The Black Spartans (1907-1948) Exhibit, located on the second floor of the Martin Luther King Jr., Library, tells the stories of 19 Black San Jose State students during a time of extreme systemic racism.
Located in the Jennifer and Philip DiNapoli Gallery, the exhibit opened on Feb. 9 and will be available to view until April 1.
The curators of the exhibit, university archivist Carli Lowe and special collections librarian Kate Steffens, were aided by SJSU’s special collections and marketing departments in the researching and retelling of the students’ stories.
Lowe came to SJSU in 2019 and noticed a lack of awareness of Black history on campus.
“I asked several people if anyone knew who the first Black student was and when they had been here and I had people tell me ‘Oh well, you know we’ve always been integrated’ and I knew that wasn’t the case,” Lowe said in a zoom call.
Lowe and Steffans, who was researching Black history as a graduate student at the time, collaborated and collected information on Black history at the university and provided it to other researchers.
The exhibit starts with Lucy Turner Johnson, the first Black woman to attend and graduate SJSU, and ends with Aubrey Minter, who attended SJSU from 1940-1944 and was on the school’s football team when the team traveled to Hawaii shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
“We ended up getting together with a group of CSU archivists across the state who were also interested in excavating these histories at their own institutions,” Steffans said in a zoom call.
The exhibit is also available online and features portraits of the students that were created by digital media arts senior Yeab Kebede.
Kebede said she did her own reading and research through the materials that Lowe and Steffans had gathered so that she could connect with these Black students and understand them.
She wanted to ensure that her portrayal of these students would accurately capture their essence.
“My thoughts creating each of the portraits was how I translate individuality through every single piece that I made,” Kebede said. “How do I tailor it to that specific person?”
Beyond just portraits, Kebede included colorful details that highlight the personalities, hobbies, and accomplishments of these Black students.
Each student is represented by a portrait with objects that refer to their passions, some featured a basketball hoop or a football while others had books.
“I wanted them to come to life because that’s what this whole project is about, recognizing these people, recognizing their stories,” Kebede said.
Researchers focused on Black students from 1907-1948 because they could collect photographs and information about their lives during the time using the Spartan Daily and La Torre yearbooks.
Experiences of Black Spartans have been documented in the Spartan Daily but their stories were often written from the perspectives of white peers.
“We used the Spartan Daily archives, keywords searched, we have a list of keywords we were using and were able to find a lot of information about our students that way,” Steffans said. “Oftentimes in the history of the Spartan Daily there is racist terminology used that was just normalized at the time.”
The derogatory term “negro” was used in a Dec. 17, 1942 Spartan Daily article in reference to a Black cook named Ben Johnson.
Steffan and Lowe were able to use their research to shed light on these otherwise untold histories. The exhibit showcases the accurate experiences of these students while highlighting their accomplishments.
“It’s very personal for me because I’m Black, I have Black family in the Bay Area, I’ve seen our own family’s history erased and overlooked in the way that Bay Area history is spoken about,” said Lowe.
History student Archit Mahale visited the exhibit and offered his insight and opinions on the experience.
“Honestly, to me it’s just completely unfiltered Black power because so much of what we are taught about Black culture, it revolves around the big names,” Mahale said. “. . . But what people often overlook is that the power was in each of the individuals.”
Awareness about these Black students' lives and experiences allows other students to learn about the University’s history.
“Celebrating Black culture is celebrating Black individuals and there’s no better way to do that than to share the story of these Black individuals,” Mahale said.
