 I will never forget the year Angela Davis returned to campus to
speak at Peterson Hall. So many people came to see her that a
second lecture room was opened with a video feed. Midway through
her speech, the wiring was mysteriously severed, disabling the
video, cutting all sound and effectively silencing her. I was
an editor on The People’s Voice, the African-American student
newspaper, and we had worked with the Black Student Union (BSU)
to bring her to campus. The People’s Voice planned to publish
articles outlining her history at UCSD to coincide with her visit.
Our conservative media mates, the right wing California Review,
made it clear that they would make a statement in response. And
maybe this was it. While we scrambled to get a handheld microphone
for Angela, all of those in the overflow room, squeezed into
the main room to hear the rest of her speech. She was undaunted.
Adding to the insult, that week’s issue of The People’s
Voice ended up in trash cans across campus. The political climate
was hot.
In the 1980s, UCSD’s African-American student population
was about 350 and we all felt it important that our collective
voice was heard on campus. Almost all of us were members of BSU
and we actively sought the counsel and support of African-American
staff and faculty such as Joe Watson, Charles Thomas (“plan
your work and work your plan”), Bobbie Gray, Phil Rafael,
Cecil Lytle, Carolyn Buck, Floyd Gaffney and Nolan Penn.  One of my best friends, Angela Knox, ’88, was an editor at
The Voice and she, along with another friend, Robyn Broughton, ’85,
one of the Pan-African revolutionaries at UCSD, persuaded me to
join the paper as a writer and editor.
The People’s Voice was named after the 1940s weekly newspaper
created by Adam Clayton Powell, the first Black congressman from
New York. Our motto was “Dedicated to Inform, Enlighten and
Educate” and we covered topics focusing on strategies for
academic and social survival, for African-American students.
We spent many late nights creating, editing and laying out articles
on the light board and creating pages by hand with border tape,
while fighting for time on the typesetters and other ancient
tools of the trade with the other student publications. The media room, located on the second floor of the original Student
Center, was shared by a motley crew indeed. Apart from The People’s
Voice, there was Voz Fronteriza! (run by MECHa students), a fraternity
paper and the right wing California Review. Needless to say, the
production nights and mornings often turned into heated debates
on race, class and economics. The Voice and Voz became natural
allies, working to support each other and publishing stories on
similar topics in both English and Spanish. Articles published
in 1986 ranged from “Campus Survival” to “No
Emancipation from Ronald Reagan” to “What are the Souls
of Black Folk Worth?” And an important piece in the October
1986 issue, “In Search of Ourselves,” discussed how
Black students on many campuses were changing how they chose to
name themselves.
The People’s Voice is no longer published but the legacy
remains. I would not be surprised to find it resurrected in some
form one day, as the small but incredibly amazing, politically
active group of African-American students currently at UCSD, use
their voices and talents to achieve an even higher level of recognition.
Do you have a memory or a story about UCSD? This space could be
yours. Write to the editor at alumnieditor@ucsd.edu
—Pamela Fruge, Warren ’87, is a Management
Officer at UC San Diego’s Education Studies. |
