 of history and culture in Washington DC and it was accepted. In fact, I received a personal email from the museum's executive director Mr. Lonnie Bunch informing me that curators of both music and photography would contact me to begin the submission process. Now the work of Steve Jackson Jr. is on exhibit in both of those wings of the museum. My father would be so proud and I know that wherever he is he is satisfied that his work was left in good hands and it will not be forgotten. I may have been a middle child but I've always been the go-to kid. Yes. And so now on with the show. San Francisco in black and white. I'd like to give you all a minute to just read this slide about the exodus of African Americans and the great migration. I'll give you a minute but it's critical to this presentation because these people just didn't decide to go on a lark and go to New York or come to California. They were moving just like refugees from any other nation looking for acceptance and wanting to make a better way for themselves. This presentation is dedicated to my parents, my uncles and aunts and all of the courageous African American pioneers who took a giant leap in order to create a better world for themselves and their progeny. I have benefited greatly from your bravery and sacrifices and it is with boundless gratitude and admiration that I honor and salute you. The great migration was an American phenomenon and we had a lot of great African American writers who documented this migration of people and this is a piece of poetry by Langston Hughes written in 1924 entitled Youth. We have tomorrow right before us like a flame. Yesterday a night gone thing a sundown name and dawn today broad arc above the road we came we march and that's what these people did. I wanted to give you an idea of the migration and the number of African American people that migrated to San Francisco and as you can see in the third column I have which war was in effect when the migrations were happening because wars stimulate economies and there were defense jobs and other ancillary jobs and so we had African Americans coming to San Francisco in droves with our highest number in the population being in the 1970s at 96,000 people. Oh, incidentally I didn't make a note of it here something I forgot but these stats are from the United States Census Bureau and now I want to tell you about my family and how we got here. This is my grandfather and five of his brothers. My grandfather is the gentleman right here in the pinstripe Su-Aini Thine and standing behind him is my uncle Leroy. My grandfather was one of nine boys and seven girls that's uncle Leroy behind him. Uncle Leroy left Louisiana in 1932 and moved to Los Angeles. It was him who invited my father to come out to Los Angeles after the war. The woman on the right, this is uncle Leroy's wife Aunt Bernice and those are her two younger sisters. My uncle and aunt hosted throngs of family members and friends from down south who wanted to make a new start because that's the way it was done. You come and establish yourself and then you help others come and make that journey too and they did that for so many people. Uncle Leroy retired after 30 years working at BF Goodrich but he helped so many friends and relatives get jobs along the way and he also owned a cafe on Central Avenue during that period that era's heyday. This is my grandmother and her daughters and her daughters-in-law. Her name was Della Jackson and that's my mother right here standing right next to her. My grandparents had 11 children 37 grandchildren and I can't even begin to count how many great grandchildren they have. I have so many little cousins I will never know but they're Jackson's and they are loved just the same. These are my mother's parents. They are Frank and Mary. This was taken in the 1940s. They had eight girls, no boys, and 15 grandchildren. These are their sons-in-law and that's my father right here on the end. He probably set this up and let someone else take this photograph and this is my little cousin Deborah flashing everybody. She's really quite a dignified woman now. This is one of my father's first bottles. This is my mother and I suspect this was taken in 1947. She grew up in a little town called Industry, Texas where Cotton was still king in the 1920s and 30s. The only thing that this is her again isn't she beautiful? Look at that here. But the only thing that I really have to tell you that was interesting about the place that she grew up was that Bonnie and Clyde hid out there when my mother was a little girl. So that was the most exciting thing that ever happened in Industry, Texas that I can talk about. I like to call this photograph getting the hell out of Texas because when my grandfather and my father's siblings always told me that my father as a little kid used to tell them when I get grown, I'm getting out of here and y'all ain't never gonna see me again. Well, he did get the hell out of Texas, but we did go back for many, many summer vacations. But he was a man that had ambition and he always wanted more than what the Jim Crow South was allowing him. And so he made a decision that he and my mother would not even have children until they found a place where they could do that and the opportunities would be better for them and for us. My father went to Los Angeles first because Uncle Leroy invited him there and he was liking it okay, but he saw a lot of LAPD harassment against African Americans and Latinos and so he knew he wasn't going to stay there. This pretty lady, that's my father's half sister, my Aunt Willie. She and my other Aunt Ruby had come out to San Francisco during the war and they had been working and so before my father left Los Angeles, they invited him to come up to San Francisco to see if he might like it and he said as soon as he got off of the bus, he knew that he was going to stay. You know, my father grew up in the in the sund