Merritt College is a public community college in Oakland, California. Merritt, like the other three campuses of the Peralta Community College District, is accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges. The college enrolls approximately 6,000 students. History Merritt College (named for physician Dr. Samuel Merritt) was opened as a general campus in 1954. Merritt College was originally located on Grove Street in North Oakland but later moved to Campus Drive in the hills of East Oakland. Grove Street The original Merritt College was located at what is now 5714 Martin Luther King Jr. Way (then called Grove Street) in the flatlands of North Oakland. In 1923, the campus of University High School was built for children of faculty of the University of California in Berkeley. The campus closed during World War II, but was reopened as the Merritt School of Business in 1946. In 1954, the Oakland Unified School District, then operating the Merritt campus and the Laney Trade and Technical School, formed Oakland Junior College (later renamed Oakland City College). In 1960, the same year as the opening of Skyline High School, OUSD decided to relocate Merritt College from Grove Street to the hills of East Oakland. Although the demographics of North Oakland changed throughout the 1950s and 1960s, it was not until the mid-to-late-1960s that the student and faculty population began to change. After the 1960 California Master Plan for Public Higher Education, more Black students began to attend Merritt. In the early 1960s, the Afro-American Association began recruiting Merritt students. By 1964, students formed the Soul Students Advisory Council, predecessors to the Black Student Union (BSU). Merritt Community College was the meeting place for prominent leaders of the Black Panther Party, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. The two met in September 1962 and shortly after began organizing the Black Panther Party. There were many public displays of unrest on the campus during this time, speaking to the Cuban blockade, the black experience, and other political topics. The two leaders also attended many politically charged classes at the school such as experimental sociology, Black History, and Negro History. This occurred in September 1966 and started as Huey and Bobby brainstorming a ten-point platform. As the two grew closer, they first became involved in local organizations in Oakland only to eventually create their own. Against numerous protests by students and community members, Merritt was relocated from