A legacy long in the making
The Black Student Alliance at the University has a long history extending the course of 52 years, yet many of its demands are unfulfilled to this day Words by Booker Johnson
“T
he Black Student Alliance facilitates community for Black students at an institution that may otherwise feel unwelcome to them,” said Norah Mulinda, a fourth-year College student and former BSA special events chair. “It can be difficult for students to transition into a space that wasn’t built for them, surrounded by people who may not always be looking out for them. BSA provides resources, companionship, and advocacy for Black students at the University who may have otherwise felt siloed from the overwhelmingly white majority.” The Black Student Alliance was formed in 1969 by a group of Black students who sought to create an organization they could call their own. It describes its mission as an organization that articulates the voices and concerns of the Black student population at the University. JaVori Warren, Class of 2020 alumna and former BSA President for the 2019-20 academic year, outlined her desire to continue BSA’s goals of supporting Black students at the University. “[BSA’s] main goal is to empower and uplift the Black community, which we strive to do by hosting numerous programs and opportunities for students to engage in specifically catered towards Black students and the Black student experience,” she said. The Black Student Alliance has a history of empowering Black students both at the University and within the larger Charlottesville community itself. In October of 1975, the Black Student Alliance released its “Proposal For The Establishment of an Office of Minority Affairs At The University of Virginia,” demanding, among other things, the creation of an office to support Black students at the University by the summer of 1976. That same month, 300 Black students marched to then-University President Frank L. Hereford’s residence to present the proposal, resulting in his
promise that the University would begin addressing their concerns. Following the proposal and march, Dr. William M. Harris, Sr. was appointed as the Office of African American Affairs’ first dean and assistant provost in July 1976, and the office formally opened on March 4, 1977. Over the course of the organization’s 52 year history, BSA has repeatedly made demands for change, many of which the University has failed to meet. “There have been demands that have been met in the past,” Warren said. “But the overwhelming majority of demands from not just BSA, but Black students [in general] and other Multicultural Student Organizations, just haven’t been.” In recent years, BSA has released demands in the aftermath of events that have caused harm to Black communities, each time calling upon the University to address these instances of aggression. For example, one month after the violent arrest of Martese Johnson in March 2015, BSA released a report entitled “Towards a Better University,” which it wrote with consultation from the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the endorsement of 29 other student groups. The document incorporated requests for increasing the Black faculty and student yield and for the University to implement a “Culture of Truth” to go in hand with its “Community of Trust.” Then, in the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally of Aug. 11 and 12, 2017 — when self-identified white supremacist groups marched through campus to protest the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue in downtown Charlottesville — BSA organized the March to Reclaim Our Grounds event. The March To Reclaim Our Grounds was a community-wide event, which invited guest speakers including students, Charlottesville com-
www.cavalierdaily.com/section/magazine 23
