11.08.09
Let’s stimulate learning
With 10.2 percent unemployment nationally and even higher rates for African-Americans, particularly youth, we can not afford to allow our students to leave grade school unprepared to compete.
During my presentation to the San Francisco Alliance of Black School Educators, I described an infusion policy, based on research about effective instruction for learners of African descent and the California curriculum frameworks and content standards.
Here is a draft of that policy:
POLICY STATEMENT ON THE INFUSION OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN EXPERIENCE IN SAN FRANCISCO AND CALIFORNIA THROUGHOUT DAILY CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT IN LITERATURE, MULTIMEDIA AND COMMUNITY (“THE LEIDESDORFF INITIATIVE”)
Whereas the San Francisco Unified School District wishes to provide a complete educational experience to all of its students, including a balanced, non-stereotypical curriculum;
Whereas the State of California has specifically provided for the emphasis on underrepresented groups in curriculum, culture and art in the Education Code;
Whereas the Education Code provides that all California schools recognize March 5 as Black American Day in honor of the death of Crispus Attucks in the Boston Massacre;
Whereas the California Department of Education annually recognizes the anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education as a seminal event in education history with specific coursework;
Whereas, A.B. 33 in 1988 provided that the superintendent of public instruction provide all schools with a list of recognized materials for African-American heritage
Whereas, the California content standards specifically identify significant African-American personalities to be studied as examples for educators;
Whereas, the first school committee chair of San Francisco was an African-American entrepreneur, William Alexander Leidesdorff, in 1848, whose life punctures many stereotypes of African-American history;
Whereas the achievement gap between African-American students and other groups is a major concern for San Francisco and many other school districts
Whereas, San Francisco has lost more than 7,000 African-American students in the past sixyears, depriving the district of vitally needed diversity;
Whereas, the late UC-Berkeley researcher John Ogbu, among others, found in a longitudinal study that the absence of positive role models negatively affects student behavior and performance;
Whereas, initiatives in such cities as Los Angeles, San Diego and Hayward have positively affected student outcomes with the infusion of African-American content throughout the curriculum;
Whereas, individual educators who have participated in the Teaching American History program for the past two years have found that the heritage of San Francisco’s African-American population has been a particularly effective educational tool, particularly with hard-to-reach children;
Whereas, many dedicated educators spend their own time and resources to search for culturally-relevant information to match their student populations and participate in organizations and training to advance that knowledge;
Whereas, the significant African-American historic and cultural sites create a demand for workers who are skilled in the knowledge of the African-American heritage of this city
Therefore, it shall be the policy of the San Francisco Unified School District to infuse the significant contributions of African-Americans within San Francisco and California throughout the k-12 educational curriculum in a coordinated, coherent way as a matter of accuracy, justice, efficiency and educational efficacy.
We find this infusion so important that the following guidelines should be followed in each school in the district:
TEACHER AWARENESS. Fourth-grade teachers of Caliifornia history should receive training on the primary sources of the black experience in San Francisco, including
–the 36 African-Americans from San Francisco listed among the 150 Most Historic Black Californians
–the significant role of the three 150-year-old black churches in San Francisco –Third Baptist, Bethel A.M.E. and First A.M.E. Zion in the abolition movement of the 1850s and the fight for civil rights in California that overturned the right of testimony and franchise laws in the 1860s
–the location and significance of two dozen African-American historic sites in the downtown financial district dating back to the 1840s
–the 29 state parks with historic sites on the black experience
–the allegorical epic Las Serges de Esplandian which led to Hernan de Cortes naming California
–important public artwork including the Room of the Dons murals by Maynard Dixon and Frank von Sloun, the Sargent Johnson murals at the National Maritime Museum and George Washington High School; the Dr. Howard Thurman sculpture; the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Waterfall by Houston Conwill; the Dewey Crumpler mural at 762 Fulton St.; the Ella Hill Hutch Center murals; the Gene Suttle Plaza; the Fillmore Street sidewalk legends and Mildred Howard’s Blue sculpture atop Geary Boulevard; Aaron Douglas painting at the DeYoung Museum;
–the heritage of entrepreneurial success beginning with pre-Emancipation millionaires William A. Leidesdorff and Mary Ellen Pleasant to the current accomplishments of executives such as Genentech COO Myrtle Potter, SBC West CEO Chuck Smith, Victor MacFarlane of MacFarlane Partners; civil engineer Frederick E. Jordan and current businesses such as restaurants
–the scientific and engineering exploits of Richard B. Spikes, inventor of the electric boom for streetcars and the automatic gearshift; Dr. Nathaniel Burbridge, a pharmacologist and Dr. Arthur Coleman, one of the first lawyer/physicians to astronauts Drs. Mae Jemison and Yvonne Cagle
–the impact on entertainment of black performers in San Francisco theatres in the 19th century such as the Hyers Sisters, leading up to the ragtime success of Bert Williams, George Walker and Sissiretta Jones; the origin of the first jazz club in the world at 550 Pacific Ave. in San Francisco and musicians who played there in the Sid leProtti So Diff’rent Orchestra
–significant literature written in San Francisco ranging from the first cookbook by a black chef by Abby Fisher in 1881, The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Roots by Alex Haley; The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest Gaines
–the impact of black labor leaders due to the decision by Harry Bridges to integrate the ILWU in the 1930s
–the political impact of leaders such as Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett, a candidate for governor in 1966 and newspaper publisher; through Mayor Willie L. Brown Jr. and current lawmakers and public executives
–primary source resources and educational experiences from:
• San Francisco African-American Historical and Cultural Society
• Museum of the African Diaspora
• African-American Center of the San Francisco Main Library
• San Francisco Room of the San Francisco Main Library
• Bayview/Waden Branch Library of the San Francisco Public Library
• Western Addition Branch Library of the San Francisco Public Library
• California Historical Society Library
• Performing Arts Library and Museum
• Bancroft Collection, UC-Berkeley
• Sutro Library of the California State Library
–the multilingual experience of peoples of African descent, including the early Spanish-speaking pobladores and conquistadors on Mission Dolores, the Presidio and Yerba Buena and the interrelationships between Africa and Europe; Africans in Latin America and the Caribbean; Africans in Asia and the Pacific Islands
–how to train other members of their staffs in the application of this material.
