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Visions Toward Tomorrow:
The African American Community in Oakland, 1890-1990 |
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Visions Toward Tomorrow: The African American Community in Oakland, 1890-1990, the permanent exhibition, is the fulfillment of a dream that was held dearly by the founders of the African American Museum & Library at Oakland (AAMLO). Visions documents the historical accomplishments of generations of African Americans in Oakland from the era of pioneering and settlement to those eras of community formation, development of the press, establishment of local churches, and creation of a lasting legacy of music and the arts.
At the same time, while looking back at significant moments in the history of Oakland’s African American community, Visions also peeks ahead at the horizon. Via an interactive multimedia database of more than fifty contemporary current and former residents, visitors are provided insight, inspiration, comparisons and contrasts between Oakland’s past and its present. You are invited to take the journey. |
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May 6, 2011
Allensworth: 100 Years of the California Dream
Allensworth has been called a “monument to a dream.” The settlement, founded in 1908 by Colonel Allen Allensworth, Professor William Payne, minister, Dr. W.H. Peck, miner, J.W. Palmer and real estate agent Harry Mitchell through the California Colony and Home Promoting Association, did represent the dream of its namesake, “to show the world that the Negro can DO and BE everything that is expected of an intelligent citizenship.” It also symbolized the dream of African Americans across California and the U.S. for civic opportunity, the chance to create an ideal social enterprise free from the restrictions imposed during this troublesome period considered “the nadir” of race relations in America.
To commemorate the 2009 centennial of Allensworth this exhibition was created through a collaborative by the California Department of Parks and Recreation, the California African American Museum and the California Community Empowerment Foundation.
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