out where it's hot all the time and he said thing that I remember most that he said about first arriving in San Francisco at the breeze so cool and his shirt wasn't sticking to him and then he saw the water and he knew that that was the place that he wanted to be. Maya Willie also was an entrepreneur in addition to working. She ultimately opened her own dry cleaners called Dixie Cleaners which was at the corner of Turk and Scott in the film or most of my childhood. Let's see. Oh, I gotta go. Let's see. I think I might have missed one. Yeah, no. Okay. Well, there you go. This is Auntie again with and this is her husband, W. A. My uncle. He actually named me. He was a native American from Oklahoma and they stayed married until his death of cancer in the 1980s. Now, this is my cousin, Simmy. She also is from Texas, but she lived here for many years in San Francisco. And when I was growing up, she had a dress store and she sold dresses and fabrics and I used to work with her on the weekends and you know, make a little money. And so she also offered me an opportunity but you can see that I come from a family of entrepreneurs. Now, I want to talk about the new Negro because when we refer to the Harlem Renaissance, that is very specific about Harlem. But what I want you to understand is that there was a Renaissance amongst African Americans that was catching fire all around the country. And one of the great Harlem Renaissance writers, Elaine Locke, documented that attrition for the younger generation is vibrant with a new psychology. The new spirit is awake in the masses, transforming what has been a perennial problem into the progressive phases of contemporary Negro life. He is talking about the progress of the new Negroes, no longer agrarian, picking cotton, doing domestic work. Well, some did do domestic work, but in San Francisco, it wasn't no cotton to pick. So that was done. Now, black is beautiful. Imagine being in a place where you're told that you're ugly, you are not wanted, that you have no value, but you strike out and you find a new place. Bam, they knew that they were beautiful and they worked very hard and they started to enjoy life in ways that they had never done down south. The new Negroes who came out west were strong, hardworking people. In an effort to establish themselves, they replicated the communities they came from, forming churches, religious organizations, small businesses, social clubs, and political organizations. These people had firsthand experience with oppressive working conditions. And they became strong union people because unions were the working classes greatest advocate for fairness and labor. One of the earliest lessons my parents taught me was to never cross a picket line because I was taking bread out of someone's mouth and I never have. It's one of the best lessons I've ever learned. Aren't they beautiful, relaxing, enjoying their lives, working very hard and having great times on the weekends. These are the everyday people out on the town and I just always thought that these women were so beautiful and the men looked so sharp and dapper. These are some clearly young women, probably working young women, maybe a couple of moms, enjoying themselves at Bo's Pop City, one of the hottest clubs in San Francisco at the time. A lot of the great jazz greats came through there and later on in this presentation I'll be able to share some of those other photographs with you. But this is about the people today, not about the jazz greats. Isn't she beautiful? I put this one as a circuit around 1951 because I'm looking at this gentleman here in his military uniform and this was taken clearly after World War II so it had to be Korean War which was from 1950 to 1953. Again, this one was taken at Jimbo's Bob City. I've always liked this picture because I never knew what was happening behind this woman's face. I mean she's got something going on but she's not revealing it to anyone. So when you look at this face all you get is a good question mark but she is beautiful. debutantes. I'm telling you these people came out west and went to the east coast and they duplicated everything that they had been denied in other parts of the country. So this is a woman's club in the 1960s and I don't need to have a color photograph to know that all of these women were wearing white dresses. If you can see they all have a white white shoe. White is really big and black so I don't know what this could have been but they look gorgeous don't they? This, well these are four members of the Crosstown Sportsmen's Club. This is my father right here. This is Mr. Gilmore. I don't remember this gentleman's name and this is Mr. Anderson. These were these people were fixtures in my childhood. We did a lot of things together. The Crosstown Sportsmen was a social club that they put together and we did a lot of wonderful things. We went on they had weekend bus trips to Reno and camping trips and fishing trips and their official blazers. You can't tell it because these are black and white but they were mustard color. They look like they were a bunch of century 21 real estate agents but we used to have a really good time. Again another organization people really wanted to document that they were there and that they had done something. Now these are some travelers and I can tell this is at the Southern Pacific Railway Station and this is Louis Jordan one of the biggest stars of his era. He was like the who can I say the John Legend or someone of his era and this was taken in the 1950s. Do you remember when people used to dress up? I mean you have to be old to remember when people dressed up to get on a plane or a train but we really used to do it and this is a family. I think they're about to board a united flight out at SFO and this is probably taken in the 1960s. This is a very special picture to me because it's the men of St. John's Missionary Baptist Church. This is a church