Second-year student Zora Williams is using her voice to bring more mental health and nutrition programming to San Diego Mesa College. Williams was elected president of the college’s Associated Students (AS) for the 2024-2025 academic year and serves as the college’s student representative on the San Diego Community College District Board of Trustees.
Sometimes, you hear a story that makes you want to know more. Kevin Gonzalez has such a story. The last time this story was updated, San Diego Mesa College student Kevin Gonzalez was a 15 year-old heading off to Massachusetts to complete his high school education. In the ensuing years, he has travelled to the other side of the world, built houses, but remained in close contact with his Mesa College professors and connections he made while on campus.
The San Diego Community College District has appointed four new student trustees for the upcoming academic year. Dalia Ramirez (San Diego City College), Zora Williams (San Diego Mesa College), Hailey Hua (San Diego Miramar College), and Haydee Zuniga (San Diego College of Continuing Education), will be sworn in during the June 20 SDCCD Board of Trustees meeting.
March 6, 2017
African American poet, professor and activist Dr. Sonia Sanchez spoke to a full room at San Diego Mesa College on Feb. 23 in honor of Black History Month.
“‘I cannot tell the truth about anything unless I confess being a student - growing and learning something new every day – the more I learn, the clearer my view of the world becomes,’” said Mesa College President Dr. Pamela Luster, Ed.D., during her introductory speech, quoting Sanchez. “In the presence of Dr. Sonia Sanchez, we are all students today…this kind of event is what it means to be the ‘Leading College of Equity and Excellence.’”
Known for her work with both the Black Arts and Civil Rights movements, Sanchez has written seven plays and more than 16 books of poetry, including “Shake Loose My Skin,” “Ash,” “Morning Haiku” and “Under a Soprano Sky.” She is the 1999 recipient of the Langston Hughes Poetry Award, and the 2001 recipient of the Poetry Society of America Robert Frost Medal for “Distinguished Lifetime Service to American poetry”.
Sanchez has taught at eight universities, including San Francisco State University, where she helped to introduce the first classes in Black Studies in the late 1960s.
“Dr. Sanchez is the gardener of advancing our intellectual prowess as someone who broke down barriers, especially with the Black Arts Movement, that education and learning did not have to happen simply through a lecture,” said Thekima Mayasa, professor of Black Studies. “She reminded us that there is more than one way to develop our scholarship, to share our scholarship, to embrace our identity, to discover who we are – and that gardening has resulted in what you see here today with Departments of Black Studies, Chicano Studies, Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies.”
During her visit to Mesa College, Sanchez read excerpts from several of her books, including “SOS – Calling All Black People: A Black Arts Movement Reader” that she co-edited with John H. Bracey, Jr. and James Smethurst. She also spoke of her experiences in helping to create the interdisciplinary field of Black Studies, and how that resulted in a visit from the FBI while she was living in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.
Upset and confused as to why the FBI was concerned about her teaching materials, Sanchez called her New York City’s Schomburg Center for Black Culture curator Jean Hudson, a friend who had given her many of the books that she used in her teachings.
“I said the, ‘FBI has just come to my house and in a sense, threatened me, and all I’m doing is teaching black literature,’ and she said, ‘oh, my dear Sonia, I thought you knew, that you were doing more than that,’” Sanchez said. “‘I thought you knew that you were teaching culture, that you were teaching history.’”
For more information about the Black Studies Department at Mesa College, contact Thekima Mayasa at (619) 388-2352 or tmayasa@sdccd.edu.
Tags: Sonia Sanchez, Black History Month
Jennifer Nichols Kearns
Director of Communications
jnkearns@sdccd.edu
(619) 388-2759
Thekima Mayasa
Professor - Black Studies
tmayasa@sdccd.edu
(619) 388-2352
Black History Month is an annual celebration of achievements by African Americans and a time for recognizing their central role in U.S. history. Every year, the San Diego Mesa College Library joins in the celebration by creating and curating a Black History Month Library Guide – filled with resources of what is available not only at the San Diego Mesa College library, but through other community resources as well.
Denise Rogers is a professor of art history at San Diego Mesa College, manages the college’s World Art permanent collection, and is the curator of “Africa in Context,” currently on display through Feb. 23 at the college in celebration of Black History Month. By Lisa Deaderick | February 4, 2023 As a young girl growing up in southeastern San Diego’s Shelltown neighborhood, Denise Rogers spent time flipping through the pages of Time and Life magazines her mother kept on their coffee table. At the time, she just enjoyed the pictures from galleries in New York, Paris, and Italy. Later, after an introductory art course prompted her to change her major from fashion design to art history, she found a career path that allowed her to pair her love of both history and art.
San Diego, CA, - Black History Month celebrations begin today at San Diego Mesa College, and the annual Rosa Parks Birthday Recognition & Libation is scheduled for Thursday, February 2. Community members are invited to join Mesa College administrators, faculty, staff and students at 12:00 p.m. for a silent walk from the Osani Circle at the Humanities and Cultural Studies Building (G-103) to the Rosa Parks Transit Station, on the corner of Mesa College Dr. and Mesa College Circle, for a traditional libation and remembrance. The walk is to honor those who walked instead of riding the bus after Mrs. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat.