–why locally-specific historical information improves the learning experience for students
–and in creative and effective ways to incorporate this information throughout various subjects throughout the years on a daily basis, not only in history/social science, but also in mathematics, foreign language and physical and biological sciences
When possible, this training should also be made available to social science faculty at all levels.
CURRICULUM MATERIALS. Each school library and fourth grade classroom should be equipped with sufficient reference materials to provide a 500-year perspective of primary source materials on the black experience in California, including books, lesson plans, documentaries, maps and online resources.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT. Schools are encouraged to observe March 5 with school wide demonstrations of student mastery in knowledge of San Francisco and California African-American history, including oral history and genealogical accounts of family heritage, and to select the most creative, most thoroughly-researched entries for competition in a district-wide judging to be announced on April 3, the anniversary of the dedication of the first public school. Students are also encouraged to present materials in different languages in the same manner as the quotations on the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. Community, business and civic engagement in this process, including donations of prizes and scholarships., is encouraged.
BUDGET. A sum of $400,000 (FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS) is appropriated from funds allocated to comply with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund the costs of training and purchase of books and other curriculum materials. Administration is authorized to seek other funding sources such as grants, gifts or sponsorships.
DESIGNATION. This policy and the implementation thereof shall be known as the Leidesdorff Initiative in honor of Capt. William A. Leidesdorff, 1810-1848, chairman of the school committee that dedicated the first public school in San Francisco and California on April 3, 1848. In addition, his values of mathematics proficiency, nautical expertise, fluency in multiple languages and business success are all attributes which are still desirable in our graduates.
EVALUATION. The research department shall note the extent to which there is progress in the state examinations for students whose teachers have completed training and implemented the initiative; and the impact on school attendance and/or dropout rates at the secondary level and report back to the Curriculum Committee in May
CONCLUSION. we find that repairing the psychological damage of discrimination is still a critical and vital role for the San Francisco Unified School District to play for its students and affirm our commitment to comply with and promote the integration of all students into constructive roles at every level of society by inspiring them as students.
APPROVED THIS __________________ DAY OF ,
11.06.09
Black heritage closes the achievement gap
Black Heritage as Gap Closer
S.F. Alliance of Black School Educators
Willie L. Brown Jr. College Prep Academy
Friday, Nov. 6, 2009 5 p.m.
John William Templeton
© 2009 eAccess Corp.
INTRODUCTION. Our speaker has provided training for SFUSD teachers through the Teaching American History program and the Ethnic Studies development process on how to infuse the significant local history of San Francisco and California in the classroom. He’s spent the last 20 years chronicling that history in a series of books, Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, three documentaries and now the daily S.F. Black Heritage Tour. He’s also the co-founder of National Black Business Month and produces the 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology. He’s a native of Statesville, North Carolina and an honors graduate of Howard University’s John H. Johnson School of Communications.
The Holy Grail of American education is how to improve the performance of African-American children. The survival of neighborhoods and in some cases entire cities depends on the answer to that dilemma.
The Bayview neighborhood we stand in at this moment is a perfect example of how significant an issue this is.
Exactty a month ago, we hosted Robert Simms, who grew up in this community, on the Hill, attended public schools, and now is the owner of ParkSFO and Trux Cargo Shipping, two significant transportation businesses along with being a lawyer.
And this school is named for someone who migrated from Texas to become the premiere political leader of the past 50 years in California.
Clearly, when we get it right, magic comes out of African-American children.
When we don’t get it right, these very streets aren’t safe to walk on when we leave here.
For the first time, we have a President who has put the resources behind the talk of closing the achievement gap — a $100 billion bet through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that transformatton is possible in American public schools.
If it doesn’t work, who knows how long it will be before education gets that kind of support again.
But I’m here to tell you tonight that it is not rocket science. How do I know that? A couple of days ago, I was talking with a rocket scientist, Mary Spio, who will be one of the 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology that we’re announcing Monday.
By age 26, she was head of digital satellite communications for Boeing. Then she created what we are now experiencing as digital cinema in our movie theatres. She holds about eight patents.
And I’m sure like me, you’d never heard of her before.
Imagine how you’d feel sitting in a movie theatre and thinking I invented that whole process. You’d want to jump up and tell everybody.
What she did tell me was, “Seeing people who looked like me who were successful was what motivated me to go into the sciences.”
That’s consistent with my experience as author of Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California. When I did the first volume in 1991, I spoke at the Los Angeles Alliance of Black School Educators monthly meeting just like this one today. I hadn’t completed the first volume yet,. I just had an uncorrected proof copy for reviewers. Dr. Bruce Gaines, who was the president, took my proof copy to his classes at Jordan High and Pasadena City College.
Just from his use of the proof book to provide lessons, he reported that his black students had an average of two grade points improvement within two months.
We got similar results thorugh IRISE up here in the 1990s, particularly with James Taylor and his faculty at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. Carol Fields told me last year how effective Our Roots has been with her fourth grade students over the years.
So we know what can happen when content is placed in the hands of master educators. According to the news last night, there are 300,000 teachers in California.
How do we make sure the vast majority of them know how to effectively reach and teach black children.
Last year, I gave the keynote for the California Council for Social Studies in Oakland and did a joint tour with the Chinese Historical Society through downtown San Francisco.
For that presentation, I conducted a research study among California social science teachers, many of whom were in San Francisco Unified, thanks to the cooperation we got from the Office of Teaching and Learning which disseminated the survey.
There is a specific term in education jargon for what I’ve been discussing — culturally-responsiive instruction. People like Carol Lee, and Michele Foster and Gloria Ladson-Billings have helped to take our intuitive sense and define it in scientific terms.
Simply, a well-trained teacher knows how to get the student to identify with the subject being taught in a way that engages their interest and perceived needs.
Juan Gilbert, chair of human-centered computing at Clemson University, is another one of the 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology. He e-mailed me last night about how they’ve designed video games using hip-hop to teach algebra to black students.
The key phrase is “To teach algebra.” Any thing you do should result in acquired skills which can be used in any context.
Our research question to the teachers was to discern their capacity to provide culturally-responsive instruction.