that my mother belonged to for more than 30 years and this is Reverend Morgan right here. She has the utmost respect for him. They don't make ministers like that anymore. Now we got mega churches and flashy guys. Now I don't know who these gentlemen are but I've looked at this photograph for years and never couldn't place it but I do believe it may have been down south where they might have had an incorporated area that was strictly African-American because there were many communities like that throughout the south apparently beginning immediately after the Civil War. As a matter of fact my grandfather in Houston Texas lived in one of the oldest African-American neighborhoods in Houston called Pleasantville and Pleasantville has a history of ex-slaves settling there and a lot of their same families still live in that community today. Now this is in San Francisco over in the Fillmore. Now I don't know if this is a religious group. I think it is because I can see the banners but I've never really had a good understanding of it but it does speak to the organization that these people had and doing whatever that you know it was that they needed to do. These are the Masons and the Eastern Stars. This is another secret society of religious organization. My father was a Mason and my mother was an Eastern Star and I don't know any of those secrets because they were not telling them these were things that they took to the grave. Some more Masons. Lots of church people. You know those of you that are watching if you're from San Francisco you may see someone that you know or something that you remember I'd love to hear from you. I'll give you that information a little bit later at the end of this presentation. Dig those crazy afros. Look at that. It's definitely probably in the late 60s or 70s but this is this is clearly a youth choir of children singing in the choir. Young people rather. Now I know that this was taken over in the Ingleside neighborhood here in San Francisco probably on Lee Street because this lady lived next door or a few doors away from Aunt Ruby and she was very proud of her garden as you can see. I don't know what they about but they look like they about it don't they? Again another children's group and I don't know what this is but the girls wear crowns I could get with that. Okay and then we had a black golfers association and there was a chapter here in San Francisco and another in Oakland and I have a lot of other photographs of them but I only put this one in because I'm trying to you know just show you the diversity of organizations and the interest of the people. This is Seventh Avenue Missionary Baptist Church. This is Mr. McCoy, Mr. Allen McCoy and this is his wife Esther. They were very dear friends with my parents. Mr. McCoy was also a member of the Crosstown Sportsman's Club and his wife and my mother and some of the other women in the club were good friends before the club and after the club disbanded. This is Ollie Blair. She was a fixture in San Francisco. She was another woman who came from the South got a great government job and worked her whole life until she retired. She was also a longtime member of St. John's and she was a very very dear friend to my parents. You know it's amazing how many of these people knew each other when they were back in Texas or in other parts of the South specifically for my family in Texas and Louisiana but they kept their ties they kept their connections. One of my mother's dearest friend who is deceased now lived over on Fulton Street for years and it is she her name was Clara Lacey. She was the one who introduced my parents to each other and her uncle who was a minister is the one who performed my parents wedding ceremony back in 1948 and these people knew each other in Texas and in San Francisco until they you know went on to glory. I don't know who they are but aren't they cute they look like they could break out and dance like Michael Jackson don't they? Very handsome twins. I should know this lady but I'm sorry to say that I don't maybe someone out there could help me with her name but isn't she beautiful? I mean people believed in being very stylish back then. You didn't see casual clothes as much as you see now as a matter of fact all we really see are casual clothes but these people really knew how to dress and she's got on the gloves are shiny you can tell that they're leather. Look at her I can't tell if she's mad or happy but she's conveying something I just don't know what it is aren't they beautiful in their polka dot dresses love and marriage you know my father wasn't just a jazz photographer or family photographer he did weddings he did funerals he did all sorts of things these are some of the wedding photographs that he did over the years it's about 1950s I guess he looks happy huh? These are our family friends this gentleman here is Mr. Sonny Sisk and this was his beautiful bride whose name also happened to be Linda and I haven't seen them in many many years but I hope they're doing well and still married. There's another bride my father knew people all over the city and he was always invited to cover some event or another entrepreneurs movers shakers and men about town this is Uncle Tiny. Uncle Tiny was a big man about town in the 1950s and 60s here in San Francisco he was a radio DJ and an emcee and he was a singer he did some of everything but Uncle Tiny of all the people that my father was around when I was growing up Uncle Tiny was one of his friends he came to our house and we went to his house this is Uncle Tiny with Mel Tormey and I don't understand I don't know who this other gentleman is but you can see Uncle Tiny was there with everything and ironically they called him Uncle Tiny because he was such a big man but I have to tell you when we used to go to Uncle Tiny's house when I was growing up everything was big it was like stepping inside of Alice Wonderland or something because