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"slug": "mary-ann-pollar-presents-rainbow-sign-berkeley-nina-simone-bob-dylan",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne afternoon in 1972, Nina Simone was getting ready to appear at Rainbow Sign, a Black cultural center that had recently opened in Berkeley. Situated at 2640 Grove St (today’s Martin Luther King Jr. Way), the venue had been set up by local concert promoter Mary Ann Pollar the year prior. After Simone and Pollar had finished eating lunch, they were on the way out of the building when they encountered two young girls in the hall, approximately 10 and 12 years old. They immediately caught Simone’s eye.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='news_11901099']“Aren’t you supposed to be in school now?” Simone asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Oh, I don’t have to go to school,” the older child said. “I’m going to be a singer like you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Simone immediately went into mentor mode. “Out of the next 100 people who walk in here, perhaps 90 can sing as well as I do,” Simone told the girl. “Do you really want to know how to become a singer?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Simone took both girls aside and talked to them for 45 minutes about the importance of education, commitment and working hard towards their goals. Simone made clear that raw talent alone was not enough to make it in the world. It was a stunning — and probably life-changing — interaction for the girls, who had shown up just hoping to catch a glimpse of their hero. A couple of years later, Mary Ann Pollar relayed the story to local journalist Sandra Greenlow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In one way,” she said, “we probably scared those children half to death. In another though, [Simone] gave them a priceless lesson.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/NinaSimoneMusic/status/1509542736495529991\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the six years it was open, Rainbow Sign was a hotspot for the kind of exchanges that Simone and those Berkeley children had that day. It was a venue that entertained audiences with some of the greatest Black artists of the time — Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Pharoah Sanders, Oscar Brown Jr. and Simone amongst them. Writers like Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Alex Haley, Alice Walker and Joyce Carol Thomas gave readings there. Historians like Samella Lewis and Mrs. W. E. B. DuBois gave talks. Legendary dancer Josephine Baker even appeared in the 200-seat hall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13874853']At the time, Mary Ann tried to explain what made her intimate venue so appealing to such major artists. “It’s an energy,” she said. “It floats in the air. In other places people overhear the performers. In this room, they listen. I don’t know what explains it, but here it’s more than just someone standing on a stage.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rainbow Sign was much more than a music hall too. It hosted weddings, tea parties, art shows and children’s events. It was the venue at which Shirley Chisholm announced her presidential run. It was a restaurant that served up Mary Ann’s spectacular cooking — smothered steak, fried chicken and dessert pies were all raved-about favorites. The banquet hall hosted the League of Women voters, the NAACP and the Urban League. Rainbow Sign was a place where employees recently released from San Quentin could rub shoulders with Berkeley’s first Black mayor, Warren Widener. Rainbow Sign also served as a movie theater, a venue for film and writing workshops and a floor for dance classes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mary Ann’s daughter Odette Pollar tells KQED Arts today: “I remember the feeling of Rainbow Sign. It was like walking into somebody’s home. It was very friendly and warm and welcoming. It was a big place but it was always bustling — always something going on. It was fun. Everybody was very accessible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927307\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13927307\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-03-at-5.14.18-PM_Edit2-800x972.png\" alt=\"A Black woman with very short hair smiles broadly, looking off in the distance. She is wearing a 1970s-era blouse with lots of ruffles.\" width=\"800\" height=\"972\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-03-at-5.14.18-PM_Edit2-800x972.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-03-at-5.14.18-PM_Edit2-1020x1239.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-03-at-5.14.18-PM_Edit2-160x194.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-03-at-5.14.18-PM_Edit2-768x933.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-03-at-5.14.18-PM_Edit2-1265x1536.png 1265w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-03-at-5.14.18-PM_Edit2.png 1320w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mary Ann Pollar. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Odette Pollar)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen people remember Mary Ann now, it is most frequently through the lens of what she did with Rainbow Sign, which, sadly, closed in 1977 because of financial woes. But Mary Ann was a pillar of the Bay Area community from the time she moved here in 1951.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mary Ann was interested in workers’ rights from a young age. After graduating from Chicago’s Roosevelt University with a degree in labor education, she shared her unionizing knowhow while working with the \u003ca href=\"https://nul.org/\">National Urban League\u003c/a> — a nonprofit that, to this day, works towards economic empowerment, education and civil rights for underserved communities. In the late ’60s, she volunteered with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.un.org/en/observances/un-day\">United Nations Day\u003c/a> Committee, even helping to organize a U.N. birthday party in Oakland in 1968.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13887962']“I am a U.N. fan,” she noted at the time. “The whole idea of everybody putting in his two cents’ worth has a lot of meaning for me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Rainbow Sign’s closure, Mary Ann went back to this kind of work while employed by AC Transit. For the two decades she worked there, she took part in multiple campaigns to benefit her fellow workers. She encouraged employees to buy savings bonds — a safe and reliable means to invest — and she organized a local union.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was music, however, that first turned Mary Ann into a public figure. In the 1950s, after booking a show for their friend \u003ca href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-odetta-revolutionized-folk-music\">Odetta\u003c/a> — a beloved folk and blues musician — Mary Ann and her husband Henry decided to become concert promoters. Under the moniker “Mary Ann Pollar Presents,” the pair booked the likes of Simon and Garfunkel, Taj Mahal, Joan Baez, Frank Zappa, Nancy Wilson, Buffy St. Marie, Nana Mouskouri, Judy Collins, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Peter Paul and Mary and, of course, Nina Simone. They were also responsible for booking Bob Dylan’s very first Bay Area concert in 1964.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13926549\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13926549\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Mary-Ann-Pollar-Presents-Ad-Oct-1969-800x610.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"610\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Mary-Ann-Pollar-Presents-Ad-Oct-1969-800x610.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Mary-Ann-Pollar-Presents-Ad-Oct-1969-1020x778.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Mary-Ann-Pollar-Presents-Ad-Oct-1969-160x122.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Mary-Ann-Pollar-Presents-Ad-Oct-1969-768x586.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Mary-Ann-Pollar-Presents-Ad-Oct-1969.png 1080w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An October 1969 newspaper ad for upcoming Mary Ann Pollar Presents concerts by Nina Simone, Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie. \u003ccite>(San Francisco Examiner)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As concert promoters, the Pollars were involved in every single aspect of getting live music to the Bay. It was their job to find appropriate stages when there were very few dedicated live music venues. In the evenings, the couple and a pre-teen Odette would sit around their dining table stuffing envelopes with upcoming concert listings and sending them out to their mailing list. (“I loved it!” Odette says, reminiscing.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The couple handled advertising, ticket printing and distribution, running the box office and even picking up and driving around the artists. After concerts were over, both musicians and audience members would usually resume the party in the Pollars’ living room on Shattuck Avenue. On at least one occasion, singer-songwriter \u003ca href=\"https://www.bobneuwirth.com/\">Bob Neuwith\u003c/a> acted as the designated door guy for the Berkeley home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because of the dedicated way the couple ran their business, and because they exercised good judgment in their booking, artists grew to trust the name Pollar, and Mary Ann became known well beyond Bay Area music scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of people came because they trusted my mom,” Odette says now. “So if there was a new performer and people got a flyer from my mom, people would go, ‘Let’s go. Let’s try it.’ That was very common. In the ’50s and ’60s, this was a small community. Not that many people knew folk music. Everyone was just starting out. Bob Dylan was just starting out!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though she is often remembered for her love of folk music, Odette mentions that her mom had very eclectic musical tastes — something Mary Ann had been careful to note in her own life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve never been able to understand why I like folk music so much,” she once said. “I come from a family of Baptist preachers down in Texas on the border of Mexico, so of course I love gospel music. I dig flamenco too. I never had any musical background. I am a listener — really a listener.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]T[/dropcap]oday, looking back, Odette speculates that her mother’s childhood may have been the reason Mary Ann carried herself with such confidence and fortitude. Mary Ann grew up in \u003ca href=\"https://missiontexas.us/\">Mission, Texas\u003c/a> — a town so close to the border she grew up speaking fluent Spanish. Mary Ann’s mother, conscious that her daughter would get a better formal education elsewhere, sent Mary Ann to Chicago at the age of 12 to live with relatives. Getting thrown into big city living without her mom by her side proved to be an education for Mary Ann in more ways than one. Mary Ann and her parents would never live in the same place again. Odette’s maternal grandparents died before she could ever meet them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13916612']Mary Ann’s dedication to the Bay Area was not wasted. Even after her death in 1999, her good example and the effects the spaces she created had on others, continue to endure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Whenever we showed up at the Rainbow Sign, we were greeted with big smiles and warm hugs,” Kamala Harris wrote in her 2019 autobiography, \u003cem>The Truths We Hold\u003c/em>. “Kids like me who spent time at Rainbow Sign were exposed to dozens of extraordinary men and women who showed us what we could become.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They were risk-takers but not crazy,” Odette says of her parents now. “My dad would say ‘Go to college, get a degree, have fun, do anything you want, but also make sure you have a practical skill to fall back on.’ What I got from my mom,” Odette continues, “is the idea that you could create something from nothing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mary Ann Pollar did that over and over and over again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Mary Ann Pollar: The Life and Times of the Rainbow Sign Founder | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">O\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>ne afternoon in 1972, Nina Simone was getting ready to appear at Rainbow Sign, a Black cultural center that had recently opened in Berkeley. Situated at 2640 Grove St (today’s Martin Luther King Jr. Way), the venue had been set up by local concert promoter Mary Ann Pollar the year prior. After Simone and Pollar had finished eating lunch, they were on the way out of the building when they encountered two young girls in the hall, approximately 10 and 12 years old. They immediately caught Simone’s eye.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“Aren’t you supposed to be in school now?” Simone asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Oh, I don’t have to go to school,” the older child said. “I’m going to be a singer like you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Simone immediately went into mentor mode. “Out of the next 100 people who walk in here, perhaps 90 can sing as well as I do,” Simone told the girl. “Do you really want to know how to become a singer?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Simone took both girls aside and talked to them for 45 minutes about the importance of education, commitment and working hard towards their goals. Simone made clear that raw talent alone was not enough to make it in the world. It was a stunning — and probably life-changing — interaction for the girls, who had shown up just hoping to catch a glimpse of their hero. A couple of years later, Mary Ann Pollar relayed the story to local journalist Sandra Greenlow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In one way,” she said, “we probably scared those children half to death. In another though, [Simone] gave them a priceless lesson.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>For the six years it was open, Rainbow Sign was a hotspot for the kind of exchanges that Simone and those Berkeley children had that day. It was a venue that entertained audiences with some of the greatest Black artists of the time — Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Pharoah Sanders, Oscar Brown Jr. and Simone amongst them. Writers like Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Alex Haley, Alice Walker and Joyce Carol Thomas gave readings there. Historians like Samella Lewis and Mrs. W. E. B. DuBois gave talks. Legendary dancer Josephine Baker even appeared in the 200-seat hall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>At the time, Mary Ann tried to explain what made her intimate venue so appealing to such major artists. “It’s an energy,” she said. “It floats in the air. In other places people overhear the performers. In this room, they listen. I don’t know what explains it, but here it’s more than just someone standing on a stage.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rainbow Sign was much more than a music hall too. It hosted weddings, tea parties, art shows and children’s events. It was the venue at which Shirley Chisholm announced her presidential run. It was a restaurant that served up Mary Ann’s spectacular cooking — smothered steak, fried chicken and dessert pies were all raved-about favorites. The banquet hall hosted the League of Women voters, the NAACP and the Urban League. Rainbow Sign was a place where employees recently released from San Quentin could rub shoulders with Berkeley’s first Black mayor, Warren Widener. Rainbow Sign also served as a movie theater, a venue for film and writing workshops and a floor for dance classes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mary Ann’s daughter Odette Pollar tells KQED Arts today: “I remember the feeling of Rainbow Sign. It was like walking into somebody’s home. It was very friendly and warm and welcoming. It was a big place but it was always bustling — always something going on. It was fun. Everybody was very accessible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927307\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13927307\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-03-at-5.14.18-PM_Edit2-800x972.png\" alt=\"A Black woman with very short hair smiles broadly, looking off in the distance. She is wearing a 1970s-era blouse with lots of ruffles.\" width=\"800\" height=\"972\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-03-at-5.14.18-PM_Edit2-800x972.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-03-at-5.14.18-PM_Edit2-1020x1239.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-03-at-5.14.18-PM_Edit2-160x194.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-03-at-5.14.18-PM_Edit2-768x933.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-03-at-5.14.18-PM_Edit2-1265x1536.png 1265w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-03-at-5.14.18-PM_Edit2.png 1320w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mary Ann Pollar. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Odette Pollar)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">W\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>hen people remember Mary Ann now, it is most frequently through the lens of what she did with Rainbow Sign, which, sadly, closed in 1977 because of financial woes. But Mary Ann was a pillar of the Bay Area community from the time she moved here in 1951.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mary Ann was interested in workers’ rights from a young age. After graduating from Chicago’s Roosevelt University with a degree in labor education, she shared her unionizing knowhow while working with the \u003ca href=\"https://nul.org/\">National Urban League\u003c/a> — a nonprofit that, to this day, works towards economic empowerment, education and civil rights for underserved communities. In the late ’60s, she volunteered with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.un.org/en/observances/un-day\">United Nations Day\u003c/a> Committee, even helping to organize a U.N. birthday party in Oakland in 1968.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“I am a U.N. fan,” she noted at the time. “The whole idea of everybody putting in his two cents’ worth has a lot of meaning for me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Rainbow Sign’s closure, Mary Ann went back to this kind of work while employed by AC Transit. For the two decades she worked there, she took part in multiple campaigns to benefit her fellow workers. She encouraged employees to buy savings bonds — a safe and reliable means to invest — and she organized a local union.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was music, however, that first turned Mary Ann into a public figure. In the 1950s, after booking a show for their friend \u003ca href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-odetta-revolutionized-folk-music\">Odetta\u003c/a> — a beloved folk and blues musician — Mary Ann and her husband Henry decided to become concert promoters. Under the moniker “Mary Ann Pollar Presents,” the pair booked the likes of Simon and Garfunkel, Taj Mahal, Joan Baez, Frank Zappa, Nancy Wilson, Buffy St. Marie, Nana Mouskouri, Judy Collins, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Peter Paul and Mary and, of course, Nina Simone. They were also responsible for booking Bob Dylan’s very first Bay Area concert in 1964.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13926549\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13926549\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Mary-Ann-Pollar-Presents-Ad-Oct-1969-800x610.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"610\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Mary-Ann-Pollar-Presents-Ad-Oct-1969-800x610.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Mary-Ann-Pollar-Presents-Ad-Oct-1969-1020x778.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Mary-Ann-Pollar-Presents-Ad-Oct-1969-160x122.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Mary-Ann-Pollar-Presents-Ad-Oct-1969-768x586.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/Mary-Ann-Pollar-Presents-Ad-Oct-1969.png 1080w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An October 1969 newspaper ad for upcoming Mary Ann Pollar Presents concerts by Nina Simone, Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie. \u003ccite>(San Francisco Examiner)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As concert promoters, the Pollars were involved in every single aspect of getting live music to the Bay. It was their job to find appropriate stages when there were very few dedicated live music venues. In the evenings, the couple and a pre-teen Odette would sit around their dining table stuffing envelopes with upcoming concert listings and sending them out to their mailing list. (“I loved it!” Odette says, reminiscing.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The couple handled advertising, ticket printing and distribution, running the box office and even picking up and driving around the artists. After concerts were over, both musicians and audience members would usually resume the party in the Pollars’ living room on Shattuck Avenue. On at least one occasion, singer-songwriter \u003ca href=\"https://www.bobneuwirth.com/\">Bob Neuwith\u003c/a> acted as the designated door guy for the Berkeley home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because of the dedicated way the couple ran their business, and because they exercised good judgment in their booking, artists grew to trust the name Pollar, and Mary Ann became known well beyond Bay Area music scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of people came because they trusted my mom,” Odette says now. “So if there was a new performer and people got a flyer from my mom, people would go, ‘Let’s go. Let’s try it.’ That was very common. In the ’50s and ’60s, this was a small community. Not that many people knew folk music. Everyone was just starting out. Bob Dylan was just starting out!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though she is often remembered for her love of folk music, Odette mentions that her mom had very eclectic musical tastes — something Mary Ann had been careful to note in her own life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve never been able to understand why I like folk music so much,” she once said. “I come from a family of Baptist preachers down in Texas on the border of Mexico, so of course I love gospel music. I dig flamenco too. I never had any musical background. I am a listener — really a listener.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">T\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>oday, looking back, Odette speculates that her mother’s childhood may have been the reason Mary Ann carried herself with such confidence and fortitude. Mary Ann grew up in \u003ca href=\"https://missiontexas.us/\">Mission, Texas\u003c/a> — a town so close to the border she grew up speaking fluent Spanish. Mary Ann’s mother, conscious that her daughter would get a better formal education elsewhere, sent Mary Ann to Chicago at the age of 12 to live with relatives. Getting thrown into big city living without her mom by her side proved to be an education for Mary Ann in more ways than one. Mary Ann and her parents would never live in the same place again. Odette’s maternal grandparents died before she could ever meet them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Mary Ann’s dedication to the Bay Area was not wasted. Even after her death in 1999, her good example and the effects the spaces she created had on others, continue to endure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Whenever we showed up at the Rainbow Sign, we were greeted with big smiles and warm hugs,” Kamala Harris wrote in her 2019 autobiography, \u003cem>The Truths We Hold\u003c/em>. “Kids like me who spent time at Rainbow Sign were exposed to dozens of extraordinary men and women who showed us what we could become.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They were risk-takers but not crazy,” Odette says of her parents now. “My dad would say ‘Go to college, get a degree, have fun, do anything you want, but also make sure you have a practical skill to fall back on.’ What I got from my mom,” Odette continues, “is the idea that you could create something from nothing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mary Ann Pollar did that over and over and over again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "inez-burns-san-francisco-abortionist-jailed-scandal-fillmore-st",
"title": "The Unrepentant Abortionist Who Defiantly Fought San Francisco Authorities",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]Y[/dropcap]ou don’t notice it unless you’re actively looking: The two-story grey-blue building on Fillmore with tasteful gold trim, just steps away from Haight Street. Today, it’s just another well appointed, two-apartment home. But a century ago, it was the most in-demand abortion clinic in San Francisco: a clean and sterile place run by a defiant woman who was unapologetic about her profession, and unafraid of the authorities who came after her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her name was Inez Burns. And for almost three decades, she helped tens of thousands of women take charge of their own bodies and their own futures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inez knew a little something about seizing control of her own destiny. She was born in September 1886 inside a rear tenement apartment in SoMa — then San Francisco’s gangland. Her father was an alcoholic cigar salesman who died at 39. Her mother was a cold, neglectful woman who fought with her fists and took Inez out of school after sixth grade so the child could work alongside her four siblings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13908327']Inez’s formative years made her tough, but never brittle. The natural beauty dedicated her spare time to self-improvement with an eye on clawing her way out of poverty. Inez taught herself to read well, hiding books away from her mother who considered them a waste of time. Inez learned how to walk and talk like a lady. And when she secured herself a job at the Palace Hotel at age 17, she learned to flirt like a lady as well. Inez worked as a manicurist at the hotel’s barber shop, polishing the nails of the most well-to-do men in San Francisco. She was so charming and such a good listener, her customers were prone to lavishing her with extra cash and expensive gifts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of Inez’s most adoring customers was a doctor named Eugene West who began an affair with her when she was 18. A year later, he offered Inez a job at his clinic, paying her twice what she made at the barbershop. West also covered her rent at Elmer House, a women’s rooming establishment at 324 Bush St. Within three months of starting at West’s clinic, Inez became a medical assistant and began aiding her lover in performing illegal abortions. Inez was a quick study and soon noticed that West sometimes performed sloppy work and didn’t always show his patients the care that Inez felt they were due.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After she got pregnant by another suitor named G.W. Merritt, Inez left West’s clinic, stealing a set of medical instruments as she went. Soon after, tragedy struck with the 1906 earthquake — an event that left Inez with only the dress on her back, the hat on her head and the surgical instruments she had taken from West. It wasn’t long before she needed to put them to use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While residing alongside 40,000 other earthquake refugees in Golden Gate Park, Inez encountered seven women who were all desperate for help. One was unmarried, and six were unsure how they’d feed another mouth under the dire circumstances. Inez successfully performed abortions on each of them in the park, carefully sterilizing her instruments before and after each procedure. Though Inez offered her services for free, all women insisted on compensating her in some way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After five weeks of residing in the park, Merritt persuaded Inez to move to Pittsburgh with him to start a new life there. Inez agreed but languished on the East Coast, working for a pittance in a pickle factory. Despite Merritt’s relationship with a younger woman there, Inez bore him two children, George and Bobby. When Bobby was two, Inez managed to save enough money to escape back to San Francisco, forced by Merritt to leave George behind. The boy would return to Inez’s care only when he turned 18.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in San Francisco, Inez quickly embraced her inner spirit of independence and went to work performing abortions at clinics around the city, all owned by men. Within months she had enough money to start her own facility — one that she operated out of a series of homes in the city, including two in the Excelsior. Unlike many of the other abortion centers in the city at the time, Inez never advertised her services. She didn’t need to. Word quickly spread around the city about Inez’s impeccably clean clinic — one in which women felt safe, cared for and out of the clutches of exploitative male practitioners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13923672\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13923672\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/20230112_143737-scaled-e1673569766549-800x1067.jpg\" alt=\"A two-floor home with garage underneath.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1067\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/20230112_143737-scaled-e1673569766549-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/20230112_143737-scaled-e1673569766549-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/20230112_143737-scaled-e1673569766549-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/20230112_143737-scaled-e1673569766549-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/20230112_143737-scaled-e1673569766549-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/20230112_143737-scaled-e1673569766549-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/20230112_143737-scaled-e1673569766549.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Fillmore Street building where Inez Burns once operated her abortion clinic.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t was in 1921 that Inez moved her clinic to 327 Fillmore Street, an eight-bedroom home with three bathrooms. She painstakingly designed the waiting room there to resemble a high-end tea room, with polished floors, Tiffany lamps and sumptuous rugs. Smoking was not permitted and talking was discouraged unless between nurses and patients. Inez installed an outdoor concrete incinerator for medical waste and a secret staircase that led to a back alley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13912974']Assisting her at the clinic was a discreet team of nurses and a utility man named Joe Hoff — a former bellboy Inez had befriended at the Palace Hotel. Hoff also assisted Inez in scaring off mobsters who sporadically attempted to extort her. Inez’s business was widely considered to be the worst-kept secret in San Francisco, but making weekly payoffs to SFPD officers and politicians kept her doors open. Inez also kept a list of trustworthy physicians on call who could assist her with procedures that resulted in complications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inez’s services came at a price. Officially, abortions performed by her within the first eight weeks of pregnancy cost $50 (about $880 in today’s money). After that, services went up to $80 (about $1400 now). Despite this, many patients found Inez willing to perform procedures for whatever amount of money they had on hand. For truly dire cases, she charged nothing at all. In one case, she handed a patient with six children an envelope of money and advised her to leave her husband.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Inez was making more money than she knew what to do with. With most procedures taking just 15-20 minutes, she quickly amassed a fortune. She built a home at 274 Guerrero St. — an address that delighted Inez because 274 happened to be the California penal code that outlawed abortion. Inez also purchased properties around the city (including one on Waller Street that doubled as a recovery center) and in La Honda and San Mateo County. She used five different aliases to do so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13923671\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13923671\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Inez-Home-Guerrero-800x722.jpg\" alt=\"A two-story rectangular home with four identical windows on the top floors and a five curved windows protruding from the building on the lower level. Large neat hedges grow in front of the home.\" width=\"800\" height=\"722\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Inez-Home-Guerrero-800x722.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Inez-Home-Guerrero-1020x921.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Inez-Home-Guerrero-160x144.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Inez-Home-Guerrero-768x693.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Inez-Home-Guerrero-1536x1387.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Inez-Home-Guerrero-1920x1733.