Earth Day 2020

04/22/2020

Kate Steffens

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Today marks the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day. Earth Day was created by peace activist John McConnell, and was meant to celebrate environmentalism, peace, and the Earth as a whole. The first Earth Day took place in 1970, and in the time since, San José State University's contribution, the Survival Faire, has become well-known for its originality and ingenuity.

During the week of February 16-20, 1970, SJSU organized the first ever Survival Faire. The event’s purpose was to engage and alert the campus community to environmental issues- specifically the survival of humanity when facing environmental destruction. Special Collections houses flyers that came from the personal collection of one of the Faire’s organizers, Anna Koster, as well as photographs and materials donated by other participants of the Faire. You can visit our Digital Collections to view photographs, flyers, and other ephemera related to the Faire and Earth Day here. The below photograph of masked students is especially timely, as we celebrate Earth Day from the confines of our homes during the Covid-19 pandemic. These students were protesting the effects of smog, and the lack of action taken by local and nationwide governments to clear the air for the public. 50 years later, we are thankful to these early protestors for their attention to environmental causes like the eradication of smog-causing pollutants, which happened through a series of actions that included banning CFC's, emissions restrictions, and 1970's Clean Air Act. As we plan for the future well-being of our planet, using historical archival resources can assist us in our understanding of past activism and how it has affected our present. It's never too late to create positive change for humanity!

A large group of students and faculty are shown sitting in a classroom, all are wearing white masks with the words "smog kills."

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New Collection Announcement: San José State University Asian American Studies Records

We are happy to announce a new addition to our collections: the San José State University Asian American Studies Records!As a result of the Third World Liberation Front movement of 1968, a proposal for the creation of an Asian American Studies Program at San José State University was spearheaded by student participants of the Progressive Asian American Coalition (PAAC), members of Associated Students, and faculty members in 1969. In Fall 1970, the program was formally established, residing under the School of Social Sciences. During the mid to late 1970s, the Asian American Studies Program faced a number of "cutback struggles" in regards to budget allocations and diminished faculty and staff, and this has remained a pattern throughout later years as well. The Asian American Studies Program frequently collaborated with related organizations, namely the student-led Asian Students In Action Now (A.S.I.A.N., also known as Asian Club), to organize events and activities such as the Asian Spring Festival. Throughout the years, there were many who acted as Program Coordinator: PJ Hirabayashi, Gregory Mark, and most notably, Raymond Lou. From Spring 1979 until around 1990, Raymond Lou, previously a lecturer of Asian American Studies, was selected as the next Program Coordinator. As Program Coordinator, Raymond Lou participated in university-wide efforts such as the Interminority Coalition (also known as the Interminority Council) and Student Affirmative Action. Around 1982, there was discussion of reorganizing the School of Social Sciences, as the ethnic programs were not under their own department, but rather as individual programs under the school. In 1987, the Department of Social Sciences was formally established with the purpose of functioning as a consortium made up of the component programs: Afro-American Studies, Asian-American Studies, Mexican-American Studies, Social Science, and Women's Studies. Today, Asian American Studies resides in the Department of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences under the College of Social Sciences.Come check out this collection and its importance to SJSU’s ethnic studies initiatives!Post authored by Christine Thuy Minh Nguyen (MSLIS ‘26). ...

