During a lifetime of dedication to medicine, literature, arts and sports, Joseph Alphonso “Joe” Pierce Jr. quietly changed the culture of San Antonio.
Pierce died Aug. 29 at age 89, leaving a legacy that includes helping elevate the San Antonio Spurs to National Basketball Association championship level, bringing a culture-changing exhibition of Black art to the San Antonio Museum of Art in 1987, and co-founding the San Antonio Ethnic Art Society to create community and advocate for Black artists in the city.
Throughout his life, Pierce worked in tandem with his wife, Aaronetta Hamilton Pierce, to enrich San Antonio’s culture while also maintaining close ties with Black scholars, authors and artists around the U.S.
Asked how her husband of 60 years would like to be remembered, Aaronetta Pierce said, “As one who respected and loved his cultural legacy and did everything he could to share it.”
Historically Black colleges
The two met as students in Nashville in the early 1960s, Aaronetta studying French at Tennessee State University and Joseph studying medicine at Meharry Medical College and interning at Hubbard Hospital before entering the United States Army Medical Corps.
After serving for one year in Korea with the Korean Military Advisory Group while his future spouse completed her studies in English and social sciences at The University of Iowa, the two returned to Nashville to marry on March 1, 1964.
He was then transferred to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, and the newlyweds relocated to Texas, a homecoming of sorts for Joseph Pierce, who was born in Marshall. His parents Juanita George Pierce and Joseph A. Pierce, Sr. taught at Wiley College before following their academic careers to Michigan and finally to Texas Southern University.
Aaronetta Pierce credits their extensive experiences with historically Black colleges and universities as inspiring their lifelong commitment to advocating for Black culture.
She said her husband “wanted African Americans to feel good about themselves. He wanted them to know their greatness because we had seen it all our lives growing up on those campuses.”
Exploring Europe
As a U. S. Army Major, Joseph Pierce began a residency in anesthesiology at Brooke Army Medical Center before being sent in 1967 to serve as chief of anesthesia and operative services at 2nd General Hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, where he attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
While in Europe, Aaronetta Pierce said, the two traveled extensively. “I joined my husband, and he showed me the world,” she said.
Exposure to the depth of European culture was a formative experience for the young couple. “In recollection, Joe and I realized that when we saw the great museums of Europe, it reminded us that we knew artists in our own lives who had created great art.”
The two had befriended such artists as Harlem Renaissance painters Aaron Douglas and Buford Delaney, Houston artist and influential educator John Biggers, and muralist Hale Woodruff, and would later come to know such luminaries as poet Maya Angelou, author Alex Haley and historian John Hope Franklin.
The Pierces settled in San Antonio after their time in Europe, and as Joseph Pierce established his 40-year practice as an anesthesiologist, Aaronetta Pierce became a docent at the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA).
Changing the culture
While leading a school group through the museum, Aaronetta Pierce fielded a challenging question from a young Black student as to why none of the portraits on display in the 19th century gallery looked like her.
The moment was an epiphany, Pierce said. “I realized that I was so indoctrinated in segregation that I was willing to volunteer in an environment that discriminated against my own people.”
The Pierces set about to change that by being instrumental in bringing the Hidden Heritage: Afro-American Art, 1800-1950 exhibition to SAMA from the Bellevue Arts Museum in Washington. The show galvanized awareness of the importance of Black American artists and among other effects, influenced local art collectors including Harmon and Harriet Kelley.
Throughout his medical career, Joseph Pierce maintained his interests as a collector of art and literature, amassing a collection of nearly 6,000 books by Black authors including rare first editions, and a collection of porcelain, glass and pewter steins influenced by his time in Germany.
Randall Burkett, retired curator of African American Collections at Emory University, said he bonded in the 1990s with Joseph Pierce over their mutual love of books. The Pierces donated a research collection of correspondence, family papers, financial records and genealogical papers dating from 1836 to the collections.
Of special interest, Burkett said, are materials documenting their involvement with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) that worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. during the early days of the 1960s civil rights movement.
Former mayor Henry Cisneros, who appointed Aaronetta Pierce as inaugural chair of the MLK Commission in 1986, said of the couple, “Together [they] have been one of San Antonio’s most dynamic duos for decades,” and that their generosity, advocacy and dignity “have been beacons for our city.”
Recently, the Pierces together informed the 2021 Black Cowboys: An American Story exhibition at the Witte Museum, which President Emeritus Marise McDermott described as “absolutely pinnacle” for the museum.
While Aaronetta Pierce was the outgoing, public face of the couple and Joseph Pierce was quieter, McDermott said, when Pierce did speak, “he’s eloquent, he’s knowledgeable, he’s courageous. He sees things that other people didn’t see.” She acknowledged speaking of him in the present tense given the difficulty of accepting him being gone.
“Aaronetta and Joe are soulmates in their work on behalf of African American history, of Black history.”
Joy and quality of life
Reflecting on her husband’s legacy, Aaronetta Pierce first addressed the artwork and literature they had collected and made accessible for public education and scholarship.
“That’s the one thing about artists and historians and authors,” she said. “They leave us a lot, and so they’re never gone. And that’s something to cherish.”
And their lifetime of shared purpose returned unexpected fulfillment, she said, “It surprised us, the joy and quality of life that we got from celebrating our legacy.”
Joseph A. Pierce Jr. is survived by his wife, Aaronetta Hamilton Pierce, sons Michael and Joseph, daughter-in-law Kama, grandchildren and numerous relatives.
The memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Friday at Antioch Missionary Baptist Church.
