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The Goodwin Sisters: The Lonely Pioneers
It was a clear, crisp and typically mild winter's day on
January 30, 1913 when 15 graduates turned out for the commencement ceremony
of San Diego Normal School, then a place where mostly females finished
a two-year curriculum to become teachers. Strangely, the San Diego Union
failed to mention Henrietta Goodwin in its list of the 15 graduates,
nor did the school list her on its rooster of graduates. However, both
an attendance ledger and her registration record card indicate that
she did in fact graduate on January 30, 1913, having attended the school
sporadically since 1908. Goodwin's sizeable family, of whom all of the
adults could read and write, had left Forth Worth, Texas hoping for
a better life in San Diego. It was her younger sister, Leila, who had
first tried to succeed here and preceded Henrietta as a registered student
in 1907, but she dropped out after taking just four classes. The Goodwin
sisters worked occasionally as domestic servants to support their studies.
They both entertained a rather impossible dream: to work in the public
school system which at the time forbade African Americans teachers as
full-time permanent employees. Henrietta Goodwin, our first African
American graduate, soon left the county but other ambitious black women
persisted.
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Photograph from Del Sudoeste, San Diego State University Yearbook, 1936.
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James T. Buchanan: The first black male to graduate
at San Diego State
Just as confident and perhaps with even more drive was the
bespectacled James T. Buchanan (Class of '36), the first black male to
graduate at San Diego State. Described in the 1931 San Diego City Directory
as a laborer, Buchanan had been an elder and, briefly, the leader of the
Beacon Light Seventh Day Adventist Church. A zoology major, he left the
city to pursue a career in health care. By 1949 he was advertising in
the Los Angeles Sentinel his "GRAND, NEW and very BEAUTIFUL ULTRA-MODERN
OFFICES" at 4350 Avalon Blvd. He was by then Dr. James T. Buchanan,
an optometrist offering eye examinations, prescription glasses and Jonathan
Buchanan vision training using equipment that was, "SCIENTIFIC and
SUPER DELUXE and said by those who KNOW to surpass all others in Southern
California."
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Beatrice Markey: First Black Faculty Member
Though her stay here was too brief it was nonetheless
historic. In the fall of 1956, Beatrice Markey arrived as assistant professor
of political science having just completed requirements for the doctorate
in public administration at the University of Southern California with
the help of a Hayes Foundation fellowship. Normally, The Aztec mentioned
new faculty at the start of the academic year in a perfunctory manner
with no fanfare whatsoever, but in Markey's case the editors took the
unusual step of announcing here arrival with a headlined article and,
just in case readers might miss the point that she was black because the
article tactfully avoided specifying her race, they included a full-face
photo of her worth more than a thousand words. Unfortunately, by 1958
the 45-year-old professor was teaching at the University of Hawaii at
Hilo, having had little impact on the school and soon forgotten. Beatrice
Markey died in Hilo in 1980.
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Photograph around 1956.
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Photograph from May 1961.
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Alyce L. Davis
Alyce L. Davis was the first African-American librarian
at SDSU. She assumed a position as a cataloger at the library from 1959
to 1966.
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Martin L. King, Jr.
"If the American dream is to become a reality,
it must be concerned with the world dream."
(M. L. King, Jr.at his SDSU speech)
There were a lot more black celebrities visiting the campus but none more
distinguished or significant than Martin Luther King Jr. who dropped by
on May 29, 1964. He spoke to a crowd that filled the Open Air Theater,
telling them of the need for Congress to pass pending legislation that
would protect the rights of blacks and improve their condition. He reasoned:
"You can't legislate integration but you can legislate desegregation.
Morality can't be legislated, but laws can regulate behavior. Laws can't
make you love me, but they can keep you from lynching me."
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Article and photograph from Daily Aztec, June 2 and May 27, 1964.
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Please see for further information our exhibit "Celebrating
the African-American Presence at SDSU. From the 1930s to the present"
(March 2002).
Many thanks to Robert Fikes who granted permission to
quote passages from his recent 76-page illustrated manuscript, "The
Black in Crimson and Black: A History and Profiles of African Americans
at SDSU".
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