SMC Celebrates Black Student Success Week
Members of the Santa Monica College Black Collegians Club gathered in the quad to kick off a week dedicated to the success of Black students.
The event kickoff took place on Monday, April 24, on the main SMC campus where students, faculty and staff were invited to gather in the quad for free food and a celebration to honor Black students. The celebration began with a Libations ceremony presented by Sherri Bradford and Dr. Jermaine Junius.
Bradford, the program leader for the Black Collegians program and Umoja community at SMC for the past 25 years, spoke about the demand for racial equity on college campuses.
“There is a kind-of statewide mandate that California colleges focus on racial equality and usually this involves looking at your colleges most disproportionately impacted students, which on our campus are Black and Latin-X students,” she said.
Black Student Success Week is honored by all California community colleges. The event was started in 2020 by Compton College president Dr. Keith Curry. He proposed that every day, there would be a different theme that would honor the success of Black students. The theme of this year was “Vision to Action: Building Systems and Structures for Black Student Success.”
In 2020, the week-long event began on Zoom with various presentations and resources provided to students each day. This year was the first time students were invited to celebrate on campus.
Complete with various meditative and uplifting presentations, students and members of the Black Collegians Club read poetry, performed spoken word, led a student-affirmation meditation, and invited others to join them in singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing”. The hymn is known widely as the "Black National Anthem" and was written by NAACP Leader James Weldon Johnson in 1900. At the end of the celebration, students were offered to enter a raffle where two backpacks were won, as well as an Ancestry DNA kit.
Amber Mitchell, emcee of the event and the former Director of Activities for the Black Collegians, closed the event by encouraging students to get free food and club T-shirts.
“The fact that they gave the black students an entire week to celebrate all students of color, and all students at SMC is amazing," Mitchell said. “This is our kickoff event, we just want to get our names out there to celebrate students of color at SMC."
