Black Power and the Mills Girl: Gender and the Black Campus Movement at Mills College, 1967–69

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the rise and impact of the Black campus movement at Mills College, a women’s college in Oakland, California. Founded in 1852 for the daughters of western industrialists, Mills actively promoted an image of its elite students as refined, intelligent, and ladylike—“the Mills girl.” Administrators historically had discouraged the students from political engagement and activism because they considered these activities to be unfeminine and believed that they would jeopardize students’ prospects for marriage and motherhood. These ideals were challenged in 1968–69 when the newly formed Black Student Union (BSU) employed direct-action protest strategies that led to the hiring of Black faculty and staff, the increased recruitment of students of color, increased financial aid, and the establishment of one of the first departments of ethnic studies in the country and the first and only at a women’s college. Although successful, the Mills BSU’s actions were met with resentment and resistance from the college administration and derision from much of the public. While the Black campus movement challenged Eurocentric curricula and racially homogenous student bodies and faculty at numerous universities, at Mills the movement also challenged gendered expectations of acceptable behavior for female students. I argue that, in critics’ views, what was most disturbing about the BSU’s actions was not its desire to make Mills inclusive and its curriculum relevant to Black students, but that, by protesting, the BSU upended the carefully crafted and protected image of “the Mills girl.”