this is a lie.. One would believe that with its proximity to mass transit that West Oakland would be getting its piece of the redevelopment pie, maybe even a larger slice. But, alas, the way things work in city politics, with city money aren't always the way things should work. However, West Oakland has become a haven for artists and techies, for anyone seeking a huge live/work space on the cheap. That's right, all of those warehouses are being converted and they're being gobbled up by those who can predict the future because where go the people so follows the business ( is that economics 116 or 140) and with the surge of people flooding West Oakland it won't be long before you can walk out your loft garage door and hang out at the corner coffee shop.
Where I live..
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ghost Town (sometimes spelled Ghosttown) is the informal name of the Foster Hoover Historic District neighborhood in West Oakland, Oakland, California. [1] [2] The community is known for its violence and blight. [1] [3] [4] The name probably originated from the two casket companies operating side by side on Filbert Street between 30th and 32nd Streets. One of these companies, "American Burial Casket Co" (sign intact) is located at 3102 Filbert Street. The second company was located at 3104 Filbert Street (no signage).[citation needed] Other explanations for the name may have originated in the times when eminent domain forced hundreds of families out of their homes and the town looked like a ghost town.[2] Another anecdote refers to the town as having so many killings it was becoming a ghost town.[2] It stretches from 31st Street to 35th Street in the area immediately southwest of the Macarthur Maze.[2] [1] This neighborhood once had active citizen crime patrols, including one group of seniors who walk the neighborhood weekly to get physical exercise and report blight.[5] Jerry Brown, formerly governor of California and Mayor of Oakland stated: "Instead of an omnibus crime bill, you have to deal with shootings in Ghostown in West Oakland and sideshows in East Oakland."[6] Brown made attempts to turn around the blighted West Oakland neighborhood after "60 Minutes" featured it in a television profile. [4]
The term "Ghost riding" has been attributed to this Oakland neighborhood. According to the Contra Costa Times and The Washington Post, local rapper Mistah F.A.B. popularized the term with his song "Ghost Ride It"[7] and speculated that its origins are in Ghosttown.[8]
[edit] City-County Neighborhood Initiative
Both Ghosttown and Sobrante Park, were targeted for youth intervention programs by the city of Oakland in their "Measure Y" campaigns.[9] The specific program is termed by the city the "City-County Neighborhood Initiative". Its strategy, according to the Human Services Department, is "based on best practices, has community builders going door-to-door to support and encourage neighbors to address their issues (e.g., typically truant youth, blight, and drug dealing) and help them ultimately to organize (e.g., Friends of Durant Park, West Oakland Mini-Grant Committee, Resident Action Council, Block captains, neighborhood watches, Home Alert, Renters or Home Owners’ Associations) and take ownership of their communities. This strategy is based on the theory that violence must be addressed in the context of the community in which it occurs." [9]
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ a b c Ostler, Scott (June 22, 2007). "Baseball Brings Life: Boy's death spurs Oakland couple to save neighborhood kids one game at a time", San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved on 2007-09-25. "Ghost Town is a violence-ridden West Oakland neighborhood, violent even by Oakland standards. Google a murder map of Oakland, and a cluster of dots pop up in the little area tucked just southwest of the MacArthur Maze."
- ^ a b c d Antonioli, Dan. "A Short History of Ghost Town". Retrieved on 2007-09-25. “In the five years that I’ve lived here I’ve heard many an oral history of ghost town. I can tell you straight up that ghost town lives. Ghosties are real, they know they live in ghost town, and they have a strong sense of identity with this community.”
- ^ "Oakland nabs drug suspects.", San Francisco Chronicle (July 9, 1998). Retrieved on 2007-09-25. "Narcotics officers continued to pursue drug suspects in West Oakland's notorious Ghost Town area Thursday in an aggressive two-day sweep officials hope will clean up some of the city's drug-infested housing projects. As of Thursday morning, 25 suspects..."
- ^ a b "'Ghost Town' a Work in Progress.", San Francisco Chronicle (January 24, 2001). Retrieved on 2007-09-25. "So now, as Brown prepares to deliver his State of the City address tomorrow, how have things turned out in the mayor's little crusade to reshape the neighborhood known on the streets as "Ghost Town?" ... On the other hand, litter and crime continue to the haunt the neighborhood."