So we asked a series of questions about what they did for Black History Month and Black American Day. The latter was a trick question. Although March 5 was declared Black American Day in the Education Code 40 years ago to mark the death of Crispus Attucks in the Boston Massacre, I’ve yet to find any evidence that any one has ever actually devoted the entire day to the “study of the contributions of African-Americans to American history.”
We expected and got 100 percent response with a question “What is Black American Day?”
We were more surprised to find that only 10 percent of the activities described by teachers iincluded the aspect of teaching skills, particularly skills identified in the curriculum frameworks and content standards.
All the evidence shows that such topics as the black queen who gave California its name, Buffalo Soldiers, the three local black churches in the Underground Railroad or, more contemporaneous topics, like black scientists and inventors attract the interest of hard-to-reach students.
We only need to ask successful learners what turns them on. And we’re not saying that only black role models can motivate black youth. In my book Success Secrets of Black Executives, I found that the presence of white mentors was a key element for the most successful black achievers.
However, the teaching of social studies, which I’m increasingly considering the most important subject, begins with a hierarchy in the primary grades of studying one’s own family, their city their state and then their country. Black kids get handicapped in those early grades because there is very little material to help them place themselves in the picture of American history, particularly family and local history.
To address that, we propose an infusion policy for San Francisco and any other school district to create a uniform standard, just as we have for mathematics, science and social studies, for how and what we expect our learners to know about African-American heritage. This will give educators a repertoire of cultural referents, with the proper training, to hang their instruction of actual skills upon.
My study indicates that we can’t leave it up to the initiative of the teachers to pull these resources together for themselves. They have too many other demands.
A couple of products we’ve done are the result of feedback from educators. The Black Queen: How African-Americans Put California on the Map is the fourth volume of the Our Roots Run Deep series. It includes twelve themes of lesson plans. short bios on the 150 most important black Californians and a breakdown of the how the California social science framework relates to African-American history. The infusion policy we suggest basically amounts to highlighting what the frameworks already call for.
Globally, we find technology a valuable tool for supplementing existing curriculum resources. The Black Students Internet Guide annotes 400 different sites with useful content for learners of African descent, broken down by subject areas.
For instance, Ron Eglash at RPI in New York has a presentation that teaches geometry through corn rowing. Its a good way to address girls’ perceived aversion to math and science.
Our guide Come to the Water: Sharing the Rich Black Experience in San Francisco drills down to the local level to use the entire community as a learning laboratory.
We’ve distributed copies of the proposed infusion policy. Students should not have to depend on the luck of the draw to get the instruction that all the research indicates is their right as part of a quality education.
Back in 1943, my mother, Mary Elizabeth McLelland was the first valedictorian of Unity High School outside of Statesville, N.C. and my dad, the late Clarence Templeton Jr. was salutorian of Morningside High School before he went off to the Navy to fight in World War II. As their kids, we always got set aside by our teachers, who had also taught them, and were given the hardest assignments to do. I was a National Achievement Scholar when I graduated from high school and my son scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT when he graduated.
My point is that when you turn a young person’s life around, to motivate them to follow in the footsteps of a Bob Simms or a Willie Brown or a Kevin Epps, you’re making a difference for generations to follow.
If there’s going to be a Bayview-Hunters Point in 50 years, then we can’t afford to write off any of the young people being forced out of the public schools. They will have children.
When we give them the kind of guidance that propelled us, the benefits extend way beyond the classroom.
I look forward to answering your questions and to working with you to find the Holy Grail.
11.04.09
Expanding the electorate
Perusing the plethora of pundits pontificating on the polls yesterday, I am prompted to place the reason for the results on the failure to learn the lessons of last November.
Tuesday was not a referendum on President Obama because neither guvernatorial race had candidates who offered the tranformation that voters sought last year.
The Democratic party must learn that it’s brand value was not particularly enhanced last year, so much as the quality of its candidates across the board improved. Bad candidates will yield bad results.
For next year’s races, it should return to the playbook of the Obama campaign and select candidates who seek to rise above the partisan divides which have paralyzed the country’s agenda.
In its governance, the White House and Congressional Democrats must rise above mere vote counting and remind the public of the goals at stake — accessible health care, energy independence and a livable climate–as well as how to create more jobs in the process.
The low turnout races of yesterday left out the new voters who were inspired in 2008. The politics of the last year has left those new voters out as well. If the focus on bipartisanship was necessary, then the next year must be geared to making the case that the election mattered for those who cared enough to seek change.
11.02.09
S.F. Black Heritage Tours begin today
The world’s number one attraction has a brand new magnet for tourists and residents -- S.F. Black Heritage Tours.
Historian John William Templeton brings the same mastery of the city’s vast African-American heritage that he has provided for major conventions like the American Library Association, American Bar Association, National School Boards Association and American Educational Research Association in three tour circuits provided by reservation daily.
The site for information and reservation is http://www.africanamericansf.info.
Group visits to such attractions as the King Tut exhibition at the DeYoung Museum are also available.
To learn more about the tours, one can also hear Templeton speak Friday, Nov. 6 to the San Francisco Alliance of Black School Educators at 5 p.m. in the Willie Brown College Prep Academy, 2055 Silver Ave. or call 415-240-3537.
Standard tour rates are $45 including a copy of Come to the Water: Sharing the Rich Black Experience in San Francisco., the indispensible guide to all aspects of black life in San Francisco, including churches, restaurants, historic sites and merchants.
Templeton curated JazzGenesis: San Francisco and the Birth of Jazz, currently on display in the Visitor Information Center of the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Gold Rush Abolitionists: the California Movement to Emancipation. Those eras of history are featured in one circuit through the Financial District of San Francisco, where the African-American community was concentrated in the 19th century.
The third Preserving California Black Heritage conference, Bayview’s Last Stand, last month, highlighted the historic black neighborhood of Bayview/Hunters Point. S.F. Black Heritage Tours begins the first regularly scheduled tours of the neighborhood, home to the some of the oldest pre-1906 earthquake churches, residences and commercial buildings in the city.
Templeton is also principal investigator of the Invisible Pioneers context statement on the history of African-Americans in San Francisco, having documented a number of previously unrecognized historic sites in the Western Addition stretching from Market Street up to Sacramento Street. One of his sources was the 1929 membership list of the new San Francisco branch of the NAACP. More than 200 of those addresses still stand in the area between Post and Sacramento Streets.