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Inez-Home-Guerrero.jpg 1964w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Guerrero Street home that Inez Burns kept until 1973. \u003ccite>(Rae Alexandra)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Inez enjoyed living lavishly, with a lively social life and fierce shopping habit. She bought a limo and hired a driver, doted on her two Pomeranians and kept regular appointments with astrologers. She underwent three plastic surgery operations: One to remove two ribs, another to remove the bones in her pinky toes and finally a facelift in her later years. Still, Inez had so much cash, she took to sewing money into drapes, burying it in lockboxes and hiding it in secret panels around her properties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Inez’s business grew, so did complications in her love life. She married William Brown in 1915, after having a son (also named William) with him. After Brown died in 1921, Inez married Charlie Granelli, with whom she had a daughter, Alice. In 1927, while Granelli was out of the country on business, Inez fell in love with an assemblyman named Joe Burns. By then, because Inez was already an infamous figure in the city, the love triangle made for salacious headlines. Inez was granted a divorce from Granelli in May 1928 and went on to marry Burns in 1932. The couple stayed together for the rest of their lives, though the relationship was frequently an open one in which fiery disagreements were not uncommon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]nez’s legal troubles started in 1936, when her financial situation finally came under scrutiny by the authorities. Still, she proved to be a slippery woman to pin down. She had so many informants scattered around the city, she got tipped off and was able to clear her properties before every raid. On one occasion, Inez was so indignant when police arrived that she kicked an inspector in the shins. Efforts to hold her legally accountable after one successful 1938 raid were thwarted by the fact that former patients steadfastly refused to assist investigators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In October 1939, Inez was finally indicted for tax evasion by a grand jury, for the years 1935 and 1936. She pleaded guilty and was fined $10,000, plus an undisclosed additional sum to settle the case. At the time, Judge Harold Louderback noted: “Never in my history on the federal bench has so little information been given the court. For some reason, there seems to be a great reluctance to tell what Mrs. Burns’ business was.” (Her business cards described her only as a “Designer.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13828983']It was after the war that Inez’s old methods of keeping authorities at bay started to become ineffective. The SFPD had undergone major personnel changes to eradicate widespread corruption. And in 1944, a new district attorney arrived and went to war with the seedier aspects of San Francisco life. Edmund “Pat” Brown (future governor of California and father to Governor Jerry Brown) prosecuted bookies and madams in the Tenderloin. He took licenses away from the rowdiest bars, and he set his sights on Inez to make an example out of her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown joined forces with Police Inspector Frank Ahern to go after Inez. Ahern proved impossible to pay off, though Inez tried heartily to do so. Despite Brown and Ahern amassing enormous files of evidence against Inez, a 1945 grand jury refused to indict her. Her luck ran out at the end of that year, however, when a judge announced that Inez and her faithful staff would be tried for felony conspiracy to commit abortion and practicing medicine without a license. It was the beginning of the end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown and Ahern had hundreds of thousands of dollars they had confiscated from Inez’s home and clinic. They had notebooks containing the names of thousands of patients and what each of them had paid. They had case history charts and receipts for medical supplies. They even found two women willing to speak about services they’d received from Inez. Part-time clinic employees Madeline Rand, Virginia Westrup and Kathryn Bartram agreed to testify against Inez and other employees in exchange for having the charges against them dropped.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13923668\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13923668\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/GettyImages-1201272584-800x1024.jpg\" alt=\"A woman with neat brown hair and a balding man bend down to assist a woman who has fainted and is on the floor.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1024\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Madeline Rand (left), prosecution witness at the Inez Burns trial in San Francisco, and Inspector Edward Penaat assist Kathryn Bartram, surprise prosecution witness who collapsed during a recess in the trial. Bartram allegedly witnessed abortions at 327 Fillmore Street when she was employed there as an anesthetist from 1934-1936. \u003ccite>(Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Despite the mountain of evidence, it took three trials for Brown to get a conviction against Inez and her employees. During the first trial, nine male and five female jurors found themselves deadlocked after days of deliberation. The second trial ended similarly with eight women and four men failing to agree on a verdict. Brown wasn’t about to back down, and in September 1946, a third trial resulted in guilty verdicts for Inez and four of her employees. Bail was successfully secured for the appeals portion of the trial, but after the court of appeals denied Inez and her cohorts a new trial and California’s Supreme Court refused to hear the case, Inez and her friends were sent to prison. Each served 29 months and were released in November 1950.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]nez’s legal woes were far from over. In 1951, she was fined $10,000 and sentenced to a year and a day in a federal prison camp for income tax evasion (for the year 1944). Inez was released after nine months but was caught performing abortions shortly afterwards and sent straight back to prison. She was aged 66 at the time and served another 25 months. During that sentence, she was forced to testify before a San Francisco grand jury. Authorities were trying to convict figures suspected of receiving bribes from Inez. During her testimony, Inez gave nothing up, denying ever paying anyone off and seemingly relishing being back in the spotlight. After her time on the stand, she told waiting reporters, “My, I’ve had a wonderful time!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13902628']Inez was released from her final prison sentence in January of 1956. When more tax evasion charges emerged two months later, she had nothing left to offer the government. All of her properties, except for her Guerrero Street home, had already been seized by the IRS. Her son Bobby and his wife had frittered away half a million dollars Inez had left with them for safekeeping. She was broke. By that time also, Inez was so ravaged by arthritis, she could no longer perform abortions, though many women continued to seek out her services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout all of her legal troubles, Burns remained dedicated to his wife. The two remained in their Guerrero Street house until 1973 — the same year that Roe v. Wade finally gave all American women the right to choose. At that time, both in their eighties, Inez and Burns moved to a convalescent home in Moss Beach. Inez died three years later at the age of 87.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inez’s commitment to the safekeeping of women’s bodily autonomy was perhaps best summed up by Burns. “Inez is an artist,” her husband told reporters during one of her trials. “That’s her trade and she won’t quit it. She’s doing a service to the public. Saving people from shame and disgrace.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">Y\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>ou don’t notice it unless you’re actively looking: The two-story grey-blue building on Fillmore with tasteful gold trim, just steps away from Haight Street. Today, it’s just another well appointed, two-apartment home. But a century ago, it was the most in-demand abortion clinic in San Francisco: a clean and sterile place run by a defiant woman who was unapologetic about her profession, and unafraid of the authorities who came after her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her name was Inez Burns. And for almost three decades, she helped tens of thousands of women take charge of their own bodies and their own futures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inez knew a little something about seizing control of her own destiny. She was born in September 1886 inside a rear tenement apartment in SoMa — then San Francisco’s gangland. Her father was an alcoholic cigar salesman who died at 39. Her mother was a cold, neglectful woman who fought with her fists and took Inez out of school after sixth grade so the child could work alongside her four siblings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Inez’s formative years made her tough, but never brittle. The natural beauty dedicated her spare time to self-improvement with an eye on clawing her way out of poverty. Inez taught herself to read well, hiding books away from her mother who considered them a waste of time. Inez learned how to walk and talk like a lady. And when she secured herself a job at the Palace Hotel at age 17, she learned to flirt like a lady as well. Inez worked as a manicurist at the hotel’s barber shop, polishing the nails of the most well-to-do men in San Francisco. She was so charming and such a good listener, her customers were prone to lavishing her with extra cash and expensive gifts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of Inez’s most adoring customers was a doctor named Eugene West who began an affair with her when she was 18. A year later, he offered Inez a job at his clinic, paying her twice what she made at the barbershop. West also covered her rent at Elmer House, a women’s rooming establishment at 324 Bush St. Within three months of starting at West’s clinic, Inez became a medical assistant and began aiding her lover in performing illegal abortions. Inez was a quick study and soon noticed that West sometimes performed sloppy work and didn’t always show his patients the care that Inez felt they were due.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After she got pregnant by another suitor named G.W. Merritt, Inez left West’s clinic, stealing a set of medical instruments as she went. Soon after, tragedy struck with the 1906 earthquake — an event that left Inez with only the dress on her back, the hat on her head and the surgical instruments she had taken from West. It wasn’t long before she needed to put them to use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While residing alongside 40,000 other earthquake refugees in Golden Gate Park, Inez encountered seven women who were all desperate for help. One was unmarried, and six were unsure how they’d feed another mouth under the dire circumstances. Inez successfully performed abortions on each of them in the park, carefully sterilizing her instruments before and after each procedure. Though Inez offered her services for free, all women insisted on compensating her in some way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After five weeks of residing in the park, Merritt persuaded Inez to move to Pittsburgh with him to start a new life there. Inez agreed but languished on the East Coast, working for a pittance in a pickle factory. Despite Merritt’s relationship with a younger woman there, Inez bore him two children, George and Bobby. When Bobby was two, Inez managed to save enough money to escape back to San Francisco, forced by Merritt to leave George behind. The boy would return to Inez’s care only when he turned 18.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in San Francisco, Inez quickly embraced her inner spirit of independence and went to work performing abortions at clinics around the city, all owned by men. Within months she had enough money to start her own facility — one that she operated out of a series of homes in the city, including two in the Excelsior. Unlike many of the other abortion centers in the city at the time, Inez never advertised her services. She didn’t need to. Word quickly spread around the city about Inez’s impeccably clean clinic — one in which women felt safe, cared for and out of the clutches of exploitative male practitioners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13923672\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13923672\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/20230112_143737-scaled-e1673569766549-800x1067.jpg\" alt=\"A two-floor home with garage underneath.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1067\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/20230112_143737-scaled-e1673569766549-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/20230112_143737-scaled-e1673569766549-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/20230112_143737-scaled-e1673569766549-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/20230112_143737-scaled-e1673569766549-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/20230112_143737-scaled-e1673569766549-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/20230112_143737-scaled-e1673569766549-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/20230112_143737-scaled-e1673569766549.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Fillmore Street building where Inez Burns once operated her abortion clinic.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>t was in 1921 that Inez moved her clinic to 327 Fillmore Street, an eight-bedroom home with three bathrooms. She painstakingly designed the waiting room there to resemble a high-end tea room, with polished floors, Tiffany lamps and sumptuous rugs. Smoking was not permitted and talking was discouraged unless between nurses and patients. Inez installed an outdoor concrete incinerator for medical waste and a secret staircase that led to a back alley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Assisting her at the clinic was a discreet team of nurses and a utility man named Joe Hoff — a former bellboy Inez had befriended at the Palace Hotel. Hoff also assisted Inez in scaring off mobsters who sporadically attempted to extort her. Inez’s business was widely considered to be the worst-kept secret in San Francisco, but making weekly payoffs to SFPD officers and politicians kept her doors open. Inez also kept a list of trustworthy physicians on call who could assist her with procedures that resulted in complications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inez’s services came at a price. Officially, abortions performed by her within the first eight weeks of pregnancy cost $50 (about $880 in today’s money). After that, services went up to $80 (about $1400 now). Despite this, many patients found Inez willing to perform procedures for whatever amount of money they had on hand. For truly dire cases, she charged nothing at all. In one case, she handed a patient with six children an envelope of money and advised her to leave her husband.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Inez was making more money than she knew what to do with. With most procedures taking just 15-20 minutes, she quickly amassed a fortune. She built a home at 274 Guerrero St. — an address that delighted Inez because 274 happened to be the California penal code that outlawed abortion. Inez also purchased properties around the city (including one on Waller Street that doubled as a recovery center) and in La Honda and San Mateo County. She used five different aliases to do so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13923671\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13923671\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Inez-Home-Guerrero-800x722.jpg\" alt=\"A two-story rectangular home with four identical windows on the top floors and a five curved windows protruding from the building on the lower level. Large neat hedges grow in front of the home.\" width=\"800\" height=\"722\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Inez-Home-Guerrero-800x722.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Inez-Home-Guerrero-1020x921.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Inez-Home-Guerrero-160x144.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Inez-Home-Guerrero-768x693.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Inez-Home-Guerrero-1536x1387.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Inez-Home-Guerrero-1920x1733.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/Inez-Home-Guerrero.jpg 1964w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Guerrero Street home that Inez Burns kept until 1973. \u003ccite>(Rae Alexandra)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Inez enjoyed living lavishly, with a lively social life and fierce shopping habit. She bought a limo and hired a driver, doted on her two Pomeranians and kept regular appointments with astrologers. She underwent three plastic surgery operations: One to remove two ribs, another to remove the bones in her pinky toes and finally a facelift in her later years. Still, Inez had so much cash, she took to sewing money into drapes, burying it in lockboxes and hiding it in secret panels around her properties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Inez’s business grew, so did complications in her love life. She married William Brown in 1915, after having a son (also named William) with him. After Brown died in 1921, Inez married Charlie Granelli, with whom she had a daughter, Alice. In 1927, while Granelli was out of the country on business, Inez fell in love with an assemblyman named Joe Burns. By then, because Inez was already an infamous figure in the city, the love triangle made for salacious headlines. Inez was granted a divorce from Granelli in May 1928 and went on to marry Burns in 1932. The couple stayed together for the rest of their lives, though the relationship was frequently an open one in which fiery disagreements were not uncommon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>nez’s legal troubles started in 1936, when her financial situation finally came under scrutiny by the authorities. Still, she proved to be a slippery woman to pin down. She had so many informants scattered around the city, she got tipped off and was able to clear her properties before every raid. On one occasion, Inez was so indignant when police arrived that she kicked an inspector in the shins. Efforts to hold her legally accountable after one successful 1938 raid were thwarted by the fact that former patients steadfastly refused to assist investigators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In October 1939, Inez was finally indicted for tax evasion by a grand jury, for the years 1935 and 1936. She pleaded guilty and was fined $10,000, plus an undisclosed additional sum to settle the case. At the time, Judge Harold Louderback noted: “Never in my history on the federal bench has so little information been given the court. For some reason, there seems to be a great reluctance to tell what Mrs. Burns’ business was.” (Her business cards described her only as a “Designer.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>It was after the war that Inez’s old methods of keeping authorities at bay started to become ineffective. The SFPD had undergone major personnel changes to eradicate widespread corruption. And in 1944, a new district attorney arrived and went to war with the seedier aspects of San Francisco life. Edmund “Pat” Brown (future governor of California and father to Governor Jerry Brown) prosecuted bookies and madams in the Tenderloin. He took licenses away from the rowdiest bars, and he set his sights on Inez to make an example out of her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown joined forces with Police Inspector Frank Ahern to go after Inez. Ahern proved impossible to pay off, though Inez tried heartily to do so. Despite Brown and Ahern amassing enormous files of evidence against Inez, a 1945 grand jury refused to indict her. Her luck ran out at the end of that year, however, when a judge announced that Inez and her faithful staff would be tried for felony conspiracy to commit abortion and practicing medicine without a license. It was the beginning of the end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown and Ahern had hundreds of thousands of dollars they had confiscated from Inez’s home and clinic. They had notebooks containing the names of thousands of patients and what each of them had paid. They had case history charts and receipts for medical supplies. They even found two women willing to speak about services they’d received from Inez. Part-time clinic employees Madeline Rand, Virginia Westrup and Kathryn Bartram agreed to testify against Inez and other employees in exchange for having the charges against them dropped.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13923668\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13923668\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/01/GettyImages-1201272584-800x1024.jpg\" alt=\"A woman with neat brown hair and a balding man bend down to assist a woman who has fainted and is on the floor.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1024\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Madeline Rand (left), prosecution witness at the Inez Burns trial in San Francisco, and Inspector Edward Penaat assist Kathryn Bartram, surprise prosecution witness who collapsed during a recess in the trial. Bartram allegedly witnessed abortions at 327 Fillmore Street when she was employed there as an anesthetist from 1934-1936. \u003ccite>(Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Despite the mountain of evidence, it took three trials for Brown to get a conviction against Inez and her employees. During the first trial, nine male and five female jurors found themselves deadlocked after days of deliberation. The second trial ended similarly with eight women and four men failing to agree on a verdict. Brown wasn’t about to back down, and in September 1946, a third trial resulted in guilty verdicts for Inez and four of her employees. Bail was successfully secured for the appeals portion of the trial, but after the court of appeals denied Inez and her cohorts a new trial and California’s Supreme Court refused to hear the case, Inez and her friends were sent to prison. Each served 29 months and were released in November 1950.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>nez’s legal woes were far from over. In 1951, she was fined $10,000 and sentenced to a year and a day in a federal prison camp for income tax evasion (for the year 1944). Inez was released after nine months but was caught performing abortions shortly afterwards and sent straight back to prison. She was aged 66 at the time and served another 25 months. During that sentence, she was forced to testify before a San Francisco grand jury. Authorities were trying to convict figures suspected of receiving bribes from Inez. During her testimony, Inez gave nothing up, denying ever paying anyone off and seemingly relishing being back in the spotlight. After her time on the stand, she told waiting reporters, “My, I’ve had a wonderful time!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Inez was released from her final prison sentence in January of 1956. When more tax evasion charges emerged two months later, she had nothing left to offer the government. All of her properties, except for her Guerrero Street home, had already been seized by the IRS. Her son Bobby and his wife had frittered away half a million dollars Inez had left with them for safekeeping. She was broke. By that time also, Inez was so ravaged by arthritis, she could no longer perform abortions, though many women continued to seek out her services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout all of her legal troubles, Burns remained dedicated to his wife. The two remained in their Guerrero Street house until 1973 — the same year that Roe v. Wade finally gave all American women the right to choose. At that time, both in their eighties, Inez and Burns moved to a convalescent home in Moss Beach. Inez died three years later at the age of 87.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inez’s commitment to the safekeeping of women’s bodily autonomy was perhaps best summed up by Burns. “Inez is an artist,” her husband told reporters during one of her trials. “That’s her trade and she won’t quit it. She’s doing a service to the public. Saving people from shame and disgrace.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n 1949, Marie Mason Potts took on a role that would transform the latter half of her life. She became editor of \u003cem>Smoke Signal, \u003c/em>the first newspaper in California to be written, edited and controlled exclusively by Indigenous Americans. Potts took over just as a new, post-war wave of Native American activism was swelling. And what she did with the paper for the next 30 years would indelibly impact the lives of countless Indigenous people all over America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Smoke Signal\u003c/em> was first established by Potts’ youngest daughter, Kitty Flores, on behalf of the Federated Indians of California (FIC). Its first issue published in January 1948, when Flores was just 22. When Flores was forced to relocate for her husband’s job, Potts — who had contributed to the paper for the past 18 months — wasn’t about to let \u003cem>Smoke Signal\u003c/em> fall out of print. She remained dedicated to it, even during times of personal crisis, for the rest of her life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Smoke Signal’\u003c/em>s initial goal was to unify disparate Indigenous communities so that they could work together as one force. “In Unity, There is Strength” its masthead declared, issue after issue. However, the longer Potts worked on the paper, the more embedded she became in every aspect of Indigenous activism — something she had already been involved with since her teens. Potts’ work at the paper ultimately transcended the normal commitments of a reporter or editor, and stretched into the realms of personal advice and legal assistance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13882943']When \u003cem>Smoke Signal’\u003c/em>s readers were struggling to deal with government officials or institutions, Potts sent them the forms they needed, instructions on how to file them and a list of official contacts who might be able to assist with land claims, civil rights issues and other legal battles. Potts’ willingness to be so hands-on provided essential support for Native communities in California — but her impact was much wider.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Smoke Signal’\u003c/em>s longevity was due not just to Potts’ knowledge and dedication to its readers, but to how successfully the paper reflected the communities it was serving. Potts recognized that writing about activism alone would not hold a large enough audience’s attention. So alongside news, analysis and regular columns, she made sure there were notices of obituaries, births and events — and, crucially, not a small amount of humor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“An Indian was being interviewed for a position,” one \u003cem>Smoke Signal\u003c/em> joke read. “Among the questions asked was, ‘Do you know a foreign language?’ His reply was: ‘Yes. English.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]P[/dropcap]otts knew the importance of levity during dark times. Indeed, she had endured plenty of her own. Potts was born in Big Meadow, Plumas County, the ancestral lands of the Northern Maidu. Today, we know it as Taylorsville, a name given to the area by white settlers during the Gold Rush. Potts’ birth, in fact, was the result of a rape committed by a white prospector. On the subject of her biological father and others like him, Potts once said, “They called the child a half-breed. I don’t know why they were ashamed of fathering a child. But that’s white society for you. My father was one of those sons o’ bitches.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At five years old, Potts was enrolled — terrified and convinced she would be murdered — at the government-operated Greenville Indian School. She attended alongside several cousins and her older sister and brother. (The three siblings were given the last name Mason while attending.) By the time Potts had graduated from Pennsylvania’s Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1915, she had no homeland to return to. Big Meadow had been submerged under a new hydroelectric reservoir, \u003ca href=\"https://www.lakealmanorarea.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Lake Almanor\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Potts never recovered from the loss of her homeland. But she captured its splendor in \u003cem>The Northern Maidu\u003c/em>, a book Potts wrote in 1971 to leave a permanent record of how her people had lived.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>How wonderful it was, lying awake at night sometimes, to hear the coyotes bark and the hoot owls uttering their calls among the trees. Sometimes there would be the running clatter of squirrels on the bark slabs above us; and in spring and summer, just as it grew light before the sun rose, there came the enchantment of the bird chorus, the orchestra of the Great Spirit all around us. That clean pine smell on the morning wind — where can we find it now?\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Though Carlisle was an institution founded on ideas of settler colonialism, Potts thoroughly enjoyed her time there. She was an eager student and a social butterfly who thrived because she was able to connect with Indigenous people from all over the country. Her circle of girlfriends included women from the Chippewa, Cherokee, Pomo, Cayuga, Konkow and Pawnee nations. Carlisle was also where Potts cultivated an interest in journalism, while contributing to the school’s two newspapers, the \u003cem>Arrow \u003c/em>and the\u003cem> Red Man.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13889944']Shortly after graduation, Potts married Hensley Henry Potts, of the Konkow nation. (“A branch of the Maidu, but we didn’t speak the same Indian language,” she later explained.) The couple quickly got to work building their family. Raising children would dominate the next two decades for Potts. The couple’s first daughter, Josephine, arrived in 1916. Then came Jeanne in 1918, William in 1920, Nora in 1921, Pansy in 1922 and Kitty in 1924.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the Potts’ large family, however, came much tragedy. William died in infancy, Kitty was killed in a car crash in her mid-twenties, and Josephine passed on before she’d reached the age of 30. Potts found great comfort in her 20 grandchildren and, of course, in fighting to improve the lives of those that remained around her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]O[/dropcap]nce her children were grown, Potts had more time to dedicate to her personal passions. She moved to Sacramento in 1942 and went to work lecturing at Sacramento State about her heritage, Native American history and cultural preservation. She gave speeches all over the country about Indigenous issues — and her years raising a family came in handy. That background enabled her to talk to groups of small children and at youth groups, after she’d given speeches at civic organizations and churches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Potts’ commitment to \u003cem>Smoke Signal\u003c/em> spurred on her activism everywhere else. Starting in 1950, she chaired the “Indian exhibit” at the California State Fair. During the Korean and Vietnam Wars, she ensured Native American veterans, and those still fighting overseas, received free copies of the newspaper. In the ‘60s, she was western regional vice president of the California League for American Indians, an organization that helped Indigenous people access higher education. She also assisted the National Congress of American Indians with their community outreach and activism. She planned and attended countless Indigenous conferences, providing detailed summaries of each for \u003cem>Smoke Signal\u003c/em> readers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13870041']When Potts’ grandson (one of Pansy’s children) took part in the occupation of Alcatraz, not only did she spend time on the island with him and his fellow protesters, she actively assisted them. She printed their “\u003ca href=\"https://libguides.uml.edu/c.php?g=945022&p=6878950#:~:text=Proclamation%20to%20the%20Great%20White,Indians%20by%20right%20of%20discovery.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Proclamation to the Great White Father and All His People\u003c/a>” on the front page of \u003cem>Smoke Signal,\u003c/em> along with a list of supplies and equipment that the occupiers needed. She helped to distribute and collect petitions in support of the occupation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as Potts knew the importance of providing humor alongside the news in \u003cem>Smoke Signal\u003c/em>, she also understood that joy and revelry were useful tools in the struggle. In addition to traveling with Maidu dancers to demonstrate traditional dances and explain their significance to others, Potts had also enthusiastically assisted in bringing back the annual Bear Dance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003cem>The Northern Maidu\u003c/em>, Potts explained:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>From ancient times, the Maidu observed a Spring ceremony which took place when the first edible shoots came through the ground … It was an offering of thanks for having survived the winter, as well as an appeasement, not only to the bear spirits, but to the rattlesnakes … The grizzly bear was a symbol of life to us. If he had survived the winter, so had the tribe.