UCLA has been enrolling Black men and women since it opened in 1919, before it offered bachelor's degree programs. The first Black fraternity chapter at UCLA, Kappa Alpha Psi, was founded in 1923 and James C. Williamson was the first Black student to graduate with a full degree in 1926. By 1939, the Black Bruin community was already home to legends like Jackie Robinson, who won varsity letters in four sports - baseball, football, basketball, and track. He was later joined by teammates Kenny Washington and Woody Strode, all of whom would pioneer the desegregation of professional sports in the 1940s. Woody would later go on to be a Western film actor and is the namesake for Woody from Toy Story. Their contemporary James Lu Valle, Olympic track athlete and chemist, founded UCLA's Graduate Student Association. He went on to lead Stanford's chemistry department and is the namesake of UCLA's Lu Valle Commons (affectionately known as "Jimmy's").

By the mid-century, Black Bruins were playing a pivotal role in the cultural shift of America. UCLA elected its first (and America's second-ever) Black student body president, Sherrill Luke. It served as a main stage for prominent activists, hosting a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. on Janss steps and hiring activist Angela Davis. In a highly controversial decision, Davis was dismissed from her faculty position by the UC Board of Regents in 1969 for her affiliation with the communist party. Black Bruins responded by creating the Center for African American Studies and designing the curriculum themselves. It has since been renamed the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African Studies and still exists to this day. Activist and alumnus J. Daniel Johnson founded the Afrikan Student Union (originally Harambee) in 1966 and went on to create the UCLA Academic Advancement Program (AAP) in 1971. The UCLA Black Alumni Association was founded in 1968.

The end of the century brought a continuation of Black excellence. Critically acclaimed director and filmmaker Ava DuVernay  graduated in 1990, during which time alumnus Tom Bradley was serving as the first Black mayor of Los Angeles and would go on to have the longest mayoral tenure in Los Angeles history (20 years). Black Bruins became Olympians, researchers, and even UCLA Deans. In 1998, California passed Proposition 209, which banned structural support systems like affirmative action and negatively affected campus diversity. Through community-based recruitment efforts, such as establishing the Strategic Partnership & Community Engagement office and appointing an Assistant Director of African American Recruitment, UCLA has regained much of the vibrancy of the Black Bruin community. We need you to write the next chapter and continue the legacy!