Hepner Hall, designed by the senior architectural designer of the California Division of the State Architect, Howard Spencer Hazen, and completed in 1931, is the iconic academic building in the center of San Diego State University (SDSU)'s campus, just north of Malcolm A. Love Library at the entrance to the Campanile Walkway and main quad.

Hepner Hall is home to SDSU's School of Social Work, along with the Department of Gerontology and the University Center on Aging. Several faculty offices and research centers also are housed in Hepner Hall, along with an assortment of classrooms and lecture halls.

Hepner Hall is the symbol of the campus, with its Mission Revival Style architecture, open-faced bell tower and archway. It is the most photographed building on campus. The tower bells are rung only once a year, during the yearly commencement ceremonies.

Hepner Hall is the centerpiece of SDSU's revised logo and presidential seal, which were unveiled in 2004.

Entrance to the building is gained through the building's impressive portales, which are framed by turquoise and white tile. Two massive turrets frame the Catalonian-style archway, which is topped by an Mission-style bell tower (campanario). Inside the archway is a ribbed Moorish-style arch vaulted ceiling with a simulated Moorish wrought iron lantern hanging from its center.

Omali Yeshitela (born Joseph Waller, October 9, 1941, St. Petersburg, Florida) the founder of the Uhuru Movement, a left wing, African Internationalist organization based in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Yeshitela participated in the American Civil Rights Movement in his youth during the 1950s and 1960s as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. At the height of the civil rights movement in St. Petersburg, Waller was jailed for an act of civil disobedience in 1966, when he tore a mural in City Hall depicting degrading caricatures of African Americans. Waller spent two and a half years in jail and prison. After his release, he was stripped of his right to vote for decades until Governor Jeb Bush and three members of Florida's Cabinet restored his voting rights in 2000.

In his civic activism in his native St. Petersburg, Yeshitela has stressed his view that political and economic development will bring peace to African American neighborhoods.