When Dr. Clifton Sanders is asked about what it means to have a library at Salt Lake Community College named after him, he connects to a story about a life-altering realization his mother, Mary Branch, had while he was in college. The Dr. Clifton G. Sanders Racial Justice and Black Liberation Library, located at SLCC’s South City Campus, opened this semester and is available to students, staff and faculty.
It’s a perfect fit, naming a library after someone who collects books and is a ravenous reader. Dr. Sanders says a love of books is a legacy passed on from his grandmother’s generation and then to him and his siblings through a mother he describes as an avid reader and a longtime champion for children, community, family and the downtrodden. He and Mary talk a lot, and when he was an undergrad studying chemistry at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, she called her son to talk about a self-discovery she made at her new job as a case worker with the Baltimore County Department of Social Services. She had white and Black clients, but in helping white people she soon learned they struggled with the same issues – poverty, homelessness and substance abuse – as her Black cases. Previously, though, her one-dimensional impression of whites was formed largely by what she saw on TV shows. “It was a revelation to her that, socially speaking, there is a lot that she, in her experience, had in common with her white clients,” says Dr. Sanders. “That was an epiphany – that whites had the same problems as she did.”
That sort of “racial reconciliation” is what Dr. Sanders hopes will happen when people meet at, talk in and read works from the new library, packed with authors like Robin Diangelo, Paulo Friere, Ibram X. Kendi, Beverly Daniel Tatum and Cornel West. The library was founded in the fall of 2020 amid heightened unrest over injustices toward Black people in the U.S. It is filled with texts on the Black experience, social justice, racial justice, Black culture and history and Black liberation. The space, divided into two rooms in 1-157A at South City, also features a variety of inspirational and captivating artwork on the walls. All are welcome to check books out of the library.
“I certainly want students of color to gain self-confidence from the kind of learning that can happen in that space,” says Dr. Sanders. “I want all students to be able to gain understanding, intellectual and cultural, to begin to act toward building real community, empathy and commitment to solidarity around what is good and just.”
This library also holds the work of Dr. Sanders, a brilliant award-winning jazz saxophonist and scholar who received his doctorate from University of Utah. He has served as SLCC provost for academic affairs since 2015. As chief academic officer at SLCC, he oversees instruction and training for more than 61,000 students annually. Previously, he served in several roles at SLCC, including assistant professor of chemistry, division chair for natural sciences and communication and dean of the School of Science, Mathematics and Engineering.
Dr. Sanders has more than 25 years of experience in teaching, administration and leadership in higher education. He led the development of several STEM programs and is a collaborator on several local, regional and national initiatives on education, diversity and inclusivity and workforce development. His scientific work resulted in six patents in biomaterials technology. He is a University of Utah Chemistry Department Distinguished Alumnus, and he coauthored a 2009 paper on music and democracy published in Radical Philosophy Review.
Dr. Sanders hopes the library will serve as not only a repository of knowledge, but also as a springboard for community building and activism, a sanctuary for renewal, a community gathering space and as an influence beyond its structural confines. “I’m totally comfortable with the idea of something bearing my name that can bring different things together for serious conversation and engagement,” he says. “Hopefully it’s an evolving space where people can come and learn what it means to think and act seriously about racial reconciliation … The hope would be that it is a healing space, which is implicit in the notion of reconciliation, where undesirable ideas can be transformed and both sides can learn from each other.”
Photo credit (portrait of Dr. Sanders): Ed Rosenberger, SLCC associate professor of photography
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