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>It was after traveling to the Bear Dance in Janesville in June 1978 that Potts’ spirit took the “no looking back” journey to the great “unknown.” The location felt fated. It was just 25 miles from Potts’ birthplace in Susanville. She was 83. When Potts died, \u003cem>Smoke Signal\u003c/em> died with her. But the paper’s legacy lives on — a testament to a life lived passionately, thoughtfully and in a near-constant state of service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Marie Mason Potts blurred the lines between journalism and community organizing — but she knew the importance of humor too. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>n 1949, Marie Mason Potts took on a role that would transform the latter half of her life. She became editor of \u003cem>Smoke Signal, \u003c/em>the first newspaper in California to be written, edited and controlled exclusively by Indigenous Americans. Potts took over just as a new, post-war wave of Native American activism was swelling. And what she did with the paper for the next 30 years would indelibly impact the lives of countless Indigenous people all over America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Smoke Signal\u003c/em> was first established by Potts’ youngest daughter, Kitty Flores, on behalf of the Federated Indians of California (FIC). Its first issue published in January 1948, when Flores was just 22. When Flores was forced to relocate for her husband’s job, Potts — who had contributed to the paper for the past 18 months — wasn’t about to let \u003cem>Smoke Signal\u003c/em> fall out of print. She remained dedicated to it, even during times of personal crisis, for the rest of her life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Smoke Signal’\u003c/em>s initial goal was to unify disparate Indigenous communities so that they could work together as one force. “In Unity, There is Strength” its masthead declared, issue after issue. However, the longer Potts worked on the paper, the more embedded she became in every aspect of Indigenous activism — something she had already been involved with since her teens. Potts’ work at the paper ultimately transcended the normal commitments of a reporter or editor, and stretched into the realms of personal advice and legal assistance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>When \u003cem>Smoke Signal’\u003c/em>s readers were struggling to deal with government officials or institutions, Potts sent them the forms they needed, instructions on how to file them and a list of official contacts who might be able to assist with land claims, civil rights issues and other legal battles. Potts’ willingness to be so hands-on provided essential support for Native communities in California — but her impact was much wider.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Smoke Signal’\u003c/em>s longevity was due not just to Potts’ knowledge and dedication to its readers, but to how successfully the paper reflected the communities it was serving. Potts recognized that writing about activism alone would not hold a large enough audience’s attention. So alongside news, analysis and regular columns, she made sure there were notices of obituaries, births and events — and, crucially, not a small amount of humor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“An Indian was being interviewed for a position,” one \u003cem>Smoke Signal\u003c/em> joke read. “Among the questions asked was, ‘Do you know a foreign language?’ His reply was: ‘Yes. English.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">P\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>otts knew the importance of levity during dark times. Indeed, she had endured plenty of her own. Potts was born in Big Meadow, Plumas County, the ancestral lands of the Northern Maidu. Today, we know it as Taylorsville, a name given to the area by white settlers during the Gold Rush. Potts’ birth, in fact, was the result of a rape committed by a white prospector. On the subject of her biological father and others like him, Potts once said, “They called the child a half-breed. I don’t know why they were ashamed of fathering a child. But that’s white society for you. My father was one of those sons o’ bitches.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At five years old, Potts was enrolled — terrified and convinced she would be murdered — at the government-operated Greenville Indian School. She attended alongside several cousins and her older sister and brother. (The three siblings were given the last name Mason while attending.) By the time Potts had graduated from Pennsylvania’s Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1915, she had no homeland to return to. Big Meadow had been submerged under a new hydroelectric reservoir, \u003ca href=\"https://www.lakealmanorarea.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Lake Almanor\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Potts never recovered from the loss of her homeland. But she captured its splendor in \u003cem>The Northern Maidu\u003c/em>, a book Potts wrote in 1971 to leave a permanent record of how her people had lived.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>How wonderful it was, lying awake at night sometimes, to hear the coyotes bark and the hoot owls uttering their calls among the trees. Sometimes there would be the running clatter of squirrels on the bark slabs above us; and in spring and summer, just as it grew light before the sun rose, there came the enchantment of the bird chorus, the orchestra of the Great Spirit all around us. That clean pine smell on the morning wind — where can we find it now?\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Though Carlisle was an institution founded on ideas of settler colonialism, Potts thoroughly enjoyed her time there. She was an eager student and a social butterfly who thrived because she was able to connect with Indigenous people from all over the country. Her circle of girlfriends included women from the Chippewa, Cherokee, Pomo, Cayuga, Konkow and Pawnee nations. Carlisle was also where Potts cultivated an interest in journalism, while contributing to the school’s two newspapers, the \u003cem>Arrow \u003c/em>and the\u003cem> Red Man.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Shortly after graduation, Potts married Hensley Henry Potts, of the Konkow nation. (“A branch of the Maidu, but we didn’t speak the same Indian language,” she later explained.) The couple quickly got to work building their family. Raising children would dominate the next two decades for Potts. The couple’s first daughter, Josephine, arrived in 1916. Then came Jeanne in 1918, William in 1920, Nora in 1921, Pansy in 1922 and Kitty in 1924.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the Potts’ large family, however, came much tragedy. William died in infancy, Kitty was killed in a car crash in her mid-twenties, and Josephine passed on before she’d reached the age of 30. Potts found great comfort in her 20 grandchildren and, of course, in fighting to improve the lives of those that remained around her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">O\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>nce her children were grown, Potts had more time to dedicate to her personal passions. She moved to Sacramento in 1942 and went to work lecturing at Sacramento State about her heritage, Native American history and cultural preservation. She gave speeches all over the country about Indigenous issues — and her years raising a family came in handy. That background enabled her to talk to groups of small children and at youth groups, after she’d given speeches at civic organizations and churches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Potts’ commitment to \u003cem>Smoke Signal\u003c/em> spurred on her activism everywhere else. Starting in 1950, she chaired the “Indian exhibit” at the California State Fair. During the Korean and Vietnam Wars, she ensured Native American veterans, and those still fighting overseas, received free copies of the newspaper. In the ‘60s, she was western regional vice president of the California League for American Indians, an organization that helped Indigenous people access higher education. She also assisted the National Congress of American Indians with their community outreach and activism. She planned and attended countless Indigenous conferences, providing detailed summaries of each for \u003cem>Smoke Signal\u003c/em> readers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>When Potts’ grandson (one of Pansy’s children) took part in the occupation of Alcatraz, not only did she spend time on the island with him and his fellow protesters, she actively assisted them. She printed their “\u003ca href=\"https://libguides.uml.edu/c.php?g=945022&p=6878950#:~:text=Proclamation%20to%20the%20Great%20White,Indians%20by%20right%20of%20discovery.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Proclamation to the Great White Father and All His People\u003c/a>” on the front page of \u003cem>Smoke Signal,\u003c/em> along with a list of supplies and equipment that the occupiers needed. She helped to distribute and collect petitions in support of the occupation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as Potts knew the importance of providing humor alongside the news in \u003cem>Smoke Signal\u003c/em>, she also understood that joy and revelry were useful tools in the struggle. In addition to traveling with Maidu dancers to demonstrate traditional dances and explain their significance to others, Potts had also enthusiastically assisted in bringing back the annual Bear Dance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003cem>The Northern Maidu\u003c/em>, Potts explained:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>From ancient times, the Maidu observed a Spring ceremony which took place when the first edible shoots came through the ground … It was an offering of thanks for having survived the winter, as well as an appeasement, not only to the bear spirits, but to the rattlesnakes … The grizzly bear was a symbol of life to us. If he had survived the winter, so had the tribe.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>It was after traveling to the Bear Dance in Janesville in June 1978 that Potts’ spirit took the “no looking back” journey to the great “unknown.” The location felt fated. It was just 25 miles from Potts’ birthplace in Susanville. She was 83. When Potts died, \u003cem>Smoke Signal\u003c/em> died with her. But the paper’s legacy lives on — a testament to a life lived passionately, thoughtfully and in a near-constant state of service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Blind Chef Who Brought Mexican Food to the American Masses",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t was the strangest of restaurants. Situated on the top floor of a Green Street apartment building, diners were asked to leave their coats in a bedroom, walk through the kitchen to get to a table, and take a seat in one of four small, separate dining rooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, customers came from all over San Francisco, lining up in the hallway for a chance to eat at Elena Zelayeta’s apartment. Her cheese-stuffed green peppers, enchiladas and chilies rellenos were the stuff of legend around the city. And, if not for the depression, there’s a good chance no one would ever have tasted them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13906189']When 1930 began, Zelayeta was working as a secretary and her husband of five years, Lorenzo, was employed as a structural engineer. As soon as the depression hit, they both lost their jobs and had to scramble to support their four-year-old son, Lawrence. Zelayeta came up with the idea of opening a restaurant. She had learned to cook as a child from her Spanish mother and the chefs who worked at her parents’ hotel in El Mineral del Oro, a small mining town on the outskirts of Pachuca, Mexico. Concerned about being a good wife, Zelayeta had honed her culinary skills carefully after getting married.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once Zelayeta started inviting the public into her home, the 32-year-old immediately took on a punishing schedule. She worked seven days a week, rising at 5 a.m. each day and working until midnight. It wasn’t easy, but Zelayeta greatly appreciated her faithful clientele. Not only was Mexican cuisine in general not yet popular with white diners, but hostilities towards Latinos were at an all-time high due to the national work shortage. Zelayeta’s cooking skills were enough to silence the skeptical and attract a diverse group of customers. At her restaurant’s peak popularity, she prepared and served over 100 meals a day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zelayeta’s faith and bravery had paid off. She would soon need more of both.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ithin three years of opening her apartment doors, Zelayeta’s popularity outgrew the space. She reopened her restaurant in a more formal setting: the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kinggeorge.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">King George Hotel\u003c/a> near Union Square. This time it had a name: Elena’s Mexican Village. By all accounts, it was a vibrant, colorful place to spend an evening. Zelayeta herself was known to emerge from the kitchen, greet people and dance joyfully through the dining room, much to customers’ delight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13909738']A twist of fate arrived in 1934. Zelayeta had been left with permanent eye damage after suffering a bout of scarlet fever as an infant. The popular chef noticed her eyes beginning to fall out of focus; she stopped being able to recognize customers at the restaurant until they were within inches. Zelayeta finally visited a doctor, who told her the situation was hopeless. A detached retina and severe cataract were about to render her blind, and there was no way to stop it. Compounding Zelayeta’s fears at the time was something else — she was pregnant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Zelayeta lost her sight, she fell into a deep depression. “At first I was in darkness,” she said later. “I had watched my sight go. I would look in the mirror, and gradually I saw my image growing dimmer and dimmer.” A few days after going completely blind, in total despair, Zelayeta attempted to throw herself from her seventh-story apartment window. Lorenzo caught her in the act and pulled her back from the ledge. Two months later, her second son was born. “Billy’s coming was like an Easter for me,” Zelayeta recognized later. “Not just a birth, but a rebirth.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the period after going blind was a tough one for Zelayeta. When she left the restaurant in the hands of other chefs, diners slowly stopped coming. At home, Zelayeta slowly learned how to live without sight while also fighting a deep depression. “For two years I was in the dark,” she said in a 1944 interview. “Then I said to myself, ‘Elena, you aren’t being anything but a burden to your family.’ So I changed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zelayeta decided to live as she had before her sight loss. Gradually, she taught herself to cook again, relying on her sense of touch and smell to re-master her favorite dishes. She timed how long things had been in the oven based on radio programming. She started inviting more guests over, and attended movies and dances. She found silver linings in her sight loss. “To me, people cannot age,” she said later. “I can see them as I saw them 10 years ago. Young, pretty, never growing old.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1944, Zelayeta turned a major corner. She began teaching cookery classes at the San Francisco Center for the Blind. That same year, the chef wrote and released her first book, \u003cem>Elena’s Famous Mexican and Spanish Recipes.\u003c/em> The tome included many of the dishes she had served in her restaurant, and her warm personality was a constant presence throughout. In her introduction, she noted that “All recipes have been thoroughly tested. All carry my wishes for \u003cem>buena suerte\u003c/em>!” The book was an immediate success and went on to sell half a million copies. Zelayeta was finally able to pay off the debts she’d accrued after she lost the restaurant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13906222']Zelayeta’s status as the only blind cooking teacher in the United States meant that her skills stayed in demand. At the invitation of the Mexican government, she visited Mexico City and established a rehabilitation program for people who had lost their sight. She also traveled all over America teaching blind students how to prepare their own meals. One of the things that made Zelayeta such a great teacher was her wicked sense of humor, captured in a 1950 Chicago Tribune story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Elena rocks with glee when she tells the story of the young lad who had just been blinded and was so despondent he wouldn’t bathe,” the paper reported. “Elena was going to see that he bathed, if she had to do the job herself. She escorted the boy to the bathroom while he protested in embarrassment. ‘What’s the difference — we’re both blind as bats!’ she jollied him.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]S[/dropcap]adly, in 1945, tragedy struck Zelayeta’s life once more. Her husband Lorenzo was killed in a catastrophic collision on Bayshore Highway when his car was flipped by a Greyhound bus. (\u003ca href=\"https://casetext.com/case/zelayeta-v-pacific-greyhound-lines\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Zelayeta would later win $75,000 in a wrongful death lawsuit\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her grief, recovery and many experiences teaching blind students inspired Zelayeta’s second book, 1947’s \u003cem>Elena’s Lessons in Living\u003c/em>. It proved so uplifting and full of comforting wisdom, Zelayeta found herself inundated by strangers with personal questions and requests for advice — some of whom would show up to her home and knock on her door. She began speaking regularly at women’s clubs. Around this time, the president of Mexico even decorated Zelayeta for her “service to humanity.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By 1950, Zelayeta was considered the foremost authority on Mexican cooking in America. So it made sense when a brand new San Francisco television station, KGO-TV, asked her to host her own show. She was the first Latina with a televised cooking show in the United States. For 15 minutes every Friday, \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/189406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fun to Eat with Elena\u003c/a> \u003c/em>announced its arrival with a catchy jingle and an image of her two books. During the show, her son Billy regularly appeared to fetch things from around the kitchen for her. Somebody had to. Every week, too, the crew attached strings to Zelayeta’s ankles and pulled on them to let her know which direction to turn for the camera.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zelayeta’s ambitions grew further. In 1951, she opened \u003cem>Elena’s Food Specialties\u003c/em>, a frozen food enterprise run by her son Lawrence out of a building on South Van Ness in the Mission. The new affordability of home freezers allowed Zelayeta’s food to be enjoyed anywhere there were people with iceboxes. When not busy with her own company, she also served as a consultant to Lawry’s Foods Inc. in the development of Mexican products.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13894842']As if that weren’t enough to keep Zelayeta busy, three more cookbooks followed. In 1952, \u003cem>Elena’s Fiesta Recipes\u003c/em> featured dishes she cooked for her own family. In 1958, \u003cem>Elena’s Secrets of Mexican Cooking\u003c/em> arrived and was hailed the “definitive volume on the subject” by the New York Times. The year 1967 brought \u003cem>Elena’s Favorite Foods, California\u003c/em> Style, a reflection on how Mexican and American cuisines had successfully mingled together. Somehow, Zelayeta also found time to write a memoir, titled simply \u003cem>Elena\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Elena Zelayeta died in 1974 at the age of 76, following a stroke. Today, though her books are hard to find and her legacy has been largely forgotten, her influence looms large on Mexican food in Northern California. Perhaps even more importantly, Zelayeta lived her life as the very picture of creative resilience. She overcame tough odds again and again, and never lost her infectious smile, sharp sense of humor or desire to help others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many of us want everyone to adjust to us,” she said in a 1950 interview. “We should begin with ourselves. There is little we can do about others. But there is much we can do to improve ourselves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>t was the strangest of restaurants. Situated on the top floor of a Green Street apartment building, diners were asked to leave their coats in a bedroom, walk through the kitchen to get to a table, and take a seat in one of four small, separate dining rooms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, customers came from all over San Francisco, lining up in the hallway for a chance to eat at Elena Zelayeta’s apartment. Her cheese-stuffed green peppers, enchiladas and chilies rellenos were the stuff of legend around the city. And, if not for the depression, there’s a good chance no one would ever have tasted them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>When 1930 began, Zelayeta was working as a secretary and her husband of five years, Lorenzo, was employed as a structural engineer. As soon as the depression hit, they both lost their jobs and had to scramble to support their four-year-old son, Lawrence. Zelayeta came up with the idea of opening a restaurant. She had learned to cook as a child from her Spanish mother and the chefs who worked at her parents’ hotel in El Mineral del Oro, a small mining town on the outskirts of Pachuca, Mexico. Concerned about being a good wife, Zelayeta had honed her culinary skills carefully after getting married.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once Zelayeta started inviting the public into her home, the 32-year-old immediately took on a punishing schedule. She worked seven days a week, rising at 5 a.m. each day and working until midnight. It wasn’t easy, but Zelayeta greatly appreciated her faithful clientele. Not only was Mexican cuisine in general not yet popular with white diners, but hostilities towards Latinos were at an all-time high due to the national work shortage. Zelayeta’s cooking skills were enough to silence the skeptical and attract a diverse group of customers. At her restaurant’s peak popularity, she prepared and served over 100 meals a day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zelayeta’s faith and bravery had paid off. She would soon need more of both.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">W\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>ithin three years of opening her apartment doors, Zelayeta’s popularity outgrew the space. She reopened her restaurant in a more formal setting: the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kinggeorge.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">King George Hotel\u003c/a> near Union Square. This time it had a name: Elena’s Mexican Village. By all accounts, it was a vibrant, colorful place to spend an evening. Zelayeta herself was known to emerge from the kitchen, greet people and dance joyfully through the dining room, much to customers’ delight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>A twist of fate arrived in 1934. Zelayeta had been left with permanent eye damage after suffering a bout of scarlet fever as an infant. The popular chef noticed her eyes beginning to fall out of focus; she stopped being able to recognize customers at the restaurant until they were within inches. Zelayeta finally visited a doctor, who told her the situation was hopeless. A detached retina and severe cataract were about to render her blind, and there was no way to stop it. Compounding Zelayeta’s fears at the time was something else — she was pregnant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Zelayeta lost her sight, she fell into a deep depression. “At first I was in darkness,” she said later. “I had watched my sight go. I would look in the mirror, and gradually I saw my image growing dimmer and dimmer.” A few days after going completely blind, in total despair, Zelayeta attempted to throw herself from her seventh-story apartment window. Lorenzo caught her in the act and pulled her back from the ledge. Two months later, her second son was born. “Billy’s coming was like an Easter for me,” Zelayeta recognized later. “Not just a birth, but a rebirth.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the period after going blind was a tough one for Zelayeta. When she left the restaurant in the hands of other chefs, diners slowly stopped coming. At home, Zelayeta slowly learned how to live without sight while also fighting a deep depression. “For two years I was in the dark,” she said in a 1944 interview. “Then I said to myself, ‘Elena, you aren’t being anything but a burden to your family.’ So I changed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zelayeta decided to live as she had before her sight loss. Gradually, she taught herself to cook again, relying on her sense of touch and smell to re-master her favorite dishes. She timed how long things had been in the oven based on radio programming. She started inviting more guests over, and attended movies and dances. She found silver linings in her sight loss. “To me, people cannot age,” she said later. “I can see them as I saw them 10 years ago. Young, pretty, never growing old.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1944, Zelayeta turned a major corner. She began teaching cookery classes at the San Francisco Center for the Blind. That same year, the chef wrote and released her first book, \u003cem>Elena’s Famous Mexican and Spanish Recipes.\u003c/em> The tome included many of the dishes she had served in her restaurant, and her warm personality was a constant presence throughout. In her introduction, she noted that “All recipes have been thoroughly tested. All carry my wishes for \u003cem>buena suerte\u003c/em>!” The book was an immediate success and went on to sell half a million copies. Zelayeta was finally able to pay off the debts she’d accrued after she lost the restaurant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Zelayeta’s status as the only blind cooking teacher in the United States meant that her skills stayed in demand. At the invitation of the Mexican government, she visited Mexico City and established a rehabilitation program for people who had lost their sight. She also traveled all over America teaching blind students how to prepare their own meals. One of the things that made Zelayeta such a great teacher was her wicked sense of humor, captured in a 1950 Chicago Tribune story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Elena rocks with glee when she tells the story of the young lad who had just been blinded and was so despondent he wouldn’t bathe,” the paper reported. “Elena was going to see that he bathed, if she had to do the job herself. She escorted the boy to the bathroom while he protested in embarrassment. ‘What’s the difference — we’re both blind as bats!’ she jollied him.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">S\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>adly, in 1945, tragedy struck Zelayeta’s life once more. Her husband Lorenzo was killed in a catastrophic collision on Bayshore Highway when his car was flipped by a Greyhound bus. (\u003ca href=\"https://casetext.com/case/zelayeta-v-pacific-greyhound-lines\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Zelayeta would later win $75,000 in a wrongful death lawsuit\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her grief, recovery and many experiences teaching blind students inspired Zelayeta’s second book, 1947’s \u003cem>Elena’s Lessons in Living\u003c/em>. It proved so uplifting and full of comforting wisdom, Zelayeta found herself inundated by strangers with personal questions and requests for advice — some of whom would show up to her home and knock on her door. She began speaking regularly at women’s clubs. Around this time, the president of Mexico even decorated Zelayeta for her “service to humanity.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By 1950, Zelayeta was considered the foremost authority on Mexican cooking in America. So it made sense when a brand new San Francisco television station, KGO-TV, asked her to host her own show. She was the first Latina with a televised cooking show in the United States. For 15 minutes every Friday, \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/189406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fun to Eat with Elena\u003c/a> \u003c/em>announced its arrival with a catchy jingle and an image of her two books. During the show, her son Billy regularly appeared to fetch things from around the kitchen for her. Somebody had to. Every week, too, the crew attached strings to Zelayeta’s ankles and pulled on them to let her know which direction to turn for the camera.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zelayeta’s ambitions grew further. In 1951, she opened \u003cem>Elena’s Food Specialties\u003c/em>, a frozen food enterprise run by her son Lawrence out of a building on South Van Ness in the Mission. The new affordability of home freezers allowed Zelayeta’s food to be enjoyed anywhere there were people with iceboxes. When not busy with her own company, she also served as a consultant to Lawry’s Foods Inc. in the development of Mexican products.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>As if that weren’t enough to keep Zelayeta busy, three more cookbooks followed. In 1952, \u003cem>Elena’s Fiesta Recipes\u003c/em> featured dishes she cooked for her own family. In 1958, \u003cem>Elena’s Secrets of Mexican Cooking\u003c/em> arrived and was hailed the “definitive volume on the subject” by the New York Times. The year 1967 brought \u003cem>Elena’s Favorite Foods, California\u003c/em> Style, a reflection on how Mexican and American cuisines had successfully mingled together. Somehow, Zelayeta also found time to write a memoir, titled simply \u003cem>Elena\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Elena Zelayeta died in 1974 at the age of 76, following a stroke. Today, though her books are hard to find and her legacy has been largely forgotten, her influence looms large on Mexican food in Northern California. Perhaps even more importantly, Zelayeta lived her life as the very picture of creative resilience. She overcame tough odds again and again, and never lost her infectious smile, sharp sense of humor or desire to help others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Many of us want everyone to adjust to us,” she said in a 1950 interview. “We should begin with ourselves. There is little we can do about others. But there is much we can do to improve ourselves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "rosalie-ritz-courtroom-artist-huey-newton-patty-hearst-black-panthers-upstairs-gallery-oakland",
"title": "The Courtroom Sketch Artist Who Immortalized Bay Area Revolutionaries",
