Sharon Jones
Biography:
Our Department is proud to include alumna, Professor Sharon Jones, in our faculty. Professor Jones received her BS and MA from SF State. She teaches Introduction to Africana Studies and engages the first time first-year Afrocentric Living and Learning Community as part of our Department's first-year living and learning experience (FYE). Jones's research concerned the strike of 1968 at San Francisco State College, which was the longest student strike in American history. Professor Jones examines the manner in which student activism and the strike impacted a portion of the core leadership of the Black Student Union strikers as they matriculated into San Francisco State College (as it was then called) and beyond their college years. This study focuses on how the Black Student Union participants were affected by their activism educationally, socially and politically. Central to this study is an examination of the influence of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s on the educational aspirations of students of African descent in the San Francisco Bay Area. The study engages experiences of core leadership to determine the motivation of their involvement in the strike. Jones also participated in the strike as a 17 year old undergraduate freshman.