- ^ "Eyes, ears, feet on streets; Citizen groups gather to patrol neighborhoods, help law enforcement", San Francisco Chronicle (May 27, 2007). Retrieved on 2007-09-25. "Jennie Black placed an orange safety vest on the back of her motorized wheelchair. A sign taped to the garment said "Feet on the Street." That's the name of a group of seniors she joined two years ago. Every Tuesday, they patrol Oakland's Ghost Town neighborhood."
- ^ DeFao, Janine; Zamora, Jim Herron (October 9, 2005). "Dellums may face big reality check", San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved on 2007-09-25. "Brown, who nearly a year ago endorsed Dellums' main rival, City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, added, "Instead of an omnibus crime bill, you have to deal with shootings in Ghosttown in West Oakland and sideshows in East Oakland.""
- ^ "The hip list: best, worst of '06", Contra Costa Times, December 26, 2006. "Ghost ride it: Popularized By Mistah FAB's song of The same name, The act of dancing on Top of a car in drive has become The newest fad to puzzle parents. ... " Accessed October 20, 2007.
- ^ Farhi, Paul. "Ghost-Riding: Brake-Dancing With Zip Under the Hood", The Washington Post, December 27, 2006, p. C01. Accessed October 18, 2007. "Although such antics probably began with the invention of the automobile, ghost-riding seems to have sprung from Oakland's "hyphy" movement, a hip-hop style with its own slang, fashion and car culture. Dating back to at least the 1980s, young people on Oakland's tough east side have been staging impromptu car rallies, or "sideshows."... F.A.B. (real name: Stanley Cox) says in an interview that he first saw people ghost-riding about 10 years ago in Oakland's "Ghosttown" section (where he thinks the name might have originated)."
- ^ a b "Programs for families and children". Oakland, California. Retrieved on 2007-09-25. “The City-County Neighborhood Initiative, a program run by the City of Oakland Division of Neighborhood Services operates in two neighborhoods, in Ghost Town Foster Hoover Historic District in West Oakland and Sobrante Park in East Oakland. The community builders work closely with teams of service agencies including the Service Delivery System (SDS) Teams, Neighborhood Services Coordinators, County agencies, schools, and local non-profit agencies. In the neighborhoods currently participating in the initiative, youth have become a key focus for neighborhood organizing.”
I thought I would have some ting to say about the little area of the world of which i currently reside; so I've drop'd some stuff here that is on the internet.
I don't really know alot about west oakland on the personal side, since i've only resided there now for the last year. I can not say I like the area__for one thing, seems most of the stores in the area are way too over priced for the most simple things and I'm talking about food; secondly, there is very little culture in west oakland, except for these tight little in groups whom are not too friendly or out reaching or inviting to new members. Thirdly, I won't go out after a certain hour of night for fear of being hasseled by drug additics, or whores, or punks just looking for bs. I don't find folks too friendly in West Oakland although I do find them very very nosey; meaning they watch you and stare but they do not speak. In a year, I have not been able to make a single friend, and that include the young bloods whom have crawled into my bed for sex, but unwilling or reluctant to follow through with friendship.??
My experiences have not been great; the first was moving into a building at 33rd St, and San Pablo, going through the usual walk through with the manager, transfering my existing services from my previous occupancy__well, the building changed owners just after I moved in; and the new owners are bigoted and stupid people; the new manager was insensitive enough to suggest I shouldn't have moved into the building with it's existing problems (duh, but you guys bought the building with it's existing problems..); the PG&E failed to transfer and for several months i received two seperate PG&E bills; then when they did get it right, they faild to bill me for gas until after a three months period of which time they billed me for it all (of course this is post a cold snap). My phone service didn't take and I had to order new services for everything including my internet options; the only thing that did work the day i moved in was cable..go figure.