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"headTitle": "The Courtroom Sketch Artist Who Immortalized Bay Area Revolutionaries | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n 1969, Rosalie Ritz’s frank take on Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin was controversial. Ritz, the sketch artist at \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sirhan B. Sirhan\u003c/a>‘s trial, described him after the fact as “the only honest man” in the courtroom. “It was my first experience with a revolutionary,” she told the \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> shortly after the guilty verdict came down. “Of course it was pointless—all killing is pointless. You have to be nutty to do it. But Sirhan knew exactly what he wanted to do and he did it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Sirhan trial was not the only time Ritz came into close contact with a revolutionary. She spent the late-1960s and ’70s covering the trials of Black Panthers including \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13881407/huey-newton-h-rap-brown-stokely-carmichael-speech-1968\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Huey P. Newton\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13891079/the-archivist-and-the-activist-behind-a-new-book-about-angela-davis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Angela Davis\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soledad_Brothers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Soledad Brothers\u003c/a>. She also documented the high profile prosecution of heiress-turned-“urban guerrilla” \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/101956/patty-hearst-how-the-outlaw-heiress-became-a-chameleon\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Patricia Hearst\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, Ritz was one of the most in-demand courtroom sketch artists of the era, providing illustrations for the Associated Press, CBS News, KPIX, KNXT and, yes, KQED. She was known to make up to 21 drawings a day in court and could sketch an entire jury in minutes. Ritz was also an accomplished writer who took readers behind the scenes. This article she wrote for the \u003cem>Los Angeles Free Press\u003c/em> used the Patricia Hearst trial to highlight the overzealous security Ritz had experienced at similarly high profile cases involving Black defendants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13917966\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13917966\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/08/Los-Angeles-Free-Press-10-75-RR-800x920.png\" alt=\"A newspaper article titled 'Near Mayhem—Tight Security.' '\" width=\"800\" height=\"920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/08/Los-Angeles-Free-Press-10-75-RR-800x920.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/08/Los-Angeles-Free-Press-10-75-RR-1020x1173.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/08/Los-Angeles-Free-Press-10-75-RR-160x184.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/08/Los-Angeles-Free-Press-10-75-RR-768x883.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/08/Los-Angeles-Free-Press-10-75-RR.png 1148w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ritz wrote and illustrated several articles for the ‘Los Angeles Free Press’ during the high-profile trial of Patricia Hearst. \u003ccite>(Los Angeles Free Press, Oct. 1975)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Ritz didn’t just have a front-row seat to one of the most turbulent eras in Bay Area history—she had the talent and determination to share it with the rest of the world. “It’s never as tough as you think it is,” she once said, “if you act from strength, not from fear, and you speak the truth to power.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That Ritz wasn’t shy about offering her opinions about the events of the day made her work all the more compelling. When Sirhan was sentenced to death, she said, “I am unutterably opposed to the death penalty. It seems vengeful to me. I think anyone who attends a lot of trials would feel very strongly on this point.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of Huey P. Newton, she shared: “Huey Newton was a very attractive young man and most intelligent. I learned a lot about social conditions from that trial … It was really awakening. Everyone was impressed by him—you couldn’t help but be.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13904183']When \u003ca href=\"http://peter-barnes.org/article/the-presidio-mutiny/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">14 soldiers were tried for mutiny\u003c/a> after participating in a peaceful demonstration against the Vietnam War, Ritz was clear about whose side she was on. “I feel very sorry for those 14 young men,” she told the \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em>. “They all have low IQs, they are very young and vulnerable and not one of them, in my opinion, would be capable of initiating anything like a mutiny. The fact that [the Army] would even take such young men into the service strikes you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]R[/dropcap]itz was brave, willful and outspoken from a very young age—possibly the result of being the seventh of 10 children, all of whom lost their father at an early age. (Ritz was just 9.) At 14, Ritz’s prodigious artistic skills allowed her to attend art college in Milwaukee. At 16, she hit the road with her big sister’s ID, alongside four other young women, and earned money for her family making portraits of people at circuses, fairs and other community events across the midwest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After graduating from Layton Art College, Ritz married a Navy officer (and future accountant) named Erwin in 1946, and had four daughters, Sandy, Barbara, Terry and Janet. The family’s home life was a happy one, full of painting, laughter and dance. (“She and my dad were like Fred and Ginger,” Sandy tells KQED Arts today.) The couple, together for more than 60 years, was also athletic—Ritz was an excellent golfer who competed in amateur championships.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was in 1966 that the Ritz family relocated to Walnut Creek from Washington D.C. Ritz was already established as a courtroom artist with a vibrant, vigorous style, having landed her first job at the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. Speaking to the \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> 15 years after the fact, Ritz recalled: “Somebody I knew there knew Joe McCarthy, so I went to his office and asked if I could attend his closed Senate hearings. I just started sketching while I was there and when I came out of the room, [a TV station] offered to buy the sketches. That started it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What kept it going was Ritz’s tenacity and people skills. On the first day of Huey P. Newton’s trial, Ritz successfully talked her way into the courtroom, despite the fact that she’d not yet been issued a press pass. That there were also 3,000 protesters outside made her entrance all the more miraculous. Later, she was permitted to visit Newton in a holding cell to draw him—a privilege not afforded to any other court reporters. It probably helped that she understood fundamentally what the Black Panthers were trying to do. “These were people who really believed in doing the right thing,” she later said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13881675']Despite Ritz’s commitment to covering the toughest, most high-profile cases of her day, the trials sometimes took their toll. Ritz’s daughter Sandy describes her mom’s days in court as “often stressful to her psyche. The mass murderers, violent outbreaks, the injustices, the racism. The work was challenging.” But, Sandy continues, “She always knew the historical significance of what she was doing, and was passionate about it. She knew that she was the eyes for the world. She knew that her work was the only pictorial record of history occurring in California at that time, and she was often the first and only reporter in the courtroom for some trials.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was this knowledge that impacted Ritz’s decision to retain ownership of all of her own artwork. Though it would have earned her a better living, she never sold her courtroom sketches—only the use of them. After her death from lung cancer in 2008, Ritz donated more than \u003ca href=\"https://oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt8g50226j&doc.view=items&style=oac4&item.position=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">1,800 of her courtroom drawings\u003c/a> to the Bancroft Library at U.C. Berkeley. Sandy and her sisters worked on cataloging and digitizing the collection so the drawings could stand as a public record of some of the most important moments in California history. “Justice was one of her strongest forces,” Sandy recalls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]A[/dropcap]way from the courtroom, Ritz was passionate about making large-scale oil paintings and sculptures, and she always had one eye on the wider Bay Area art community. In 1974, she opened the Upstairs Art Gallery at 927 Broadway alongside fellow artists, Thomas Bray and Edy Keeler. Opening a gallery in Oakland was extremely important to Ritz. She recognized that the Bay Area arts scene—including the organizations responsible for handing out grants and funding—was focused almost exclusively on San Francisco. And she desperately wanted to change that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My opinion of Oakland is that it is a very beautiful city,” Ritz told the \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> in 1974. “[Its neglect] is due to snobbery of people around Oakland, and we let them get away with it. What we’re going to do is start saying ‘The Oakland San Francisco Bay Area’ and they’ll complement one another.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ritz was also determined that the Upstairs Gallery should be warm and welcoming for all people. She believed that the large art institutions in the Bay could be off-putting for everybody but the elite. “People don’t relate to it because it’s for people dressed in fancy clothes,” she once said of the \u003ca href=\"https://museumca.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Oakland Museum\u003c/a>. With that in mind, Ritz and her friends lovingly restored the Upstairs Gallery space, including a 100-year-old fireplace. (“These buildings are museum pieces and I think they should be saved,” she said at the time.) The \u003ca href=\"https://www.betheden.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Beth Eden Baptist Church\u003c/a> choir performed at the gallery opening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13916612']Though the Upstairs Gallery was a scrappy endeavor once described by the \u003cem>Tribune\u003c/em> as a “struggling, always dollar-short art colony above a pawn shop,” Ritz successfully made the impact on the arts scene that she had hoped for. In 1979, when the City of Oakland and the Labor Department awarded federal unemployment seed money to the Oakland art community for the first time, it went to Ritz and the Upstairs Gallery. She used the $100,000 check to hire staff artists at $700 a month. (That’s about $4,200 in 2022 money.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the gallery was inundated with applicants, Ritz told the \u003cem>Tribune\u003c/em>: “It was shocking, and a good indication this city has deeper problems than it realizes. It’s not only the tradesmen, the unskilled, the young people, minorities, or the ex-felons who can’t find jobs. It’s right here in our cultural midst.” Ritz pledged to help as many of the non-successful candidates as she could, seeking out other outlets that might offer art-related jobs in Oakland. “Oakland can’t afford to lose them to other cities,” she said of the artists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, Rosalie Ritz approached everything she did with a full-hearted determination that enabled her to live life on her own terms \u003cem>and\u003c/em> in a way that sought to benefit others. Her uncompromising vision—for both her art and her Bay Area communities—drove her to leave her mark on the world. And at the end of her life, she knew that she had.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just had a wonderful life,” Ritz said. “It was a great ride. I always had a smile because I did what I wanted to do. I interpreted the world in drawings, in writing. I had a good time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Rosalie Ritz illustrated Patty Hearst's and the Black Panthers' trials. But she also helped put Oakland's art scene on the map. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>n 1969, Rosalie Ritz’s frank take on Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin was controversial. Ritz, the sketch artist at \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sirhan B. Sirhan\u003c/a>‘s trial, described him after the fact as “the only honest man” in the courtroom. “It was my first experience with a revolutionary,” she told the \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> shortly after the guilty verdict came down. “Of course it was pointless—all killing is pointless. You have to be nutty to do it. But Sirhan knew exactly what he wanted to do and he did it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Sirhan trial was not the only time Ritz came into close contact with a revolutionary. She spent the late-1960s and ’70s covering the trials of Black Panthers including \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13881407/huey-newton-h-rap-brown-stokely-carmichael-speech-1968\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Huey P. Newton\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13891079/the-archivist-and-the-activist-behind-a-new-book-about-angela-davis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Angela Davis\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soledad_Brothers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Soledad Brothers\u003c/a>. She also documented the high profile prosecution of heiress-turned-“urban guerrilla” \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/101956/patty-hearst-how-the-outlaw-heiress-became-a-chameleon\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Patricia Hearst\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, Ritz was one of the most in-demand courtroom sketch artists of the era, providing illustrations for the Associated Press, CBS News, KPIX, KNXT and, yes, KQED. She was known to make up to 21 drawings a day in court and could sketch an entire jury in minutes. Ritz was also an accomplished writer who took readers behind the scenes. This article she wrote for the \u003cem>Los Angeles Free Press\u003c/em> used the Patricia Hearst trial to highlight the overzealous security Ritz had experienced at similarly high profile cases involving Black defendants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13917966\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13917966\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/08/Los-Angeles-Free-Press-10-75-RR-800x920.png\" alt=\"A newspaper article titled 'Near Mayhem—Tight Security.' '\" width=\"800\" height=\"920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/08/Los-Angeles-Free-Press-10-75-RR-800x920.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/08/Los-Angeles-Free-Press-10-75-RR-1020x1173.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/08/Los-Angeles-Free-Press-10-75-RR-160x184.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/08/Los-Angeles-Free-Press-10-75-RR-768x883.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/08/Los-Angeles-Free-Press-10-75-RR.png 1148w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ritz wrote and illustrated several articles for the ‘Los Angeles Free Press’ during the high-profile trial of Patricia Hearst. \u003ccite>(Los Angeles Free Press, Oct. 1975)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Ritz didn’t just have a front-row seat to one of the most turbulent eras in Bay Area history—she had the talent and determination to share it with the rest of the world. “It’s never as tough as you think it is,” she once said, “if you act from strength, not from fear, and you speak the truth to power.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That Ritz wasn’t shy about offering her opinions about the events of the day made her work all the more compelling. When Sirhan was sentenced to death, she said, “I am unutterably opposed to the death penalty. It seems vengeful to me. I think anyone who attends a lot of trials would feel very strongly on this point.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of Huey P. Newton, she shared: “Huey Newton was a very attractive young man and most intelligent. I learned a lot about social conditions from that trial … It was really awakening. Everyone was impressed by him—you couldn’t help but be.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>When \u003ca href=\"http://peter-barnes.org/article/the-presidio-mutiny/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">14 soldiers were tried for mutiny\u003c/a> after participating in a peaceful demonstration against the Vietnam War, Ritz was clear about whose side she was on. “I feel very sorry for those 14 young men,” she told the \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em>. “They all have low IQs, they are very young and vulnerable and not one of them, in my opinion, would be capable of initiating anything like a mutiny. The fact that [the Army] would even take such young men into the service strikes you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">R\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>itz was brave, willful and outspoken from a very young age—possibly the result of being the seventh of 10 children, all of whom lost their father at an early age. (Ritz was just 9.) At 14, Ritz’s prodigious artistic skills allowed her to attend art college in Milwaukee. At 16, she hit the road with her big sister’s ID, alongside four other young women, and earned money for her family making portraits of people at circuses, fairs and other community events across the midwest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After graduating from Layton Art College, Ritz married a Navy officer (and future accountant) named Erwin in 1946, and had four daughters, Sandy, Barbara, Terry and Janet. The family’s home life was a happy one, full of painting, laughter and dance. (“She and my dad were like Fred and Ginger,” Sandy tells KQED Arts today.) The couple, together for more than 60 years, was also athletic—Ritz was an excellent golfer who competed in amateur championships.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was in 1966 that the Ritz family relocated to Walnut Creek from Washington D.C. Ritz was already established as a courtroom artist with a vibrant, vigorous style, having landed her first job at the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. Speaking to the \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> 15 years after the fact, Ritz recalled: “Somebody I knew there knew Joe McCarthy, so I went to his office and asked if I could attend his closed Senate hearings. I just started sketching while I was there and when I came out of the room, [a TV station] offered to buy the sketches. That started it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What kept it going was Ritz’s tenacity and people skills. On the first day of Huey P. Newton’s trial, Ritz successfully talked her way into the courtroom, despite the fact that she’d not yet been issued a press pass. That there were also 3,000 protesters outside made her entrance all the more miraculous. Later, she was permitted to visit Newton in a holding cell to draw him—a privilege not afforded to any other court reporters. It probably helped that she understood fundamentally what the Black Panthers were trying to do. “These were people who really believed in doing the right thing,” she later said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Despite Ritz’s commitment to covering the toughest, most high-profile cases of her day, the trials sometimes took their toll. Ritz’s daughter Sandy describes her mom’s days in court as “often stressful to her psyche. The mass murderers, violent outbreaks, the injustices, the racism. The work was challenging.” But, Sandy continues, “She always knew the historical significance of what she was doing, and was passionate about it. She knew that she was the eyes for the world. She knew that her work was the only pictorial record of history occurring in California at that time, and she was often the first and only reporter in the courtroom for some trials.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was this knowledge that impacted Ritz’s decision to retain ownership of all of her own artwork. Though it would have earned her a better living, she never sold her courtroom sketches—only the use of them. After her death from lung cancer in 2008, Ritz donated more than \u003ca href=\"https://oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt8g50226j&doc.view=items&style=oac4&item.position=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">1,800 of her courtroom drawings\u003c/a> to the Bancroft Library at U.C. Berkeley. Sandy and her sisters worked on cataloging and digitizing the collection so the drawings could stand as a public record of some of the most important moments in California history. “Justice was one of her strongest forces,” Sandy recalls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">A\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>way from the courtroom, Ritz was passionate about making large-scale oil paintings and sculptures, and she always had one eye on the wider Bay Area art community. In 1974, she opened the Upstairs Art Gallery at 927 Broadway alongside fellow artists, Thomas Bray and Edy Keeler. Opening a gallery in Oakland was extremely important to Ritz. She recognized that the Bay Area arts scene—including the organizations responsible for handing out grants and funding—was focused almost exclusively on San Francisco. And she desperately wanted to change that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My opinion of Oakland is that it is a very beautiful city,” Ritz told the \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> in 1974. “[Its neglect] is due to snobbery of people around Oakland, and we let them get away with it. What we’re going to do is start saying ‘The Oakland San Francisco Bay Area’ and they’ll complement one another.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ritz was also determined that the Upstairs Gallery should be warm and welcoming for all people. She believed that the large art institutions in the Bay could be off-putting for everybody but the elite. “People don’t relate to it because it’s for people dressed in fancy clothes,” she once said of the \u003ca href=\"https://museumca.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Oakland Museum\u003c/a>. With that in mind, Ritz and her friends lovingly restored the Upstairs Gallery space, including a 100-year-old fireplace. (“These buildings are museum pieces and I think they should be saved,” she said at the time.) The \u003ca href=\"https://www.betheden.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Beth Eden Baptist Church\u003c/a> choir performed at the gallery opening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Though the Upstairs Gallery was a scrappy endeavor once described by the \u003cem>Tribune\u003c/em> as a “struggling, always dollar-short art colony above a pawn shop,” Ritz successfully made the impact on the arts scene that she had hoped for. In 1979, when the City of Oakland and the Labor Department awarded federal unemployment seed money to the Oakland art community for the first time, it went to Ritz and the Upstairs Gallery. She used the $100,000 check to hire staff artists at $700 a month. (That’s about $4,200 in 2022 money.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the gallery was inundated with applicants, Ritz told the \u003cem>Tribune\u003c/em>: “It was shocking, and a good indication this city has deeper problems than it realizes. It’s not only the tradesmen, the unskilled, the young people, minorities, or the ex-felons who can’t find jobs. It’s right here in our cultural midst.” Ritz pledged to help as many of the non-successful candidates as she could, seeking out other outlets that might offer art-related jobs in Oakland. “Oakland can’t afford to lose them to other cities,” she said of the artists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, Rosalie Ritz approached everything she did with a full-hearted determination that enabled her to live life on her own terms \u003cem>and\u003c/em> in a way that sought to benefit others. Her uncompromising vision—for both her art and her Bay Area communities—drove her to leave her mark on the world. And at the end of her life, she knew that she had.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just had a wonderful life,” Ritz said. “It was a great ride. I always had a smile because I did what I wanted to do. I interpreted the world in drawings, in writing. I had a good time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>After Vivian Osborne graduated from high school in 1914, she applied to study anthropology at U.C. Berkeley. A gifted student, she had earned outstanding grades at both Berkeley High and, prior to that, Houston High School.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it wasn’t enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13950520']At the time, U.C. Berkeley refused to admit any student who had been schooled even partially in Southern states unless that student also passed four additional entrance exams. Osborne completed only two — she was excused from the last couple because her results on the first two were so good. So exceptional, in fact, that her example prompted Berkeley to permanently scrap its discriminatory policies against students from the South.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was just the first time that Vivian would transform U.C. Berkeley for the better. Not only was Vivian the first Black woman to ever major in anthropology at the university, she was also one of the first two women to earn a master’s degree there. (The other was Belinda Davison Mabson.) Vivian’s master’s thesis, titled “\u003ca href=\"https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3807566&view=1up&seq=1\">Types and Distribution of Negro Folklore in America\u003c/a>,” successfully argued that many American children’s classics were, in fact, stories that originated in Africa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In America alone,” she wrote, “stories that the Negro brought over from Africa with him have either been preserved in their native forms, worked entirely over … or are altered in order to suit the surroundings.” She earned High Honors for her research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was while working toward her master’s degree that Vivian founded the first Black sorority at Berkeley, modeling the Kappa chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority after the one founded at Howard University in 1913. Like the original, the Kappa chapter was dedicated to both “academic excellence and social service.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vivian acted as the sorority’s first president. By that time, Vivian understood implicitly the power garnered from working in organized groups. Throughout her academic life, she had been a member of the Phillis Wheatley Club — part of the California State Association for Colored Women, of which Vivian would be elected president in 1941.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Vivian graduated in 1922, she embraced a life of activism, public service and leadership full-time. She and her new husband, Leon F. Marsh, lived in Berkeley, and their home on Grant Street quickly became a crucial hub for community organizers and political groups. Vivian was involved with so many, it’s genuinely hard to keep track of them all. It seems if there was a club actively fighting racism, sexism or both, Vivian was in it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13926548']Through her association with the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, she became active with the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, which was focused on civil rights and improving conditions for the Black community. Vivian was a member of the YWCA and the Berkeley Women’s Civic Club.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1928, she became director of the Oakland junior branch of the NAACP — she would work alongside the anti-racist organization in one way or another for the rest of her life. And in 1929, Vivian established the Omega Sigma Alumnae Chapter so that U.C. Berkeley women could continue their involvement in Delta Sigma Theta after they’d graduated. (She was Omega Sigma’s first president.) In fact, Vivian’s work for the sorority never ceased. In 1948, she and her sister Bessie founded the Patroness Club — a group of women who acted as mother figures to female pledges who were far from home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1931, while serving as secretary for the Northern Board of the California Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, Vivian fought hard to stop a racist bill that would have segregated children in recreational areas. The proposed law was written in response to a battle in Los Angeles to integrate public pools. Letters co-written by Vivian were reproduced in full in The Oakland Tribune as part of Delilah Beasley’s “Activities Among Negroes” column.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One letter to Frederick M. Roberts, the first African American man to be elected to the California State Assembly read:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Dear Sir: The California Federation of Colored Women’s clubs … on the 6th day of January 1931, have unanimously gone on record as protesting the passage of the discriminatory act sponsored by the League of California Municipalities. This bill proposes to discriminate against colored boys and girls by setting aside for them certain hours and days in public playgrounds and swimming pools. Speaking for the thousands of colored voters, we petition you to use your best efforts before the legislature to prevent the passage of this bill.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The legislation was defeated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Later in the decade, Vivian campaigned relentlessly at universities and women’s clubs to help get anti-lynching legislation passed. In 1938, the \u003cem>California Eagle\u003c/em> newspaper reported on a lecture-reception Vivian was hosting: “Her appearance in Los Angeles is expected to draw throngs and ovations similar to that received in the South,” it wrote, “especially at Fisk University where [writer and civil rights activist] James Weldon Johnson gave up his scheduled appearance in order that students might hear her.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13931436']\u003cem>The Eagle\u003c/em> quoted Vivian as saying, “If we keep constantly demanding of our senators that they vote for it, the [Wagner-Van Nuys-Gavagan anti-lynching] bill will be passed. Many of them are coming up for reelection and women’s auxiliaries should know those who supported the measure and use their vote accordingly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The anti-lynching bill ultimately failed to pass after four senators from Texas, Georgia and Florida filibustered for 30 days straight to block it. But the frustrating failure did nothing to dull Vivian’s fighting spirit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout the 1930s, Vivian was focused on helping young Black people across the nation. As part of her role as Delta Sigma Theta’s national president (1935-’39), she organized a traveling library for children in rural Georgia. Then she created a program called “Teen Lift,” which covered travel and ticket costs for underprivileged Black children to attend operas, symphonies, concerts and other live events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the Great Depression, Vivian was the first Black woman on the West Coast to take on the position of state supervisor of the National Youth Organization (NYO). Working in the Division of Negro Affairs, she was tasked with finding jobs for unemployed people of color between the ages of 16 and 25 and ensuring that other parts of the organization were free from discriminatory practices. At one stage, Vivian wrote to every chamber of commerce across California and requested assistance in finding NYO workers positions in the private sector. Her idea was greeted with flagrantly racist response letters. She later noted “The writers do not know they are writing to a Negro.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The advent of World War II did nothing to slow Vivian down. She took it upon herself to be a unit commander of the Women’s Ambulance and Defense Corps of America. The women were trained in first aid, ambulance driving, nursing, rescue work, radio operations and infantry drills. They also sold war bonds and visited veterans in the hospital. By 1944, Vivian was so revered, she was invited to christen a Navy cargo ship (the SS Ocean Telegraph) in Oakland before it took its maiden voyage. She was elected vice-president of the National Council of Negro Women in 1945, and quickly formed smaller councils in Oakland, Richmond, Fresno and Sacramento to aid in the organization’s civil rights work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the 1950s, Vivian tackled social issues on both the political and personal fronts. An active member of the Republican party, she sat on the Alameda County Republican Central Committee and the State Republican Legislative Council. She also provided her home as a space where Senator Joseph R. Knowland could connect with members of the public. But she was known to offer advice on racial issues to Democrats too, including State Senator Nicholas C. Petris. Later in the decade, Berkeley’s city council appointed her to their Planning Commission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13889944']In the 1950s and ’60s, Vivian worked with her husband to establish fraternal organizations. She helped establish nine lodges, each of which provided scholarship grants to students, and donations of money, food and clothing to members of the community in need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vivian would go on to live her whole life in the house on Grant Street. She and Leon raised two sons there — Roy Curtin Osborne and Leon F. Marsh Jr., who grew up to be a well-respected firefighter in Berkeley. She stayed in the home even after Leon Jr. died in 1956 and Leon Sr. passed in 1968.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vivian made it to age 88. She suffered a stroke in 1986 while at a convention, and passed away soon after. The marks she made on the community were not quickly forgotten, however. In 1981, the city of Berkeley declared Feb. 21 Vivian Osborne Marsh Day — a small token of gratitude for a life spent tirelessly in community service.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>After Vivian Osborne graduated from high school in 1914, she applied to study anthropology at U.C. Berkeley. A gifted student, she had earned outstanding grades at both Berkeley High and, prior to that, Houston High School.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it wasn’t enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>At the time, U.C. Berkeley refused to admit any student who had been schooled even partially in Southern states unless that student also passed four additional entrance exams. Osborne completed only two — she was excused from the last couple because her results on the first two were so good. So exceptional, in fact, that her example prompted Berkeley to permanently scrap its discriminatory policies against students from the South.