John Biggers Lasting Impact at Texas Southern University

John Thomas Biggers was an African American muralist and professor who created the art program at Texas Southern University School for Negroes in 1949 as well as the originator of the murals located on campus at Hannah hall.

Biggers impact at TSU can still felt by Jesse Sifuentes his former student now adjunct instructor for the university art program who reflects on the life of the late muralist life.

“John Biggers is the founder of the Art Department founded in 1949, he felt that it was an artist responsibility to document the times and usually artist would do that,” said Sifuentes.

“He took this job in Texas because it was close to Mexico and John Biggers is a

big fan of the Mexican muralist and John Biggers thought murals were important because of his role as an artist,” Sifuentes said.

The former professor passion for murals is what lead him to convince the university to allow art major to paint the visual art inside the Hannah Hall building.

Biggers also instituted the the art form into the schools curriculum.

“Every student is supposed to paint a mural before they graduate it’s part of the curriculum, he put that the curriculum,” Sifuentes said.

“So if the students going to graduate from Texas Southern University with a degree in art, they have to paint a mural and he got permission to paint have the students paint murals in Hannah Hall and that's how the mirrors and Hannah has started,” Sifuentes said.

John Thomas Biggers works can be found all throughout TSU, in buildings such as Hannah Hall that display his passion, or Robert James Terry Library, “Heartman Collection” that is filled with the university's history and articles about the late great professor life and legacy.

Lastly Biggers final works could be found in his students who were inspired by his message and at the same time hoping to keep his legacy alive.

The type of legacy that makes students proud to utter the words “my name is Jesse Sifuentes Jr.” I came here in 1973 graduated in 1978 and Dr. Biggers was my teacher.

“And right now I'm an adjunct professor and mural painting sculpture, and ceramics,” Sifuentes said.