Illuminating Marginalized Stories from the Jim Crow Era in Historic Preservation

Illuminating Marginalized Stories from the Jim Crow Era in Historic Preservation

Instructor: Alison Rose Jefferson

This seminar includes a discussion of research methods in illuminating erased and overlooked stories about African Americans’ fight for dignity, equal access, and the full range of human experience and self-fulfillment. Drawing from her research in California, the instructor takes a fresh approach to looking at the historical practices of relaxation and recreation at outdoor and public spaces for all people at beaches, mountains, and other scenic locales connected to the long freedom rights struggle. Leisure was not an optional add-on to civil rights, but an essential component of liberty. Attendees will learn how some of these site histories and present-day public programming are shaping today and the future with examples from Los Angeles. Most of these places demonstrate a social heritage of action and occupation of space that have implications for broadening the American identity and for commemorative justice due to reinsertion of the African American experience into landscapes and civic memory where it has been ignored.

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