Adorned in black, red, yellow and green, several 5C dining halls are leading the way in celebrating Black History Month in Claremont. Through serving Black cultural cuisines, showcasing decorations and displaying educational materials, students and staff have worked to make places to eat, places to learn.
Pitzer College’s McConnell dining hall started the month with several initiatives. Ornamented with streamers featuring Black History Month’s official colors and educational posters commemorating influential historical figures, General Manager Miguel Menjivar explained that McConnell aims to honor and spread awareness of notable moments in Black history.
Menjivar said the preparation process involved collaboration with campus groups, including Pitzer’s Black Student Union (BSU).
“We got together with [Pitzer] BSU and started [preparing] last December,” Menjivar said. “We put together a program where we are going to be celebrating Black History Month [through] different articles of famous Black characters throughout history.”
Menjivar explained that several Pitzer BSU members selected and researched these historical figures, creating educational infographics detailing their stories and placing them on all of the dining hall’s tables.
Besides decorations and informative articles, McConnell is also offering a special menu featuring Black culinary cultural recipes every Wednesday of the month.
Pomona College’s BSU also worked alongside Pomona’s dining halls to celebrate Black History Month. However, Jose Martinez, general manager of dining services at Pomona, said a lot of the initiative for celebrations at Frary and Frank dining halls also came from the staff.
“We work with [Pomona] BSU and the community to organize and celebrate Black History Month,” Martinez said to TSL via email. “Our staff are passionate about celebrating Black history and heritage, within our team: Cathy Hicks, Aimee Lewis, Chef Marvin Love, Chef Kenneth LaCroix and Aaron Archer develop creative menus, ambiance and special events for our community.”
Part of the Pomona initiative includes serving Southern Black cuisine such as muffuletta sandwiches, cajun sweet potato fries, shrimp and fries baskets, remoulade sauce, fried fish po’ boys and hushpuppies.
Pomona’s dining halls also worked with Pomona BSU to host this year’s blackout party.
“We are proud to partner with [Pomona] BSU to host the annual blackout party at [Smith Campus Center],” Martinez said. “We collaborate and define the menu items, decorations, music and facilitate special requests. Shout out to Precious Omomofe PO ’24, president of [Pomona] BSU, for a great blackout event this year!”
On another campus, Collins dining hall at Claremont McKenna College (CMC) also made an effort to celebrate Black culture. The staff noted that, although they have not put up decorations, they are including recipes such as Liberian jollof rice and a Mardi Gras-themed lunch to celebrate throughout the month. Staff said that they would welcome the idea of decorations to celebrate Black History Month and encouraged student initiative regarding these celebrations.
One example of student initiative regarding cultural celebrations was seen in October for a Day of the Dead altar. CMC’s Latine Club, Mi Gente, hosted the celebration at the entrance of Collins. TSL reached out to Mi Gente’s President Javier Gonzalez CM ’24 to speak about the process of organizing a celebration such as this one and why Collins was chosen as the location.
“We wanted it to be somewhere on campus and we thought that Collins would be a very central place to have the altar so people can see it, people can celebrate [and] learn,” Gonzalez said.“We got to have a lot of faculty, a lot of staff involved in this. It means a lot to us and I know it means a lot to them.”
According to students, the platform that dining halls hold in the colleges, as buildings frequented daily by 5C students, gives them a unique responsibility during celebrations. Sydney Fouch SC ’27 spoke about the opportunity these spaces hold for teaching students about Black History Month.
“Since the dining halls are so connected with the school, I think it is really important for holidays like this to be celebrated [there],” Fouch said. “Having a bulletin board or maybe just a little section of the dining hall dedicated to that would be really cool.”
Alexia Ortiz CM ’25 expressed her appreciation for the dining hall’s efforts to put up decorations and include foods that celebrate different cultures.
“I feel like food is such a big aspect of different cultures,” she said. “They can take the opportunity to educate people on [Black History Month] and have some decorations and then be like, ‘Here’s why this is so important to the culture and [to] educate people on why.”
If you have not yet gotten the chance to try any special meals this month, Martinez said he recommends everyone head to Frary today to try Chef Marvin Love’s cooking,
“Chef Marvin Love is planning a variety of specials at Frary … [he] is doing a crab cake special this Friday, Feb. 23, don’t miss it!”
The post A look into how dining halls across the 5Cs are celebrating Black History Month appeared first on The Student Life.
