Umoja Turns 50

BU Today

On a Tuesday night in February, 15 to 20 students were sitting in a circle in a College of Arts & Sciences classroom. They were there for a panel discussion titled What I Wish I Knew as a Freshman, hosted by Umoja, Boston University’s black student union.
The student panelists, Jordan Carter (CFA’17), Kirby Page (CAS’18), Daniel Wiley (ENG’17), and Sherifat Bakare (CAS’16, SPH’18), were leading a conversation about the culture shock that black students often experience when they arrive at BU as freshmen. The discussion was part of the club’s Unity Week, a series of events commemorating Umoja’s 50th anniversary.
The panelists stressed the importance of building rapport with professors inside and outside of class, meeting new people, and getting involved in activities you’re passionate about. Bakare shared her struggle to fit in. “I just didn’t feel comfortable,” she recalled of her first months at BU. “I hadn’t found my group of people.” But when she began working at the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground, she found a home base and was able “to really put my feet down on the ground here.”
Many of the students at the discussion said that Umoja itself had been instrumental in helping them find community at BU. The organization was founded in 1967, at a time when African Americans all over the country were gaining traction and mobilizing around civil rights. In its early years, members fought against racial injustice on campus and in the larger community. They protested the University’s lack of African American faculty in 1969 and created a legal defense fund the next year in support of activist Angela Davis, prosecuted for conspiracy involving the armed takeover of a Marin County, Calif., courtroom that left four people dead, and later acquitted in a federal trial.
Today, the club’s mission is to support and represent black ...

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