For background on these sites, the four-volume reference Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4, gives a context for the central role of African-Americans in California from the 1500s to present.
10.29.09
Black Heritage as Gap Closer
John William Templeton, author of Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4 and founder of S.F. Black Heritage Tours, discusses Black Heritage as Gap Closer to the San Francisco Alliance of Black School Educators Friday, Nov. 6 at 5 p.m. at the Willie L. Brown College Prep Academy, 2055 Silver Ave.
He will describe a proposed policy to “infuse” local and regional African-American heritage into daily classroom experiences in line with the state content standards and curriculum frameworks as a research-based method to improve student outcomes.
Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4 won the 2002 Library Laureate award from the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library and the 1998 Commendation from the California Sesquicentennial Commission. The books were the subject of a traveling exhibition in the Historic State Capitol Museum, Los Angeles Central Library and San Francisco Main Library in 1995-96.
Templeton is principal investigator for Invisible Pioneers: Blacks in San Francisco 1770-1985, a context statement, and was project historian for 62 Heroes and Heroines of the Western Addition oral history research project for the S.F. African-American Historical and Cultural Society. He also contributed African-Americans in the West to the Oxford Encyclopedia of African-American History, 1619-1890, From the Colonial Era to the Age of Frederick Douglass.
S.F. Black Heritage Tours begins Monday, Nov. 2. Reservations can be made at http://www.africanamericansf.info There are three tour circuits: JazzGenesis/Gold Rush Abolitionists; Western Addition/Pacific Heights/Haight; and Bayview to OMI.
10.28.09
Hot off the press: Contemporary history made by sports legends
The underappreciated role of black athletes in the civil rights movement is one of the themes that jumps out from Volume 3 of Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, 1950-2000. New editions of the four-volume set are available today. To put the significance of Jackie Robinson and Bill Russell in context, the following letter indicates that blacks were routinely refused factory jobs as late as the 1960s.
No jobs for Negroes
It is difficult to overstate the motivational role of Jackie Robinson, the Pasadena sports and military hero who was an all-star in three sports at UCLA (football, basketball and track) , to take on the task of integrating major league baseball. Two chapters by Anthony Pratkansis describe Robinson’s impact on American society in Vol. 2 of Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, 1900-1950.
Dodger Jackie Robinson
A decade later, Bill Russell pulled off the amazing feat of winning NCAA, Olympic and NBA championships, boosting the morale of the civil rights movement even further. As the NBA season launches again, with a preponderance of black players, it is difficult to realize how Russell’s run of nine championships spanned a transformation in American society.
Some of the athletes were so important in later life that we forget they were sports stars. Lionel Wilson was a Negro Leagues pitcher long before he was first black mayor of Oakland, and Tom Bradley was a track standout at UCLA who later became mayor of Los Angeles for 20 years. Ralph Bunche also was a UCLA basketball legend who ascended to the highest ranks of the United Nations at the same time that Robinson was breaking into the major leagues.
Bunche went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The winning attitude of sports has been just as important to the civil rights progress as legal victories. Relive those magic moments in Volume 3 of Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, 1950-2000.
Other chapters cover S.F.’s Fillmore District: the Cutting Edge of Black Urban Removal, the Bakke decision, the Watts and Rodney King riots, the Proposition 209 campaign, whether the CIA brought crack into south-central Los Angeles, bringing understanding to topics which still resonate through today’s news.
As the referees toss the ball up for the opening jump balls of the NBA season, reflect on the shoulders upon whom they stand.
10.27.09
Tragedy needs a landmark
The spirit of despair was etched on the face of the woman who scurried to open the door of the post office at Geary and Fillmore.
It was a reminder of how that same despair had helped create the largest mass suicide in American history — starting from that very location.
But there is no landmark, although the post office is a relatively new building.
For the unaware, who simply see a place to get a passport or drop off a package, this post office sits on the site of the People’s Temple.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY3cx3U0gYE
Next month will be another anniversary of Jonestown in which the memories of the fallen will be obscured.
San Francisco avoids facing that history, because it still continues the same policies which created what researcher Mindy Thompson-Fullilove termed “Root Shock,” neighborhoods stripped of the social supports which make up a community through misguided land-use policies. I describe that era in a chapter of Volume 3 of Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California “San Francisco’s Western Addition: The Cutting Edge of Black Urban Removal.”
900 souls contnue to cry out for justice!
Explore S.F.’s black heritage in a new tour
If you didn’t know that the first building rebuilt after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was a black-owned jazz club or where novelist Ernest Gaines penned such works as the Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, then you’ll be interested in the new San Francisco Black Heritage Tour beginning daily operation Nov. 2, 2009.
Created by historian John William Templeton, author of Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4 and the section on African-Americans in the West in the Oxford Encyclopedia of African-American History, the three distinct tours cover time periods stretching back to the Mexican era.
For more information, call 415-240-3537 or go to http://www.africanamericansf.info or use the I-phone application at iheritageguide.com.
10.23.09
The Black Queen: How African-Americans Put California on the Map
Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4 is a 1,400 page chronicle of the centrality of blacks in California heritage from the naming of the area in the 1500s to the present.
It has been updated to integrate with the California content standards and to include new discoveries from recent exhibitions in Los Angeles and San Francisco — the first black company to record a jazz record; the first black woman to publish a cookbook and the site of the first jazz club and jazz band in history.
Volume One also includes the translation of Las Serges de Esplandian, the 1510 epic describing California as an island populated only by black women, which Cortes sought out with his party of 300 African conquistadors in the 1530s.
Volume Four, The Black Queen: How African-Americans Put California on the Map, is designed for frequent classroom usage with 12 thematic lesson plans, bibliographies and the 150 most important blacks in California history. The package also includes a DVD of Our Roots Run Deep documentary, a 56-minute public television show; Black Heritage as Gap Closer, a research study on the capacity of California educators to provide culturally-responsive instruction in social studies, Come to the Water: Sharing the Rich Black Experience in San Francisco, a tourist guide to the city’s 300 black historic sites, 50 black restaurants and 100 churches, the Black Students Internet Guide, a resource for 400 sites with educational content geared to learners of African descent, and the new documentary Freedom Riders of the Cutting Edge, a chronicle of early black technology pioneers in the earliest days of Silicon Valley.
