If you have any information about businesses missing from the map, please contact Dr. Johnson (Co-Curator) and we will add it to our database.   Thank you!        

email: stephanieannejohnsonphd@gmail.com

“This second year of our project has been amazing! I am very pleased with the support and assistance provided by our advisory board, curatorial assistants, and lead researcher. It is my pleasure to bring forward the experiences of triumph, challenge, community empowerment and local contributions that characterize the lives of African Americans in Berkeley from 1940-2000 and beyond. In the context of gentrification, a  diminishing Black population, and lack of policies that promote ‘age in place’ cultural continuity, it is an obligation that I preserve and promote history that might have disappeared and gone unnoticed. May the ancestors and those who have gone before me find this offering acceptable. It is with tremendous pride that I invite viewers to experience this history and its impact on the City of Berkeley.”

-Dr. Stephanie Anne Johnson, Co-curator

“Year two of our exhibition project, African Americans in Berkeley, has again brought me in touch with personal memories from the early 1970s into the 2000s – from working with the health programs of the Black Panther Party to the election campaigns of Ron Dellums, Margot Dashiell, Keith Carson, and Sandré Swanson to so many community meetings in churches and senior centers. Many decades-long friendships have grown out of involvement in these activities, bringing to reality the Bay Area impulse for multicultural action. So I remain honored to help bring this multi-faceted deep history to live on for all the people of Berkeley during a time when the nation is on the cusp of moving Black issues from street activism to public policy. We have been waiting far too long.” 

-Harvey Smith, Co-curator