Cal Poly students amplify “Hidden Voices” of influential women in San Luis Obispo’s history
The San Luis Obispo History Center is full of innovative exhibits and collections dedicated to the town’s history and the people who have contributed to it in some way.
One such exhibit, titled “Hidden Voices: Influential Women in San Luis Obispo History,” was co-curated by Cal Poly anthropology and geography 2023 graduate Zoë Levit and history senior Jess O’Leary. Their carefully crafted exhibit details the lives of Stella Louis, Maxine Lewis, Alice Martin and Nettie Sinsheimer, who all impacted the San Luis Obispo community in their time spent here.
This project began shortly after the two students met in early 2022. Both Levit and O’Leary interned at the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center and the San Luis Obispo History Center. Levit was already creating an exhibit for the History Center when she met O’Leary, but both were interested in working together to craft something new.
“We had a common interest in museums and both had experience at the History Center,” Levit said. “I didn’t know what was going on [with the exhibit], so [I asked O’Leary], ’Do you want to join me and figure it out?’ Then we basically scrapped the entire project that I worked on alone and pivoted towards a project highlighting minority women in San Luis Obispo.”
After choosing a topic for the exhibit, the real work began. Levit and O’Leary started to research women in the San Luis Obispo community who led inspiring lives.
The pair began by conducting basic internet searches to learn about different influential women in the San Luis Obispo community so that they could choose who to focus their exhibit on. Once they established their four figures, they created a timeline of each of their lives then delved into the locally stored records from the History Center to learn more. The records consisted of newspapers, ledgers, and other miscellaneous documents that offered information about the women.
With all their research, O’Leary and Levit formulated a cohesive narrative for each woman.
The first woman the pair chose to focus on was Nettie Sinsheimer. The Sinsheimer family was a prominent Jewish family in the area who had a local park named after them.
Levit also explained how the restaurant Giuseppe’s was where the Sinsheimer brothers’ general store was located. The brothers founded their general store and became important figures in the community, as they were one of the first established stores in the San Luis Obispo area, providing the public with necessary goods.
While the Sinsheimer brothers are more well-known in San Luis Obispo’s history because of their store in the heart of town, the pair focused on Nettie Sinsheimer because of her admirable philanthropic endeavors.
“The exhibit that was in the room before ours was about local Jewish people in San Luis Obispo, and there was a picture of Nettie in the exhibit, but it didn’t talk about her at all,” O’Leary said. “So, we thought it’d be kind of cool to highlight this woman specifically.”
The next woman the two chose was Stella Louis, who, like Nettie Sinsheimer, was overlooked by the community because of her other well-known family members. Stella Louis married one of Ah Louis’ sons, becoming a member of another prominent family in San Luis Obispo.
Ah Louis was a Chinese-American pioneer who founded the Ah Louis store, which acted as a general store, bank, employment center, post office and overall gathering place from the 1870s to the 1900s. Stella Louis founded the Chinese Students’ Association, which is now one of the biggest cultural associations on campus.
Another woman Levit and O’Leary focused on was Alice Martin, one of the first Black airplane mechanics during World War II, they said. The pair found information on Alice Martin with the help of an archivist at Cal Poly Special Collections and Archives, Laura Sorvetti.
“We thought she would be super interesting to look at because Special Collections actually had a collection of her ephemera and other items related to her,” O’Leary said.
The last woman chosen for the exhibit was Maxine Lewis. Maxine Lewis was pictured in the front of the History Center, yet there wasn’t a lot of general information about her. Levit and O’Leary aimed to rectify that by recognizing her for the organization she started called Grassroots II.
“She was just a huge advocate for the homeless in San Luis Obispo, and she did these Thanksgiving dinners every year where she would invite all sorts of people over to her house for a free dinner,” O’Leary said. “She was just a huge part of the community during that time.”
With their fourth and final woman chosen, Levit and O’Leary then delved into research to create a knowledgeable account of the women’s lives. They looked through Special Collections and the History Center’s warehouses and met with some of the women’s families.
They got in contact with Grassroots II and spoke with the current director, Peggy Fowler, who personally knew Maxine and her family. They also spoke to Maxine’s daughter over the phone to learn more about her.
“We connected really well with the family in an attempt to portray her as they would want her to be seen in the community,” Levit said.
After conducting interviews and scouring archives, the students began putting the exhibit together. They wrote paragraphs describing different aspects of the women’s lives to be set alongside their pictures.
The Sinsheimer and Louis families donated specific collections of pictures and belongings of the women being featured. Cal Poly’s Special Collections also helped contribute items for the exhibit, particularly for Alice Martin.
“I think adding objects, especially objects that we knew belonged to the women that we talked about, helped bring them to life,” Levit said. “We also looked through photographs, and added a lot of photographs of the women, just to try and put a face to all the texts that we had written.”
After almost two years of preparation, “Hidden Voices” opened on November 10, 2023.
“For me, the highlight of this project was connecting with local people that I never would have met before, like Peggy Fowler and the Louis family and a bunch of other people that we spoke with,” O’Leary said. “When I walk around San Luis, I think about things differently. It just kind of gave me a new perspective on the place where I live and the people that live in it.”
Levit shared a similar insight as she recognized the impact each woman had on San Luis Obispo’s permanent landscape.
“Connecting specifically with Maxine Lewis’s family was a highlight,” Levit said. “Her entire family came to our exhibit opening, and it was so heartwarming to see them and have them speak, which added another dimension that we, as outsiders, couldn’t have added. Talking to real people that knew this woman was just so great.”
The Hidden Voices exhibit will be on display through the fall of 2024 at 696 Monterey Street. Read more about “Hidden Voices” here.
