Aug. 9, 1969: Formation of the Bay Area High School Union

August 9 1969, students from thirty-one high schools across the Bay Area met to attend a 3-day long High School Liberation Conference in San Francisco. They established the Bay Area High School Student Union and created a nine-point program to unite student demands.

The program listed demands to end the school tracking system, abolish racism and patriarchy in school administrations, cancel suspensions, and called for the removal of all cops from school grounds, open admissions to colleges, ending ROTC, and community control of all schools.

Students created an underground paper, the “Bay Area Student Union Free Press,” and the union set up offices in four regions: San Francisco, Marin County, East Bay, and the Mid-Peninsula. Becoming heavily involved in antiwar organizing, they mobilized with students across the US.

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