Dr. Juan Martinez speaks

Former SFSC History professor Dr. Juan Martinez, son of a migrant worker, experience the poverty of the Great Depression fought hard for his education; he attended college on the G.I. Bill, earning a Ph.D. in history at University of California, Berkeley by 1956. Martinez started at San Francisco State College in fall of 1966 and immediately clashed with History chair Ray Kelch over teaching course in Mexican-American history. At the end of the spring semester of 1967, Martinez was notified that his job would not be renewed for the next academic year. Martinez filed a grievance and President John Summerskill appointed him to be head of the College Commitment Program through the Social Science department. Confounded by institutional obstacles, Martinez proposed an alliance of ethnic student organizations that would work together around common goals of achieving educational equity at San Francisco State College.