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to Joy and Pride to Richmond
A Vision for Downtown Richmond
August 11, 2003
Subject: Proposal and Justification for Revisiting the Main
Street Vision
Dear Main Street Board Member and Friends:
I’m proposing that we develop our old downtown area as an Arts & Entertainment District based upon Richmond’s rich black cultural history. There is no more healing way to honor the African American community than by making it a host community in much the same way that San Francisco and Oakland’s Chinatowns, the Fruitvale Main Street project, and Japan Town, or as Richmond’s 23rd Street is slowly emerging as Little Mexico. These nicely represent the racial diversity of the Bay Area and Northern California. This is the obvious way to begin to rid us of the crime and violence – rather than dissipating energy and resources by working tirelessly and vainly against them. By making the negative irrelevant simply by moving the positive to the forefront is a way to overcome.
There is currently a great deal of energy being generated by the city’s contracting with a Design Team to re-design the Macdonald Avenue Corridor from San Pablo to Garrard, including the center of town that is largely the home of African Americans (1st through 23rd Streets).
For instance, the old Pennys Building on Macdonald and 8th might be developed as a Black performing arts center housing a Black Repertory theater company where the works of playwrights like Tony Award-winning August Wilson and director/producer George C. Wolfe might be performed in season. Might be a place where local writers might develop their experimental works before hometown audiences. That 48,000 square ft. building would become the western anchor of such a district. There’s enough space in that structure, alone, to house live/work space for artists, rehearsal halls, costume and set storage, exhibition areas, etc.
Already in place in the downtown area are the very fine and under-utilized Richmond Art Center, NIAD, and the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts. These must be the original building blocks upon which to create the new downtown. This new performing arts center would become the anchor piece.
There are other buildings in the downtown, specifically at Harbor Way and Macdonald, that are already owned by the city and would easily fit into this new arts-driven economic development. A place to begin is all that’s required for us to give character to the downtown and start to attract entrepreneurs to complete the vision.
Have succeeding over the years to stay in touch with the really significant, but mostly “homeless” band of Bay Area Black performing artists (i.e., Shakiri and Root Workers, Joanna Haigood and Zaccho Dance Company, Rhodessa Jones and Idris Ackamoor of Medea Cultural Arts Group, E.W. Wainwright, master jazz player and educator, Dimensions Dance,) all of whom are struggling to keep their companies together and viable. Most are better known on the East Coast than they are at home in the Bay Area since – over time – rehearsal space has been lost to the high cost of rental space for both work, living, and performances. They’ve been forced to live locally but work both coasts and “The World.” Joanna and Shakiri last fall completed a two-year arts project to half-page rave reviews in the New York Times. They did one of Zaccho’s fantastic multimedia events against a 100-ft. giant silo where they were aerialists “page turners.” Rhodessa recently performed her one-woman show in South Africa.
I see the entire African Diaspora represented through art galleries, restaurants, shops, blues and jazz clubs, etc., and am finding enthusiastic responses at all levels of city government to such a proposal.
The complexity of cultures that makes up “Blackness” has served to enrich that of the entire nation in all of its art forms. That culture is Ethiopian, Brazilian, Kenyan, South African, Cuban, Creole, Maroon, as well as New Orleans Creole/Cajon, and Gullah/Geechee of the Carolinas, etc.
At a recent extended workshop hosted by the team that is re-designing Macdonald Avenue, I noticed that – upon breaking out into sections of the neighborhood. We were divided into groupings of those interested or residing in sections A, B, C, D, and E (from Garrard to the east to San Pablo to the East). The “A” group was almost totally made up of black residents. It was so striking that I brought to the attention of the city manager. Dig the demographics! He laughed. It occurred to me that – if each of those black residents had been Asian – we’d have been immediately thinking Chinatown. But in effect, they would surely have been Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, Laotian, Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian, etc. But the common denominator would have been Asian. And, thematically, it would have been very smart to have honored that mixed heritage. We must demand the same complexity, and not allow our common denominator to be crime and poverty.
Bringing the constant presence of artists to the city by providing live/work and rehearsal space enriches the cultural life of Richmond. It creates a new civic identity, one that is being left unexplored in other areas of the Bay Area – or is being priced out of existence.