Editor John William Templeton also contributed “African-Americans in the West” to the Oxford Encyclopedia of African American History. Co-editor of Volume 2 is Agin Shaheed, a San Diego education administrator and grandson of the first African-American administrator in Los Angeles public schools.
Volume orders also include training in culturally-responsive instruction using California African-Ameircan heritage. A showing of the play Queen Calafia: Ruler of California, which excited hundreds of San Francisco students is slated in February 2010 in Oakland.
“OUR ROOTS RUN DEEP: THE BLACK EXPERIENCE IN CALIFORNIA, 1500-1900 is an effective reference book for researchers from a variety of backgrounds,from students to interested community members. This book is jam-packed with excerpts from primary source material: the reader can hear the voice of civil-rights activist and entrepreneur, Mary Ellen Pleasant; read the Gold Rush diary of Alvin Coffey; and experience the verbatim testimony of Charlotte Brown in her 1863 discrimination case against the street car company.
In addition, the book contains a number of essays from historians and other academics, many reprinted from books that are rare or out-of-print. OUR ROOTS RUN DEEP pulls together a large overview of the experience of the Black community in California, incorporating both original voices and reliable historical analysis.”
Susan Goldstein
Manager, San Francisco History Center
City Archivist
San Francisco Public Library
10.22.09
Compensation furor indicates new environment
Anger has been rising among Americans and other global observers that the financial calamity of 2008 has not caused a more sensible approach to CEO and executive compensation.
The issue is a marker for a larger re-examination of the role of the largest businesses in the global economy.
At the end of the robber baron era of the 19th century, progressive societies chose not to allow the pursuit of profit at any cost to be the determinative factor in business success.
Throughout the 20th century, other objectives like ending child labor, paying minimum wages, providing pensions and health care, equal employment opportunity and environmental remediation have become societal imperatives that businesses must embrace.
From the Drexel Burnham Lambert junk bond days through the 2008 meltdown, the pedalum swung towards profound cost-shifting of those obligations to individuals while a privileged elite concentrated more and more wealth.
In my opinion article for the New York Society of Security Analysts in October 2008, I suggested that a rebound of the market would depend on how well companies, particularly in the financial sectors, read the lessons of the Obama election.
“Is there an Obama play in the market?” predicted that companies would need to grow not just by moving money around in acquisitions but by demonstrating ethics and broad societal value.
It has taken a while for the changed environment to sink in. Some CEOs have seen the Troubled Asset Recovery Program as a piggy bank to fund even larger bonuses and stock options.
As the proxy for the taxpayers who had to fund the $700 billion TARP, the federal government should act against top executives who felt they deserved rewards for almost presiding over the demise of their firms. That poor judgment would not have survived in an open market, and government intervention should not protect them from those consequences.
A wider adjustment should come from the pension funds which supply much of the liquidity in the market. The best investment plays are policies and practices which widen opportunity.
Outlandish bonuses in the face of high unemployment and depressed demand are a bigger threat to capitalism than any government regulation. The economy depends on trust. Managers, who do not understand that, need the same wakeup call that investors and consumers got last year.
10.21.09
Are you ready to step up to the plate?
Have only watched two pitches of the major league baseball playoffs. Like many other blacks, the game has lost its luster for me as its number of African-American players has declined.
However, Ryan Howard did catch my eye the other night while channel flipping, and like the prime ttime player he is, he hit a home run on that pitch.
While in a restaurant last night, Alex Rodriquez was at the plate. I watched because he has a reputation for not performing iin clutch post-season action. Just before he swung, the announcer was making a reference to his different body language. Sure enough, he belted a homer too.
If I don’t see any more baseball, it won’t be a big deal, because there is a real World Series going on around us. In major league politics and governance, the number of African-Americans in positions of influence is growing.
The significance of the decisions to be made in the next few weeks — from troop deployments in Afghanistan to whether all Americans will be covered with health insurance to a global treaty on reducing emissions–can not be overstated.
However, there are media reports that African-American voter interest is lagging in the off-year elections slated for the first Tuesday in November, most notably the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey.
It is partially understandable. The intense excitement of last year’s election was followed by a daunting economic downturn, making the casual observer of politics perhaps feel that things have not changed.
The announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize was a recognition of how thoroughly the Obama administration has changed the course of the country for the better in just nine months. Many of the changes will take years to be visible, but the President and his Cabinet are delivering on the change they promised in 2008.
Delivering health care for all was the mantra in 1992, but a fierce reaction by entrenched special interests kept any legislation from coming to the floor of Congress.
Obama has provided the leadership to get a bill through both the House and Senate, perhaps by Thanksgiving.
U.S. troops are leaving Iraq on schedule, the issue that propelled him to the front of the campaign last year; and the conflict on the Afghan-Pakistan border now has the direct involvement of Pakistan’s army, which is the gamechanger that the previous administration never attracted, even from a military dictatorship.
These changes are happening because African-American voters took a leap of faith, beginning in South Carolina, that the most improbable, the most far-fetched thing most of us could ever contemplate would occur.
Yet, as the troubles of New York Gov. David Paterson indicate, progress is rarely a straight line, and popularity can shift in an instant.
The tides of the battles over these issues can continue to move in a positive direction as an unexpected force, just as been the case in Pakistan, comes to the battlefield.
In Virginia, black voters understood that electing James Webb would transform the national landscape by creating a Democratic majority in the Senate. He wasn’t particularly exciting and some of his past statements were problematic. But they acted on the permanent interests philosophy articulated by Frederick Douglass.
I had the chance to help send out that message during that election and witnessed a similar transformation when black voters helped Debbie Stabenow win an upset in Michigan.
The notion that only the President can get black voters to turnout is disrespectful to their good judgment.
However, there are forces at work to divert their attention in the final days before the election. I’ve been troubled by the fact that one of the most conservative activists, Phillip Anschutz, through his control of AEG Entertainment, has the rights to much of the Michael Jackson legacy.
The release of the new rehearsal footage film just a week before the election has the opportunity to distract voter attention in November.
But I lean to the belief that the ideas that Jackson espoused in his music will cause voters to become more active as they peruse the person in the mirror.
