East Bay: Redline Redefined

Explore your way through Berkeley and down through Oakland, while experiencing the commissioned pieces by our artists; Katy Luo, Theresa Wong, Sudhu Tewari, Gabby Wen, Ayodele Nzinga, Maxi Himpe and Hallie Smith, and Suki O’Kane.

Katy Luo

Location: 1213 San Pablo Ave. Berkeley, CA 94706

The Drive By, is a remembrance of her Taiwanese immigrant family life in 1985. Using poetry, pictures and manipulated sounds, Katy hopes to share a glimpse of a Taiwanese family navigating life in transition.

Theresa Wong

Location: Former Site of the Standard Soap Company

600 Addison St., Berkeley CA 94710

Flatlands, is a short film portraying the landscape of West Berkeley and the hidden history of Asian discrimination from both the 1800s as well as the redlining policy of the 1930s. Filmed mostly from the San Francisco Bay Trail pedestrian bridge crossing the I-80 freeway, the footage alternates between an eastward view looking towards the city and hills, and a westward view towards a fog laden bay. A voiceover reads the texts of area descriptions and racist language documented in the U.S. government's Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) redlining policies. Drawing upon the research of Berkeley resident and historian Richard Schwartz, the film also focuses on the construction site of the Berkeley Commons, located on the former site of the Standard Soap Company, where Chinese laborers were unjustly fired in favor of white workers in 1879.

Sudhu Tewari

Location: San Pablo Park

2800 Park St., Berkeley, CA 94702

The voice of Nailah, my neighbor, with recordings of the neighborhood

Location: 3109 Ellis St. Berkeley, CA 94703

The voice of Pam Uzzell with recordings of the neighborhood.

Location: Adeline St. & Harmon St., Berkeley CA 94703

The voice of Victor Mavedzenge, recordings of his neighborhood, and a clip of Nina Simone at the end.

Friends of Adeline

Location: Between Harper and Ellis on Ashby Ave.

Two excerpts from interviews with Pam Uzzell and Vicotor Mavedzenge, sharing ideas about how to be a good neighbor and support the community.

Friends of Adeline

Gabby Wen

Location: Oakland Public Library - Golden Gate Branch

5606 San Pablo Ave. Oakland CA 94608

The Golden Gate Branch of Oakland Public Library was built in 1918 with grants from the Carnegie foundation. It is one of the six Carnegie libraries in Oakland (five public libraries and one at Mills College). The architect was Charles W. Dickey, who also designed the Claremont Hotel and the Temescal Branch Library. It is one of the oldest buildings in the neighborhood, and its status of being an Oakland historical landmark protected the area from major developments such as the plan to move the Oakland Kaiser Permanente to the Golden Gate neighborhood in the 1990s. The Golden Gate branch is known for being one of the largest African American collections in the OPL system and the Summer Jazz on Sundays free concert series before the Covid-19 pandemic. In recent years, the branch has been collaborating with Commons Archive, a local creative grassroots history project led by marksearch, focusing on building neighbor relationships, that collected stories from North Oakland neighborhoods and produced publications on such topics as part of the library’s collections.

With the library representing the neighborhood’s long-standing history and being the local cultural center, I chose this location to be the center point of my research and outreach efforts in getting to know about the neighborhood’s past, as well as the neighbors’ cultures, lifestyles, and opinions on the rapid changes and the on-going gentrification happening in recent years. For a long time, residents was able to defy some of the disadvantages of redlining by creating a mutual assistance network. This sound art composition is made solely with audio recordings in the neighborhood - local businesses, street corners, sites of worship, and my backyard. Some sounds are unadulterated, and some are processed electronically. The poetry is inspired by my encounters with neighbors and the historical research during my explorations.