Latino thugs indiscriminately murder blacks regardless of gang membership, genocidal purge aligns with radical Aztlan theology
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, January 22, 2007
Racist Mexican gangs are indiscriminately targeting blacks who aren't even involved in gang culture, as part of an orchestrated ethnic cleansing program that is forcing black people to flee Los Angeles. The culprit of the carnage is the radical Neo-Nazi liberation theology known as La Raza, which calls for the extermination of all races in America besides Latinos, and is being bankrolled by some of the biggest Globalists in the U.S.
A story carried on the liberal website Alternet, charts an explosion in brutal murders of blacks by Hispanic street gangs in L.A. Far from being gang on gang violence, the Latinos are targeting innocent blacks in accordance with a concerted ethnic cleansing campaign that seeks to eradicate all blacks from Hispanic neighborhoods.
In one instance, 21-year-old Anthony Prudhomme was shot in the face with a .25-caliber semi-automatic while lying on a futon inside his apartment, slain by a Latino gang known as the Avenues as part of a racist terror campaign in which gang members earn "stripes" for each black person they kill.
In one typical case," writes journalist Brentin Mock, "Three members of the Pomona 12 attacked an African-American teenager, Kareem Williams, in his front yard in 2002. When his uncle, Roy Williams, ran to help his nephew, gang member Richard Diaz told him, "Niggers have no business living in Pomona because this is 12th Street territory." According to witnesses, Diaz then told the other gang members, "Pull out the gun! Shoot the niggers! Shoot the niggers!"
The fatwah against blacks began in the mid-nineties, with a 1995 LAPD report concluding that Latinos had vowed to "Eradicate black citizens from the gang neighborhood." In a follow up report on the situation in east Los Angeles, the LAPD warned that "Local gangs will attack any black person that comes into the city."
The author notes that since 1990 the African-American population of Los Angeles has halved, partly as a result of rampant illegal immigration and that there are noticeably fewer blacks walking the streets because many have been forced to relocate in fear of the racist gangs.
"The LAPD estimates there are now 22,000 Latino gang members in the city of Los Angeles alone. That's not only more than all the Crips and the Bloods; it's more than all black, Asian, and white gang members combined. Almost all of those Latino gang members in L.A. -- let alone those in other California cities -- are loyal to the Mexican Mafia. Most have been thoroughly indoctrinated with the Mexican Mafia's violent racism during stints in prison, where most gangs are racially based," writes Mock.
Mock blames the "Mexican Mafia" for ordering the campaign of ethnic cleansing from prison, as part of a turf war with the Black Guerilla family, another prison gang, but fails to pinpoint the racist creed from which the Mexican kingpins draw their inspiration - the long standing Aztlan invasion agenda.
Aztlan's goal, known as La reconquista, is to cede and take over the entirety of the southern and western states by any means necessary and impose a Communist militant dictatorship. President Bush's blanket amnesty program goes a long way to helping the extremists achieve their aim.
Despite the fact that the majority of documented hispanics oppose illegal immigration, as do the majority of Americans, Aztlan and La Raza race hate groups have become the self-appointed voice for a separatist movement that threatens a violent overthrow of the Constitutional system and a barbaric program of ethnic cleansing. This is held up by the media as 'diversity' and to vociferously oppose it is scorned as racism.
Aztlan and Mecha groups advocate killing all whites and blacks and driving them out of the southern states by means of brutal ethnic cleansing. Flags and placards carried at marches depict white people having their heads cut off, as seen in the picture below.
Those that protest such groups are then attacked by the establishment media and labeled as racists, despite the fact that the Plan of San Diego, a rallying cry for the hispanic Klan groups, advocates total eradication of any race but hispanics.
Mecha's own slogan reads, "For the race everything. For those outside the race, nothing."
TV stations owned by rich white industrialists erect giant billboards in Los Angeles claiming the city belongs to Mexico, as seen below.
Mainstream hispanics who love America abhor the virulent racism that the Mexican klan groups embrace.
And who bankrolls these pocket radicals? Billionaire tax-exempt foundations and NGO's owned by white men. Organizations like the Ford Foundation, groups who are zealous in their quest to eliminate the middle class and destroy America, turning it into a cashless society, compact city, surveillance control grid where only two tiers of society exist - the elite and the poor slaves.
During the May immigration protests, The Aztlanwebsite carried the following statement.
"If the racist "Sensenbrenner Legislation" passes the US Senate, there is no doubt that a massive civil disobedience movement will emerge. Eventually labor union power can merge with the immigrant civil rights and "Immigrant Sanctuary" movements to enable us to either form a new political party or to do heavy duty reforming of the existing Democratic Party. The next and final steps would follow and that is to elect our own governors of all the states within Aztlan."
Here is the open call for violent separatism and the overthrow of existing state government structures.
During the immigration demonstrations, which were orchestrated by Rob Allyn of Rob Allyn & Co. who is closely tied with George W. Bush, alarming reports of illegals carrying out violent beatings began to surface. In Santa Ana California, illegal aliens swarmed around in mobs invading schools, carrying out violent beatings and in one incident a county worker had a Mexican flag plunged into his chest.
The violent protests that began on May 1 last year were characterized by throngs marching under Mexican flags, many of which were illegal aliens, as a "day without gringos."
Imagine what the reaction would be if white middle class Americans marched in their millions and called the event "a day without blacks."
The media continues to run defense for a violent militant movement that seeks nothing less than the eradication of blacks and whites through ethnic cleansing and the takeover of the southern and western states. This is a separatist junta that has over 30,000 ruthless gang members at its disposal once the call for mobilization is heard, along with millions of illegal aliens pouring across the border.
These thugs have the temerity to call Latinos, blacks and whites who are opposed to uncontrolled illegal immigration racists when it is their own La reconquista philosophy that has spawned target hits in Los Angeles as part of a virulently racist ethnic cleansing rampage. It's a bloodlust that can only spread to other cities as the realization of Aztlan is generously aided by billionaire Globalists who wish to see America balkanized, plundered and destroyed.]]>
Gang leaders arrested but violence continues in West Oakland
By Cecily Burt
Oakland Tribune
Article Last Updated: 07/28/2008 11:08:21 PM PDT
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Two- and 3-year-olds diving for cover at the first staccato pops of gunfire. Windows shot out in the local Head Start center. Parents afraid to let their children leave the house for fear they'll never return.
That is daily life as some West Oakland residents know it.
And it's been like that since Oakland police announced June 17 that they'd made 54 arrests in the Operation Nutcracker case, a huge law enforcement effort targeting members of the notorious Acorn drug gang believed responsible for dozens of murders and the main instigator of a violent feud with gangs in Lower Bottoms and Ghost Town.
"Removing the criminal gang in Acorn and other suppression efforts have not been enough," Oakland Police Capt. Anthony Toribio said during a heated community meeting last week. "Police alone cannot solve the problem."
An overflow crowd of nearly 100 residents who live in the Acorn, Mohr and City Towers housing complexes on 7th and 8th streets jammed into a meeting room at Acorn last Wednesday to express their frustration with the violence in their community and demand action from the police — and each other.
The gathering followed seven straight days of random shootings in the area.
"Since Nutcracker happened, everyone is in jail, and we're gettin' shot at," yelled one young female resident who lives in Mohr housing.
That sentiment was echoed during the heated meeting, where residents shouted over each other an
"We're afraid to go outside," shouted another.
At a news conference to announce the huge Nutcracker gang bust last month, Oakland homicide Lt. Ersie Joyner said police believed they had dismantled the Acorn gang's infrastructure with the arrest of alleged ringleader Mark Anthony Candler, aka M.A.C. 34.
The peace was short-lived, and on Wednesday, Joyner acknowledged that with the ringleaders cleared out, others are moving in to take up the slack.
The violence is not limited to West Oakland. The city had logged 73 homicides before Wednesday's meeting, and there have been four more since then.
Although most of the murders have been concentrated in East Oakland since the Nutcracker arrests, angry West Oakland residents said they are dodging bullets and that it's a miracle more people haven't died.
"I've been at Highland (Hospital) every day for seven days this week," said an angry Ikeiya Johnson. "Four or five different people I know got shot."
Oakland police and city officials had scheduled the meeting and tried to follow an agenda. But few in the audience wanted to hear about earthquake preparedness or plans to start a restorative justice program in the schools, or the newest police academy or jobs for ex-felons.
Toribio said he understood the residents' frustration and agreed that things had gotten worse. Residents called it a state-of-emergency, and he didn't disagree. But he said the community needs to be better organized and start neighborhood watch groups to get to know one another and share information.
He said that victims in recent shootings have refused to help police investigators, and the families of victims won't help either.
Toribio said residents need to overcome their distrust of the police or the violence will never end.
"You can blame the police ... but it goes both ways," Toribio said.
There have been three murders — two just down the street from Acorn — and more than 30 reported shootings in West Oakland since police agencies swooped in and made the arrests last month, Toribio said. Many more shootings go unreported. He said robberies are up, too.
He promised that there would be more walking officers and bicycle officers in the neighborhoods in the coming weeks and months. He said officers would have zero tolerance for public drinking, gambling and reckless driving, activities that often take a back seat as overwhelmed officers tend to more violent crimes.
Carmen Baires is social services director at St. Vincent's Day Home, a facility for 230 children from low-income families, on 8th Street, across from City Towers, where many of the gang members were arrested. She said she worries how the daily violence is affecting her young charges enrolled in preschool there.
"They know how to dive when they hear the shots, but when we call the police, they ask 'Did you see who did it?' The children tell me, 'Miss Carmen, my heart is pounding.'"
Corinne Mohrmann, executive director of St. Vincent's, said the violence surrounding the school means that ducking for cover is part of the curriculum, along with ABCs, painting and nap time.
"Yes, it does rip your heart out to see a 2-year-old hit the ground, but the violence is happening right outside our door," Mohrmann said.
"Life's realities should not be burdensome to children of such a young age, but they are," she added. "I certainly don't surmise to have the answers, but I can assure you, the cops will not clean this up until people start (showing) their children how to be responsible adults.
"It's not just a police issue here; all of us should be stepping up," she said.
Jeff Baker with the Oakland City Administrator's office scheduled another meeting for 7 p.m. Wednesday to allow residents an opportunity to be heard and to assist them with organizing and other concerns. The meeting will be held at Acorn, 1143 10th St., in Oakland.
Federal prosecutors say a powerful Latino gang systematically targeted rival black gang members and innocent black civilians in a reign of terror.
A south Los Angeles Latino street gang targeted African-American gang rivals and other blacks in a campaign of neighborhood "cleansing," federal prosecutors say. Alleged leaders and foot soldiers in the Hispanic gang Florencia 13, also called F13, are being arraigned this week on charges stemming from a pair of federal indictments that allege that the gang kept a tight grip on its turf by shooting members of a rival gang—and sometimes random black civilians. The "most disturbing aspect" of the federal charges was that "innocent citizens … ended up being shot simply because of the color of their skin," U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien told reporters in announcing the indictments.
No one is sure what started the war between F13 and the black gang known as the East Coast Crips in the Florence-Firestone area of unincorporated L.A. County. Simple neighborhood demographic shifts played a role, as formerly black areas have become majority-Latino. The two gangs are also rivals in the lucrative drug trade. Much of the F13 indictments lay out a conspiracy alleging that gang members controlled drug houses where they sold large amounts of cocaine, crack and methamphetamine. Some say the killings began after the Crips pulled a large drug heist against F13 several years ago. Whatever the causes, L.A. Sheriff's Department statistics chart the war's violent toll: 80 gang-related shootings in the past three years, including 20 murders.
The federal charges name 61 alleged F13 members in two indictments. The gang-violence charges came in a 53-count RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) indictment against 24 alleged gang leaders, charging them in a conspiracy to sell drugs, possess weapons illegally, and assault and kill black gang members and civilians. In the second indictment prosecutors charged the rest of the men on federal drug-distribution charges. More than 40 of the defendants pleaded not guilty at arraignments Tuesday, according to prosecutors. Michael Khouri, an attorney for Luis Aguilar, 35, says his client left the gang "several years ago" and served recently as a gang negotiator. "Mr. Aguilar will plead not guilty, and he is not guilty," says Khouri. Fifteen of the accused remain fugitives.
The indictments provide a telling snapshot of the changing nature of gangs in south L.A. According to federal prosecutors, F13 has grown into a tightly controlled gang of 2,000 members in 30 cliques led by convicts and parolees who are members of the prison-based Mexican mafia. It's a far cry from the '80s, when the black drug gangs, including the Crips and the Bloods, predominated, mining the crack epidemic with ruthless efficiency. Compared with looser Latino gangs that were seen as turf-conscious fighters, the black gangs were organized and disciplined. "The stereotype was that [the black gangs] were all about the [drug] business," says gang researcher Cheryl Maxson, an associate professor of criminology at University of California, Irvine. With the black gangs, "there was a millionaire in every neighborhood" perched at the top of the crack distribution pyramid, adds gang expert Alex Alonso, who edits streetgangs.com.
Now it's the Latino drug gangs that seem tighter and more highly controlled. "The Hispanic gangs like F13 were incredibly regulated, from the street level to the leadership in the prisons," says Olivia Rosales, a hard-core gangs prosecutor for the L.A. district attorney's office who prosecuted F13 and Crips homicide cases for two years. She now heads one of the DA's satellite offices. "The East Coast Crips weren't as organized."
Top-down organization in F13 aided the assaults on black gangsters. The federal indictments charge that Mexican mafia leaders "make sure that all the F13 cliques were participating in the assaults of African-American rival gang members." But the assaults went beyond rival gangs; they "target[ed] African-American individuals for assault," according to the indictment. Gang leaders even allegedly instructed foot soldiers in how to hunt blacks in the most efficient manner, the feds maintain. A wiretap cited in the RICO indictment reveals that one gang leader allegedly told an underling that "when he went looking for African-Americans to shoot, only a driver and a shooter were needed."
The targeting of blacks by the Latino F13 appears to be an anomaly; experts say the majority of gang violence still involves a gang member and a victim of the same race. "On average, the violence just isn't race-based," says UC Irvine criminologist George Tita. "Our studies show there's no pattern of black-brown crime." Between 2000 and 2006 black offenders in south Los Angeles were more than seven times more likely to kill black victims, according to a study recently published by Tita and colleagues; Hispanic killers targeted fellow Hispanics twice as often.
But clearly race was a motivating factor for the F13 gang. In one case in the indictment, two Florencia gang members came upon a black couple on Florence Boulevard in September 2005. One shouted "F— Cheese Toast" (a derogatory name for the East Coast Crips) and ordered the other to shoot the pair. (The feds say the couple weren't affiliated with any gang.) Instead they stole the woman's purse, Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Hernandez, the case's lead prosecutor, tells NEWSWEEK. An unnamed black victim at a bus stop the month before hadn't been so lucky, Hernandez says. F13 members shot him "three or four times, but he survived."
The F13 indictment marks the third high-profile Latino gang charged with attacking blacks in the past two years. Last year federal prosecutors won life sentences against four members of the Latino Avenues gang for civil rights violations of blacks they had murdered simply for moving into the gang's Highland Park turf. State prosecutors say the Latino 204th Street gang targeted African-Americans not affiliated with gangs, writing graffiti such as "187 N———" (187 is shorthand for "kill"; it's the California penal code section number for homicide). Two 204th Street members face an upcoming trial on state murder charges for the slaying of 14-year-old Cheryl Green, a black teen killed on the street last December.
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For all the evidence of race-based targeting of victims, federal prosecutors haven't filed civil rights charges against F13 members, though Hernandez says the idea remains under investigation in the ongoing case. (Hernandez explains that the charges are difficult to prove and wouldn't increase prison time for those convicted of the other charges, anyway.) But law enforcement officials say the F13 members—and the Crips—frequently targeted victims based on race. "The way it came out was that any young black man could be the target of [F13] and any young Hispanic man was the target of the [black gang]," says Rosales. "All they see is race."