he was a big man he had big furniture big easy chairs everything was so largely oversized and no matter what time we visited Uncle Uncle Tiny he was always dressed you know to perfection which was really interesting you know there wasn't time in this country when people used to drop in on each other and pay a visit without calling and you were welcomed in they always had some cake or something for you and so I grew up in that era and we would go to Uncle Tiny's house and with all the big things that Uncle Tiny had he had on top of his big television a wooden hand carved redwood holder and it was about I want you to see my hands it was cupped like this and it was about this big and long and what it held was not a cemetery it held a giant candy cane that was about this big and round and very very long and so after a few pleasantries with the adults he'd look around at us kids and he'd say hey y'all want some candy and of course we said yes so Uncle Tiny would pull out his pocket knife you know this was an era when a lot of men wore pocket had carried a pocket knife you know it was or Swiss Army knife so Uncle Tiny would take out his his knife and break off large shards of this huge peppermint candy and he would give it to us in our bare sticky hands and I can still just see the look on my mother's face as she would just cringe because she didn't she was so gentle and so southern and she kept us so clean and immaculate she just couldn't stand that we were about to have sticky hands and no place to put these big pieces of peppermint candy maybe that's why I love peppermint candy to this day because of Uncle Tiny you know and the research for this project I was trying to identify through clues in some of the images who some of these people might be and I knew the name of Orville Luster and so having lived outside of San Francisco for a very long time I just wanted to research him and I then it all just came back to me. Orville Luster was a social worker and a human rights commissioner here in San Francisco but most importantly well I guess to me he was the executive director of San Francisco Youth for Service. Mr. Orville Luster this is him right here used to go into Bayview Hunters Point, Patrol Hill, the Tenderloin, the Mission District and work with gang members and he'd get them he'd actually show them a way that they could actually change their lives and be productive members of society. He and many of them went on to become bankers and lawyers and professional people because Mr. Orville Luster stepped in to help them and rescue them. Now during the era of redevelopment in San Francisco there Mr. Orville Luster got together with James Baldwin to see because there were a lot of fights about redevelopment people were always trying to stem the tide but it was just really too late but there was a documentary done in 1964 called Take This Hammer and you can find it on YouTube and it's really really compelling. You know I love James Baldwin so much as you can see he's my buddy in back of me right there but he really cared a lot and his work is having a new resurgence because many of the things that he predicted in the 1960s have come to past in the 21st century. This is Mr. Elmo Oleson. He used to be an auto salesman at Neville Ford. He sold Ford's and it was when I was doing this this putting this together I thought about it. That's why all of my family members drove Ford's. I grew up in brand new Ford's that my father bought from Mr. Oleson. My uncle my uncle W.A. and Willie's husband who named me he bought his first Thunderbird from Mr. Oleson in 1955. Mr. Oleson was a popular man kind of a raconteur himself. I think he did a little emceeing but wherever he went they always gave him a microphone and the opportunity to advertise himself so that he could sell more cars. Aren't these Thunderbirds? You can see the street sign I don't know if you can see it very well but that's at the corner of Vale in San Bruno. I couldn't find much about Neville Motors online but I did find this. This is a vintage license frame from that company on sale $99 on eBay. I think I'd rather buy a bus pass. This is Mr. George R. Riley. This is the this white gentleman here. He ran for mayor of San Francisco twice once in 1943 and once in 1955. He served I think he is known to be one of the longest serving elected members of any elected office. He served for 44 years on the California State Board of Equalization. Now that's an office that sets up tax assessments and that sort of thing and so it's no wonder that he would take on that in his profession because Mr. George R. Riley by profession was a real estate broker so he knew exactly what he was doing. Apparently he was a friend to the African-American community and probably not enough to get to make him mayor but still I'm sure it did him some good. There's Mr. Riley with some of his constituents in the 1955 bid for mayor. Now the entertainers. This is the fun part to me because I remember a lot of this. These this is Jimmy Mamu and his wife Judy. As you can see they are performers and this was clearly during the Batman craze. Jimmy Mamu and his wife Judy were entertainers in North Beach at the Condor Club for many many years. If you look at this marquee in the back you will see see that Carol was Carol Dota who ultimately ended up taking this whole marquee but I see there there's Wally Cox an old actor from the 40s 50s and 60s who was also a stand-up comedian and the Imperials which was like little Anthony and the Imperials back in those days. Now the thing about Jimmy Mamu and Judy was that they were personal friends of the family. Jimmy's mother and family which included three of his younger sisters who were my age lived directly across the street from my family on McKinnon Avenue in San Francisco. And so he was more than just an entertainer that I met. He was just he was a friend. He actually taught me how to play Pacino and poker when