By the time 3:30 pm rolls around, most students clock out and head home. They load themselves up on big yellow buses, cram themselves into their friend’s car, or hop into a parent’s minivan and call it a day. 

But not everyone. Some members of the school’s African American Student Association (AASA) found themselves staying at school until late hours putting up murals displaying significant Black figures in different fields for Black History Month. 

Students may have noticed these murals all around the school, each set up in a hallway specific to the field it is labeled as. 

According to junior Jessica Isibor, a member of the Association, the plan to create and display the murals had been in the works since November. 

“Last [school] year, the club presidents said they had problems getting things up in time,” Isibor said. “A lot of the stuff they had planned went up so late into February that it was only up for maybe a week or a week and a half before they had to take it down.” 

To not repeat the same mistake, the AASA committed to a plan early. During November and December, they planned out the murals for each subject. Half of January was spent printing out the photos and captions for each mural. 

By February 1, the murals were up. 

According to senior Brandon Norfleet, one of the AASA’s co-presidents, putting up all the murals took two to three days, from January 30 to February 1. He helped with putting up the visual arts, history and athletic mural. 

The athletic mural (located on the first floor by the locker rooms) is Isibor’s favorite, she said.

“It’s so massive,” she said. “I don’t know how they finished it so quickly.”

The athletic mural was fully printed, written and put up in three days. 

AASA reporter Selorm Dente, a senior, also likes the sports mural because it was the first one to go up. 

“It was great to see some of the vision come to life,” Dente said over text message. “I am also very partial to the science ones because I was one of the people who collected the information for it. Zach Andersen, a fellow senior who is very involved with our club, was the one who made them look very pretty though, so I must give them credit.” 

Norfleet’s favorite is the performing arts mural (located on the second floor by the theater black box), which Isibor helped set up. 

“She showed me what she had in mind, and it was a lot, and I was like, ‘If you can do it, you got it.’ And she did,” he said. “It was really nice seeing that actually work out for her.”

The performing arts mural took three days to complete, and Isibor stayed after school from 3:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. to finish it. 

“For those three days, we were just working on it,” she said. “At one point a couple of band kids came to help because they were in the same hallway, and on the last day a couple of friends came to help.” 

Dente helped put up the sports, English, math and science murals, and he said it took “probably around four hours between two days.”

“We spent a lot of weeks beforehand planning, doing research, designing and getting materials printed and collected,” Dente said.

Norfleet said the Association hopes to do more to celebrate and spread awareness regarding Black History Month.

“But for this one, we really wanted to branch out and make sure we hit every point, so people know it wasn’t just Rosa Parks and MLK that did something that was important for the Black community.”

“We plan on having a can drive,” Norfleet said. “We did have a clothing drive for winter clothes [earlier this year], and that was successful.” 

The Association is “hoping we can get a Bridge segment,” Isibor said, particularly during the last week of February. She also hopes to do a collaboration with the ceramics club, as she is in the club and has made pieces for it. 

Ultimately, the goal of the murals is to educate others, Norfleet said. 

“We just want to educate the school since it’s predominantly white and educate them on people they may not know or how they influenced different things like art or sports or literature or science. That was the goal with the murals because that’s our goal every year,” said Norfleet. 

“But for this one, we really wanted to branch out and make sure we hit every point, so people know it wasn’t just Rosa Parks and MLK that did something that was important for the Black community.”

Gallery • 8 Photos

Anna Gorman

The display of books by Black authors in the media center.

Celebrating Black History Month is something very personal to Isibor, especially when she was growing up. 

“My mom is a teacher, and she always does these really extravagant Black History Month shows where you would obviously learn about important historical figures but also sort of spotlight kids who had other talents, like singing, acting,” she said. “She kind of instilled this idea in me that it’s important to celebrate lesser-known figures, celebrate our own, especially during the month, especially in a school that’s predominantly white. And I just wanted to carry that over here.”

She emphasized the importance of celebrating the month, not just acknowledging it.  

“Black History Month is, again, a time to celebrate, honestly. A time to look at our accomplishments as Black people and say, ‘Hey, we did these things.’ We have so many awesome contributions to society, and I felt we’d put that up on a wall.”