“We demand an opportunity to be educated and to educate about America’s historical treatment and marginalization of colored groups through race and ethnicity requirements throughout all schools and colleges within the university.”
Activists on the steps of Hill Auditorium Monday said that University of Michigan officials have seven days to meet seven demands addressing lack of diversity and inclusion at U-M or ‘physical actions’ will be taken on campus.
Speaking Monday after a speech inside the auditorium by civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, representatives of the University of Michigan Black Student Union — the group that started the Being Black at University of Michigan (#BBUM) movement in the fall — issued a set of seven demands that they see as vital to improving life for minority students on campus.
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the student speakers linked their campaign to historical efforts of the Black Action Movement, which temporarily shut down the university’s campus in 1970.
“What brings me here today is not that social action is done,” junior Robert Greenfield, the Black Student Union treasurer, told a gathered crowd of about 75 people.
“It’s the unfinished business of the first three fights of the Black Action Movements. I am a single voice in a sea of voices that yearns to get away from the sea of isolation on this campus.”
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