Honoring UTrailblazers

The Taylor Family/ UTrailblazers Experience spotlights the stories and honors the courage of the University’s first Black graduates.

A one-minute video clip of Martin Luther King Jr. speaking on the University of Miami’s Coral Gables Campus in 1966.

News clippings of a student-led sit-in staged in University President Henry King Stanford’s office to demand the enrollment of more Black students, the creation of African American history courses, and the hiring of Black professors to teach them.

Pages from the Malaika handbooks, guides produced by the United Black Students organization during the 1970s to help underrepresented students navigate college life during the early years of desegregation at the University.

These are just a sample of the trove of items now featured in a new University of Miami Libraries exhibit that chronicles the history of the institution’s first Black graduates.

The Taylor Family/UTrailblazers Experience features an interactive kiosk with three touchscreens that allow users to scroll through hundreds of photographs, documents, newspaper articles, and other historical artifacts related to the years just after 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. 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 and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based Society for Human Resource Management. “The first Black graduates of this institution probably didn’t consider themselves pioneers, but they were. This exhibit is a way to show appreciation for the path they ultimately paved for not only people like me but also current and future generations of students,” Taylor explained.

“Equally as important,” he continued, “is that the exhibit demonstrates to all segments of society that this University is truly capable of practicing true diversity and inclusion without sacrificing quality and competitiveness.”

Located in the Dooly Memorial Classroom Building breezeway, which is now known as the Johnny C. Taylor Jr. Breezeway, the exhibit is divided into three time periods, allowing users “to experience the arc of the experiences of the Black community at the University,” said Roxane Pickens, librarian assistant professor and director of the Learning Commons at University Libraries, who led the exhibit’s curation.

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.