Showcasing SJSU Poets

Our new exhibit, San José State University’s Legacy of Poetry, is located on the fifth floor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Library. Curated by Student Assistant Alona Hazen in honor of National Poetry Month, the exhibit features the works and lives of poets who have walked SJSU’s campus since its beginnings. Whether student or faculty (or both!), these poets have contributed to a legacy over a century strong and thriving. Student Jean Holloway (above, 1938) and Professor Esther Shephard (below, 1941) pictured as members of the Pegasus Literary Society in the university's La Torre yearbooks. I was especially excited to be able to highlight two women who were part of SJSU’s community in the 1930s and 40s: student Jean Holloway and professor Esther Shephard. Their materials can be seen in the cases near the elevators. Both women pursued poetry primarily as a hobby, led professional lives centered on writing as an art, and were active members of our university via various clubs and organizations. Jean Holloway, born Gratia Jean Casey, attended San José State in the late 1930s. She was an active member of several university clubs, including the Pegasus Literary Society, the Radio Speaking Society, and the San José Players. Poetry was just one of Holloway’s creative outlets, though she excelled at it and won many awards in her time as a student. Her poems range in subject from the everyday to the fantastical and in tone from the anxious to the whimsical.A talented writer, Holloway’s radio scripts aired on San José’s local station, KQW, and on San Francisco’s local station, KYA, while she was a student. Her writing pursuits led her to become a scriptwriter for radio, film, and television in Hollywood from the 1940s through the 1970s. Holloway made her professional break into radio when she was hired to work on The Kate Smith Show by Ted Collins, leaving San José State as a sophomore. She later contracted with the studio MGM, for which she wrote three musical films. Holloway primarily wrote for television from the 1950s on, writing over 500 episodes of television’s first long-running daytime soap opera, The First Hundred Years.Esther Shephard, born Esther Maria Lofstrand, was a professor in San José State’s English Department from 1939 until 1959. During her time at the university, Shephard participated in numerous poetry readings and talks, judged student literary competitions, and often worked with clubs such as the English Club and the Free-lance Writing Club. As El Portal had been discontinued during World War II, Shephard was a founding advisor of its successor, The Reed, in 1948. Shephard continued to advise the Pegasus Literary Society, which sponsored Reed, after her retirement.Shephard began her career as a high school teacher in Montana before deciding to attend the University of Washington after the death of her first husband. She earned her Ph.D. there in 1938. Shephard’s dissertation, Walt Whitman’s Pose, was published that same year. She would continue to focus on the renowned poet throughout her career. Another of her achievements was the retelling of the ancient Chinese legend The Cowherd and the Sky Maiden, published in 1950 and later staged as an opera at Shephard’s alma mater. Shephard’s work also included one-act plays and Paul Bunyan, a collection of logging camp stories. Dr. Henry Meade Bland teaching class outside San José State Teachers College, 1929. In the upper cases of our foyer, I created a timeline of university poets, accompanying University Archivist Carli Lowe’s exhibit on Faricita Hall Wyatt, an amazing SJSU alum who also published her own poetry. Far from definitive, the timeline cases offer just a sample of the poetry written by SJSU students and faculty over the last century. Love, loss, and contemplation find their expression here, perhaps offering connection and even hope to readers. More than a legacy of individual poets, this is a legacy of community. Dr. Henry Meade Bland, poet laureate and professor of English, had a role in the establishment of The Quill, a student publication which continues today as the award-winning Reed Magazine. His impact as a founding member of our university’s legacy of poetry cannot be understated and was certainly appreciated by his students, who continued to honor him after his death. A more recent thread of connection on display highlights the continuing influence poetic friendships and mentorship have on our community. Sandra McPherson was featured during SJSU’s Contemporary Poetry Festival in 1977, as was poet Robert Bly. Bly was influential for poet Nils Peterson, featured a few cases down. Inspiringly, these connections went far beyond our campus, as Peterson and Naomi Clark showed in founding Poetry Center San José, an organization which seeks to “nurture…diverse literary expression” to this day. Exhibit case near the fifth floor elevators, 2024. Given the limitations of the space available for the exhibit, it was difficult to choose materials that would not only display well, but that would truly reflect the rich history of poetry we have in the archive. I chose to focus on poets who either attended or worked at SJSU, though this left out many materials we have relating to poets from across the country and even around the world. Notable poets whose works I did not feature include Charles Bukowski, Robert Frost, Aldous Huxley, Czesław Miłosz, and Ezra Pound, among others. Admittedly, SJSU itself has been home to more poets than could be featured in this exhibit. The English Department’s extensive efforts to preserve our university’s Legacy of Poets can be found here.To view materials from our collections, please make an appointment by contacting us at special.collections@sjsu.edu. Collections featured in this exhibit include the Student Publications Collection, the Jean Holloway Papers, the Esther Shephard Papers, the Carolyn Grassi Papers (in process), and the Virginia de Araujo Papers (yet to be processed). We welcome you to search for other poetry materials via our Online Archive of California finding aids, notably that of the Poetry Journals and Chapbooks Collection. Additionally, a number of poetry books are held in our Rare Books Collection and can be searched via the university library’s OneSearch. To narrow your search to items held by the Special Collections & Archives, please filter “location” to the various “Special Collections” options on the left hand side of the page. Post written by Alona Hazen, Special Collections & Archives Student Assistant....

Collection Spotlight: The Harry Edwards Papers

A Scholar, An Activist: Selections from the Harry Edwards Papers is located in the SJSU Special Collections & Archives Reading Room on the fifth floor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Library. This exhibition features documents, journals, artifacts, and more donated from Dr. Harry Edwards. His career as a sociologist and professional sports consultant has deeply impacted the culture of inclusion and representation of Black Athletes. A distinguished professor and dedicated proponent of civil rights, Dr. Harry Edwards’ first came to San Jose State College. Here he excelled as an honor student on the basketball and track and field teams until his graduation in 1964. Afterwards he received his Master’s in Sociology from Cornell University before returning to SJSC as an instructor. Along with then Sociology graduate student, Kenneth Noel, they founded the United Black Students for Action, an organization to fight against the discrimination of Black students, especially those in the Athletics Department. After gaining traction and hosting the Black Youth Conference in Los Angeles, the movement gained national renown after voting to boycott the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. The Olympics Committee for Human Rights was formed, culminating in the famous black power salute on the podium by Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Dr. Edwards continued his work as a professor and activist at UC Berkeley after he received his PhD in Sociology. Over the years, he guest lectured at numerous campuses and wrote several books, including The Revolt of the Black Athlete in the immediate aftermath of the Olympic Games. In the 1980s, Dr. Edwards also began working as a consultant to many professional sports organizations. He developed programs to create better conditions and promote minoritized groups for the Golden State Warriors and Major League Baseball. His longest partnership was as a staff consultant to the San Francisco 49ers, where he worked closely with former coach, Bill Walsh. The events of his life reflect the changes towards progress for Black Athletes throughout the nation. It can inform our understanding of where we have been and what actions are needed to continue seeking a better, more equitable culture. To view the other materials in the Harry Edwards Papers, please make an appointment by contacting us at special.collections@sjsu.edu. For more information about the Civil Rights Movement at San Jose State College in the 1960s, please refer to our other collections, San José State University Civil Rights and Campus Protest Collection and the San Jose State College "Speed City" Collection. Post written by Eilene Lueck, Special Collections & Archives Student Assistant. ...

Announcing the Sisterspirit Records

We are happy to announce a new addition to our collections: the Sisterspirit Records! Sisterspirit Bookstore was founded in 1984 by four women who originally met at San Jose State – Mary Jeffrey, Marilyn Cook, Karen Hester, and Amy Caffrey with the goal of creating a feminist bookstore and coffeehouse where women could socialize and enjoy live music. The group’s mission statement was: “To promote women’s culture and community in the South Bay Area, to help unify and strengthen the South Bay women’s community and provide a multicultural information center to enable networking with other women’s groups and communities. To develop and promote educational projects responsive to human, civil, and women’s rights. To teach and promote women’s culture by providing a meeting place for all women, by providing space and support for local women’s artistic works, by providing information on women’s history, women’s music, women’s literature, etc. by providing a women’s bookstore and coffeehouse. To work in solidarity with other women’s organizations on projects and events which support women’s issues and culture.” By 1985, Sisterspirit became a fully-fledged non-profit organization, selling books and records by mail. In 1986, Sisterspirit joined with the Billy DeFrank Center and opened a physical bookstore, in which they held regular coffeehouses with live music or author book-signings. Sisterspirit also sold books for students at San Jose State University. Most importantly, Sisterspirit became a space for women and LGBTQ+ people in San Jose, one of the very few feminist bookstores in the South Bay. At Sisterspirit's height, the bookstore was open seven days a week, with over 5,000 titles, along with 40 regular volunteers. However, by the early 2000s, Sisterspirit had lost much of their support. With an on-going recession and the South Bay rapidly becoming more expensive, it became harder to get volunteers and to keep their space at the Billy DeFrank Center. Moreover, many of the books that were once exclusive to Sisterspirit could be bought online or at chain bookstores. By August 2010, Sisterspirit closed, selling off the last of their materials and donating the money to Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. Sisterspirit was the only bookstore in the United States to be run for over two decades by an all volunteer staff. This collection consists of 11 boxes of administrative/business records, photographs, book-signing and performance material, book-selling information, meeting minutes, financial records, and framed materials. Also includes posters, broadsides,stickers, buttons, and other realia. Post written by Special Collections & Archives Student Assistant Elena Castaneda, who was also responsible for processing the Sisterspirit Records. Sources: https://www.queersiliconvalley.org/sisterspirit-story/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2010/08/30/san-jose-lesbians-and-feminists-mourn-loss-of-sisterspirit-books ...

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