I was a kid and when I won the money and came home with it my mother made me take it over there and give it back. I was so disappointed if I'd been smart I would have kept it. This picture as beautiful as it is is one of the biggest regrets of my life because I was that night and this is Mary Wilson from The Supremes my all-time favorite singer Dionne Warwick and here in the middle that's Ms. Lena Horne. This was at the Circle Star Theater in San Carlos in 1973. I remember it well because it was one of my father's gigs for photography and he took me with him because I love Dionne Warwick so much. I had all of her albums. I knew all of her lyrics. I was a Burke Backrack and Hal David fan and this was my graduation present from my father. This woman here is Dee Dee Warwick that's Dionne's sister and these two ladies here on the right were her backup singers. When they got together to take this photograph they kept beckoning me to come in but I was 18 years old. I was so intimidated because I knew I was going to see Dionne Warwick and the spinners at the Circle Star that night but I had no idea Lena Horne was going to be there. Billy Eckstein was also there. I mean it was a night to remember. This as you can see you might recognize this character here. This is Cecil Williams from Glide Memorial Church and he was always a fixture at a lot of events around San Francisco. He knew everybody and was part of everything. This gentleman in the middle is Lena Horne's son. I don't remember his name but this was also the same night in 1973 at the Circle Star Theater. Now that's me and Dionne Warwick. I was very excited about meeting her and you know I look at this picture and I see me and Dionne Warwick but I look at that. I used to think I was fat back then. I was a fat back then. I would take that right now. That's me and one of the spinners. His name is Purvis Jackson. Oh you know what I want to tell you about this was that when I was at this event and my father would introduce me to these people because he knew a lot of them. He said that's my daughter. She just graduated from high school. I mean these people stopped and came over to me and each one I mean even Lena Horne they congratulated me on being a high school graduate. I mean you would have thought I'd had a PhD or something but education was very important to them and it was so encouraging that they took a moment to give me some praise me for at least getting out of high school. Now this is Mr. Red Fox and Mr. Elmo Allison. He was clearly in the 1960s. My father was acquainted fairly acquainted with Red Fox and whenever he was in town my father always went to the gigs and this was later on after so many years and I don't even know where this is but this is clearly on someone's home. This is Mr. Slappy White and this is Red Fox. They used to be a comedy team called Red and White back in the day and if you watch old episodes of Sanford and Sun you will see Slappy White in some of the episodes because Red kept a lot of his comedian friends working and interesting point is that if you ever were a Sanford and Sun fan Sanford was actually Red Fox's last name and so he put that in his show so he actually was answering to himself. Now that's me self-portrait 21st century. I thank you so much for allowing me to give you this presentation. If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them. Anissa? Oh my gosh, thank you Linda. That was so amazing. Oh thank you. I knew you were in for a treat. I'm gonna sharing your screen or let's see. I'm gonna steal the screen share. Put this up. That was amazing and we do have a couple questions and one person wanted to ask about segregation at this time. Segregation in San Francisco? Yes. Oh yes it definitely did exist and it's really interesting you should ask that question because when I was reading a lot of background stuff on Mr. Orville Lester who used to work with people about issues of racism and injustice as being an activist there was a woman who commented that in the south you know where you stand because they have up these signs that say you know go to the back or no color or whatever but here on the west coast they just do it with the pencil meaning that they changed laws they don't consult you they don't they are not hostile to you well you they did run into some hostility but by and large people just did things by laws they would redline and rezone and do all of those sorts of things and so they and so yes they did experience racism I experienced racism right here in San Francisco as a little kid going to St. Teresa's in Petrel Hill you know not even a story worth mentioning now but I don't want to present this as if there was some sort of fallacy that racism did not exist in San Francisco we clearly know that racism exists everywhere in America and unfortunately on the planet but it was in many ways not as strident and and aggressive because you have to understand a lot of these people who came from the south my mother included they'd seen lynchings they'd seen people burned and and and beaten or they had family members who had to run and leave town in the middle of the night because white people were out to kill them for some you know innocuous offense and so yes there was racism everywhere but here they were allowed to I guess move about a little differently and organized because a lot of these people were activists as well they went home they marched they did all sorts of things any other questions we do have one person recognizes perhaps somebody miss gilmore of gilmore's restaurant is that who that was well i knew mr gilmore oh my goodness you i hope they are able to point out who that was which one well we'll have to get their information so that i can get that that's wonderful i was hoping that someone would see someone read the exact question was mr gilmore who is in one of the photos the owner of gilmore's restaurant restaurant i don't remember in the