The following selection of documents, mostly from the records of the Office of the President with some articles from The Michigan Daily and the University Record, is intended to provide an overview of the Black Action Movement (BAM) demands and the university's immediate response in each of the three phases of the Black Action Movement. It represents a small portion of the documentation of BAM contained in the records of various university units, personal papers, photograph collections, and publications held by the Bentley Historical Library. All the records are open to researchers, subject to some limited restrictions (student records protected by FERPA; personnel records, and certain administrative records subject to review).
The Black Action Movement (BAM) was formed in 1970 from a coalition of the Black Student Union, the Black Law Students Association, the Association of Black Social Work Students, and groups of black students from the Medical School and the Psychology Department. BAM initiated a series of protests by the University of Michigan African American students against the policies and actions of the university administration, that took place in 1970 (BAM I), 1975 (BAM II), and 1987 (BAM III).
The BAM I campaign was one of the most successful in campus history. Over three hundred professors and teaching assistants canceled classes and many departments were shut down. After eight days, the university gave approval to the essential demands of increased minority aid, services, and staff, and agreed to work toward a goal of 10% African-American enrollment by 1973. The BAM II campaign of 1975 aimed its protests against the lack of progress by the University in fulfilling negotiations of BAM I, expulsion of Black nursing student, and University's rejection of Regent approved Black candidate for LS,&A deanship. The BAM III of 1987 protest began as a result of issues related to admissions and faculty, racist remarks of the student WJJX radio disc jockey, University Housing's efforts to address harassment of Black students in Residence Halls, and University and Ann Arbor Police Department's handling of fight at South Quad. In 1988 the University established the Michigan Mandate under President James Duderstadt. Its goal was to increase representation of Students of Color at the University of Michigan.
