“Black Leaders of Leisure at California Beaches in the Struggle for Freedom during the Jim Crow Era:
The Implications of their Stories for Our Lives Today” A Lecture by Alison Rose Jefferson
Wednesday, March 16, 2022
12:30 – 1:30 PM
Payson Library, Surfboard Room Pepperdine Libraries and the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art will present a lecture by independent historian Dr. Alison Rose Jefferson titled “Black Leaders of Leisure at California Beaches in the Struggle for Freedom during the Jim Crow Era: The Implications of their Stories for Our Lives Today” on Wednesday, March 16, 2022 from 12:30–1:30 PM in the Surfboard Room of Payson Library. The lecture is free of charge and open to the general public; advance registration is required. Seating is limited. Jefferson will discuss the overlooked stories in the “collective memory” of Southern California beach culture heritage in Santa Monica, Venice, and Manhattan Beach. She will highlight stories of African Americans who faced discrimination and their contestation responses during the Jim Crow era. She will also review the current innovative public programming forged in new partnerships with colleagues in ocean stewardship, the history industry, local government and ocean aquatics that are facilitating pathways to broader audiences connecting to these more diverse stories of our collective history and heritage. In their leisure-making practices African Americans made history, before and after, racial restriction attempts on California’s public beaches were abandoned in 1927. Jefferson’s research demonstrates how these local stories contribute to the national narrative of mass movement that illustrates how the struggle for leisure and public space also reshaped the freedom rights struggle. Her presentation will feature some material from her recent book, Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era (University of Nebraska Press, 2020), which presents new directions in Black Western Studies and ways history public programming is being used to empower people with useful knowledge to be a force for civic engagement, justice, and equality, while facilitating individual and community pride. The lecture will be available for real-time viewing via livestream. This event is presented in conjunction with the spring 2022 Weisman Museum exhibition The Cultivators: Highlights from the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection. ABOUT DR. ALISON ROSE JEFFERSON
Dr. Alison Rose Jefferson is an independent historian, heritage conservation consultant and a third generation Californian. Jefferson is a 2021–22 Getty Conservation Institute Scholar in Residence where she is doing research on the historical African American experiences and public policies to conserve it in the California coastal zone district of Los Angeles’ Venice area. Her recently finished Applied History projects draw on her research of Southern California locales that feature historical significance as well as contemporary consequence to elucidate the African American experience during the Jim Crow era for Santa Monica’s Belmar History + Art project and the Angels Walk L.A. Central Avenue heritage trail. She was a 2021 Scholar in Residence with the Institute for the Study of Los Angeles at Occidental College where she in virtual campus and public programs shared her work of re-centering the African American experience in local history, heritage conservation efforts and the American identity. Her recent book, Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era was honored with the 2020 Miriam Matthews Ethnic History Award by the Los Angeles City Historical Society for its exceptional contributions to the greater understanding and awareness of regional history. Jefferson earned a PhD in History from University of California, Santa Barbara, a Master of Heritage Conservation from University of Southern California, and a bachelors of arts from Pomona College. Her work has garnered attention in KCET-LA programming, the Los Angeles, the New York Times, the Guardian and Le Monde newspapers, CBS TV’s 60 Minutes, and other media. Learn more about Jefferson’s work at: alisonrosejefferson.com.
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