At Fort Point, An Ode to ‘Black Gold,’ Then and Now

Directly beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, Fort Point’s red brick ceilings and white walls are currently a three-story display of fine art. While the works highlight the golden legacies of African Americans of yesteryear, they wouldn’t be possible without the jewels dropped by the creators of today.

Black Gold: Stories Untold is a free exhibition highlighting the lives of African Americans during the California Gold Rush, the Civil War and the Reconstruction period. Curated by FOR-SITE Foundation founder Cheryl Haines, it features the works of 17 artists, including the Bay Area’s own Adrian L. Burrell and Mildred Howard, as well as artists from around the country like Hank Willis Thomas.

The combination of lingering fog overhead and dim lights inside the oddly-shaped site create a spooky aura. Multimedia pieces play in the fort’s cul-de-sacs while paintings hang near the barracks. Around the building are sculptures, tintype photographs and tiny ships constructed inside of small glass bottles. The stories behind the art reference pioneers, whale captains, millionaires and military leaders; all of them African American people who shared a special connection to the Bay Area, more than a century ago.

On the third floor at Fort Point, a former military outpost constructed in the 1860s, a seven-minute film shows a montage of one of the highest ranking African American servicemen in this country’s history.

“It’s crazy to me that people don’t know him,” says filmmaker Trina Michelle Robinson, discussing the U.S. Army’s Brigadier General Charles Young, the subject of her short film, Transposing Landscapes: A Requiem for Charles Young.

Robinson refers to Young, a composer and skilled pianist, as a genius. He was a lifelong friend of former colleague W.E.B. Du Bois and mentor to Sgt. Maj. Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., the first Black general in the U.S. Army. Young was also a well-traveled Black man who spoke multiple languages, despite being born enslaved.

“I wanted a piano composition of his to be the focus,” says Robinson of the film. Young’s 1918 song “There’s A Service-Flag In The Window,” an enthusiastic number with a military march tempo, is emblematic of his brilliance. “It’s not that he could just play it,” she says. “He could compose a classic composition.”

At Fort Point, the film plays across two screens. One shows reenactments that serve as theatrical glimpses into Young’s life story; the other centers shots of nature with a simplified version of Young’s composition, arranged by the Haitian American composer Joel st. Julien and played by Bay Area-based musician Nils Bultmann.

Robinson says the alternative version that plays throughout the film is reflective of how Young’s genius has been lost over time. But at the film’s end, his accomplishments are on full display. As the credits roll, Young’s original composition of “There’s A Service-Flag In The Window” is played by College of Alameda jazz professor Glen Pearson and paired with archival footage of President Theodore Rosevelt’s visit to San Francisco in 1903.

“Theodore requested both Charles Young and the Buffalo Soldiers to escort him down Market Street,” explains Robinson, pointing to the footage.

While making the film, Robinson thought deeply about her own family’s history, as well as the internal conflict Young must have felt as a man born enslaved who later served in a racially divided military.

That dichotomy, where amazing people live in a country that treats them as if they’re less than human, is present throughout the exhibition.

Just down the brick-lined hallway is the work of Bryan Keith Thomas. He explores duality by juxtaposing African spirituality, fly dandyism and gilded golden eggs with stolen heirlooms and watches used by mixed-race enslaved children, given to them by their white fathers so they could buy their own freedom.

Thomas’ exhibit, “‘Heirloom’ Gilded Box,” brings together items from around the world as a sort of “homecoming,” he says. Standing in a room of vintage items — a royal chair carved from redwood, fine vases, miniature statues and an image of Louis Southworth, a man who bought his freedom by playing the fiddle — Thomas explains that African Americans weren’t always the ones polishing these fine pieces of art. We were also the ones owning them.

“When children come and look at this exhibition,” says Thomas, “they will see Africa and they will see themselves. They will also see aspects of opulence, aspects of home, aspects of faith and aspects of religion.”

That idea is echoed by Tiff Massey. Her piece “72 Reasons Why I’m Not Playing” is made of 72 huge brass links in a chain, laid on the floor of a walkway inside Fort Point.

“I have a love affair with brass,” she jokes. “We’ve been going steady since 2014.” A Detroit-raised, classically trained metalsmith, Massey’s path to fine art started with making wearable objects, like necklaces. She has since drastically scaled her productions. “My largest piece to date,” Massey says, “is 15,000 pounds of stainless steel that people can walk through.”

Unsatisfied with the individualized experience of designing for one person at a time, Massey began to look at architecture and the ways in which people inhabit space, herself included.

“I’m a Black woman that deals with adornment,” she says, adding that “there’s no other culture in the world that adorns themselves like Africans and people through that diaspora.”

When asked to contribute work to an exhibition about Black gold, Massey says her goal was twofold. First, she wanted to create an oversized jewelry piece that occupied a large amount of space. And, at the same time, she wanted to ensure that people don’t look past the obvious.

“Black gold?,” says Massey, a metalworker adorned in her own handmade jewelry. “I am literally Black gold.”

‘Black Gold: Stories Untold’ is on view through Nov. 2 at Fort Point in San Francisco. Admission is free to all ages. Special artist talks and performances take place on June 7. Details here.