BC History Highlight - BC Black Consciousness
Photo above: Dr. Jesse Bradford’s inaugural course in Black History was offered in 1969
When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968, Bakersfield College’s more than 200 faculty and administrators included only one Black person, Home Economics teacher Willye Pearl Mdodana.
Before Dr. King’s assassination, the anger that had been building in America’s Black communities over centuries of discrimination and injustice had already boiled into violence during the riots of 1965-67. Dr. King’s death set off further outrage in Black communities as well as college campuses, and Bakersfield College was no exception.
1968 marked the founding of a Black Student Union chapter at BC, and in December 1968 the BSU published an open letter to the administration asking for Black faculty and counselors, courses in Black literature, history, art, and music, more Black authors in the BC library collection, and more Black classified staff.
By the spring semester, BC offered two such courses, a sociology class entitled “Race and Poverty” taught by Duane Belcher, and a Black history course taught in the evenings by Charles Ford, principal of Fremont School and a former board member of the Watts NAACP. The college brought two new Black faculty members on board in the fall semester of 1969, history teacher Jesse Bradford (a Bakersfield College alumnus) and art teacher Chalita Brossett (now Robinson), who would each have an immediate impact on the education of Black students through the new courses in Black history and art that they taught.
Odella Johnson, now retired from a counseling career at BC, was one of those students.
“When I first arrived on the BC campus in 1969, I was passionate about art,” Johnson said. “I was excited to take any drawing or art class that increased my knowledge about style, techniques and the history of art. Chalita Brossett willingly shared her knowledge and took an interest in all students, especially the art students. You could tell by her stories and her enthusiasm that she loved her field of study. She was engaging and allowed for a lot of hands-on displays in the classroom. Being exposed to Afro American art was a joy for me in a way that it had not been for me in high school.”
“The black history classes taught by Jesse Bradford were popular and easily met enrollment goals,” Johnson said. “I was surprised by non-Black student interest in the course. Mr. Bradford’s discussions on contemporary issues were the most relevant topics discussed in class. Slave trade and the numbers of slaves brought to the new world was disgusting and caused a lot of anxiety for all the students to hear and read about.”
Oscar Anthony, now a pastor at St. Peter Restoration Church, came to BC in 1971 after serving in the military and remembers how much he learned in Dr. Bradford’s class.
“We weren’t aware of our history,” Anthony said. “We were all raised learning a very Eurocentric history of the world and America, so it was new to a lot of African Americans to get this level of information about our past. It was a growth period for us.”
Johnson noted that many off-campus and on-campus groups supported and advised the efforts of Black students at BC.
“The Bakersfield College Black Staff Association, which included classified and certificated staff on the BC campus, took an active interest in the lives of black students by meeting with us, providing guidance and helping us to develop our ideas, support our success and encourage us to learn from our failures,” Johnson said.
“Behind the scenes, staff like Clif Garrett, Jack Hernandez, Gaylen Lewis, Jesse Bradford, Larry Robinson, Bruce Meier, Don Johnson, Vic St. Marie and administrators like Rick Wright and John Collins were receptive to the needs of black students and graciously supported the expanded programming,” Johnson said.
“The NAACP was also an active group of civic minded individuals who encouraged, supported and helped to direct community and campus activities, also suggesting potential groups or speakers on campus,” Johnson recalled. “Truly nothing happened in a vacuum. Later, when I returned as a faculty member in 1976, I took an active role with my colleagues on campus and in the community to support black student involvement.”
BC’s first Black History Week took place during spring semester of 1969 with the local NAACP youth council sponsoring several community events in the Bakersfield community besides those scheduled on campus. The aim, according to BSU leader Wayne Ford, was “to promote and advance Black culture and to make all students, white and Black, aware of Black contributions to our society.”
Black History Week was an opportunity to bring eminent Black activists, athletes, writers and artists to speak on campus. In 1975, Ralph Abernathy, a civil rights activist and close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at BC. The following year, actor and civil rights activist Ossie Davis visited BC, and in 1979, memoirist and poet Maya Angelou came to the campus, followed by Wimbledon and Grand Slam tennis champion Althea Gibson in 1980.
Black pride achieved a milestone of sorts at BC in 1971 when JoAnn Webster was elected BC’s first Black homecoming queen. Rich Richardson, a Black Air Force veteran who had come to the college that year and was BSU president, helped to engineer a coalition of clubs to support Webster’s election.
“When she was escorted out, the black students shouted ‘black college’ rather than ‘Bakersfield College’ because they were so excited and proud,” Richardson said. The politics of electing a homecoming queen election gave Richardson a nudge toward elective office, and he was elected ASB President the following year, also serving as a McGovern delegate at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.