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was just the first time that Vivian would transform U.C. Berkeley for the better. Not only was Vivian the first Black woman to ever major in anthropology at the university, she was also one of the first two women to earn a master’s degree there. (The other was Belinda Davison Mabson.) Vivian’s master’s thesis, titled “\u003ca href=\"https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3807566&view=1up&seq=1\">Types and Distribution of Negro Folklore in America\u003c/a>,” successfully argued that many American children’s classics were, in fact, stories that originated in Africa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In America alone,” she wrote, “stories that the Negro brought over from Africa with him have either been preserved in their native forms, worked entirely over … or are altered in order to suit the surroundings.” She earned High Honors for her research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was while working toward her master’s degree that Vivian founded the first Black sorority at Berkeley, modeling the Kappa chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority after the one founded at Howard University in 1913. Like the original, the Kappa chapter was dedicated to both “academic excellence and social service.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vivian acted as the sorority’s first president. By that time, Vivian understood implicitly the power garnered from working in organized groups. Throughout her academic life, she had been a member of the Phillis Wheatley Club — part of the California State Association for Colored Women, of which Vivian would be elected president in 1941.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Vivian graduated in 1922, she embraced a life of activism, public service and leadership full-time. She and her new husband, Leon F. Marsh, lived in Berkeley, and their home on Grant Street quickly became a crucial hub for community organizers and political groups. Vivian was involved with so many, it’s genuinely hard to keep track of them all. It seems if there was a club actively fighting racism, sexism or both, Vivian was in it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Through her association with the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, she became active with the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, which was focused on civil rights and improving conditions for the Black community. Vivian was a member of the YWCA and the Berkeley Women’s Civic Club.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1928, she became director of the Oakland junior branch of the NAACP — she would work alongside the anti-racist organization in one way or another for the rest of her life. And in 1929, Vivian established the Omega Sigma Alumnae Chapter so that U.C. Berkeley women could continue their involvement in Delta Sigma Theta after they’d graduated. (She was Omega Sigma’s first president.) In fact, Vivian’s work for the sorority never ceased. In 1948, she and her sister Bessie founded the Patroness Club — a group of women who acted as mother figures to female pledges who were far from home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1931, while serving as secretary for the Northern Board of the California Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, Vivian fought hard to stop a racist bill that would have segregated children in recreational areas. The proposed law was written in response to a battle in Los Angeles to integrate public pools. Letters co-written by Vivian were reproduced in full in The Oakland Tribune as part of Delilah Beasley’s “Activities Among Negroes” column.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One letter to Frederick M. Roberts, the first African American man to be elected to the California State Assembly read:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Dear Sir: The California Federation of Colored Women’s clubs … on the 6th day of January 1931, have unanimously gone on record as protesting the passage of the discriminatory act sponsored by the League of California Municipalities. This bill proposes to discriminate against colored boys and girls by setting aside for them certain hours and days in public playgrounds and swimming pools. Speaking for the thousands of colored voters, we petition you to use your best efforts before the legislature to prevent the passage of this bill.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The legislation was defeated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Later in the decade, Vivian campaigned relentlessly at universities and women’s clubs to help get anti-lynching legislation passed. In 1938, the \u003cem>California Eagle\u003c/em> newspaper reported on a lecture-reception Vivian was hosting: “Her appearance in Los Angeles is expected to draw throngs and ovations similar to that received in the South,” it wrote, “especially at Fisk University where [writer and civil rights activist] James Weldon Johnson gave up his scheduled appearance in order that students might hear her.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cem>The Eagle\u003c/em> quoted Vivian as saying, “If we keep constantly demanding of our senators that they vote for it, the [Wagner-Van Nuys-Gavagan anti-lynching] bill will be passed. Many of them are coming up for reelection and women’s auxiliaries should know those who supported the measure and use their vote accordingly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The anti-lynching bill ultimately failed to pass after four senators from Texas, Georgia and Florida filibustered for 30 days straight to block it. But the frustrating failure did nothing to dull Vivian’s fighting spirit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout the 1930s, Vivian was focused on helping young Black people across the nation. As part of her role as Delta Sigma Theta’s national president (1935-’39), she organized a traveling library for children in rural Georgia. Then she created a program called “Teen Lift,” which covered travel and ticket costs for underprivileged Black children to attend operas, symphonies, concerts and other live events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the Great Depression, Vivian was the first Black woman on the West Coast to take on the position of state supervisor of the National Youth Organization (NYO). Working in the Division of Negro Affairs, she was tasked with finding jobs for unemployed people of color between the ages of 16 and 25 and ensuring that other parts of the organization were free from discriminatory practices. At one stage, Vivian wrote to every chamber of commerce across California and requested assistance in finding NYO workers positions in the private sector. Her idea was greeted with flagrantly racist response letters. She later noted “The writers do not know they are writing to a Negro.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The advent of World War II did nothing to slow Vivian down. She took it upon herself to be a unit commander of the Women’s Ambulance and Defense Corps of America. The women were trained in first aid, ambulance driving, nursing, rescue work, radio operations and infantry drills. They also sold war bonds and visited veterans in the hospital. By 1944, Vivian was so revered, she was invited to christen a Navy cargo ship (the SS Ocean Telegraph) in Oakland before it took its maiden voyage. She was elected vice-president of the National Council of Negro Women in 1945, and quickly formed smaller councils in Oakland, Richmond, Fresno and Sacramento to aid in the organization’s civil rights work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the 1950s, Vivian tackled social issues on both the political and personal fronts. An active member of the Republican party, she sat on the Alameda County Republican Central Committee and the State Republican Legislative Council. She also provided her home as a space where Senator Joseph R. Knowland could connect with members of the public. But she was known to offer advice on racial issues to Democrats too, including State Senator Nicholas C. Petris. Later in the decade, Berkeley’s city council appointed her to their Planning Commission.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In the 1950s and ’60s, Vivian worked with her husband to establish fraternal organizations. She helped establish nine lodges, each of which provided scholarship grants to students, and donations of money, food and clothing to members of the community in need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vivian would go on to live her whole life in the house on Grant Street. She and Leon raised two sons there — Roy Curtin Osborne and Leon F. Marsh Jr., who grew up to be a well-respected firefighter in Berkeley. She stayed in the home even after Leon Jr. died in 1956 and Leon Sr. passed in 1968.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vivian made it to age 88. She suffered a stroke in 1986 while at a convention, and passed away soon after. The marks she made on the community were not quickly forgotten, however. In 1981, the city of Berkeley declared Feb. 21 Vivian Osborne Marsh Day — a small token of gratitude for a life spent tirelessly in community service.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "the-chinatown-nightclub-dancer-who-helped-squash-asian-stereotypes",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n the 1930s, young Asian American women living in San Francisco didn’t have a lot of job prospects. At home, these women often faced limiting cultural expectations. And in the wider non-Asian community, discrimination against them was rife. Secretarial and administration positions were off limits, and even the most beautiful and talented girls couldn’t find regular work as models or actors. For those unwilling to rush into marriage or work manual labor jobs, employment options were few and far between.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After prohibition ended in 1933, however, new opportunities arose. For those brave enough to embrace the thrills and spills of city nightlife, the new bars and nightclubs that began opening all over Chinatown offered jobs. Bold young Asian American women became singers, dancers and showgirls, and entertained packed rooms of diverse audiences. In the process, they helped buck racist stereotypes about Asian Americans common in the Bay Area at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of these women was Mary Mammon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13895374']For the first 16 years of her life, Mammon lived in Clifton, Arizona—a small town that was overwhelmingly white, but still welcoming to her family. When Mammon’s grandmother got sick, her mom—originally from San Francisco—moved Mammon and her five older siblings to the city by the bay. Mammon was immediately struck by how segregated it was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At one time,” she told Arthur Dong for his \u003ca href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28958446-forbidden-city-usa?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=y4gDuKbP6M&rank=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Forbidden City USA\u003c/em>\u003c/a> book, “the boundary line was Broadway. The Italians didn’t cross over to the Chinese side and the Chinese didn’t cross over to that side without causing some sort of fracas … [At] one time, the parks had signs that said ‘No Chinese or dogs allowed.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Faced with few other options, in 1936 Mammon tried her hand as a cocktail waitress at the Chinese Pagoda, situated at 830 Grant Ave. (The bar makes a very brief appearance in the 1960 film \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054197/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Portrait in Black\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.) A popular trend at the time was to have singing wait staff, so Mammon quickly became accustomed to performing. Though never formally trained, she had gravitated towards singing and dancing since she was a little girl. In high school, she was a member of the Glee Club, and a huge fan of Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler. Mammon jumped at the opportunity to perform for an audience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of Mammon’s most popular numbers at the Pagoda was “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJcdNr-WIvA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">A-Tisket-A-Tasket\u003c/a>,” the jazz standard popularized by Ella Fitzgerald. Legend has it that, after seeing Mammon perform it one night, Herb Caen expressed confusion in his \u003cem>Chronicle\u003c/em> column over why an Asian girl would perform such a song. At the time, most Americans had simply never seen people of Asian descent singing anything other than traditional Chinese opera.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mammon actively looked for performing gigs that wouldn’t require her to also wait tables. She reached out to chorus lines across San Francisco and was turned down by all of them. “They didn’t think a Chinese could do it,” she told the \u003cem>Sydney Morning Herald\u003c/em> in 1992. “Most people thought that Blacks had a lot of rhythm and Orientals had none.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13915033\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13915033\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mary-Mammon-C-800x479.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"479\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mary-Mammon-C-800x479.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mary-Mammon-C-1020x610.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mary-Mammon-C-160x96.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mary-Mammon-C-768x459.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mary-Mammon-C-1536x919.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mary-Mammon-C-2048x1225.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mary-Mammon-C-1920x1149.png 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A fashion-forward Mary Mammon is seen at the center of a Forbidden City table in the 1940s. To her right is her friend and dance partner Dottie Sun. On either side of them sit two servicemen and another friend. \u003ccite>('Forbidden City USA' documentary)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In December of 1938, Mammon was finally given the chance to expand her skills when the first Chinese nightclub in America opened at 363 Sutter Street. Its name was Forbidden City, and it was the brainchild of Charlie Low, a bar owner originally from Nevada. Low was encouraged to open the club by his second wife Li Tei Ming—a singer who was looking for stages to perform on. When Mammon auditioned for the second-floor club, she was welcomed with open arms—she was one of the few chorus girls there with any experience at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I shared the tastes of middle America,” Mary said in 1992. “The nightclubs were not a cultural shock to me. They were quite nice. The days of the speakeasy were gone. I mainly remember that we had a lot of fun at Charlie Low’s club, doing what we wanted to do. People were curious about us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The club limped through its first year, struggling to find its tone and audience. But once it did, it inspired a rash of copycats in Chinatown. The Chinese Skyroom, Club Shanghai, Kubla Khan and Lion’s Den all swiftly followed in Forbidden City’s footsteps, offering the same joyful blend of Asian and American cultures. The change in the neighborhood was not welcomed by everyone—and the female performers were judged most harshly of all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13902628']“The Chinese families in San Francisco looked down on such things,” Mammon explained in \u003cem>Forbidden City USA\u003c/em>. “Show your legs out there for people to see? It was unheard of! Girls were taught to grow up and keep house, and we were supposed to get married at a certain time, and we were supposed to know how to take care of a house, and take of the children, and take care of your husband. This was just not part of the Chinese culture.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Arthur Dong’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121292/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">1989 documentary, \u003cem>Forbidden City USA\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, Jadin Wong, one of Mammon’s fellow dancers, recalled: “We used to get letters from Chinese people telling us that we should be ashamed of ourselves doing what we do for a living, dancing in a nightclub.” Singer Frances Chun added: “[It] was shocking for the Chinese community, and confusing for the Caucasian people.” One former patron named Gladys Hu explained that “it was quite a scandalous place to be going, because you had showgirls in skimpy costumes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the midst of it all, Mammon and her friends remained impervious to the criticism and, for the most part, had a ball—despite being underpaid for their labor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]B[/dropcap]y the 1940s, Mammon and her Forbidden City cohorts were nationwide sensations. \u003cem>Life\u003c/em> magazine had garnered the club national attention in 1938 with an article outlining the ways it filled “a local cultural need” in San Francisco. But it was during World War II when word really began to spread, thanks to the servicemen who visited Forbidden City whenever granted leave in the Bay. Once word spread throughout the military, the press was quick to follow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One newsreel of the time introduced Forbidden City’s chorus girls in a beach setting. Wearing traditional Chinese dresses, the women begin the segment with what the newscaster describes as an “age-old dance” in order to “welcome Springtime.” After a few moments, the seemingly demure women run behind a screen, fling off their clothes and emerge gleefully in modern swimsuits for a dance routine on the sand. Each of the Forbidden City dancers looks thrilled to play into, and then flip, the common Asian American stereotypes of the day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13915135\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13915135\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Screen-Shot-2022-06-22-at-3.30.17-PM-800x922.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"922\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Screen-Shot-2022-06-22-at-3.30.17-PM-800x922.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Screen-Shot-2022-06-22-at-3.30.17-PM-160x184.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Screen-Shot-2022-06-22-at-3.30.17-PM-768x886.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Screen-Shot-2022-06-22-at-3.30.17-PM.png 836w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Associated Press picture story about Mary Mammon, titled “Chinatown Girl,” as seen in the Bangor Daily News, July 4, 1941. \u003ccite>(Bangor Daily News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In June of 1941, a syndicated Associated Press article presented a day in the life of Mammon. Chinatown, the report said, “once was reputed to hold all the sins and exotic charms of Old China, but a new generation, modern and American, has sprung up.” After a series of fluffy and frivolous photos of Mammon performing, shopping, eating, studying, sunbathing, and walking through Chinatown in fashionable garb, the story concluded with a salient point.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Tourists may mourn the passing of the old Chinatown customs and fixtures,” it said, “but for Mary and girls like her it has meant emancipation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13897608']The coverage gave Forbidden City yet another boost, and it began attracting celebrities. Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Alfred Hitchcock, John Wayne and Ronald Reagan all paid the club a visit. Now and again, Mammon and other dancers, including Hazel Jay and Dottie Sun, hit the road to show audiences across America what they could do. The \u003cem>Chinese Follies\u003c/em> tour was one such jaunt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the 1950s came a new wave of pop culture icons and a cultural shift that left Forbidden City and other nightclubs like it looking increasingly dated. Low finally sold the club in 1962. By that time, Mammon was a single mom of two sons, having married in 1947 and divorced in 1955. When the club closed, she hung up her dancing shoes and took a grocery clerk job at Safeway. Mammon never lost her love of music, though. In retirement, she sang in choirs and danced at the Berkeley Chinese Senior Center, where she was an active volunteer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mary Mammon died in 2002 at the age of 84, a beloved great-grandmother who never forgot her nightclub days. The determination she showed in her younger years to live life on her own terms was not only an inspiration to other women at the time—it also transformed how white America saw a new generation of Asian Americans. That everyone had such a good time in the process is just the cherry on top.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "The Chinatown Nightclub Dancer Who Helped Squash Asian Stereotypes | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>n the 1930s, young Asian American women living in San Francisco didn’t have a lot of job prospects. At home, these women often faced limiting cultural expectations. And in the wider non-Asian community, discrimination against them was rife. Secretarial and administration positions were off limits, and even the most beautiful and talented girls couldn’t find regular work as models or actors. For those unwilling to rush into marriage or work manual labor jobs, employment options were few and far between.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After prohibition ended in 1933, however, new opportunities arose. For those brave enough to embrace the thrills and spills of city nightlife, the new bars and nightclubs that began opening all over Chinatown offered jobs. Bold young Asian American women became singers, dancers and showgirls, and entertained packed rooms of diverse audiences. In the process, they helped buck racist stereotypes about Asian Americans common in the Bay Area at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of these women was Mary Mammon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>For the first 16 years of her life, Mammon lived in Clifton, Arizona—a small town that was overwhelmingly white, but still welcoming to her family. When Mammon’s grandmother got sick, her mom—originally from San Francisco—moved Mammon and her five older siblings to the city by the bay. Mammon was immediately struck by how segregated it was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At one time,” she told Arthur Dong for his \u003ca href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28958446-forbidden-city-usa?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=y4gDuKbP6M&rank=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Forbidden City USA\u003c/em>\u003c/a> book, “the boundary line was Broadway. The Italians didn’t cross over to the Chinese side and the Chinese didn’t cross over to that side without causing some sort of fracas … [At] one time, the parks had signs that said ‘No Chinese or dogs allowed.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Faced with few other options, in 1936 Mammon tried her hand as a cocktail waitress at the Chinese Pagoda, situated at 830 Grant Ave. (The bar makes a very brief appearance in the 1960 film \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054197/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Portrait in Black\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.) A popular trend at the time was to have singing wait staff, so Mammon quickly became accustomed to performing. Though never formally trained, she had gravitated towards singing and dancing since she was a little girl. In high school, she was a member of the Glee Club, and a huge fan of Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler. Mammon jumped at the opportunity to perform for an audience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of Mammon’s most popular numbers at the Pagoda was “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJcdNr-WIvA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">A-Tisket-A-Tasket\u003c/a>,” the jazz standard popularized by Ella Fitzgerald. Legend has it that, after seeing Mammon perform it one night, Herb Caen expressed confusion in his \u003cem>Chronicle\u003c/em> column over why an Asian girl would perform such a song. At the time, most Americans had simply never seen people of Asian descent singing anything other than traditional Chinese opera.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mammon actively looked for performing gigs that wouldn’t require her to also wait tables. She reached out to chorus lines across San Francisco and was turned down by all of them. “They didn’t think a Chinese could do it,” she told the \u003cem>Sydney Morning Herald\u003c/em> in 1992. “Most people thought that Blacks had a lot of rhythm and Orientals had none.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13915033\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13915033\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mary-Mammon-C-800x479.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"479\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mary-Mammon-C-800x479.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mary-Mammon-C-1020x610.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mary-Mammon-C-160x96.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mary-Mammon-C-768x459.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mary-Mammon-C-1536x919.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mary-Mammon-C-2048x1225.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Mary-Mammon-C-1920x1149.png 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A fashion-forward Mary Mammon is seen at the center of a Forbidden City table in the 1940s. To her right is her friend and dance partner Dottie Sun. On either side of them sit two servicemen and another friend. \u003ccite>('Forbidden City USA' documentary)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In December of 1938, Mammon was finally given the chance to expand her skills when the first Chinese nightclub in America opened at 363 Sutter Street. Its name was Forbidden City, and it was the brainchild of Charlie Low, a bar owner originally from Nevada. Low was encouraged to open the club by his second wife Li Tei Ming—a singer who was looking for stages to perform on. When Mammon auditioned for the second-floor club, she was welcomed with open arms—she was one of the few chorus girls there with any experience at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I shared the tastes of middle America,” Mary said in 1992. “The nightclubs were not a cultural shock to me. They were quite nice. The days of the speakeasy were gone. I mainly remember that we had a lot of fun at Charlie Low’s club, doing what we wanted to do. People were curious about us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The club limped through its first year, struggling to find its tone and audience. But once it did, it inspired a rash of copycats in Chinatown. The Chinese Skyroom, Club Shanghai, Kubla Khan and Lion’s Den all swiftly followed in Forbidden City’s footsteps, offering the same joyful blend of Asian and American cultures. The change in the neighborhood was not welcomed by everyone—and the female performers were judged most harshly of all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“The Chinese families in San Francisco looked down on such things,” Mammon explained in \u003cem>Forbidden City USA\u003c/em>. “Show your legs out there for people to see? It was unheard of! Girls were taught to grow up and keep house, and we were supposed to get married at a certain time, and we were supposed to know how to take care of a house, and take of the children, and take care of your husband. This was just not part of the Chinese culture.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Arthur Dong’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121292/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">1989 documentary, \u003cem>Forbidden City USA\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, Jadin Wong, one of Mammon’s fellow dancers, recalled: “We used to get letters from Chinese people telling us that we should be ashamed of ourselves doing what we do for a living, dancing in a nightclub.” Singer Frances Chun added: “[It] was shocking for the Chinese community, and confusing for the Caucasian people.” One former patron named Gladys Hu explained that “it was quite a scandalous place to be going, because you had showgirls in skimpy costumes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the midst of it all, Mammon and her friends remained impervious to the criticism and, for the most part, had a ball—despite being underpaid for their labor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">B\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>y the 1940s, Mammon and her Forbidden City cohorts were nationwide sensations. \u003cem>Life\u003c/em> magazine had garnered the club national attention in 1938 with an article outlining the ways it filled “a local cultural need” in San Francisco. But it was during World War II when word really began to spread, thanks to the servicemen who visited Forbidden City whenever granted leave in the Bay. Once word spread throughout the military, the press was quick to follow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One newsreel of the time introduced Forbidden City’s chorus girls in a beach setting. Wearing traditional Chinese dresses, the women begin the segment with what the newscaster describes as an “age-old dance” in order to “welcome Springtime.” After a few moments, the seemingly demure women run behind a screen, fling off their clothes and emerge gleefully in modern swimsuits for a dance routine on the sand. Each of the Forbidden City dancers looks thrilled to play into, and then flip, the common Asian American stereotypes of the day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13915135\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13915135\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Screen-Shot-2022-06-22-at-3.30.17-PM-800x922.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"922\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Screen-Shot-2022-06-22-at-3.30.17-PM-800x922.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Screen-Shot-2022-06-22-at-3.30.17-PM-160x184.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Screen-Shot-2022-06-22-at-3.30.17-PM-768x886.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/06/Screen-Shot-2022-06-22-at-3.30.17-PM.png 836w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Associated Press picture story about Mary Mammon, titled “Chinatown Girl,” as seen in the Bangor Daily News, July 4, 1941. \u003ccite>(Bangor Daily News)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In June of 1941, a syndicated Associated Press article presented a day in the life of Mammon. Chinatown, the report said, “once was reputed to hold all the sins and exotic charms of Old China, but a new generation, modern and American, has sprung up.” After a series of fluffy and frivolous photos of Mammon performing, shopping, eating, studying, sunbathing, and walking through Chinatown in fashionable garb, the story concluded with a salient point.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Tourists may mourn the passing of the old Chinatown customs and fixtures,” it said, “but for Mary and girls like her it has meant emancipation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The coverage gave Forbidden City yet another boost, and it began attracting celebrities. Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Alfred Hitchcock, John Wayne and Ronald Reagan all paid the club a visit. Now and again, Mammon and other dancers, including Hazel Jay and Dottie Sun, hit the road to show audiences across America what they could do. The \u003cem>Chinese Follies\u003c/em> tour was one such jaunt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the 1950s came a new wave of pop culture icons and a cultural shift that left Forbidden City and other nightclubs like it looking increasingly dated. Low finally sold the club in 1962. By that time, Mammon was a single mom of two sons, having married in 1947 and divorced in 1955. When the club closed, she hung up her dancing shoes and took a grocery clerk job at Safeway. Mammon never lost her love of music, though. In retirement, she sang in choirs and danced at the Berkeley Chinese Senior Center, where she was an active volunteer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mary Mammon died in 2002 at the age of 84, a beloved great-grandmother who never forgot her nightclub days. The determination she showed in her younger years to live life on her own terms was not only an inspiration to other women at the time—it also transformed how white America saw a new generation of Asian Americans. That everyone had such a good time in the process is just the cherry on top.