Richmond is, after all, the home of blues greats Jimmy McCracklin and Lightnin’ Hopkins. The work of these artists is celebrated internationally, but lack a marker in their home community.
It seems clear that we’ve fallen into a trap of dealing with the African/American community in a custodial way, and over time have developed a system of “taking care of the poor” through low cost housing, job-training, then jobs, and – as a final step – places where they can spend earnings (i.e., strip malls, Ross, Target, etc.). That’s a closed and sterile circle that impoverishes those it is meant to nurture. As a consequence we’ve watched kids killing one another over Nikes and portable CD players and gold chains because we’ve inadvertently established a pattern of pure materialism by omitting the esthetic soul-nurturing cultural elements of life. It’s hard to believe that we’ve not learned by now that these are as vital to human growth as breathing, and the more important where there is profound need.
It’s revealing that so few folks I’ve talked with recently have ever heard of August Wilson, (The Piano Lesson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) or George C. Wolfe (The Colored Museum, Angels Over America). And you’ll forgive me for stating the obvious, but I’m no longer taking chances that friends don’t know who I’m talkin’ about.
I’m seeing the excitement in others when I share the vision, but am needing now to begin to make it soo-oo-o exciting that someone will steal the idea and run with, or that the people we need to pull it off will surface to aid and abet.
There isn’t a lot of time, Jennifer Ross of About Face Consulting is in place and working with me (we met while trying to resuscitate the Upper Room years ago). She’s presently working with the S.F. Arts Commission, the Oakland Arts & Cultural Commission. was the developer of the Bay View Opera House programs at Hunters. She’s a brilliant African American entrepreneur in the field of the arts. She’s worked with Media as well as Zaccho and does contract work for the S.F. Artists in Residence program in the schools.
We’ve talked casually with Isiah Turner, Janet Johnson of Redevelopment, Ray Lambert – Community Relations, George Harris of the school board, who have all expressed great interest. Since this was first proposed, Jennifer’s enthusiasm for helping to actualize the dream has caused her to pick up her tools and phone lists and move to Richmond.
This could be another Great Bay Area and national destination along with the newly –created Rosie the Riveter Historical Park. The truly exciting Ford Entertainment project only 2 miles away at the northern end of the Park will bring in hosts of visitors to the city. If we do it right, there will be nothing to compare it since the magical days of the Harlem Renaissance. This will become one more reason to visit this city.
The usual and time-honored way to deal with African/American culture has been to “integrate” it out of existence. The more recent practice is equally devastating. It’s now done through “multiculturalism,” which buries blackness under “diversity.” I’ve never heard anyone even mildly suggest that we integrate Chinatown, have you? This is a respected culture – and revered in our time, as are all things Eastern. Historically, we’ve expropriated from Black culture what the majority population values and scrapped the rest. These days, in order to see the best of black dance in the public arena, for instance, you have to view it filtered through “Fosse” on Broadway or watch the immortal Fred Astaire dancing Honey Coles in old films. Astaire in a filmed interview confessed to hanging around Harlem clubs studying Cole’s every move.
Hip Hop has now swept the world and influenced world youth cultures for the past quarter of a century, but found no permanent home in its birthplace in the urban cores.
At a recent Main Street meeting I heard one of the students from the university planning department speak of the importance of bringing in a Ross store to anchor Macdonald’s proposed Main Street district (“the nearest one is about 4 miles away”). Found myself muttering under my breath, “Please let it be something whose nearest clone is in Atlanta, Chicago, or Baltimore! A first class African American performing arts center in an authentic African-oriented Arts & Entertainment District is hard to find anywhere.
This is a time when second and third-generation Richmond African/American families are standing nervously on one foot anticipating long-feared gentrification as the armies of developers awaken to the rich potential of this area. By marking our turf, so to speak, we’ll be legitimizing our residency by designating ourselves members of a “host” community. This, after a half-century; is a long time to wait to be landed in one’s own country. We can DO this.
Betty Reid Soskin
Joy
and Pride to RichmondMail: RPA, P.O. Box 160 - Station A, Richmond, CA 94808-0160
Telephone (510) 595-4661