President Obama didn’t make the change in 2008. Voters did. To maintain the pace of change, voters must stay at bat, ready to take the big swing in the clutch. As the H1N1 flu strikes, the need for near-universal health care coverage is all the more important. As the polar ice caps melt, we can’t wait another decade to do something about climate change.
One doesn’t have to have a big contract to hit a home run in this World Series, one just needs to get in the game.
10.19.09
Embracing Queen Calafia
Millions of California school children never learn the origin of the state’s name.
That’s why I begin many of my discussions with teachers or students by asking “How did California get its name?”
The answer is usually so incongruous that I give it through a video clip of my documentary “Our Roots Run Deep” which pans through the Room of the Dons in the Mark Hopkins Hotel. I’ve learned it has to be seen to be believed.
Last year, we enacted that same experience of discovery through the one-woman play Queen Calafia: Ruler of California during a three-day run starring Ajuana Black at the African-American Art and Culture Complex.
The actress did a fabulous job of presenting the awe and amazement one experiences when learning about the origin of California.
We first presented the primary source account in Chapters Two and Three of Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vol. 1, 1500-1900. Chapter Two describes the Maynard Dixon-Frank von Sloun murals in the Room of the Dons.
Chapter Three is a translation of Las Serges de Esplandian by Garcia Ordonez Montalvo, the 1510 Spanish epic which was the first written use of the word “California.”
In Las Serges, Montalvo describes California as an island nation populated solely by black women. As described by UC-Santa Cruz historian Margo Hendricks, Montalvo’s work was part of a genre of European literature from the 1300s to the 1500s which portrayed black women warriors as synonymous with wealth, courage and beauty.
The contrast between this genre and the way that blacks have been portrayed for most of the 500 years since is so glaring that we immediately seized upon this as a window to the examination and understanding of race.
In Volume Four of Our Roots Run Deep, The Black Queen: How African-Americans Put California on the Map, we present a series of lesson plans to explore not only the content of Las Serges, but the context of a Mediterranean area where Moors were dominant for 700 years in southern Europe through the end of the 1400s; and where West African emperors were fabled for their wealth in gold as far away as Mecca on the Arabian peninsula.
Students learn the role of mythology to create their cultural norms and how to determine what is actually true.
They can put themselves in the shoes of Cortes, who read Las Serges and believed that he had found the island nation of California just off the western coast of North America.
Most importantly, we want to them to ask deep questions about why this information has not been presented to them and generations of school children before them.
Queen Calafia, as Dixon and von Sloun portray, is a metaphor for the California quest for adventure, but her omission is a metaphor for the invisibility of the central role of blacks in the history of the Golden State.
It begins with the 300 black conquistadors among Cortes’ party, continues through the African ancestry of four in ten pobladores who settled the missions along the coast of Alta California, including the majority of the original settlers of sites like Los Angeles and San Jose; moves through the intrigues of competing black land barons from southern and northern California on whether the area would stay part of Mexico, go independent or join the United States and then begins a still-unresolved battle for racial justice in response to the intolerance that began with the Gold Rush.
As we survey today’s images of black women through such works as the Chris Rock documentary “Good Hair” where billions are being spent to live up to a completely foreign mythology or the caricatures of Tyler Perry, we must insist that all our students receive the primary source information about the proud heritage which they can make part of their own self-esteem.
Books such as Serena Williams’ new autobiography or the movie Akeelah and the Bee demonstrate the power of positive self-image as part of the educational experience. Educators who fail to employ the magic of California’s African-American experience are doing themselves and their students a disservice.
Now that a new school year has begun, parents should insist that by March 5, which is Black American Day in the California Education Code, that classrooms demonstrate proficiency in California’s African-American heritage. During February, which is not only Black History Month but also the time for National African-American Parent Involvement Day, parents should ask what is being presented and why.
Our study Black Heritage as Gap Closer demonstrates through a research study what types of lessons truly embody culturally-responsive instruction during Black History Month and throughout the year. Armed with these tools, parents can effectively advocate for their children.
Let’s not let another year of ignorance proscribe the futures of our children.
10.18.09
Rebuilding black communities from our own initiative
Dr. Grant Venerable, formerly provost of Chicago State University and Lincoln (PA) University says of him:
“John W. Templeton is an “impressario” like entrepreneur of the media world who sees future possibilities long before they occur. This is especially true in the world of creative media and innovative educational concepts. He brings together the right people at the right time to create new synergies that enable him to succeed in his always expansive objectives.”
10.12.09
Why must we look so continental?
I once saw an advertisement featuring an African-American NBA player which described his hair style as “continental.” It was clear the continent he was referring to was Europe and not Africa.
This weekend, I had the eye-opening experience of watching Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair, and the new French film 35 Shots of Rum (35 Rhums).
The later film was notable for its normalcy. There were no extreme comedy, action scenes or violence. It portrayed a French train engineer and his college student daughter. There was tenderness, subtlety and a riveting dialogue about economics and Africa set in a college classroom. Having just watched Good Hair, it occurred to me that the blacks in the film who lived in Europe, most specifically the fashion capital of France, were depicted as quite comfortable with their blackness, and were generally trying to identify with their African heritage.
In Good Hair, we saw an interview with Rev. Al Sharpton who reminisced about the perm he got at the behest of James Brown, the architect of the Afro as the performer of “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” in the 1960s.
We also saw the theatrics of the Bronner Brothers Hair Show and Rock’s comical attempts to see some clearly African hair to a retailer. The economics of hair shaved as part of Indian religious rituals being packaged and sold to African-Americans at a tremendous markup by a Korean cartel spoke for itself.
Several black leading ladies told Rock they couldn’t stay in the movie business without their weaves–or get a date.
The contrast between the depictions in the two films was too obvious to ignore. Part of Rock’s genius in Good Hair was that he avoided the temptation to pass judgment on the authentic beliefs and choices of his subjects–either the parents giving perms to three year olds or the priests shaving the hair of toddlers to sell it overseas.
But there is a question to ponder. If black folks who live in Europe aren’t trying to look European, why should African-Americans go in debt to do so?
If the answer is that society values a certain look, then perhaps a better response is to change society, beginning with the broadcast and film images that lead to distorted self-worth. We need think no further than the upcoming release of the first products from the Michael Jackson abortive tour to understand the path that troubled images in the mirror leads to.