Like the shorebirds
Coming and going
Like the tidal waves
Rising and falling
The remaining trees
Swaying with time
Take the precious ones under your wings Deconstruction and reconstruction
What’s familiar is ever-changing
There’s only one way to feel about it
Yet there are still things not to be abandoned
The warmth of the bonds and the wisdom of kindness
Recipes from the elderlies
Carrying memories from the beginning of the journey
Diaspora may not be a choice
It could even be the result of mistakes
Propagated and cultivated
Healing for real
Then the new branches flourish
Offering sweeter fruits
Fruition brings yet another cycle
Roots reaching the water body that was once forgotten Remembering what the land and the people before us had offered
Paying it forward, and it’s our turn to offer the land
Wealth does not bring true self-sufficiency
Only mutual assistance - sharing of knowledge, resources
And good hangs on Saturday afternoons

Golden Gate Business district Walking Tour

Courtesy of Oakland History Center at Oakland Public Library for all historical documents and photos

Location: Temescal Creek Park Playground

53rd St. Entrance Oakland CA 94608

The Temescal Creek flows from the Oakland Hills in Monclair to the Emeryville Cresent saltmarsh into the San Francisco Bay. In the 20th century, urbanization of the area caused the creek to be vulnerable to floods, leading to the decision to build underground culverts for the creek to flow through. Today, the creek is mostly culverted downstream from Lake Temescal, a reservoir created by damming the Temescal Creek in 1868. In pre-colonial times, the Huichin Ohlone people settled by the creek and built structures known as sweathouses, or “temescalli” in an indigenous language from Mexico, from which the Spanish term “temescal” is derived. At the time, the rainbow trout population was abundant in the creek but diminished with urbanization and damming at Lake Temescal. At the mouth of the creek, the Ohlone people built one of the largest shellmounds in the Bay Area. At Temescal Creek Park, the stream flows about 10 feet underground, directly beneath the park’s path, and there is an opening of the creek under a large grate by 53rd Street’s entrance. This segment of the creek was voted to be culverted in 1977. Many newer residents are not aware of the creek’s existence.

This location’s audio composition is made with recordings at the creek’s opening at Temescal Creek Park, me singing into the opening and sounds of oyster shells and rocks scraping over the grate. Through this piece, I intend to recognize the creek’s significance in Oakland’s history and ecology. We must acknowledge the fact that the influx of population and urban development has already damaged the biodiversity and the land’s natural defense against extreme climate events. Further negligence of environmental health resulted from the practice of redlining - unlike going upstream from Lake Temescal, the part where the creek flows through the Oakland lowlands, where previously redlined, efforts of maintenance and protection were lacking until the end of the 20th century. In 1977, a local newspaper described the creek as being “garbage-filled”. In the past three decades, some efforts have been made to restore Temescal Creek, led by local environmental coalitions. In 2013, Temescal Creek Park was restored to include several bay-friendly and green infrastructure features.

1981 - plans to bury temescal creek in culvert

A Creek ran through it

Native plant species common to Oakland's Creeks

Courtesy of Oakland History Center at Oakland Public Library for all historical documents and photos

Ayodele Nzinga

Location: The 16th Street Station, Wood St. Oakland CA 94607

The 16th Street Station began construction in 1910 and opened in 1912 along what was at time the waterfront. The Beaux Arts style building replaced an earlier wooden structure and housed the Southern Pacific Railroad at ground level and the East Bay Electric Lines, Interurban Electric Railway (IER) - on elevated tracks. The station served as a secondary station to the “Mole”, the city’s main station and the official end of the Transcontinental Railway. Southern Pacific Railway, founded in San Francisco in 1861, merged with the Central Pacific Railroad. Before being demolished in 1960, ferries picked up passengers going to San Francisco from the Mole located at the site of Middle Harbor Shoreline Park. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, rendered 16th St Station structurally unsound.

The station and its history marks an important time in West Oakland where being from or passing through West Oakland was a common accordance in travel or White flight to the suburbs. During this time Black movement was curtailed by systemic racism. Black travelers traveled in the Jim Crow cars. Black travelers picked up at the 16th Station coming from the south were settling into redlined West Oakland if they were staying in Oakland. Service on these trains was exclusively Black and mimicked the genteel south which the travelers in the Jim Crow car wished fervently to escape. Ironically work on the train was a way that many moved their families to California escaping the overt racism they knew for the subtle exclusion of a sundown town.

