in shaping scientific inquiry around race, ethnicity, and genetics.

Professor Duster brings to this oral history both his very human lived experiences combined with his analytic frame as a sociologist and scholar. In this interview Duster situates his own life and trajectory, and that of his generation, against a backdrop of social transformation that reaches from the pre-Civil Rights era to our present moment as we entertain the notion of a post racial society. This interview reveals his acute clarity about the anatomy of structural inequality and institutional discrimination, what these are made of and how they function, and the potential for strategic interventions. Professor Duster fought hard and creatively to increase access for minorities and women at UC Berkeley. Significant themes of this oral history are: a perspective on the University of California's institutional history from the vantage point of someone who worked for change from within the administration, a perspective on how and why affirmative action policies and programs were built and dismantled, gender and racial discrimination and academic culture, and curricular transformation catalyzed by the social movements of the 1960's.

Video Excerpts:
Selections from the African American Faculty and Senior Staff Oral History Project

William Russell Ellis
Professor Ellis joined UC Berkeley's Department of Architecture in 1970, where he taught, researched, and innovated in the intersection of sociology and architecture. He subsequently played a significant role in university administration, serving as Vice Chancellor of Undergraduate Affairs and Faculty Equity Associate, a position for which he emerged temporarily from retirement. Ellis was raised in Los Angeles and educated at Compton High School and UCLA where he gained significant recognition as an athlete before going on to become a scholar and professor of sociology. Ellis emphasized over the course of his interview that his is a California story that reflects this state's social history and diverse population. At Berkeley, he has worked to support and grow a student population that reflects this state's diversity.

In this interview Professor Ellis reflects on UC Berkeley and the life and times that led him here. Significant themes include: a perspective on the University of California's institutional history from the vantage point of someone who worked for change from within the administration, a perspective on how and why affirmative action policies and programs were built and dismantled, gender and racial discrimination and academic culture, and curricular transformation catalyzed by the social movements of the 1960's. Professor Ellis' trajectory reflects that of a generation of African American scholars and professionals. For many in this cohort, athletic excellence and/or military service were the mechanics of mobility that allowed them to circumvent structural racism and gain access to formerly segregated institutions of higher education. Against the changing backdrop of America's racial landscape during the ‘60s and ‘70s, Ellis and his peers leapt far beyond what had been possible for their parents and previous generations and were central in efforts to create mechanisms to increase access for minorities and women who followed them in the academy.

Video Excerpts:
Selections from the African American Faculty and Senior Staff Oral History Project

Margaret B. Wilkerson
Margaret Wilkerson came to UC Berkeley in 1968 as a PhD student in the drama department. Upon completing her dissertation on the topic of black theater groups on the West Coast, she began teaching at UC Berkeley. Over the course of thirty years at Berkeley, Wilkerson taught in and chaired both the Dramatic Arts and African American Studies departments and served as the Director of the Center for the Study, Education and Advancement of Women, before retiring and taking up her current post as the Director of the Ford Foundation’s Media, Arts, and Culture Program. This interview contains her reflections on the times in which she came of age, her research—black theater and the life of Lorraine Hansberry, and UC Berkeley, which she had the opportunity to experience from a few different vantage points, as a professor with multiple affiliations and as a student.