The Nobel Peace Prize and 2008 election should be an indication that there is a road to success through authenticity.
10.07.09
Cappin’ the Notorious Ph.D
Talk about dissin’ one’s O.G.’s.
A University of Southern California film professor Todd Boyd, who styles himself the “Notorious Ph.D.”, responded to the news that Ebony and Jet magazines may be for sale by essentially saying “good riddance.”
There’s no comparison between what Johnson Publications has done for African-Americans and the country as a whole compared to Boyd, but overlooking the disrespect, his premise that African-Americans have moved beyond race-conscious media, and/or businesses in general, could not be more wrong.
He appears not to have gotten the loud-and-clear memo over the summer that the talk of a “color-free” society has been inundated in a wave of gun-waving hysteria.
In fact, African-Americans need more and more vigorous media in a time of rapid transformation. But that media must begin with the perspective of the vast archives and editorial experience of news media like Ebony and Jet. The new wave of black bloggers and online publications has mostly been notable for its lack of depth, which comes from a deficit of experience and research.
We need to be able to compare the changes of the Obama administration with the shifts during the Johnson administration, for instance, to be able to avoid the mistakes of the past. My first job out of college was working on the national desk of the AFRO-AMERICAN Newspapers in Baltimore. I got to talk every day with lions of the Double-V campaign and the desegregation of major league baseball like Art Carter and Sam Lacy, perspective that I carry with me to this day.
Johnson Publications is subject to forces which are challenging the largest media companies. Its primary advertisers in automobiles and finance have been subject to bankruptcy and government bailouts. Last hired, first fired has an advertising dimension.
Our philosophy through National Black Business Month is “the most important thing we can do right now is what they did back then.” There would not be an African-American president today but for the foundations set by publications based in Chicago like Ebony, Jet and the Chicago Defender. If they delivered that kind of advance, this is no time to discard them.
The best move for social media to employ would be to encourage a campaign of new subscriptions and online advertising for the JPC network as a show of support for its management team that Black America has enough common sense to know which publications were there for them in their darkest hours.
We have not reached a stage where we will not see more dark hours. Would you want something “notorious” on your coffee table?
10.05.09
A short story–The Blackberry
As a writing exercise over the weekend, had to create a short story on the fly. Here goes.
“407-632-9654.
The number didn’t look familiar as it popped up on my Blackberry.
“Who has gotten my number?” I wondered. The little black combination phone, address book and Internet access had become my primary contact with the outside world. I tightly controlled who had the number because my business required me to be discreet.
“Should I answer it?” I queried, quickly scanning my entire network of contacts.
“Who do I know in Pittsburgh?” I wondered. “No one and I’ve never been in Pittsburgh.”
My business dealings took me to many cities across the globe, often for brief, furtive visits. But Pittsburgh had not been one of them.
“What do I know about Pittsburgh?” I surmised. “Almost nothing, except that the Steelers had a black head coach who won the Super Bowl in his first season. I think they have a baseball team, but I hadn’t heard anything about them since the days of Clemente.”
The call was now over, as I still considered my options. Now a voice mail menu appeared on the screen. One touch and I was listening aptly.
“We’re ready for you,” a somber-sounding female voice deadpanned.
“Who’s ready for me and why?” I sneered at the phone.
I flipped to the Internet option on the screen, typed in the phone number to a search engine and got one result.
It was the last thing I would have imagined.
“I don’t believe this.”
Now I had to find out why they were calling me.
Then the screen went black. My battery was dead.
Oh well, I supposed. I’ll power up again when I reach my destination.
Five hours passed, before my plane arrived on the West Coast.
I reached my hotel just in time to find out the location for my next performance, at a small club in West LA. I was about to pull out my ax to practie when I remembered the message.
I plugged in my Blackberry to recharge it. Then I dozed off to sleep.
A bright ray of sunlight woke me up. The television was on, tuned to a morning news show. The announcer talked over some video of a trumpeter among lots of folks in tuxedos. He said this soloist had been the hit of the G-20 Summit dinner in Pittsburgh, although he’d been contacted on less than five hours notice earlier in the day.
The voice said, “The White House said he had been contacted after their first choice didn’t return a phone message.”
“That’s interesting,” I thought. So I called the number on my re-charged Blackberry.
The hotel operator answered with the news that the party I called had just checked out with the Presidential party.
Guess I won’t screen my calls any more.”
10.03.09
A fascinating look at Bayview in the 1960s
It was a heady feeling for a brand new San Francisco State University graduate, who’d grown up on “the Hill” along Innes Street near the Hunters Point Shipyard, to take an interview to serve as manager of what would turn out to be the first black supermarket nationwide.
That was how Robert Simms was thrust into the middle of the 1960s in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, as first manager of the Neighborhood Coop, which had attracted 2,500 African-Americans to join in an unprecedented show of economic unit.
During “A Conversation with Robert Simms: Bayview in the 1960s” Friday, Oct. 2 at the Bayview branch library, Simms told of coming to the neighborhood at the age of four, attending local elementary and middle schools and then being inspired by neighborhood business leaders like Sam Jordan, whom he would ask their secrets to success.
“Although I majored in business at S.F. State, the insights I got from people like Sam Jordan have served me well for a long time,” said Simms.
After a year heading the Coop, Simms decided to start a newspaper to chronicle the positive developments in the neighborhood. It was called The Spokesman. When he walked into the community room of the library, he was struck by the bound copies of the newspaper, which published from 1964 to 1970, most of which he had not seen for more than three decades.
Simms described a group of women known as the “The Big 5″, who were the supervisors of various block clubs and could command attention anywhere from Washington to Sacramento to City Hall. “They could come into a meeting and change the agenda. They’d say, No, this is what we want to talk about.”
He also illuminated what had become known as the 1966 “riot.”
“After the shooting of a black youth in the back, we all thought it was unjust, so there was a meeting called with the mayor, but the mayor didn’t show for hours on end. People got frustrated and a side group began breaking some windows, so huge numbers of police showed up. We didn’t leave because we were just standing in the street. So the police would huddle and then they’d come out with billy clubs and chase us up the street. After 20 minutes or so, we’d come back. Then, they’d chase us again. The Spokesman was the only media there so we had the photos and the story and all the other media had to use our information. It even showed up in the national magazine The Nation.”