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n October of 1968, a reporter from the \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> spent an evening inside a third floor office at 345 Franklin Street in San Francisco. By day, the place belonged to an attorney named Vincent Hallinan. After 7pm every Thursday, Hallinan offered his office—free of charge—for America’s very first post-abortion center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The free clinic was a safe space for young women who’d recently undergone illegal abortions and weren’t able see their regular doctors for post-operative care. The clinic also offered free pregnancy tests, birth control prescriptions and advice from a Planned Parenthood volunteer. It was staffed by volunteer gynecologists, a nurse, a receptionist and a lab technician named Pat Maginnis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was Maginnis who had started the clinic. It was she that was the most unapologetic about a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. And it was she that told a waiting room full of young women that night in 1968:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Remember. Your abortion is your business and no one else’s. You have a right to silence guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. Abortions performed outside of the state are not reportable to police.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>By the time the \u003cem>Examiner\u003c/em> paid Maginnis’ clinic a visit, she was already a well-known figure in San Francisco, and a pro-choice thorn in the side of anti-abortionists across the country. In 1962, Maginnis had started the Citizens Committee for Humane Abortion Laws, which was later renamed the Society for Humane Abortion (SHA). In 1964, she co-founded the Association to Repeal Abortion Laws (ARAL), alongside Rowena Gurner and Lana Phelan Kahn. (It was a precursor to today’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NARAL Pro-Choice America\u003c/a>.) Maginnis, Gurner and Kahn were such a force to be reckoned with that they earned the nickname ‘The Army of Three.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912998\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13912998 size-medium\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576-800x814.jpg\" alt=\"Three women wearing 1960s attire sit at a table strewn with papers. One of them holds up a sign that says 'REPEAL ABORTION LAWS'\" width=\"800\" height=\"814\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576-800x814.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576-160x163.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576-768x781.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576.jpg 1007w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pat Maginnis organizing in Sausalito with (center) Anne Treseder who was the executive director of the Society for Humane Abortion, and another campaigner. \u003ccite>(Bettman)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The SHA and ARAL served different purposes, but enabled Maginnis and her likeminded campaigners to achieve goals on both an official and underground basis. Official operations included public campaigning and working diligently to change the laws of the day. Underground activities included the compiling and distribution of lists of safe abortionists, along with how much they charged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maginnis and her colleagues held classes across the United States to teach women how to book an appointment, what to expect and how to prepare for the procedure. Other lessons taught women about reproductive health, anatomy, step-by-step instructions on how to perform abortions at home, and even the best ways to deal with police after an abortion. Bomb threats and protests were not uncommon outside these gatherings and classes often had to be moved at the last minute to private homes, motel rooms, church basements and union halls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Bay Area, Maginnis contended with protests staged by Mothers Outraged at the Murder of Innocents (MOMIS). MOMIS pushed district attorneys all over the region to prosecute Maginnis, to no avail. The D.A.s of San Francisco, Sacramento, Alameda, San Mateo, Sonoma and Santa Clara all refused to penalize Maginnis and her cohort for their work. By the end of the 1960s, local publications had started referring to her as “the Che Guevara of abortion reformers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13913761\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 596px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13913761\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.27.35-PM.png\" alt=\"The white and blue cover of a textbook titled THE ABORTION HANDBOOK.\" width=\"596\" height=\"856\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.27.35-PM.png 596w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.27.35-PM-160x230.png 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 596px) 100vw, 596px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of the publications created by Pat Maginnis and Lana Phelan during their time as abortion educators in a pre-Roe v. Wade America. \u003ccite>(NPR/Courtesy of Andrea Bowers)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]P[/dropcap]atricia Theresa Maginnis’ road to becoming the most prominent pro-choice campaigner of the 1960s was not an easy one. She was compelled to act only after bearing witness, for many years, to the consequences of women being denied access to their own health decisions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of seven children, Maginnis was born in Okarche, a small town outside of Oklahoma City, in 1928. She was raised in dire poverty by a veterinarian father who never escaped the stigma of being born illegitimate, and a mother who endured chronic pain and ailments caused by giving birth so many times. (“My mother would tell you she enjoyed having children,” Maginnis once said. “I didn’t go through childhood with that impression.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1950, Maginnis left a job at the Bureau of Mines and joined the Women’s Army Corps, training as a surgical technologist. After being assigned to a pediatrics and obstetrics ward in Panama, she bore witness to the aftermath of botched abortions and forced births. In 1966, she told the \u003cem>Examiner\u003c/em>: “My first real contact with abortion was in the Army. A woman pregnant by another man and expecting her husband’s return tried to abort herself [and] was hospitalized. The poor thing, who received no sympathy or understanding, became so distraught, a wire cage was placed over her bed. She was held captive like an animal. I still shudder at the memory.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maginnis left her three-year enlistment as a corporal and decided to attend San Jose State College under the G.I. Bill. During her studies there, she got pregnant three times. On the first occasion, she traveled to Mexico for an abortion. She administered the next two on herself at home. After one of them landed her in the hospital, she was asked if she had given herself an abortion. Her response? “Sure I did. Want me to demonstrate how in court?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13911567,arts_13894842,arts_13870056']After Maginnis graduated in 1961, aged 33, she worked nights as a medical technologist. Her late schedule was by design—she needed her days free for pro-choice campaigning. That year, she was arrested for the first time for distributing literature that advised women how to access abortion services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time, Section 601 of the California Business and Professions Code made it a felony to “willfully compose and publish a notice and advertisement of a medicine and means for producing and facilitating a miscarriage and abortion.” Still, the judge at Maginnis’ trial concluded that she had been arrested on grounds that were unconstitutional, and promptly set her free. “Now I can paper the town with leaflets,” Maginnis joyfully announced after the verdict, “and that’s exactly what I plan to do.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was by no means the end of Maginnis’ legal troubles; eight years later, Maginnis found herself convicted again of “willfully writing, composing and advocating abortion techniques.” In 1966, she and Rowena Gurner were arrested in San Mateo after teaching an abortion class. They paid their fines and carried on, unrepentant. Maginnis told the \u003cem>Examiner\u003c/em> shortly afterwards, “It kills me to see these young healthy women be expected to jeopardize their lives for what is a simple, safe surgical procedure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That same year, Dr. Theodore Montgomery of the State Public Health Department stated that the number of legal abortions performed in California was around 500, sanctioned only when the life of the mother was in jeopardy. But Montgomery also estimated that around 100,000 California women were acquiring illegal abortions each year. Significantly, in 1968, the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> reported: “Some leading obstetricians say privately that when they feel they must refuse to abort a patient, they usually send her to Miss Maginnis.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n addition to making her own doctor lists, health guides and abortion handbooks, Maginnis was also fond of drawing satirical cartoons. Many skewered the institutions that sought to deny women control over their reproductive healthcare. Maginnis continued to draw her cartoons after Roe v. Wade, concerned that it hadn’t yet been codified into law and that people were still being denied access to the procedure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13913763\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13913763\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-800x495.png\" alt=\"A cartoon of a sobbing woman, clutching $500 and begging at the feed of three men labeled 'MERCY HOSPITAL/POLITICIAN.' The caption reads: "Please may I have a US Supreme-Court-Approved, Politician Sanctioned, Psychiatrist Rubber-Stamped, Clergy-Counseled, Residency-Investigated, Committee-Inspected Therapueticked, US Health Dept Statistized, Contraceptive-Failure, Religious-Sect-Guilt-Surmounted ABORTION."\" width=\"800\" height=\"495\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-800x495.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-1020x631.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-160x99.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-768x475.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-1536x950.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM.png 1572w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A cartoon by Pat Maginnis lambasting the lengths women had to go to access an abortion—even in 1977, four years after Roe v. Wade. \u003ccite>(Pat Maginnis)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Pat Maginnis stayed dedicated to activism for the rest of her 93 years—animal rights, gay rights and, yes, reproductive rights. Her interest in environmentalism inspired her to take up beekeeping in her 80s. At home, she painted watercolors. Those present at Occupy Oakland in 2011 might recall Maginnis showing up to hand out pea soup and hand-drawn cartoons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13912860']Pat Maginnis died on Aug. 30, 2021, just two days before \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13902723/texas-abortion-sb8-bay-area-activism-artists\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Texas enacted its six-week abortion ban\u003c/a>, SB 8. As America now braces for a future in which Roe v. Wade is overturned and millions of people no longer have legal access to abortion, Maginnis’ legacy is more important than ever. Her tenacity, her boldness, and her willingness to talk candidly about her own abortions may all serve as inspiration to a new generation facing life-stunting healthcare restrictions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These are personal matters, private matters. They don’t concern others—not doctors or judges or boards,” she told the \u003cem>Rapid City Journal\u003c/em> in 1969. “Women have got to fight. They’ve taken this kind of vile abuse too long.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>n October of 1968, a reporter from the \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> spent an evening inside a third floor office at 345 Franklin Street in San Francisco. By day, the place belonged to an attorney named Vincent Hallinan. After 7pm every Thursday, Hallinan offered his office—free of charge—for America’s very first post-abortion center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The free clinic was a safe space for young women who’d recently undergone illegal abortions and weren’t able see their regular doctors for post-operative care. The clinic also offered free pregnancy tests, birth control prescriptions and advice from a Planned Parenthood volunteer. It was staffed by volunteer gynecologists, a nurse, a receptionist and a lab technician named Pat Maginnis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was Maginnis who had started the clinic. It was she that was the most unapologetic about a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. And it was she that told a waiting room full of young women that night in 1968:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Remember. Your abortion is your business and no one else’s. You have a right to silence guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. Abortions performed outside of the state are not reportable to police.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>By the time the \u003cem>Examiner\u003c/em> paid Maginnis’ clinic a visit, she was already a well-known figure in San Francisco, and a pro-choice thorn in the side of anti-abortionists across the country. In 1962, Maginnis had started the Citizens Committee for Humane Abortion Laws, which was later renamed the Society for Humane Abortion (SHA). In 1964, she co-founded the Association to Repeal Abortion Laws (ARAL), alongside Rowena Gurner and Lana Phelan Kahn. (It was a precursor to today’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NARAL Pro-Choice America\u003c/a>.) Maginnis, Gurner and Kahn were such a force to be reckoned with that they earned the nickname ‘The Army of Three.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912998\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13912998 size-medium\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576-800x814.jpg\" alt=\"Three women wearing 1960s attire sit at a table strewn with papers. One of them holds up a sign that says 'REPEAL ABORTION LAWS'\" width=\"800\" height=\"814\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576-800x814.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576-160x163.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576-768x781.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576.jpg 1007w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pat Maginnis organizing in Sausalito with (center) Anne Treseder who was the executive director of the Society for Humane Abortion, and another campaigner. \u003ccite>(Bettman)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The SHA and ARAL served different purposes, but enabled Maginnis and her likeminded campaigners to achieve goals on both an official and underground basis. Official operations included public campaigning and working diligently to change the laws of the day. Underground activities included the compiling and distribution of lists of safe abortionists, along with how much they charged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maginnis and her colleagues held classes across the United States to teach women how to book an appointment, what to expect and how to prepare for the procedure. Other lessons taught women about reproductive health, anatomy, step-by-step instructions on how to perform abortions at home, and even the best ways to deal with police after an abortion. Bomb threats and protests were not uncommon outside these gatherings and classes often had to be moved at the last minute to private homes, motel rooms, church basements and union halls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Bay Area, Maginnis contended with protests staged by Mothers Outraged at the Murder of Innocents (MOMIS). MOMIS pushed district attorneys all over the region to prosecute Maginnis, to no avail. The D.A.s of San Francisco, Sacramento, Alameda, San Mateo, Sonoma and Santa Clara all refused to penalize Maginnis and her cohort for their work. By the end of the 1960s, local publications had started referring to her as “the Che Guevara of abortion reformers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13913761\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 596px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13913761\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.27.35-PM.png\" alt=\"The white and blue cover of a textbook titled THE ABORTION HANDBOOK.\" width=\"596\" height=\"856\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.27.35-PM.png 596w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.27.35-PM-160x230.png 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 596px) 100vw, 596px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of the publications created by Pat Maginnis and Lana Phelan during their time as abortion educators in a pre-Roe v. Wade America. \u003ccite>(NPR/Courtesy of Andrea Bowers)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">P\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>atricia Theresa Maginnis’ road to becoming the most prominent pro-choice campaigner of the 1960s was not an easy one. She was compelled to act only after bearing witness, for many years, to the consequences of women being denied access to their own health decisions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of seven children, Maginnis was born in Okarche, a small town outside of Oklahoma City, in 1928. She was raised in dire poverty by a veterinarian father who never escaped the stigma of being born illegitimate, and a mother who endured chronic pain and ailments caused by giving birth so many times. (“My mother would tell you she enjoyed having children,” Maginnis once said. “I didn’t go through childhood with that impression.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1950, Maginnis left a job at the Bureau of Mines and joined the Women’s Army Corps, training as a surgical technologist. After being assigned to a pediatrics and obstetrics ward in Panama, she bore witness to the aftermath of botched abortions and forced births. In 1966, she told the \u003cem>Examiner\u003c/em>: “My first real contact with abortion was in the Army. A woman pregnant by another man and expecting her husband’s return tried to abort herself [and] was hospitalized. The poor thing, who received no sympathy or understanding, became so distraught, a wire cage was placed over her bed. She was held captive like an animal. I still shudder at the memory.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maginnis left her three-year enlistment as a corporal and decided to attend San Jose State College under the G.I. Bill. During her studies there, she got pregnant three times. On the first occasion, she traveled to Mexico for an abortion. She administered the next two on herself at home. After one of them landed her in the hospital, she was asked if she had given herself an abortion. Her response? “Sure I did. Want me to demonstrate how in court?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>After Maginnis graduated in 1961, aged 33, she worked nights as a medical technologist. Her late schedule was by design—she needed her days free for pro-choice campaigning. That year, she was arrested for the first time for distributing literature that advised women how to access abortion services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time, Section 601 of the California Business and Professions Code made it a felony to “willfully compose and publish a notice and advertisement of a medicine and means for producing and facilitating a miscarriage and abortion.” Still, the judge at Maginnis’ trial concluded that she had been arrested on grounds that were unconstitutional, and promptly set her free. “Now I can paper the town with leaflets,” Maginnis joyfully announced after the verdict, “and that’s exactly what I plan to do.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was by no means the end of Maginnis’ legal troubles; eight years later, Maginnis found herself convicted again of “willfully writing, composing and advocating abortion techniques.” In 1966, she and Rowena Gurner were arrested in San Mateo after teaching an abortion class. They paid their fines and carried on, unrepentant. Maginnis told the \u003cem>Examiner\u003c/em> shortly afterwards, “It kills me to see these young healthy women be expected to jeopardize their lives for what is a simple, safe surgical procedure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That same year, Dr. Theodore Montgomery of the State Public Health Department stated that the number of legal abortions performed in California was around 500, sanctioned only when the life of the mother was in jeopardy. But Montgomery also estimated that around 100,000 California women were acquiring illegal abortions each year. Significantly, in 1968, the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> reported: “Some leading obstetricians say privately that when they feel they must refuse to abort a patient, they usually send her to Miss Maginnis.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>n addition to making her own doctor lists, health guides and abortion handbooks, Maginnis was also fond of drawing satirical cartoons. Many skewered the institutions that sought to deny women control over their reproductive healthcare. Maginnis continued to draw her cartoons after Roe v. Wade, concerned that it hadn’t yet been codified into law and that people were still being denied access to the procedure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13913763\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13913763\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-800x495.png\" alt=\"A cartoon of a sobbing woman, clutching $500 and begging at the feed of three men labeled 'MERCY HOSPITAL/POLITICIAN.' The caption reads: "Please may I have a US Supreme-Court-Approved, Politician Sanctioned, Psychiatrist Rubber-Stamped, Clergy-Counseled, Residency-Investigated, Committee-Inspected Therapueticked, US Health Dept Statistized, Contraceptive-Failure, Religious-Sect-Guilt-Surmounted ABORTION."\" width=\"800\" height=\"495\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-800x495.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-1020x631.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-160x99.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-768x475.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-1536x950.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM.png 1572w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A cartoon by Pat Maginnis lambasting the lengths women had to go to access an abortion—even in 1977, four years after Roe v. Wade. \u003ccite>(Pat Maginnis)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Pat Maginnis stayed dedicated to activism for the rest of her 93 years—animal rights, gay rights and, yes, reproductive rights. Her interest in environmentalism inspired her to take up beekeeping in her 80s. At home, she painted watercolors. Those present at Occupy Oakland in 2011 might recall Maginnis showing up to hand out pea soup and hand-drawn cartoons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Pat Maginnis died on Aug. 30, 2021, just two days before \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13902723/texas-abortion-sb8-bay-area-activism-artists\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Texas enacted its six-week abortion ban\u003c/a>, SB 8. As America now braces for a future in which Roe v. Wade is overturned and millions of people no longer have legal access to abortion, Maginnis’ legacy is more important than ever. Her tenacity, her boldness, and her willingness to talk candidly about her own abortions may all serve as inspiration to a new generation facing life-stunting healthcare restrictions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These are personal matters, private matters. They don’t concern others—not doctors or judges or boards,” she told the \u003cem>Rapid City Journal\u003c/em> in 1969. “Women have got to fight. They’ve taken this kind of vile abuse too long.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "the-1960s-women-whose-environmental-activism-saved-the-bay",
"title": "The 1960s Women Whose Environmental Activism Saved the Bay",
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"content": "\u003cp>The \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> story set off alarm bells across the region. Published April 23, 1961, “Our Shrinking Bay” dared to gaze 40 years into the future at what the Bay Area would look like if urban development continued unchecked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By 2020,” Ed Salzman wrote, “the Bay could be little more than a wide river. Berkeley would extend so far west that part of the city would be in San Francisco County. And much more of the southern Eastbay shoreline would belong to San Mateo County.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t a work of Salzman’s imagination. The journalist had recently seen a paper the Army Corps of Engineers had written for the Department of Commerce. It explained in some detail that 70% of the Bay was less than 18 feet deep—meaning it could be filled and paved over relatively easily. Not only were plans afoot to start that process, but at the time there were zero rules against such development. The private companies who owned the shoreline could do whatever they pleased with it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13898345']Shortly after the \u003cem>Tribune\u003c/em> published the article, a woman named Esther Gulick was visiting her friend Catherine “Kay” Kerr to drop off some home-baked almond cookies. The two had become friends through their husbands, who were both members of the U.C. Board of Regents. (Gulick herself was a U.C. Berkeley graduate who had majored in economics. Kerr had graduated from Stanford with a major in political science.) After the pair got to chatting about Salzman’s story, Kerr asked Gulick if she might have a little spare time to try and prevent the decimation of the Bay. Gulick said that she did, and the pair quickly started organizing with Sylvia McLaughlin—a Vassar graduate, mom of two and another Board of Regents wife.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of the women had any idea they were about to embark on a lifelong journey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1961, the San Francisco Bay was not in good shape. It had been a century since the Gold Rush, and at least 80% of the Bay’s wetlands had been lost to development. The water was filthy, tainted by oil slicks, shipping pollution, trash from multiple garbage dumps at the edge of the water and, worst of all, untreated sewage. At low tide, the stench emanating from the water wafted from Mill Valley to Oakland. At night, Gulick, who had a view of the Bay from her Berkeley home, watched in horror as trash was dumped in the shallows and set on fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first, Kerr, McLaughlin and Gulick assumed they could join forces with an already established group who could guide and inform their campaign. In 1961, the women invited every local environmentalist they could think of to Gulick’s home for a meeting. Those in attendance included reps from the \u003ca href=\"https://act.sierraclub.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sierra Club\u003c/a>, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.savetheredwoods.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Save the Redwoods League\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://act.audubon.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Audubon\u003c/a> and several local grassroots groups. They even invited author \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Gilliam\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Harold Gilliam\u003c/a> because of his work profiling the waterfront in his 1957 book \u003ca href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15721143-san-francisco-bay\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>San Francisco Bay\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the trio had carefully laid out the Bay’s urgent need for intervention, each of their attendees warmly agreed—then explained they were too busy with their own campaigns, and encouraged the women to start their own organization. To help, the Sierra Club’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.sierraclub.org/library/david-brower\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">David Brower\u003c/a> handed over his organization’s mailing list and made himself available for advice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That night, the Save the San Francisco Bay Association—now popularly known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=408SHpeOt8o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Save the Bay—was born\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13882943']Almost half a century after he attended that first meeting, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/How-the-bay-was-saved-Development-threatened-to-2564089.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Harold Gilliam wrote for \u003cem>SFGate\u003c/em>\u003c/a>: “My own feeling was that any attempt to stop the filling of the bay would be hopeless … I was certain that the three Berkeley women were too naive and inexperienced to realize the bay was as doomed as the orchards of the Santa Clara Valley … The notion that the big-buck developers, the shoreline cities and some of the country’s biggest corporations could be turned back by a few starry-eyed bay savers seemed preposterous.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within two years, the association had proved Gilliam wrong, winning its first major victory. And it was a major one. Save the Bay almost single-handedly stopped the City of Berkeley from expanding into 2,000 acres of Bay waters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912297\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912297\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-800x894.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"894\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-800x894.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-1020x1139.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-160x179.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-768x858.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter.png 1298w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A ‘Save the San Francisco Bay Association’ newsletter, sent out to subscribers in Dec. 1968. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the California Historical Society)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kerr, McLaughlin and Gulick, it turned out, were a force to be reckoned with. They understood that the only way to win was to combine grassroots people power with irrefutable data. They used targeted flyer campaigns, phone chains and gatherings to attract more members to their cause. They charged $1 per year to receive their newsletter—a simple but effective way to fundraise. And they consulted with biologists, engineers, economists, architects, legal scholars and city planners to prepare official arguments for all eventualities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s easy to forget now, but environmental campaigns were a fringe issue at the time that Save the Bay first started. Kerr, McLaughlin and Gulick instinctively knew how to take them mainstream. In 1968, for example, they distributed handmade “Save the Bay” flags to a gala parade of boats who were celebrating the start of yachting season. This simple but savvy move garnered them press coverage without even having to organize a protest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With attention, of course, came personal scrutiny. The women—and their supporters—were often subjected to mockery and name-calling. Gulick noted in one 1988 speech that they were called: “enemies of progress, impractical idealists, do-gooders, posy pickers, eco-freaks, enviromaniacs, little old ladies in tennis shoes and almond cookie revolutionaries.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point, even an \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> columnist piled on. In 1963, Al Martinez wrote facetiously of the work Save the Bay was doing: “O, lo, the Bay is shrinking, the Bay is shrinking! Really? That’s what they tell me,” he scoffed. “We can always spray the waterfront with an air-sweetener or deodorizer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through it all, Kerr, McLaughlin and Gulick harbored no hesitations about testifying at hearings, hassling government officials, petitioning state agencies and leading protests to Sacramento. All three steadfastly refused to be intimidated by the corporations, politicians, bureaucrats, landowners and occasional journalists who attempted to block their path.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912298\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912298\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-800x1004.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1004\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-800x1004.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-1020x1280.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-160x201.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-768x964.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM.png 1026w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A ‘Save the San Francisco Bay Association’ newsletter, sent to subscribers in July 1970. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the California Historical Society)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The tenacious organizing undertaken by these three women has influenced the ecology of the Bay Area in too many ways to comprehensively list. But it is thanks to them that we have a state commission whose sole job it is to protect the San Francisco Bay. (The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission has been in place since 1965. And that, in turn, inspired the creation of the California Coastal Commission in 1972.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without Save the Bay’s campaigning and influence, Berkeley and San Mateo may have succeeded in expanding their city limits into the waterfront in 1980. David Rockefeller and his associates may have succeeded in sucking up 27 miles of coastline for a major new development in the early 1970s. Without Save the Bay, we probably wouldn’t have the \u003ca href=\"https://www.fws.gov/refuge/don-edwards-san-francisco-bay\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge\u003c/a>, nor the 85,000 acres of wetlands still protected by 1977’s \u003ca href=\"https://bcdc.ca.gov/plans/suisun_marsh_preservation_act.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Suisun Marsh Preservation Act\u003c/a>. We wouldn’t have the permanently protected McLaughlin Eastshore State Park that runs between Emeryville and Richmond. (It was named after Sylvia in 2011.) In fact, between the time Save the Bay formed and 2007, the bay \u003cem>expanded\u003c/em> by 40,000 acres. The environmental impact of the organization cannot be overstated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13871297']Gulick died in 1995. Both McLaughlin and Kerr died just months before their 100th birthdays, in 2016 and 2010 respectively. McLaughlin continued to attend protests well into her 90s—even ones that involved climbing trees. In a 1988 speech she noted: “Esther, Kay and I were inspired by the vision of what we felt San Francisco Bay could be and the reality of what was happening to it. We regarded the Bay as one of this country’s national treasures and to us, and to many others, it was unthinkable that most of this beautiful natural resource could be filled.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, the \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> journalist who wrote “Our Shrinking Bay” \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/sixty-years-of-saving-san-francisco-bay/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">talked to the \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em>\u003c/a> about the 1961 story that started it all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I covered presidents and governors and all kinds of big shots,” Ed Salzman said at the age of 89. “But when you look back, I don’t remember those stories at all. This story I remember in detail, because—let’s face it—the saving of San Francisco Bay is still going on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "In 1961, Kay Kerr, Sylvia McLaughlin and Esther Gulick kickstarted a crucial conservation movement that continues today.",