darro street you know what i think so i think so but i don't remember my father had so many friends and many of them were entrepreneurs and did so many things i don't remember the gilmore is having a restaurant per se but i was a kid you know i mean i really didn't pay attention to all of their businesses and so that may very well be so i will try and do a little research and see what i can't find out about that but thank you for the clue you can always steal the screen back to linda if you wanted to pull up a photo oh no i'm good if someone wants it i'll do it but somebody was asking which is kind of in line with that next one is what kind of jobs were available it sounds like entrepreneurship was pretty big back then oh yes oh yes well you know um as i said my aunt had her own dry cleaners but my mother you know there was a time in san francisco when it was a huge apparel city meaning that there were a lot of apparel companies that had factories here in san francisco most of them um near first admission where the old um transport terminal used to be um where i'm sorry i'm reading one of the questions that popped up where the old transport terminal used to be my mother did piece work and for one of those apparel companies my mother was an incredible seamstress and later on started you know worked as a as an entrepreneur herself doing a seamstress work for her entire usherboard doing wedding dresses bridesmaids dresses all sorts of things but yes there were those types of jobs some and there actually was discrimination within some of the hotels and it took a lot of um uh political movement to get african-americans working in the hotels in in various capacities besides just housekeeping and and that sort of thing i hope that answers your question yeah i loved your um story too about the labor labor never cross a labor strike oh yeah yeah oh even to this day any other questions there are several other questions one of the best history book of the 20th century is a is warmth of other sons by isabel wilkerson a great migration told through the eyes of three individuals one constant is staying in the family and community groups when they move north and west so your family would have stayed connected with friends from texas and roots i suppose that's a common question oh my goodness thank you that's a wonderful question and thank you for giving me an opportunity to share this with you um i know i can speak for my family but i know that there were many other families who'd left the south but our family we used to go back every single year there were very few years when i was growing up that we did not go to houston to visit our relatives my father was very important to him that we know our family and where we had come from and how different our life was and so every single year we would jump in the ford and we would drive across country and because my father was a photographer we all had cameras i still own my original brownie camera to this day but we would take different routes from san francisco to texas and so sometimes we'd go to the great salt lake the grand canyon los vegas we just went everywhere but my father loved driving route 66 that is the highway of my childhood because we used it so much going to texas and you know when you get out there i don't know what it's like now because i haven't done a cross-country road trip in many many years but back then once you got so far out you had no radio signals whatsoever i mean you might be able to get a country and western station but uh we weren't into that um but we also i wanted to point out we used a green book there was a film that came out about a year or so ago called the green book and i was so surprised that no one knew about this book because we never left home without it the green book was um prepared put together by a man whose last name was green and he had been a us postal worker and what he understood was that when african americans you see what you have when you have these new negroes they're getting new cars and they're driving and they're going back home but they're still not safe and so the green book was a book that could tell you every state in the union where you could where you could go and get food get lodging have a nice rest stop without molestation or running into the clan and so i remember so often we're riding in the car in the middle of you know the country nothing around and my father'd be staying to my mother what does the book say what does the book say and we would follow that i don't know if we ever stayed in any of those facilities because i don't remember um you know anything negative happening when we were taking those trips but one funny thing is that whenever um he would my father would stop the car and he'd say you know everybody get out and go to the bathroom and we would say oh we don't have to go to the bathroom he'd say well go do something because he knew what was coming we might not have another convenience stop to use the bathroom and so um you know that was a big part of um of our childhood but getting back to route 66 my father who was not a very good singer sang that Nat King Cole song just about all those only song he sang when we were riding along and i guess he did that to break up the the monotony of us kids in the back in the backseat singing every song we ever knew you know i don't wish that on anybody thanks for that question any other questions there are i'm going to try and combine a couple questions that are are out here okay first are um have you been to the smithsonian exhibits and are any of these photos that you show today at the exhibit there and i'm excited with another question linda which is sort of like the archive of the question what are you what are you doing with these photos what will happen to these photos there are very people are very um they're amazed and that they're important and they'd like to know what your plans are well you know i