Simms challenged the characterization as a riot. “It was just people who were frustrated. There was no violence.”
He described Bayview/Hunters Point as a neighborhood filled with hard-working people who raised families. “But we were always characterized negatively, and it puts a burden on anyone who comes from there to prove themselves.”
There’s still a need for something like The Spokesman today, Simms suggested.
09.30.09
Dr. Feel Good in new digs
One of my favorite people is Dr. Murray Callier, one of premiere chiropractors on the planet. He’s known as Dr. Feel Good. His patient list has ranged from Sammy Davis Jr. to Hit Man Hearns, but he’s liable to just walk up to you on the street and give you an adjustment.
That’s how we met.
I was out at Ft. Mason, a national park on the San Francisco shore, opening an exhibition on Queen Calafia about five years. I’d been in such pain that I couldn’t sit, walk or type — the three activities I do most in any given day. While I was standing by the door of the gallery, a casually dressed older gentleman ambled in and asked if I’d ever been adjusted by a chiropractor.
In fact, I had been undergoing unsuccessful treatment, hooked up to all sorts of gizmos that only confirmed what I already knew–that something was wrong–but not what to do about it.
I replied that I had, but wasn’t seeing results. Something about him exuded credibility and confidence, so I didn’t resist when he reached over and made a few simple adjustments. I felt better immediately and made an appointment.
In his office, then near the San Francisco side of the Golden Gate bridge, I got a sense of the history he’d been a part of since graduating from Alabama State University as a scholarship baseball player from Detroit. A couple of visits and my problem went away. He didn’t rely on technology, but on the sensitivity of his ability to read the body with a single finger touch.
I’ve referred him to a number of people, who’ve had the same experience, as if they’ve been touched by the Creator, most recently a visiting guest from Los Angeles who cried out in deliverance from a long-suffering back pain.
Dr. Callier has new quarters now, at 319 Miller in Mill Valley, on the Marin side of the Golden Gate bridge. Contact him at 415-474-8668 to learn how he can help you get in touch with your body and your soul.
09.29.09
Stroll down Barbecue Boulevard
Join us for a Stroll Down Barbecue Boulevard, a tour through the architecture, cuisine and culture of the Bayview/Hunters Point district to kick off the third annual Preserving California Black Heritage conference — Bayview’s Last Stand: Protecting Historic Black Neighborhoods. Begin registration at the conference headquarters, Bayview Commons community room, 4445 Third St. at 10:30 a.m. We’ll not only learn about some of San Francisco’s oldest buildings, but visit and shop with the dedicated merchants who have maintained the community’s character.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/08/13/BAGOHE7IQ21.DTL
09.22.09
Bayview’s Last Stand: Protecting Historic Black Neighborhoods
Robert Simms remembers the 1966 riot in Bayview like it was yesterday. As editor of The Spokesman, his paper was the only media that saw the events first hand.
The incident lives on in the memory of many Bayview/Hunters Point residents because the Bayview Opera House, a cultural center where folks like Danny Glover got their start, was riddled with bullets by police.
“Just about all the coverage was based on what we wrote, because the mainstream media wouldn’t come into Bayview” says Simms. “That included a followup story in the Nation magazine.
The former editor recalls a very cohesive neighborhood, governed more by its churches and block clubs than any outside authories. Simms was at the heart of the community as its scribe from 1964 to 1970.
A Conversation with Robert Simms: Bayview in the 1960s on Friday, Oct. 2 is a highlight of the third annual Preserving California Black Heritage conference. That session begins at 6 p.m. in the Bayview branch of the San Francisco Public Library.
He will discuss the community activism that made Bayview an example for organizing across the nation. Housewives and church deacons successfully lobbied for more than $50 million from the first African-American Cabinet member, HUD Secretary Robert Weaver.
It is a model that is now coming full circle as Bayview is one of the most threatened historic black neighborhoods in the country, with more than 95 percent of all foreclosures in the entire city of San Francisco. Stories in USA Today and the Christian Science Monitor have noted that San Francisco has the most extensive outmigration of African-Americans of any city in the country.
From Wednesday, Sept. 30 to Friday, historic preservation and planning experts will share effective strategies for forestalling gentrification used in such cities as Savannah, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Historic American Beach in Florida and Houston. There will be a focus on empowering residents of neighborhoods like Bayview to use historic preservation programs to stabilize and bring economic development.
A second track will train teachers in the use of community, local and regional African-American heritage as a method to improve student outcomes.
Featured presenters in the preservation track include Rick Moss, historian member of the State Historical Resources Commission; Karina Muniz, outreach director of the Los Angeles Conservancy; and Yolette Merritt, member of the Santa Clara County Historic Preservation Commission.
The Wednesday, Sept. 30 evening program features a showing of the documentary and companion book by Bayview native Kevin Epps, The Black Rock: Black Alcatraz, also at 6 p.m. in the Bayview branch library.
For educators, National Park Rangers Guy Washington, western regional director of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom and Frederik Penn, Buffalo Soldiers interpretive specialist at the Presidio, will share the country’s excitement about national parks during the Ken Burns’ PBS series. Another documentary, Freedom Riders of the Cutting Edge, will showcase the innovation of black technologists in the 1950s and 1960s in Silicon Valley on Thursday, Oct. 1.
Preservation track members can participate in bus tours each morning, exploring historic sites in the black experience throughout the city.
Conference organizer John William Templeton, principal investigator for a context statement on African-American history in San Francisco, working with architect Miles Stevens and SFSU Professor Johnetta Richards, Ph.D, will also present new findings on the significant role of African-American architects in California, including their imprint on black church architecture, while presenting a slide show of 400 African-American potential historic sites or districts.
Much of that hidden history has been revealed through community publications such as Simms’ The Spokesman. The project has read every black-owned newspaper printed in San Francisco from 1857 through the 1980s in the process of its research. One objective of the conference is to enlighten community members to the importance of the cultural artifacts they may have stored in closets and attics.
Another goal of the conference is to revive the community organizing spirit of the 1960s, as celebrated later in October for the 40th anniversary of the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State. Models for homeowners and renters to join forces to effectively manage the preservation of stable black neighborhoods with historic character will be presented throughout the conference.
