Community

The City of Richmond is rich with history. The City of Richmond has done a wonderful job of compiling black history on their website. Please visit their Richmond's Black History Corner for more information, including Richmond's Black Elected Officials. What follows is an excerpt from their website.

Richmond's Black History Corner

Thank you for visiting Richmond's Black History Corner.  Here you will find various facts on Black History in Richmond.  Hopefully this will wet your appetite for researching deeper into the Black History of Richmond to discover the pride, roots, and beginnings in various areas, such as arts & culture, the WWII era, athletics, business, entertainment, politics and more.  Let's get started with...Did you know?/

Did you know?

One of the first downtown African American-operated businesses was O.B. Freeman's Shoe Shine at 1319 Macdonald Avenue. This place in the heart of Richmond's commercial district was fondly remembered by Gus Sonoda, whose family ran a shoe repair store on 10th Street, as a pre- WWII gathering place for "hot rodders."

The Maritime Child Development Centers -- created and maintained to enable women to work 'roun the clock -- did not serve African American children. However, there was such a strong tradition of collective parenting brought with them from the South, that it mattered little to black families. It didn't take long before that collection of hard-working heroic strangers created "community" in North Richmond and parts of Berkeley and Oakland - wherever housing could be found, and began to set down roots in the West, despite the continuing handicap imposed by racism.

Henry J. Kaiser's mission was -- not to conduct a social experiment in race relations -- but to use his power to build ships faster than the enemy could sink them. He did that; 747 were built here in Richmond, some in as little as 4 days. Kaiser created and trained a huge unskilled workforce of women, aging men, and those too young or disabled to fight. To accomplish this, Kaiser Permanente recruited black and white people from the southern states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma. Those he brought together in Richmond would not be sharing drinking fountains, schools, public accommodations, even cemeteries, in their places of origin for another 20 years; not until the Sixties. Into a town (Richmond) of 24,000 would come 108,000 over the next four years, bringing with them a system of racial segregation and inequality that would set the stage for the Civil Rights struggles that would follow. An argument can be made that the Civil Rights Revolution that swept the nation in the Sixties may have had its genesis right here in Richmond, California, as an unintended consequence of the dynamics set in motion in the cause of securing the victory over the enemy, and saving the world from tyranny.

Dr. Martin Luther King's first visit to the State of California occurred in the early days of the Civil Rights struggles when -- at the invitation of Pastor Booker T. Anderson -- he visited Easter Hill United Methodist Church on Cutting Boulevard. Yes, Pastor Booker T. Anderson is the late husband of our former Mayor Irma L. Anderson.

Lena Horn entertained at Kaiser Shipyard III at the launching of the George Washington Carver.

It doesn't take much imagination to envision the kind of organizing that must have taken place at Ethel Dotson's historic International Hotel on South Street. During the early days that preceded the creation of the Sleeping Car Porters Union under A. Phillip Randolph and C.L. Dellums who was the strong president of the East Bay NAACP.

At that time the Pullman company serviced its cross-country rail cars at the huge plant on Carlson  and South, the western terminus of their runs. There was a hotel that served the "layover" white workers on the corner of Carlson (since demolished). Black porters (barred from the Pullman) stayed at the International Hotel about a block away, where there were 20 small second story rooms and a large reception area on the ground floor. This certainly must have been the site of much organizing and socializing that eventually led to the establishing of the (national) Railroad Porters Union that caused such a stir in Washington during the Roosevelt administration. That building still stands.

A Berkeley woman, Mrs. Frances Albrier, was the first black woman to apply for work at the Richmond Kaiser Shipyards. She was at first refused, but persisted and was eventually hired. Mrs. Albrier has a rich history in the Bay Area that includes activism that broke workplace and housing barriers in the City of Berkeley and that led to a South Berkeley community center being named in her memory at San Pablo Park. Today, Mrs. Albrier's son is the chief engineer on the Red Oak Victory berthed here in Richmond.

Information included in the "Did you know" section was provided by our own Ms. Betty Reid-Soskin, who is a Community Outreach Specialist for the Rosie the Riveter WWII Homefront National Historical Park here in Richmond. Ms. Soskin was named a 1995 "Woman of the Year" by the California State Legislature and an honoree of the National Women's History Project for 2006.