The Black Leadership and Opportunity Center (the BLOC) at San José State celebrated its sixth year opening its doors to students on Wednesday afternoon and evening on campus.
The Black Leadership and Opportunity Center (BLOC) is a center where Black students and students from other backgrounds gather to develop a community, and to provide social and academic support while fostering Black pride, according to a webpage from SJSU.
The center first opened on Feb. 21, 2018 and was the first Black community center developed for Black students on campus, according to the same webpage.
The room at the center was filled wall to wall with groups of Black students chatting and eating soul food while listening to calm R&B music in the background.
Emerald Green, a 2013 SJSU alumna and the program director for BLOC, said the food was sponsored by Spartan Eats and provided by Jackie’s Place.
Jackie’s Place is a restaurant in San José that is a Black-owned, women-led and family-operated business, according to its website.
Jackie’s Place is also the only restaurant that sells only soul food in Silicon Valley, according to the same source.
In the back of the room, metal trays of catfish, fried chicken, mashed yams and cooked green beans were displayed on two tables.
For dessert, a small stack of velvet cupcakes and a box of peach cobbler sat at the edge of one of the tables.
Green said the array of different soul dishes pays homage to Black American history, color and experiences.
She said she was excited to have the anniversary celebration tap into the community with soul food.
Green also said Jackie’s Place happens to be a crowd favorite at the center.
“It’s really important that us, as leaders of the BLOC we do our due diligence to seek out Black-owned businesses and caterers in the area,” Green said. “So when we can make that happen, particularly around soul food or particularly around diasporic African food, (it) is really a great opportunity.”
Kinesiology freshman Brooklyn Moultry said she decided to join the BLOC because she wanted to find a sense of community.
“I decided to join the BLOC to find my sense of community since I know that San José has a low percentage of Black students,” Moultry said.
Within SJSU’s student body only 3.3% of students are Black, according to a webpage from the university.
Moultry said she felt welcomed in the club because there are a lot of Black people at the center.
She said being a part of the Black Leadership and Opportunity Center makes her feel like she is around family and friends.
Moultry said she thought the event was very social and that it helps bring different types of people together.
“If you're not a very social person and you're close to yourself, someone will come up to you and talk to you and get to know you and that can help you have a good friendship,” Moultry said.
Amen Abdissa, a business administration sophomore, said she was happy to see a lot of people in the room during the celebration.
Adbissa said she started visiting the BLOC last fall, but visits the center almost every day this spring semester.
“I get to have (and) create a lot of connections and talk with others,” Abdissa said.
She said it would still be significant to see the center celebrate its anniversary during any other month, but it’s very special to experience the BLOC’s birthday during Black History Month.
National Black History Month was founded by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, a historian and author, and was initially founded as Negro History Week in February 1926, according to a webpage from the Library of Congress.
Congress passed a law to designate February as National Black History Month in 1986, according to the same source.
Green said she does not believe it was initially planned to open the Black Community and Opportunity Center during Black History Month, however she does think the universe has its way of aligning itself.
“We're forever grateful because we get to have a birthday in the month where we're already centering and celebrating Blackness,” Green said.
MyShaundriss Watkins, the program coordinator for the center and a 2017 alumna, said she was part of the group of students who advocated and fought for the Black Leadership and Opportunity Center to be built for Black students.
“I didn't get to experience this as a student so it's truly a full circle being able to do this on the other side as a staff member,” Watkins said.
Watkins said it’s an issue that the BLOC has only been open for six years because SJSU has been open since 1857.
SJSU is considered the oldest campus in the state and was the first public institution for higher education to open in California when it was founded in 1857, according to a webpage from the university’s website.
“I think that we (SJSU) should lead by example in the entire CSU and create more spaces before there's a need for them,” Watkins said.
Green said Black people are Black not only during Black History Month, but 365 days of the year.
She said the community’s trajectory in America as Black-bodied individuals has not always been an easy experience.
Green said the community has experienced a fair share of discrimination, racial injustice and state-sanctioned violence.
Black people make up 13% of the U.S. population, but 27% of people who were fatally shot and killed by police in 2021 were Black, according to a March 3, 2022 article from NBC.
This means Black people are twice as likely as white people to be shot and killed by police officers, according to the same article.
Green said any time the community can come together and incorporate different cultural elements is super important.
“It honors our students to go back out into our campus environment (and) into their work environments to really be strong, to really be brave and to really think about that they're not alone, that they're not in isolation (and) that they're experiencing the myriad of micro or macro aggressions that they experience on a day-to-day basis,” Green said.
Green said Black History Month is a holiday that represents the community and is an opportunity to see Black community members celebrate one another.
She also said she wants students at the BLOC to see themselves in the celebration.
Green said the Black Leadership and Opportunity Center continues to exist because students keep coming to visit the center.
She said students keep visiting the center and continue to be amazing student leaders because they center themselves all the time and want to amplify themselves as Black-bodied folks.
“If it (was) not for just all of us here at San José State, (it's) really for our Black Spartans to really just (be) in gratitude and say thank you to them for being with us throughout these last six years,” Green said.