have all sorts of designs for these photographs but i do have to tell you this is my father's work i am a writer so i'm trying to get my books published you know but this you know is like um you know close to my heart because my father never lived to see his work you know actually you know take off in the way that it has um i hope at some point to be able i mean coronavirus changed everything but there was a time and we can probably do it in the way that we're doing this i would like to take this information out to the schools i mean i have enough material so that i can do presentations for black music month which is in june black history month which now runs from january 15th to the end of february you know because it is important history is important i mean and i when i hear people say oh i don't like history i just that's like saying you don't like chocolate or french fries or something like that how can you not like history history tells us who we are history tells us where we are going i wish agent orange knew a little bit more about history are there any other questions there are there are we so we still have a few more minutes and these are some of them are pretty big questions but let me take on one that's what uh oh let's see here um what do you think people would say of black lives matter now and sort of um tying in another question which was um gentry the gentrification of the african-american community here in san francisco what do you think of all that and what okay i think the folks in the photo would think of this situation the first part of what they would think they would be happy and they would be amazed what i'd like to share with you was that i think it was the summer of 1963 see when my when we would go to uh houston uh oh you're freezing a little bit linda to visit sometimes it was during the summer when my parents just took regular vacay photography and we would just take our schoolwork on the road uh oh it says my internet connection are you i'm getting a signal that my internet connection am i okay okay great great great okay um read that question again i'm sorry i lost my train of thought with that sign i thought i was losing people gentrification no the other part during the first part um i i deleted it or moved it to the next oh that's okay oh what they would think what they would think i'm back i'm back 1963 we're on the road and we're in our station wagon on the road and there are buses and cars and people are blowing their horns and waving this is out in the middle of the country because everybody's on their way to the march on washington okay so just for days and days i mean it was just a phenomenal thing and i remember my father saying yeah they're gonna change things it's gonna be happening now they were very very excited about it you know my mother was my mother didn't talk a lot about the things that she experienced growing up in the south but my father talked about everything and he would have been so proud and happy he would have been out there like john louis standing on black lives matter plaza you know showing you know his support for the young people doing all of this there there are lots of other questions and comments we are at our time but i'm willing to go through this if you are linda well i mean it's three o'clock can we do like two three is that okay um let's see people want you to have an exhibit of these photos so there's that people are very like they there's they like me when i saw um linda mentioned in the beginning thanking my son i made my son do all the scanning of the photos for linda so i saw all these photos and they are i can i can relate with people feeling like oh my gosh i want to see more of these so there's people asking can you have an exhibit um they're wondering if you if your father took any pictures of miss ardaugh nicolas a community organizer bay view region san francisco do you know what what you see here and what i extracted in order to do this presentation today is just a mere thumbnail of the photographs that i have and more importantly i still have the majority of the negatives to all of these photographs okay now they're over 50 years old so they are not some of them are not in pristine condition but some of them are um as for that individual i have a lot of photographs of people that i cannot identify and one of the great things if i could get an exhibit going would be to be able to have people come in and identify their relatives because i know that there are still a few san franciscans around here who know people you know so uh from your lips to god's ears if anybody wants to host a uh an exhibit i'm down with it well you keep in touch with me linda if we ever reopen again i might know a place where we can have an okay okay i'd like that um does it make you uh let's see um this is interesting were your father's photos published in local media at the time yes good question because it lets me share something else about that my father's work was in local media he was also in jet an ebony magazine which are two major african-american publications but one of the things my father knew a lot of people he came across a lot of people in his work and he used to tell us about his friend who was doing this research on his family um going to um all different parts of the world going to the south he's telling us about his friend alex hayley my father told us about alex hayley preparing roots when i was a little girl and i had no real concept of what that was about and then the book came out and then the television show came out and it all came together i found you you old african you know it was just it was just amazing so um yeah you must have some amazing stories i can't wait for that memoir okay i have a nice one linda i'm a chinese-american fourth generation it seems oops it's jumping it seems i lost it oh there we go it seems my extended family from my mother and father did not communicate