ARJ, Coastal Conservancy Noon Time Talk | Thurs., Sept. 20, 2018

Please join me, Dr. Alison Rose Jefferson, at the Coastal Conservancy at noon on September 20 for my presentation: “Making Visible Overlooked Stories of African Americans in California Dreams.” 

You can join in person at 1515 Clay St, 10th Floor, Big Sur Conference Room, in Oakland near the 12th Street BART station or by webinar. Register for the webinar at: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1453555864673254658. Feel free to bring a lunch.

When: 12:00, September 20, 2018

Where: 1515 Clay St, 10th Floor, Oakland CA, 94612 or attend the webinar here https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1453555864673254658

What: Dr. Alison Rose Jefferson discussing the history and legacy of racial restrictions on California’s public beaches.

Based on chapters in my forthcoming book with the working title Leisure’s Race, Power and Place in Los Angeles and California Dreams During the Jim Crow Era to be published by the University of Nebraska Press, in this presentation I will briefly discuss the history and public memory of the African American experience at California’s Santa Monica beach site that has some times been called “the Inkwell” and the city of Manhattan Beach’s, Bruce’s Beach. Additionally, I will discuss my efforts towards innovative public programming forged in new partnerships with colleagues in ocean stewardship as well as in the history industry, social action and ocean aquatics, to build interpretation projects at these sites that are facilitating pathways to broader and younger audiences by connecting them with overlooked culturally diverse stories of our collective history and national heritage.

Commemorated with landmark monuments and a park renaming, these sites were preferred gathering places in the Los Angeles region for African Americans during the Jim Crow era for varied durations. In their leisure making practices they made history there, before and after, racial restriction attempts on California’s public beaches were abandoned in 1927. These local stories contribute to the national narrative of mass movement that illustrates how the struggle for leisure and public space, alongside political and economic issues, also reshaped the long civil rights movement.

As a historian and heritage conservation consultant, my work explores the intersection of the history of the African American experience in Southern California, historical memory, heritage conservation, and, spatial and social justice.

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