L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca tells NEWSWEEK that early wiretaps in the case recorded phone calls in which a senior F13 member ordered a young gang "soldier" to kill a particular East Coast Crip. But when "the soldier called back to say he couldn't find the [Crip], the gang leader told him to shoot any black," Baca says. "I disagree that it wasn't a hate crime." In response to the gang war, Baca flooded the Florence-Firestone neighborhood with deputies in 2005, after the area had suffered 41 murders. Last year the number dropped to 19.
© 2007
She (Opal Palmer Adisa) was one of my creative writing lecturers;
TALES OF A FORGOTTEN GLORY: WEST OAKLAND SENIOR CITIZEN ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
Cecil Thurston and Elmer McConnell, professional barbers for 40 years, photograph by Jonathan Eubanks
Project Title: Tales of a Forgotten Glory: West Oakland Senior Citizen Oral History Project
Recipient Organization: The African American Museum and Library at Oakland
Lead Artist: Opal Palmer Adisa
Genre and Date Awarded: Literary Arts, January 1998
Premiered: 1999 display at the West Oakland Branch of the Oakland Public Library; 2000-03 exhibition at the African American Museum and Library in Oakland, California
As she embarked on this project, writer Opal Palmer Adisa had lived in West Oakland for seven years and witnessed rapid changes in the neighborhood. Feeling a strong commitment to area, which is rich in the history and culture of a working-class African American populace, she sought to preserve and honor the voices, stories, and images of 20 of its residents who had lived in the neighborhood for 20 years or longer.
The project culminated in several forms. Oakland photographer Jonathan Eubanks—well-known for his documentation of The Black Panther Party as well as other social movements from Oakland’s history—photographed the seniors for an exhibition at the African American Museum and Library. Video producer Ian Dawkins-Moore created a 60-minute documentary using footage from the library’s collection, and juxtaposing West Oakland’s past with overlays from the 20 interviews. The project was delayed somewhat by the need to raise additional funds to complete the video.
Adisa’s process began with an extensive canvassing of seniors in the neighborhood-through fliers at library branches; visits to churches, senior centers, and residential homes; and connections to home-bound seniors through Meals-on-Wheels. Once her subjects were identified, she held preliminary interviews with each of them (sometimes conducted by telephone) to establish a rapport and relationship; and then returned to video or audiotape an interview session. She and her collaborators encountered the unanticipated challenge that while many seniors wished to be interviewed, they did not want to be videotaped or tape recorded. Others were lonely and eager to tell their stories, but had little connection to the neighborhood. Ultimately the project featured 46 subjects.
In most instances, the seniors wanted to be interviewed in their homes and many no longer lived in West Oakland. The artists drove as far as Stockton to interview Rose Dalton, 101 years old, who was raised in West Oakland near DeFermery Park and who now lives with her granddaughter; and to Suisun to interview Marcela Ford, 90 years old, one of the co-founders of the African American Museum. Other subjects included Ananis Wills, the first black dry-cleaning company owner in Oakland; Margaret Wright, called by many “the Mayor of Myrtle Street”; dancer and choreographer Ruth Beckford; labor historian Joe Johnson; barbers Cecil Thurston and Elmer McConnell; and sisters Mary Jones and Lillian Steward, whose father’s ministry, Beth Eden, is a landmark in the West Oakland Community.
Adisa wrote profiles of the participants—interweaving their personal stories with quotations from their interviews. As the project progressed, she came to realize that her original plan, which had been to write a biography of each subject, was too ambitious and would require many more interviews. “So instead, what I have done is to focus on certain highlights in each person’s life and identify that which distinguishes each.”
In her final report, Adisa writes of being awed by the seniors’ tenacity, wit, and zeal. She notes, “The overriding theme of the interviews was that West Oakland was an integrated community where everyone got along. It certainly was not free from racism, which seemed to rear its ugly head after World War II, but still people for the most part were allowed to be themselves, despite their race.” The project’s title, Tales of a Forgotten Glory came from an inspiring interview with Joe Johnson.
