Black Cultural Association

The Black Cultural Association (or BCA) was an African American inmate group that was founded in 1968 at the Calfiornia Medical Facility at Vacaville, a California state prison, and formally recognized by prison officials in 1969. The primary purpose of the BCA was to provide educational tutoring to inmates, which it did in conjunction with graduate college students from the nearby San Francisco Bay Area. Outsiders were allowed to attend meetings of the BCA, and tutors provided remedial and advanced courses in math, reading, writing, art, history, political science, and sociology. These courses made the BCA popular with inmates as well as outsiders; in time, radical political organizations such as Venceremos infiltrated the BCA, giving rise to BCA factions such as Unisight, which eventually gave birth to the Symbionese Liberation Army.