Civil Rights 125AC Podcast 6.1 Affirmative Action V02.mp3 [MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER 1: UC Berkeley summer sessions. You're listening to the history of the civil rights movement. SPEAKER 2: Here's Dr. Ula Y. Taylor on affirmative action. [MUSIC PLAYING] ULA TAYLOR: The federal government and its police force and the form of the FBI really worked hard to muzzle what they perceived as out-of-control activists. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover aimed his repressive COINTEL programs to dismantle radical political organizations. His goal with COINTELPRO was to magnify tensions among activists, and that work succeeded in many cases. For example, the FBI exploited a teenager, William O'Neill, to serve as one of their informants, and the information they got from him enabled the killing of O'Neill's fellow Chicago Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. But activists were not going down without a fight. At the same time, concessions were made at every stage of the modern civil rights movement. One such concession on behalf of the federal government was affirmative action. The story of affirmative action really takes shape in the period after 1965. During this time, it was clear that the legal achievements to remove Jim Crow laws had not erased discrimination. This continued discrimination kept African Americans and Mexican Americans from materially transforming their lives. They were still being denied equal opportunity in secondary schools that would make them eligible for higher education and professional schools. This is why activists organized a school walk out in Los Angeles. Moreover, those who were able to receive a college education, largely at historically black colleges and universities, were systematically passed over for promotions.
