Join Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) and California Historical Society (CHS) to honor the 50th Anniversary of the Third World Strike and the Rise of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University with a screening of the gripping documentary Agents of Change. The screening will be followed by a discussion of the film with Co-Director and Co-Producer Abby Ginzburg and participant and campus leader at SF State Dr. Ramona Tascoe.

From the well-publicized events at San Francisco State in 1968 to the image of black students with guns emerging from the takeover of the student union at Cornell University in April, 1969, the struggle for a more relevant and meaningful education, including demands for black and ethnic studies programs, became a clarion call across the country in the late 1960's. Through the stories of these young men and women who were at the forefront of these efforts, Agents of Change examines the untold story of the racial conditions on college campuses and in the country that led to these protests. The film's characters were caught at the crossroads of the civil rights, black power, and anti-Vietnam war movements at a pivotal time in America's history.

Today, almost 50 years later, many of the same demands are surfacing in campus protests across the country, revealing how much work remains to be done.

Abby Ginzberg, a Peabody award-winning director has been producing compelling documentaries about race and social justice for over 30 years. Her film, And Then They Came for Us (2017), about the connection between the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WW II and the current Muslim travel ban just won a Silver Gavel Award and has played in major cities across the country.

She co-produced and co-directed Agents of Change (2016; with Frank Dawson), which premiered at the Pan African Film Festival where it won the Jury and the Audience Awards for Best Feature Documentary. It was broadcast on America Reframed in February, 2018.

Abby is the President of the Berkeley Film Foundation, which has given out over $1 million to East Bay filmmakers since 2009.

‍Dr. Ramona Tascoe, who is featured in the film, was a student and campus leader at SF State. After graduating in 1970, she went on to earn a medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco in 1979. Tascoe has been an internal medicine specialist in Oakland for decades and has also put her unique mix of skills to work on behalf of communities around the world.

As a Global First Responder she's led medical missions to Kenya, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, India and Sri Lanka. And she's worked extensively with Haiti's Ministry of Health and the University General Hospital of Haiti, that nation's largest public hospital. She was the 2018 SF State Commencement Speaker.

This program is co-presented by the California Historical Society