Oakland’s inaugural Poet Laureate traveled from State Line Mississippi to California in the early 1950’s. She came to California by rail into the 16th St. Station on the Jim Crow Car. The poet’s work Conquered, a short film, discusses traveling from the South to the West for opportunity in Oakland.

16th St. Dreams

we traveled by rail
back of the freedom train
jim crow rode with us
picked up from the 16th St Station
to stay with auntie brother uncle
we have come for the milk & honey
we have brought our blues
we will build us a world
we are builders
we will build us a world
just look what we do with freedom
just look what movement look like
spirit & movement
be my testament
in search of a resting place

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/16th-street-train-station-oakland

Location: The Lincoln Theater

1620 7th St., Oakland CA 94607

Joseph and Elizabeth Freeman founded The Lincoln Theatre in 1921. The Lincoln was a Black movie house, that served as a church, and an entertainment venue at different points in its existence. It operated until the early 1960s according to firsthand accounts.

It’s primary function was a movie theater that Black people could frequent and be treated with respect and without the Jim Crow separation imposed at the time. It was a place you could take a date for less than $5.00 and see a show, have popcorn, and a drink for two.

The Freedman’s son Percy according to firsthand accounts was a well-respected pimp.

The establishment hails back to a time where Blacks in West Oakland could not safely cross what is now Martin Luther King after sundown. Although Blacks were firmly discouraged from traveling into downtown proper and vigorously encouraged to stay inside their redline communities after sundown. White people frequented the lively night scene on 7th St. where the Lincoln was a central institution. It’s said that it functioned as an informal shelter at night for people who did not have homes.

7th St was an institution unto itself. It was the ‘downtown’ of the redlined area and one could find every manner of enterprise from high to low. The Willow Hotel was on 7th and Willow over the Grand Auto store across the street from Golden Gate Keys, near John Henry’s Liquor Store. John Henry might have owned the Moon Pawn shop and the Café on 7th St. Other businesses in the direct vicinity were the 49 club, the Kit Kat club, Angie’s Fish & Poultry, West Land Market, and Jackmon’s Flowers.

The Lincoln like the 16th St train station is now defunct. The train station will never return to its previous function and the Lincoln owned by a community trust will not likely return to its original form. But the story of them is crucial to telling the story of redlined West Oakland; the Harlem of the West, built by Black people on dreams of movement by spirits with praying hands.

7th St. : (Lincoln Theater), Harlem of the West

no peanut gallery
free to sit in any seat
watch the show
or catch the beat
blues & the holy ghost
in the same place
i lay me down without
a place in the wilds of
the west in a sundown town
trying to make the sunshine
trying to make the sunshine
restless roots spread far as
my eye can see
you drew a redline to confine me
i built a world to proclaim me
beating my chest
in the Harlem of the West
the Freemans sold dreams
made of dreams
we were buying
we were buying
singing a song about us
in our own Harlem
close your eyes
tilt your head
breath in the beat
7th St.
7th St.
7th St.

Location: Sister Thea Theater

920 Peralta St. Oakland CA 94607

Playaz

who tell the stories
who channel the dreams
do we remember the places
we crossed over full of spirit
moving in our movement
on the way to freedom
there is always the story
if you forget
will you ever make it home
will you ever make it home
if you never know the story
if your story is never known
will the trees & dust remember
you passed this way
with a story of becoming
from railway dreams
though a Harlem made by
Black hands in a sundown town
in a redlined land will anyone
understand how much the spirit
of movement is written on the place
if no one tells the story
if no one knows where we crossed over
how they follow where we go
restless roots in the wind
chasing a song about home
& a place to belong
who will tell my story
who will sing my song