The African American Museum and Library of Oakland (AAMLO) addresses the needs of the wider Bay Area African American community and documents the achievements as well as the ordinary history of Blacks in the area. The institution was created through a public-private partnership between the Oakland Public Library and the Northern California Center for African American History and Life, which joined forces in 1994 to create AAMLO—now a division of the public library. AAMLO holds more than 300 original manuscripts, several oral histories, more than 8,000 books dealing with Africa-American history and life in California, and full and partial runs of early black weeklies—some dating from the early 1890s. It publishes exhibition catalogues, posters, calendars and a quarterly newsletter.
During the course of its collaboration with Opal Palmer Adisa, the library moved from 56th and Peralta to a new site on 14th Street in downtown Oakland. The photographs and documents from this project were exhibited at its opening in April 2000 through 2003. The exhibition will re-open in May 2004 at the Prescot-Joseph Center, 920 Peralta Street in Oakland. The library collaborated with the artists on the historical context for the manuscript and video; and it now serves as the repository for materials developed through the project.
Opal Palmer Adisa is a multi-disciplinary writer, and the author of numerous poems, the novel It Begins With Tears, and the performance piece, “The Despair Series,” which was produced as a video and was shot in West Oakland. As a resident of West Oakland, she had come to know many of the neighborhood’s seniors. She had collaborated with photographer Jonathan Eubanks and video producer Ian Dawkins-Moore on prior projects.
Joseph Johnson, labor historian, photograph by Jonathan Eubanks
Opal Palmer Adisa
Jamaican born, Opal Palmer Adisa is a literary critic, poet, prose writer, and storyteller. Her published works are: Caribbean Passion, poetry (Peepaltree Press, 2004); Leaf-of-Life, poetry (Jukebox Press, 2002); The Tongue is a Drum, CD of poetry and jazz with devorah major (Irresistible Recordings, 2003); It Begins With Tears, (Heinemann, 1997); Tamarind and Mango Women, winner of the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award (1992); traveling women (1989); Bake-Face and Other Guava Stories (1986); and Pina, the Many-Eyed Fruit (1985); and the recording Fierce/Love with devorah major (1992).
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Nice ani't it. I like it but my sticker is more in the center of the bill instead of off to the side, which i should copy or remove;
penpal in quite a while; I hope he has not gotten himself into another jam; I was kinda stern with him about asking me for money; which i don't like to send; but i did for him just this once; now he's absent, hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.. I'm really rather hungry right now and wished i'd fried that chicken this morning..cause i would have had some lunch today; oh, well, gonna be a hard nite and long ride home tonight.
A LITTLE CLOSE UP of a rather old painting; just love the expression so much..though the work is rather crude and colored rather dirty or muddy in affect..i still enjoy this work, but probably for different reasons than at first.
Yeah, these bad boys are my new sneakers, one thing i did right for my brithday; got them on sale in fact; the material is said to be water proof so i spend a little time cleaning them up and/or keeping them clean; nothing like white sneakers..
thinking too hard about this matter won't be good for me; this image above is part of a larger painting i gave to my man Joesph; if u look real hard you can see two tongues tip to tip; right now it expresses my unrequited desire, if desire can be such a thing.. 
Length: 8 inches / Width At base: 2.1 inches / Width At Head: 2.36 inches
7/15/2009
a queer life; drugs, sex and isolation; race, money and social standing? lately i taken to listening to 
on one hand, i think my art has definitely improved; I've changed from being timid about what I wish to convey and to just doing what ever i feel; my lines have more confidence; perhaps since i started doing more and more sketches in pen I have felt less concerned for exact lines, thus i've reached a sort of figurative freedom, meaning all lines are part of the process;
Oh, my gosh, i'm actually back; i sent AT&T 
In a vacumn..i mean, nothing is original, 
how different is my portrait work from the work of a brazilian a half a century ago..
i lept to the above, because in essence, much of my figurative work is just that, an attempt to find myself, outside of the confines of this "system of signification" in either context, homosexual, or black 'american' male. To appropriate some'ting() 
Yesterday, my boi came to visit as he usually does on a friday; he shared half of his meal with me--i mean the boi brought a burrito all the way from 30th ave east side to share wit me on 33 st west side.
by Mistress gotcha; 
speaking of music,