to use the history of anti-chinese discrimination they have faced how was it in your family about about my parents talking about discrimination yes my father talked about it all the time my mother talked about it very little now the only thing that made my mother mad my mother hated elvis pressley and i understand now that because she was thinking in terms of cultural misappropriation because she says she knew boys in her neighborhood when she was growing up that could do the same thing far better with the guitar on saturday night on the front porch than what elvis pressley did on the uh ed sullivan show so she had a thing about elvis pressley but i do want to um share something about my father and our family connection to the chinese community in san francisco my father worked for the federal government he had a very dear friend named mr chang who was from china and my father used to help mr chang and well they were friends and so they supported each other and mr chang would have relatives that would come over and my father and mr chang would help them get jobs with the government and whenever we would go to china town we would go to mr chang he had family members that owned restaurants and whatever so i grew up on chinese food i mean this was the most incredible chinese food um in my life as a child going to these wonderful restaurants in china town and because they respected my father so much his money was no good we i mean they and they'd give them just big bottles of liquor and all the food and then they'd give us food to take home but one of the things that they did was for the children they gave us um red silk chinese pajamas and the little silk slippers and um when i think back on that it was one of the nicest times in my life because they were so kind to us and we always had such a good time in china town and there was someone in the family that used to take the little cardboard rolls off of the toilet paper when it when the toilet paper was gone you've got this little cardboard roll left they would stuff it with candy and all sorts of goodies and then wrap it in bright paper brightly colored you know gift wrap paper tie the ends with pretty ribbon and they would give them to us along with red envelopes with money and and um you know it was just really wonderful but one thing that i saw that i don't think that many people have seen in this uh in my generation i saw women from china who had their feet bound when i was a little girl there were still women that were over here that had their feet bound and of course they walked a different a particular way because of the feet binding now my sister and i we didn't know that you know that you know what all of that meant but we liked the walk and we would put on our red silk pajamas as children do and we were you know trying to imitate these women because we thought that they were lovely we thought that they were beautiful but i didn't understand about the feet binding until i started studying history my background in history is not only african-american history but asian history as well um which was like a no-brainer for me you know um having been born and raised in san francisco so um i guess i've answered your question but yes my father talked about racism and his experiences a lot my mother didn't talk about it at all except for Elvis interesting um a few questions kind of tie together about redevelopment in the film more and what it did to the businesses what it did to the community and how it you know it kind of cut the african-american community um you want to talk on that a bit well you know um the ravages of redevelopment turn up in and many of my short stories because i remember the film more when i was growing up i mean it had smells and sounds there were you know meat markets and billiard halls and cafes and and beauty parlors and candy stores i mean it was thriving and there were all sorts of languages you just heard everything but the flavor was black and because it was so culturally diverse i am so proud to say that i believe that i can understand english i don't care what kind of accent you put on it because i grew up in this city and i just i mean it was just such a wonderful experience to be here i wouldn't change growing up in san francisco to grow up any place else in the world not even paris and i love paris thank you linda i think that is a good place to conclude some of the questions and the chat will be uh preserved in the recording the recording is not available to the public but linda you can get all of these questions for yourself if there's some you'd like to answer and there is um there's talk of online exhibitions is a thing we can we can talk like that offline if you want to every work on something like that and they would love to have your contact information if that's okay maybe an email we can send that out if you want to later or you can give it to them now i will give you an email later on in this and you can send it out to anyone who participated today or anyone who requested you know if they you know want to talk about the photographs or writing or any of those things i'd be happy to uh hear from them that's great and jen thank you for that link to the um Pittsburgh archive that sounds awesome tiny harris archive that's oh teeny harris yes yes photographer yes so we should check that out and see what our options are linda we'll do and i want to thank everyone so much amazing photos and we thank you today linda we thank all of our participants out there and this is where the um you know weirdness of virtual world gets weird we just say thank you and end the meeting thank you everyone for coming but we feel you linda thank you thank you thank you thank you everyone i appreciated so much it's been a blast i hope i get an opportunity to meet with you again that was wonderful okay all right everyone enjoy the rest of their sunday and thank you for being with us today signing off