Student Solidarity
"From left, activists Charles Brown, of the Afro-American Students Union; Ysidro Macias, of the Mexican-American Student Confederation; LaNada Means, of the Native American Student Union; and Stan Kadani, of the Asian American Political Alliance, walk down Bancroft Way. (Chicano Studies Program Records, Ethnic Studies Library, UC Berkeley, CS ARC 2009/1, Carton 1, Folder 14.)” https://bimi.berkeley.edu/research/community-projects
Bottom row: Members of the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) of UC Berkeley march at the student strike of SF State in 1969. Yolanda Lopez printmaker, painter, and Third World Liberation Front student activist during the 1960s student movement in SF State.
George Murray, an English Department lecturer at SF State was dismissed from his teaching
position for his participation in the Black Panther Party and politics.
A group of 12 black student athletes from UC Santa Barbara take over the University’s North Hall in October 14, 1968. Their act of civil disobedience was the result of repeated racism from the campus community and academic curriculum. Their action contributed to a more inclusive climate for Black students but also to the establishment of Chicana/Chicano studies department, Asian American studies department and gender studies at UC Santa Barbara.
https://news.ucsb.edu/2018/019214/north-hall-takeover-50-years-later
School Desegregation
Top: Charlestown High School Boston, September 15, 1975
Bottom: Grenada, MS. Mississippi, Sep 14, 1966
Trans Liberation
The legacy of Marsha P Johnson and Silvia Rodriguez is vital to LGBTQIA2+ liberation movements in the 1960s and today. Both activists greatly defended their local trans and queer community while creating a movement that begun as the Stonewall Uprising in 1966 and ripples to today’s pride and protest events.
Beyond Politics
Maya Angelou bridges the collective and the personal struggle through her poem And still I rise. The excerpt below parallels many of the sentiments that fueled the activist depicted on the ride side of the mural.
Poem excerpt
“Out of the huts of history’s shame,
I rise,
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain,
I rise,
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear,
I rise,
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear,
I rise,
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise,
I rise,
I rise.”
The Black Power fist represents black liberation and a symbol of solidarity. Mary Eliza Mahoney is the first Black woman to become a nurse starting a legacy of black women in nursing and centers black healers in the US.
Local legacies who’ve contributed to student success
Lucy Hicks Anderson
Philip Vera Cruz
Larry Itliong
John R. Hatcher III
Mexican Americans with Moxie by Frank P. Barajas
The 20th Century Onyx Club
Cerisa House Wesley
Bedford Pinkard and Irene Pinkard
Carmen Ramirez
Sankofa in Twi Language of Ghana symbolizes the importance of acknowledging and understanding
history.
Xochitl in cuicatl (The flower and the song) is embedded in the religious, cultural and philosophical traditions of the Nahua. In this mural the it serves to symbolize oral histories and songs.
Both symbols connote an urgency to seek and understand history to create fuller present and future.
Jarabe Mixteco Dancer
Djembe Drummer
Taiko Drums
Drum
Braceros and Farmworkers represent the relationship between agriculture and environmental
justice. Fernando Ortega, a CSUCI Student shared the story of his great-grandfather,
Aurelio De Robles Madera a farmer Bracero. Aurelio’s portrait is imagined standing
in line with other braceros inspired by the historic photographs of Leonard Nadel
documenting the hardships of workers. Fernando is one of various students who shared
having former bracero family and relate it to their legacy and motivation at the university.
Students practicing from local perspectives and acknowledgment of the lands’ needs.
Dolphin
Island Fox
Elderberry
A figure emerges from the hills and native plants holding a fist. Local Chumash people
tended the land for generations preserving and understanding plants like the California
Fuchsia and its medicinal uses. This healing plant grows in the design foreground
while the a Junipero Serra statue falls in the back.
The figure is seen wearing a mask to acknowledge the COVID-19 pandemic and its harsh impact. Also during this time, the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers lead to an uprising that put into questioning monuments that glorified racist and hurtful symbolisms like that of Serra.