Honoring UTrailblazers The interactive Taylor Family/UTrailblazers experience honors those pioneers who blazed the trail for later generations of Black students at the U. University alumnus and trustee Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., center right, made the gift that brought the experience to life.
the University’s Board of Trustees voted in 1961 to admit qualified students without regard to race or color beginning in the summer of that year. The idea for the exhibit was first conceived by the Black Alumni Society in 2012, following the University’s 50-year anniversary marking desegregation. A group of alumni volunteers, including Denise Mincey-Mills, B.B.A. ’79, Phyllis E. Tyler, B.B.A. ’79, and Antonio Junior, B.A. ’79, began to unearth the stories and struggles of the first Black students. Their efforts evolved into the First Black Graduates Project which later became known as UTrailblazers.
The Taylor Family/ UTrailblazers Experience spotlights the stories and honors the courage of the University’s first Black graduates.
When Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., B.S.C. ‘89, vice chair of the University’s Board of Trustees, learned about the UTrailblazers project, he stepped forward with a generous donation to turn the dream of a permanent memorial into a reality. The exhibit has a two-pronged purpose, said Taylor, who is president
A one-minute video clip of Martin Luther King Jr. speaking on the
and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based Society for Human
University of Miami’s Coral Gables Campus in 1966.
Resource Management. “The first Black graduates of this
News clippings of a student-led sit-in staged in University
institution probably didn’t consider themselves pioneers, but they
President Henry King Stanford’s office to demand the enrollment
were. This exhibit is a way to show appreciation for the path they
of more Black students, the creation of African American history
ultimately paved for not only people like me but also current and
courses, and the hiring of Black professors to teach them.
future generations of students,” Taylor explained.
Pages from the Malaika handbooks, guides produced by
demonstrates to all segments of society that this University is truly
underrepresented students navigate college life during the early
capable of practicing true diversity and inclusion without sacrificing
years of desegregation at the University.
quality and competitiveness.”
These are just a sample of the trove of items now featured in a
Located in the Dooly Memorial Classroom Building
new University of Miami Libraries exhibit that chronicles the history
breezeway, which is now known as the Johnny C. Taylor Jr.
of the institution’s first Black graduates.
Breezeway, the exhibit is divided into three time periods, allowing
The Taylor Family/UTrailblazers Experience features an
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“Equally as important,” he continued, “is that the exhibit
the United Black Students organization during the 1970s to help
users “to experience the arc of the experiences of the Black
interactive kiosk with three touchscreens that allow users to
community at the University,” said Roxane Pickens, librarian
scroll through hundreds of photographs, documents, newspaper
assistant professor and director of the Learning Commons at
articles, and other historical artifacts related to the years just after
University Libraries, who led the exhibit’s curation.
UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI