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"title": "The 1960s Women Whose Environmental Activism Saved the Bay | KQED",
"description": "In 1961, Kay Kerr, Sylvia McLaughlin and Esther Gulick kickstarted a crucial conservation movement that continues today.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> story set off alarm bells across the region. Published April 23, 1961, “Our Shrinking Bay” dared to gaze 40 years into the future at what the Bay Area would look like if urban development continued unchecked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By 2020,” Ed Salzman wrote, “the Bay could be little more than a wide river. Berkeley would extend so far west that part of the city would be in San Francisco County. And much more of the southern Eastbay shoreline would belong to San Mateo County.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t a work of Salzman’s imagination. The journalist had recently seen a paper the Army Corps of Engineers had written for the Department of Commerce. It explained in some detail that 70% of the Bay was less than 18 feet deep—meaning it could be filled and paved over relatively easily. Not only were plans afoot to start that process, but at the time there were zero rules against such development. The private companies who owned the shoreline could do whatever they pleased with it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Shortly after the \u003cem>Tribune\u003c/em> published the article, a woman named Esther Gulick was visiting her friend Catherine “Kay” Kerr to drop off some home-baked almond cookies. The two had become friends through their husbands, who were both members of the U.C. Board of Regents. (Gulick herself was a U.C. Berkeley graduate who had majored in economics. Kerr had graduated from Stanford with a major in political science.) After the pair got to chatting about Salzman’s story, Kerr asked Gulick if she might have a little spare time to try and prevent the decimation of the Bay. Gulick said that she did, and the pair quickly started organizing with Sylvia McLaughlin—a Vassar graduate, mom of two and another Board of Regents wife.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of the women had any idea they were about to embark on a lifelong journey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1961, the San Francisco Bay was not in good shape. It had been a century since the Gold Rush, and at least 80% of the Bay’s wetlands had been lost to development. The water was filthy, tainted by oil slicks, shipping pollution, trash from multiple garbage dumps at the edge of the water and, worst of all, untreated sewage. At low tide, the stench emanating from the water wafted from Mill Valley to Oakland. At night, Gulick, who had a view of the Bay from her Berkeley home, watched in horror as trash was dumped in the shallows and set on fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first, Kerr, McLaughlin and Gulick assumed they could join forces with an already established group who could guide and inform their campaign. In 1961, the women invited every local environmentalist they could think of to Gulick’s home for a meeting. Those in attendance included reps from the \u003ca href=\"https://act.sierraclub.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sierra Club\u003c/a>, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.savetheredwoods.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Save the Redwoods League\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://act.audubon.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Audubon\u003c/a> and several local grassroots groups. They even invited author \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Gilliam\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Harold Gilliam\u003c/a> because of his work profiling the waterfront in his 1957 book \u003ca href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15721143-san-francisco-bay\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>San Francisco Bay\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the trio had carefully laid out the Bay’s urgent need for intervention, each of their attendees warmly agreed—then explained they were too busy with their own campaigns, and encouraged the women to start their own organization. To help, the Sierra Club’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.sierraclub.org/library/david-brower\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">David Brower\u003c/a> handed over his organization’s mailing list and made himself available for advice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That night, the Save the San Francisco Bay Association—now popularly known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=408SHpeOt8o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Save the Bay—was born\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Almost half a century after he attended that first meeting, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/How-the-bay-was-saved-Development-threatened-to-2564089.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Harold Gilliam wrote for \u003cem>SFGate\u003c/em>\u003c/a>: “My own feeling was that any attempt to stop the filling of the bay would be hopeless … I was certain that the three Berkeley women were too naive and inexperienced to realize the bay was as doomed as the orchards of the Santa Clara Valley … The notion that the big-buck developers, the shoreline cities and some of the country’s biggest corporations could be turned back by a few starry-eyed bay savers seemed preposterous.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within two years, the association had proved Gilliam wrong, winning its first major victory. And it was a major one. Save the Bay almost single-handedly stopped the City of Berkeley from expanding into 2,000 acres of Bay waters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912297\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912297\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-800x894.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"894\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-800x894.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-1020x1139.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-160x179.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-768x858.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter.png 1298w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A ‘Save the San Francisco Bay Association’ newsletter, sent out to subscribers in Dec. 1968. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the California Historical Society)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kerr, McLaughlin and Gulick, it turned out, were a force to be reckoned with. They understood that the only way to win was to combine grassroots people power with irrefutable data. They used targeted flyer campaigns, phone chains and gatherings to attract more members to their cause. They charged $1 per year to receive their newsletter—a simple but effective way to fundraise. And they consulted with biologists, engineers, economists, architects, legal scholars and city planners to prepare official arguments for all eventualities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s easy to forget now, but environmental campaigns were a fringe issue at the time that Save the Bay first started. Kerr, McLaughlin and Gulick instinctively knew how to take them mainstream. In 1968, for example, they distributed handmade “Save the Bay” flags to a gala parade of boats who were celebrating the start of yachting season. This simple but savvy move garnered them press coverage without even having to organize a protest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With attention, of course, came personal scrutiny. The women—and their supporters—were often subjected to mockery and name-calling. Gulick noted in one 1988 speech that they were called: “enemies of progress, impractical idealists, do-gooders, posy pickers, eco-freaks, enviromaniacs, little old ladies in tennis shoes and almond cookie revolutionaries.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point, even an \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> columnist piled on. In 1963, Al Martinez wrote facetiously of the work Save the Bay was doing: “O, lo, the Bay is shrinking, the Bay is shrinking! Really? That’s what they tell me,” he scoffed. “We can always spray the waterfront with an air-sweetener or deodorizer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through it all, Kerr, McLaughlin and Gulick harbored no hesitations about testifying at hearings, hassling government officials, petitioning state agencies and leading protests to Sacramento. All three steadfastly refused to be intimidated by the corporations, politicians, bureaucrats, landowners and occasional journalists who attempted to block their path.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912298\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912298\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-800x1004.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1004\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-800x1004.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-1020x1280.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-160x201.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-768x964.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM.png 1026w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A ‘Save the San Francisco Bay Association’ newsletter, sent to subscribers in July 1970. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the California Historical Society)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The tenacious organizing undertaken by these three women has influenced the ecology of the Bay Area in too many ways to comprehensively list. But it is thanks to them that we have a state commission whose sole job it is to protect the San Francisco Bay. (The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission has been in place since 1965. And that, in turn, inspired the creation of the California Coastal Commission in 1972.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without Save the Bay’s campaigning and influence, Berkeley and San Mateo may have succeeded in expanding their city limits into the waterfront in 1980. David Rockefeller and his associates may have succeeded in sucking up 27 miles of coastline for a major new development in the early 1970s. Without Save the Bay, we probably wouldn’t have the \u003ca href=\"https://www.fws.gov/refuge/don-edwards-san-francisco-bay\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge\u003c/a>, nor the 85,000 acres of wetlands still protected by 1977’s \u003ca href=\"https://bcdc.ca.gov/plans/suisun_marsh_preservation_act.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Suisun Marsh Preservation Act\u003c/a>. We wouldn’t have the permanently protected McLaughlin Eastshore State Park that runs between Emeryville and Richmond. (It was named after Sylvia in 2011.) In fact, between the time Save the Bay formed and 2007, the bay \u003cem>expanded\u003c/em> by 40,000 acres. The environmental impact of the organization cannot be overstated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Gulick died in 1995. Both McLaughlin and Kerr died just months before their 100th birthdays, in 2016 and 2010 respectively. McLaughlin continued to attend protests well into her 90s—even ones that involved climbing trees. In a 1988 speech she noted: “Esther, Kay and I were inspired by the vision of what we felt San Francisco Bay could be and the reality of what was happening to it. We regarded the Bay as one of this country’s national treasures and to us, and to many others, it was unthinkable that most of this beautiful natural resource could be filled.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, the \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> journalist who wrote “Our Shrinking Bay” \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/sixty-years-of-saving-san-francisco-bay/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">talked to the \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em>\u003c/a> about the 1961 story that started it all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I covered presidents and governors and all kinds of big shots,” Ed Salzman said at the age of 89. “But when you look back, I don’t remember those stories at all. This story I remember in detail, because—let’s face it—the saving of San Francisco Bay is still going on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "sarah-mildred-jones-sacramentos-first-black-principal-fremont-school-ungraded-number-2",
"title": "Sacramento’s First Black Principal Fought Tirelessly for Children of Color",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hite people called it “the colored school.” In Sacramento, city documents, and local newspapers, it was referred to as: “Ungraded School No. 2—Colored.” But to the children who attended, it was simply “Miss Jones’ school.” And those children—many of them honor students—enjoyed an excellent education, high scores on their public school exams, and a teacher who was deeply invested in their futures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sarah Mildred Jones was the first Black female teacher in Sacramento in the two decades after \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13881675/the-19th-century-teacher-who-fought-to-give-black-children-an-education\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood\u003c/a> set up the city’s first school for children of color in her own home in 1854. By all accounts, Jones’ classroom was a vibrant place to learn. One description of the “closing exercises” before summer break appeared in the \u003cem>Record-Union\u003c/em> newspaper in 1883. The July report stated:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>The walls were profusely draped with the red, white and blue, gathered in festoons caught up by trim-colored rosettes, while evergreen national flags and other patriotic emblems were tastefully disposed throughout the room, together with bouquets of flowers … The pupils were promptly in their seats, presented a bright and attractive appearance and manifested the liveliest interest in the proceedings … There was a promptness in recitation and dialogue, and a vivacity in the class singing that testified to good training.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Jones took over Ungraded School No. 2 in August 1873 after Emily A. Aubrey—a white teacher who had been there since 1869—was repeatedly denied a raise and resigned in frustration. The school’s designation as “ungraded” means Jones was responsible for teaching children of all ages and abilities in a single room. (Ungraded schools were a product of small, still-developing communities. Ungraded School No. 1, for example, was for white children.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13881675']Jones was born in Missouri, graduated from Ohio’s Oberlin college in 1865, and first worked as a teacher in Washington, D.C. She headed west in 1873, quickly earned her California teaching certificate—scoring in the 95th percentile—and went right to work with the 52 primary and intermediary pupils of Ungraded School No. 2. Jones was light-skinned and could have passed for white at a time when concealing her identity might have meant an easier—and more lucrative—career path. But she didn’t shy away from her role within her community; she felt the place she could have the most positive impact was with younger Black students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Jones arrived in Sacramento, the question of race in schools was something the local school board, teachers and city officials were still very much wrestling with. Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood had set up the first school for Black children in 1854 because public schools in Sacramento were for white children only. Even after Flood’s popular school was quickly accepted into Sacramento’s official school district, she was still denied funding. Public funding for Black schools only became mandated in 1870, after state law was amended to say that “children of African descent and Indian” must be provided with “separate schools,” or “admitted into the schools of white children.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One need only look at the white principal of the Sacramento City Grammar School, Alexander Holmes McDonald, to get a flavor of education-based tensions at the time. At the start of 1873, McDonald had been endorsed by the Democratic City Central Committee to be the city superintendent of schools. That was, until McDonald refused to commit, in writing, to the exclusion of Black children from his grammar school. He was quickly passed over and a man named Addison Hinkson was hired as superintendent instead. When McDonald accepted two Black girls into his grammar school in Dec. 1873, Hinkson put him on notice. “You are hereby instructed to admit no children of African descent, or Indian children into your school,” Hinkson wrote. When McDonald defied Hinkson’s order, he was promptly fired.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='pop_108474']Jones would later have her own battle with Hinkson, after he publicly suggested she was in favor of school segregation. In response to these assertions, Jones clarified in \u003cem>The Sacramento Bee\u003c/em>, “I would rather teach my students separately, as opposed to having them taught by a white teacher and be made to feel inferior because of their skin color.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he strides forward that Jones swiftly made at Ungraded School No. 2 were no small feats. Just months after her arrival, Jones managed to acquire a second classroom after lobbying the Sacramento School Board. On April 27, 1874, the chairman of the board’s building committee declared:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>We are satisfied that notwithstanding her eminent qualifications for the position which she holds, [Jones] can not do justice to that number of pupils in an ungraded school without doing great injustice to herself. And therefore, without the question of separate schools, we are emphatically of the opinion that another teacher and room are required.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>A week later, Jones was also given a raise—taking her monthly wages from $90 to $100—after the school board introduced a resolution to pay teachers $100 a month. Jones advocated on her own behalf to make sure she would earn the same as white teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After segregation was outlawed in California schools in 1880, Ungraded School No. 2 was moved and attached to the Capitol Grammar School. And while the two classrooms there were still not integrated with the rest of the grammar school, the move brought Black and white children together in new ways. On Aug. 27, 1881, a columnist for the \u003cem>Sacramento Daily Record Union\u003c/em> wrote:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Day after day, I see three or four negro girls with school books and lunch pails trudging along side-by-side with one or more white girls, always in earnest conversation, and there seems to be no thought of race between them. Since the abolishment of the colored school we not infrequently find names that belonged to it on our rolls of honor, and the experiment has worked well.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>With her stellar reputation preceding her, in 1894 Jones became the first Black woman in Sacramento to become principal of a fully integrated elementary school. She was the only Black member of the Fremont Primary School’s faculty, where the vast majority of pupils were white.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By that time, Jones’ 20 years of dedicated service to the children of Sacramento was so well-established, not even protests by 36 racist parents shook her position at the downtown school. When the parents called for her removal, 98 of her fellow teachers stepped up with a petition in her defense. (Including, delightfully, the niece of Addison Hinkson.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Oct. 3, 1894, after arguments between both sides were heard, Jones also spoke in her own defense before a gathering of both the school board and the parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003cem>Record-Union\u003c/em> reported:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Miss Jones appeared and stated her case, and made a deep impression by her straightforward manner. She pointed to the fact that the school, opened only two days, was full, already; that for the first time it had two fifth grade classes, and that did not look like ill success. She recited a list of her educational certificates, from her Eastern collegiate diploma to her State life certificate, and outlined her teaching career of 18 years in the city, and asked for time for the people of the district to see and know her. She spoke with feeling, but with dignity … A motion to receive and file the petition prevailed unanimously and the matter was dropped, the sense of the board being to give the teacher a trial, in view of her qualifications and success.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The matter was never revisited.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once she was safely appointed at the Fremont School, Jones went about saving the two beloved classrooms of Ungraded School No. 2, which had been slated for demolition. She successfully persuaded the school district to move them to the Fremont School to ease overcrowding in the elementary department. Not only did the district oblige, they also agreed to Jones’ request to elevate the classrooms to protect them from flooding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]J[/dropcap]ones’ dedication to children extended beyond her own city. In April 1906, she joined forces with Rev. Mary Bowen to establish a “toy department” for San Francisco children who had lost everything in the recent earthquake and fire. The pair asked principals all over the Bay to collect used “toys, books, pictures and other trinkets [pupils] have no further use for.” And this simple gesture towards San Francisco’s children was a source of immediate comfort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A report in the \u003cem>Record-Union\u003c/em> on April 27, 1906 stated:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>The first consignment of toys yesterday reached the children of fire sufferers from San Francisco and the little ones were so overjoyed that they seemed beside themselves. They laughed and cried by turns. There was a touching little scene when a child was given a doll which she declared was the veritable one she thought had been burned in the big fire. She pressed the doll to her bosom in an ecstasy of delight, calling the new-found doll by the old name, and no one had the heart to dispel her illusion and tell her that it was a case of mistaken identity.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Even after Jones officially retired as principal in 1914, she kept working to make the lives of Bay Area children better. She served on the Sacramento School Board until 1920—just five years before her death at the age 83. In her will, she left $1,000 to Booker T. Washington School in Tuskegee, Alabama, and $500 to St. Andrews Church, which had once housed Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood’s school for children of color.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13892514']In Feb. 1996, an expert on Jones’ life named Marilyn Demas told the \u003cem>Sacramento Bee\u003c/em> that this groundbreaking teacher should be an example to us all. “[Jones] shows that there is hope,” Demas said. “People can triumph, can persevere. Nobody opened doors for her. She was a woman. She was Black. And she was extremely successful. She had that—what can you say?—that burning light.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">W\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>hite people called it “the colored school.” In Sacramento, city documents, and local newspapers, it was referred to as: “Ungraded School No. 2—Colored.” But to the children who attended, it was simply “Miss Jones’ school.” And those children—many of them honor students—enjoyed an excellent education, high scores on their public school exams, and a teacher who was deeply invested in their futures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sarah Mildred Jones was the first Black female teacher in Sacramento in the two decades after \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13881675/the-19th-century-teacher-who-fought-to-give-black-children-an-education\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood\u003c/a> set up the city’s first school for children of color in her own home in 1854. By all accounts, Jones’ classroom was a vibrant place to learn. One description of the “closing exercises” before summer break appeared in the \u003cem>Record-Union\u003c/em> newspaper in 1883. The July report stated:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>The walls were profusely draped with the red, white and blue, gathered in festoons caught up by trim-colored rosettes, while evergreen national flags and other patriotic emblems were tastefully disposed throughout the room, together with bouquets of flowers … The pupils were promptly in their seats, presented a bright and attractive appearance and manifested the liveliest interest in the proceedings … There was a promptness in recitation and dialogue, and a vivacity in the class singing that testified to good training.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Jones took over Ungraded School No. 2 in August 1873 after Emily A. Aubrey—a white teacher who had been there since 1869—was repeatedly denied a raise and resigned in frustration. The school’s designation as “ungraded” means Jones was responsible for teaching children of all ages and abilities in a single room. (Ungraded schools were a product of small, still-developing communities. Ungraded School No. 1, for example, was for white children.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Jones was born in Missouri, graduated from Ohio’s Oberlin college in 1865, and first worked as a teacher in Washington, D.C. She headed west in 1873, quickly earned her California teaching certificate—scoring in the 95th percentile—and went right to work with the 52 primary and intermediary pupils of Ungraded School No. 2. Jones was light-skinned and could have passed for white at a time when concealing her identity might have meant an easier—and more lucrative—career path. But she didn’t shy away from her role within her community; she felt the place she could have the most positive impact was with younger Black students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Jones arrived in Sacramento, the question of race in schools was something the local school board, teachers and city officials were still very much wrestling with. Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood had set up the first school for Black children in 1854 because public schools in Sacramento were for white children only. Even after Flood’s popular school was quickly accepted into Sacramento’s official school district, she was still denied funding. Public funding for Black schools only became mandated in 1870, after state law was amended to say that “children of African descent and Indian” must be provided with “separate schools,” or “admitted into the schools of white children.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One need only look at the white principal of the Sacramento City Grammar School, Alexander Holmes McDonald, to get a flavor of education-based tensions at the time. At the start of 1873, McDonald had been endorsed by the Democratic City Central Committee to be the city superintendent of schools. That was, until McDonald refused to commit, in writing, to the exclusion of Black children from his grammar school. He was quickly passed over and a man named Addison Hinkson was hired as superintendent instead. When McDonald accepted two Black girls into his grammar school in Dec. 1873, Hinkson put him on notice. “You are hereby instructed to admit no children of African descent, or Indian children into your school,” Hinkson wrote. When McDonald defied Hinkson’s order, he was promptly fired.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Jones would later have her own battle with Hinkson, after he publicly suggested she was in favor of school segregation. In response to these assertions, Jones clarified in \u003cem>The Sacramento Bee\u003c/em>, “I would rather teach my students separately, as opposed to having them taught by a white teacher and be made to feel inferior because of their skin color.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">T\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>he strides forward that Jones swiftly made at Ungraded School No. 2 were no small feats. Just months after her arrival, Jones managed to acquire a second classroom after lobbying the Sacramento School Board. On April 27, 1874, the chairman of the board’s building committee declared:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>We are satisfied that notwithstanding her eminent qualifications for the position which she holds, [Jones] can not do justice to that number of pupils in an ungraded school without doing great injustice to herself. And therefore, without the question of separate schools, we are emphatically of the opinion that another teacher and room are required.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>A week later, Jones was also given a raise—taking her monthly wages from $90 to $100—after the school board introduced a resolution to pay teachers $100 a month. Jones advocated on her own behalf to make sure she would earn the same as white teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After segregation was outlawed in California schools in 1880, Ungraded School No. 2 was moved and attached to the Capitol Grammar School. And while the two classrooms there were still not integrated with the rest of the grammar school, the move brought Black and white children together in new ways. On Aug. 27, 1881, a columnist for the \u003cem>Sacramento Daily Record Union\u003c/em> wrote:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Day after day, I see three or four negro girls with school books and lunch pails trudging along side-by-side with one or more white girls, always in earnest conversation, and there seems to be no thought of race between them. Since the abolishment of the colored school we not infrequently find names that belonged to it on our rolls of honor, and the experiment has worked well.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>With her stellar reputation preceding her, in 1894 Jones became the first Black woman in Sacramento to become principal of a fully integrated elementary school. She was the only Black member of the Fremont Primary School’s faculty, where the vast majority of pupils were white.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By that time, Jones’ 20 years of dedicated service to the children of Sacramento was so well-established, not even protests by 36 racist parents shook her position at the downtown school. When the parents called for her removal, 98 of her fellow teachers stepped up with a petition in her defense. (Including, delightfully, the niece of Addison Hinkson.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Oct. 3, 1894, after arguments between both sides were heard, Jones also spoke in her own defense before a gathering of both the school board and the parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003cem>Record-Union\u003c/em> reported:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Miss Jones appeared and stated her case, and made a deep impression by her straightforward manner. She pointed to the fact that the school, opened only two days, was full, already; that for the first time it had two fifth grade classes, and that did not look like ill success. She recited a list of her educational certificates, from her Eastern collegiate diploma to her State life certificate, and outlined her teaching career of 18 years in the city, and asked for time for the people of the district to see and know her. She spoke with feeling, but with dignity … A motion to receive and file the petition prevailed unanimously and the matter was dropped, the sense of the board being to give the teacher a trial, in view of her qualifications and success.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The matter was never revisited.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once she was safely appointed at the Fremont School, Jones went about saving the two beloved classrooms of Ungraded School No. 2, which had been slated for demolition. She successfully persuaded the school district to move them to the Fremont School to ease overcrowding in the elementary department. Not only did the district oblige, they also agreed to Jones’ request to elevate the classrooms to protect them from flooding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">J\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>ones’ dedication to children extended beyond her own city. In April 1906, she joined forces with Rev. Mary Bowen to establish a “toy department” for San Francisco children who had lost everything in the recent earthquake and fire. The pair asked principals all over the Bay to collect used “toys, books, pictures and other trinkets [pupils] have no further use for.” And this simple gesture towards San Francisco’s children was a source of immediate comfort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A report in the \u003cem>Record-Union\u003c/em> on April 27, 1906 stated:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>The first consignment of toys yesterday reached the children of fire sufferers from San Francisco and the little ones were so overjoyed that they seemed beside themselves. They laughed and cried by turns. There was a touching little scene when a child was given a doll which she declared was the veritable one she thought had been burned in the big fire. She pressed the doll to her bosom in an ecstasy of delight, calling the new-found doll by the old name, and no one had the heart to dispel her illusion and tell her that it was a case of mistaken identity.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Even after Jones officially retired as principal in 1914, she kept working to make the lives of Bay Area children better. She served on the Sacramento School Board until 1920—just five years before her death at the age 83. In her will, she left $1,000 to Booker T. Washington School in Tuskegee, Alabama, and $500 to St. Andrews Church, which had once housed Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood’s school for children of color.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In Feb. 1996, an expert on Jones’ life named Marilyn Demas told the \u003cem>Sacramento Bee\u003c/em> that this groundbreaking teacher should be an example to us all. “[Jones] shows that there is hope,” Demas said. “People can triumph, can persevere. Nobody opened doors for her. She was a woman. She was Black. And she was extremely successful. She had that—what can you say?—that burning light.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "the-pistol-packing-gold-rush-gambler-who-beat-men-at-their-own-game",
"title": "The Pistol-Packing Gold Rush Gambler Who Beat Men at Their Own Game",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s Eleanor Dumont walked home alone one night after a successful evening of gambling, her path was suddenly blocked by two men. Holding her at gunpoint, the pair demanded she hand over her purse or suffer the consequences. Dumont nodded, maintaining the trademark cool that local gold rush miners knew her for, and reached into her skirt. Rather than pulling out her winnings, she instead retrieved her derringer pistol. She quickly shot the man with the gun, while her other assailant fled in fear. Then Dumont continued her journey home, without a hair out of place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was life in the Wild West, and Madame Eleanor Dumont had—by then—learned the hard way how to deal with it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Frenchwoman—whose real name was Simone Jules—had arrived in San Francisco in 1850, aged 21, and immediately started work as a professional gambler. She was the only woman to deal cards at the Bella Union Hotel (a privilege not afforded to women on the Las Vegas strip until 1971). She was an elegant presence in the Portsmouth Square establishment—always well-dressed and quick to find an easy rapport with the customers. Not only was Dumont enormously skilled with a card deck, she was also an excellent conversationalist. There was never a dull moment at her table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13908397\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13908397\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/The-Bella-Union-Hotel-in-1855-on-the-Northside-of-Portsmouth-Square-800x570.png\" alt=\"A row of Gold Rush era store fronts line a street with sparsely populated hills behind.\" width=\"800\" height=\"570\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/The-Bella-Union-Hotel-in-1855-on-the-Northside-of-Portsmouth-Square-800x570.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/The-Bella-Union-Hotel-in-1855-on-the-Northside-of-Portsmouth-Square-1020x727.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/The-Bella-Union-Hotel-in-1855-on-the-Northside-of-Portsmouth-Square-160x114.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/The-Bella-Union-Hotel-in-1855-on-the-Northside-of-Portsmouth-Square-768x547.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/The-Bella-Union-Hotel-in-1855-on-the-Northside-of-Portsmouth-Square-1536x1095.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/The-Bella-Union-Hotel-in-1855-on-the-Northside-of-Portsmouth-Square.png 1692w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Bella Union Hotel, on the north side of Portsmouth Square, as seen in 1855. \u003ccite>(Public domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Despite her popularity, Dumont lost her job at the hotel after she was accused of hustling players. In all likelihood, this was the result of a disgruntled guest who underestimated Dumont’s skill level and resented losing to a woman. Outside of the Bella Union, Dumont had a lifelong reputation for playing a fair game, and handing over winnings graciously when they were due.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dumont’s firing may also have been influenced by the stereotypes about French women that were pervasive in San Francisco at the time. William Perkins, a Canadian miner and merchant who \u003ca href=\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/three-years-in-california-william-perkins-journal-of-life-at-sonora-1849-1852/oclc/555460\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">documented his travels across the United States between 1849 and 1852\u003c/a>, once wrote: “French women … are one of the peculiar features of California society. They are to be met with every where, and every where they are the same: money making, unscrupulous, [but] outwardly well-behaved.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the Bella Union, Dumont knew instinctively it was time to strike out on her own. So in 1854, she arrived by stagecoach to Nevada City—a booming mining town where gold nuggets were plentiful, and miners were starved of female company. Though the move would go on to be a winning combination for Dumont, locals greeted her incredulously at first. They simply couldn’t figure out why a young woman, dressed in finery, would be walking up and down Broad Street on her own for hours on end. She was looking for the perfect storefront to open a casino, but one confused woman reportedly commented: “There’s got to be some bad in a girl with all her charms who seems to have nothing to do but strut up and down main street.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13902628']Once Dumont had opened what one newspaper ad described as the “best gambling emporium in Northern California,” it all made sense. Dumont called her casino Vingt-et-Un (21 in French) after her favorite card game—a precursor to blackjack. And there was nothing like it in Nevada City, or any other mining town for that matter. The grand, 50 ft.–long room was decorated with luxurious carpets, gas-powered chandeliers and plush furnishings. Rare liquors and wines were served while a small orchestra played. Gamblers were offered free champagne upon arrival. Dumont enforced a dress code (jackets, ties and hats) and strictly prohibited swearing, smoking, spitting and fighting. She was bringing class to the rough-and-tumble mining community—and they absolutely loved it. Not least because it offered the opportunity to play against the mysterious Madame Dumont herself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She possessed a peculiar power over the roughest of her customers,” the \u003cem>Hamilton County Democrat\u003c/em> reported in Oct. 1879. “It became a saying of theirs that there was more satisfaction in playing against the Madame’s game and losing, than in winning at any other game.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n the course of running Vingt-et-Un\u003cem>,\u003c/em> Dumont met a fellow professional gambler named David Tobin. The two hit it off, became romantically involved, and she soon invited him to co-manage the casino. Partnering with Tobin enabled Dumont to broaden her horizons and open a second venue. Dumont’s Place, as it was called, specialized in games not played at Vingt-et-Un, including keno, roulette, poker, chuck-a-luck (a game of chance played with three dice) and the most popular game of the day, faro.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13908457\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 440px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13908457\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/440px-Faro_card_game.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"440\" height=\"309\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/440px-Faro_card_game.jpg 440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/440px-Faro_card_game-160x112.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 440px) 100vw, 440px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gold rush gamblers playing a game of Faro in Tombstone, Arizona—where Eleanor Dumont lived, and gambled, for a time. \u003ccite>(Public domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The couple’s success was short-lived. By 1857, as gold lodes dwindled, so did casino customers. Dumont and Tobin cut their losses, sold the businesses and parted ways. Tobin headed to New York where he died a very wealthy man in 1865. Dumont followed the miners to Columbia, California where a new wealth of gold was being uncovered. Dumont set up a gambling table inside a hotel and, as with Nevada City, she made a good living as long as the miners did. Once gold supplies petered out and prospectors began moving on, Dumont faithfully and fearlessly followed. She would go on to travel extensively in pursuit of mining money, spending the 1860s bouncing between Virginia City and Pioche in Nevada, Fort Benton and Bannack in Montana, Helena and Salmon in Idaho, Colorado City in Arizona, and Corinne and Silver City in Utah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of this was in Dumont’s original life plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dumont had made an attempt to embrace a quieter life at the end of the 1850s. She had saved enough money by that time to buy herself a ranch in Carson City, Nevada—and she was determined to get off the road and make a go of it. It might just have worked out if she hadn’t fallen in love with a saloon owner named Jack McKnight. McKnight told Dumont he was a cattleman who could turn the ranch into a successful business. Swept up in what seemed like a happy ending, Dumont married McKnight and signed over the ranch to him so he could manage it for her. Within a month, he had sold the property and skipped town with everything Dumont had worked so hard for. She had no choice but to hit the road once more, and she never again attempted to settle down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13874853']Something about the experience with McKnight hardened Dumont. She became a heavy drinker, took less care with her appearance and was outwardly more cynical. She started carrying a gun wherever she went, and when fate crossed her path with McKnight’s once more, she wasted no time in shooting him dead. Dumont was never charged with any crime, however. Some said there simply wasn’t enough evidence to charge her; others claimed the sheriff knew what McKnight had done to Dumont and thought he had it coming. Only many years after the crime did Dumont admit to the murder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dumont’s newfound toughness found its way into her card games. She is said to have horsewhipped one cheating gambler during a game in Colorado City. Rumors were rife that after one of her customers angrily accused her of not really being French, she had him thrown through a door. In Fort Benton, Dumont’s gambling house, the Cosmopolitan, stood right in the middle of what was commonly referred to at the time as “the bloodiest block in the West”—a lawless cluster of bars, brothels and casinos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One night on that chaotic street, word began to spread that trouble was on the horizon—a steamboat said to be carrying many passengers with smallpox was about to dock, bringing the feared disease to Fort Benton. Dumont sprang into action, and raced down to the docks with a pistol in each hand. When the boat arrived, she threatened to shoot the captain if he attempted to dock. Needless to say, he abandoned the plan and turned around. Dumont made her way back to the Cosmopolitan, told her customers the danger had passed and bought everyone drinks on the house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]D[/dropcap]espite Dumont’s necessary assimilation into the harshest of environments, she never did lose her charm. Throughout her life, she retained a knack for defusing dangerous situations using only her grace and wit. On one occasion, she is said to have single-handedly prevented a riot that was brewing amongst an angry mob of unemployed miners and Mexican laborers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On another, the \u003cem>Hamilton County Democrat\u003c/em> reported:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>In Pioche, the room in which she was dealing her game became filled with a noisy, quarreling crowd of miners, maddened with drink and flourishing pistols … The bar keepers and faro dealers were fruitlessly trying to quiet the crowd, when Madame Dumont … quietly approached the noisies and laughingly removing them for ungallant conduct, succeeded in clearing the room and avoiding a bloody row.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>By 1864, while residing in Bannack, Dumont decided to open a brothel to supplement her gambling earnings. It was a far cry from Vingt-et-Un, where women had been banned, lest prostution lure her customers away from the card table. In Bannack, Dumont drummed up brothel business by driving her girls around town in carriages, never missing the construction camps along the route of the Union Pacific Railroad.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four years later, she took a chance on the Kootenai Mines in British Columbia. But as soon as she arrived and started building a new casino, the miners and prospectors found a more promising lode down the line and moved on. Dumont quickly ran out of cash and skipped town by mule train, without telling the contractors who’d been building her new venue. Dumont made her way to central Montana, where she made herself a fast fortune at the mining camps. One year later, she tracked down her old contractors in Reynolds City and paid them back in full, in what \u003cem>The Butte Miner\u003c/em> newspaper later referred to as “bankable gold dust.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13894842']It was in middle age that Dumont acquired the cruel nickname that never left her: Madame Mustache. As she aged, the hair on Dumont’s upper lip had darkened and, after an angry customer threw the insult at her one day, the sobriquet stuck and followed her around the country wherever she traveled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s almost impossible to map Dumont’s exact movements during the 1870s—except to say that she showed up at card tables across the west. Boise City, Oklahoma. Cheyenne, Wyoming. Blackfoot City, Idaho. Eureka, Nevada. Tombstone, Arizona. Deadwood, South Dakota—where Dumont, incidentally, befriended Calamity Jane and taught her how to gamble. No wonder the \u003cem>Bodie Standard\u003c/em> reported in 1878 that, “Probably no woman on the Pacific Coast is better known.” And they were right. In July of that same year, a single week-long visit to Modesto earned Dumont two separate articles in the \u003cem>Modesto Herald \u003c/em>newspaper. She was merely passing through on her way to Bodie—the only town she never left.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After arriving in Bodie, Dumont began dealing 21 at the Magnolia saloon on Main Street. She was welcomed warmly. “She appears young as ever and those who knew her ever so many years ago would instantly recognize her now,” the \u003cem>Bodie Standard\u003c/em> cheerfully reported.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n the morning of Sept. 8, 1879, a sheep herder discovered Eleanor Dumont’s lifeless body, head resting on a stone, a mile outside of Bodie. She had killed herself by drinking a combination of morphine and red wine, and left a note addressed to the public administrator. In it, she gave instructions about what to do with her worldly possessions and stated simply that she was “tired of life.” Friends reported that she had borrowed $300 to gamble with the night before (over $8,000 in today’s money), and was bereft after losing it all within a few short hours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='news_11640709']The outpouring prompted by the death of Dumont was immense. Local women lovingly prepared her body for burial, while miners raised money to give her an appropriate sendoff. \u003cem>The Bridgeport Chronicle Union\u003c/em> wrote: “It is said that of the hundreds of funerals held in the mining sample, that of Madame Mustache was the largest. The gamblers of the place buried her with all honors and carriages were brought in from Carson City, NV, a distance of 120 miles.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dumont was buried in the section of Bodie’s cemetery reserved for outcasts and sinners. Still, newspapers across the country reported Dumont’s death with reverence and respect. The \u003cem>Bodie Morning News\u003c/em> reported that she “bore a character of virtue possessed by few in her line.” The \u003cem>Hamilton County Democrat\u003c/em> wrote: “Despite her strange surrounding and unusual mode of living, [Dumont] possessed the respect, as well as the admiration of her rough companions for years.” Montana’s \u003cem>Butte Miner\u003c/em> noted: “Truthful and honest, whatever other faults she might have had, always smiling, never forgetting the politeness of her native France, and her purse ever open at the appeal of sickness or suffering, Madame Mustache leaves friends in almost every class of Western society.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shortly after her death, the\u003cem> San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em> quoted a miner who had known and loved Dumont. He perhaps summed up her life best.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Her life was as square a game as was ever dealt. The world played against her with all sorts of combinations but she generally beat it. The turn was called on her at last for a few paltry hundreds … and she passed in her checks, game to the last.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Frenchwoman Eleanor Dumont—nicknamed 'Madame Mustache'—followed miners all over the West, winning their gold in card games. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">A\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>s Eleanor Dumont walked home alone one night after a successful evening of gambling, her path was suddenly blocked by two men. Holding her at gunpoint, the pair demanded she hand over her purse or suffer the consequences. Dumont nodded, maintaining the trademark cool that local gold rush miners knew her for, and reached into her skirt. Rather than pulling out her winnings, she instead retrieved her derringer pistol. She quickly shot the man with the gun, while her other assailant fled in fear. Then Dumont continued her journey home, without a hair out of place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was life in the Wild West, and Madame Eleanor Dumont had—by then—learned the hard way how to deal with it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Frenchwoman—whose real name was Simone Jules—had arrived in San Francisco in 1850, aged 21, and immediately started work as a professional gambler. She was the only woman to deal cards at the Bella Union Hotel (a privilege not afforded to women on the Las Vegas strip until 1971). She was an elegant presence in the Portsmouth Square establishment—always well-dressed and quick to find an easy rapport with the customers. Not only was Dumont enormously skilled with a card deck, she was also an excellent conversationalist. There was never a dull moment at her table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13908397\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13908397\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/The-Bella-Union-Hotel-in-1855-on-the-Northside-of-Portsmouth-Square-800x570.png\" alt=\"A row of Gold Rush era store fronts line a street with sparsely populated hills behind.\" width=\"800\" height=\"570\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/The-Bella-Union-Hotel-in-1855-on-the-Northside-of-Portsmouth-Square-800x570.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/The-Bella-Union-Hotel-in-1855-on-the-Northside-of-Portsmouth-Square-1020x727.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/The-Bella-Union-Hotel-in-1855-on-the-Northside-of-Portsmouth-Square-160x114.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/The-Bella-Union-Hotel-in-1855-on-the-Northside-of-Portsmouth-Square-768x547.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/The-Bella-Union-Hotel-in-1855-on-the-Northside-of-Portsmouth-Square-1536x1095.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/The-Bella-Union-Hotel-in-1855-on-the-Northside-of-Portsmouth-Square.png 1692w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Bella Union Hotel, on the north side of Portsmouth Square, as seen in 1855. \u003ccite>(Public domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Despite her popularity, Dumont lost her job at the hotel after she was accused of hustling players. In all likelihood, this was the result of a disgruntled guest who underestimated Dumont’s skill level and resented losing to a woman. Outside of the Bella Union, Dumont had a lifelong reputation for playing a fair game, and handing over winnings graciously when they were due.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dumont’s firing may also have been influenced by the stereotypes about French women that were pervasive in San Francisco at the time. William Perkins, a Canadian miner and merchant who \u003ca href=\"https://www.worldcat.org/title/three-years-in-california-william-perkins-journal-of-life-at-sonora-1849-1852/oclc/555460\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">documented his travels across the United States between 1849 and 1852\u003c/a>, once wrote: “French women … are one of the peculiar features of California society. They are to be met with every where, and every where they are the same: money making, unscrupulous, [but] outwardly well-behaved.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the Bella Union, Dumont knew instinctively it was time to strike out on her own. So in 1854, she arrived by stagecoach to Nevada City—a booming mining town where gold nuggets were plentiful, and miners were starved of female company. Though the move would go on to be a winning combination for Dumont, locals greeted her incredulously at first. They simply couldn’t figure out why a young woman, dressed in finery, would be walking up and down Broad Street on her own for hours on end. She was looking for the perfect storefront to open a casino, but one confused woman reportedly commented: “There’s got to be some bad in a girl with all her charms who seems to have nothing to do but strut up and down main street.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Once Dumont had opened what one newspaper ad described as the “best gambling emporium in Northern California,” it all made sense. Dumont called her casino Vingt-et-Un (21 in French) after her favorite card game—a precursor to blackjack. And there was nothing like it in Nevada City, or any other mining town for that matter. The grand, 50 ft.–long room was decorated with luxurious carpets, gas-powered chandeliers and plush furnishings. Rare liquors and wines were served while a small orchestra played. Gamblers were offered free champagne upon arrival. Dumont enforced a dress code (jackets, ties and hats) and strictly prohibited swearing, smoking, spitting and fighting. She was bringing class to the rough-and-tumble mining community—and they absolutely loved it. Not least because it offered the opportunity to play against the mysterious Madame Dumont herself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She possessed a peculiar power over the roughest of her customers,” the \u003cem>Hamilton County Democrat\u003c/em> reported in Oct. 1879. “It became a saying of theirs that there was more satisfaction in playing against the Madame’s game and losing, than in winning at any other game.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>n the course of running Vingt-et-Un\u003cem>,\u003c/em> Dumont met a fellow professional gambler named David Tobin. The two hit it off, became romantically involved, and she soon invited him to co-manage the casino. Partnering with Tobin enabled Dumont to broaden her horizons and open a second venue. Dumont’s Place, as it was called, specialized in games not played at Vingt-et-Un, including keno, roulette, poker, chuck-a-luck (a game of chance played with three dice) and the most popular game of the day, faro.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13908457\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 440px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13908457\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/440px-Faro_card_game.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"440\" height=\"309\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/440px-Faro_card_game.jpg 440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/440px-Faro_card_game-160x112.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 440px) 100vw, 440px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gold rush gamblers playing a game of Faro in Tombstone, Arizona—where Eleanor Dumont lived, and gambled, for a time. \u003ccite>(Public domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The couple’s success was short-lived. By 1857, as gold lodes dwindled, so did casino customers. Dumont and Tobin cut their losses, sold the businesses and parted ways. Tobin headed to New York where he died a very wealthy man in 1865. Dumont followed the miners to Columbia, California where a new wealth of gold was being uncovered. Dumont set up a gambling table inside a hotel and, as with Nevada City, she made a good living as long as the miners did. Once gold supplies petered out and prospectors began moving on, Dumont faithfully and fearlessly followed. She would go on to travel extensively in pursuit of mining money, spending the 1860s bouncing between Virginia City and Pioche in Nevada, Fort Benton and Bannack in Montana, Helena and Salmon in Idaho, Colorado City in Arizona, and Corinne and Silver City in Utah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of this was in Dumont’s original life plan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dumont had made an attempt to embrace a quieter life at the end of the 1850s. She had saved enough money by that time to buy herself a ranch in Carson City, Nevada—and she was determined to get off the road and make a go of it. It might just have worked out if she hadn’t fallen in love with a saloon owner named Jack McKnight. McKnight told Dumont he was a cattleman who could turn the ranch into a successful business. Swept up in what seemed like a happy ending, Dumont married McKnight and signed over the ranch to him so he could manage it for her. Within a month, he had sold the property and skipped town with everything Dumont had worked so hard for. She had no choice but to hit the road once more, and she never again attempted to settle down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Something about the experience with McKnight hardened Dumont. She became a heavy drinker, took less care with her appearance and was outwardly more cynical. She started carrying a gun wherever she went, and when fate crossed her path with McKnight’s once more, she wasted no time in shooting him dead. Dumont was never charged with any crime, however. Some said there simply wasn’t enough evidence to charge her; others claimed the sheriff knew what McKnight had done to Dumont and thought he had it coming. Only many years after the crime did Dumont admit to the murder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dumont’s newfound toughness found its way into her card games. She is said to have horsewhipped one cheating gambler during a game in Colorado City. Rumors were rife that after one of her customers angrily accused her of not really being French, she had him thrown through a door. In Fort Benton, Dumont’s gambling house, the Cosmopolitan, stood right in the middle of what was commonly referred to at the time as “the bloodiest block in the West”—a lawless cluster of bars, brothels and casinos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One night on that chaotic street, word began to spread that trouble was on the horizon—a steamboat said to be carrying many passengers with smallpox was about to dock, bringing the feared disease to Fort Benton. Dumont sprang into action, and raced down to the docks with a pistol in each hand. When the boat arrived, she threatened to shoot the captain if he attempted to dock. Needless to say, he abandoned the plan and turned around. Dumont made her way back to the Cosmopolitan, told her customers the danger had passed and bought everyone drinks on the house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">D\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>espite Dumont’s necessary assimilation into the harshest of environments, she never did lose her charm. Throughout her life, she retained a knack for defusing dangerous situations using only her grace and wit. On one occasion, she is said to have single-handedly prevented a riot that was brewing amongst an angry mob of unemployed miners and Mexican laborers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On another, the \u003cem>Hamilton County Democrat\u003c/em> reported:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>In Pioche, the room in which she was dealing her game became filled with a noisy, quarreling crowd of miners, maddened with drink and flourishing pistols … The bar keepers and faro dealers were fruitlessly trying to quiet the crowd, when Madame Dumont … quietly approached the noisies and laughingly removing them for ungallant conduct, succeeded in clearing the room and avoiding a bloody row.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>By 1864, while residing in Bannack, Dumont decided to open a brothel to supplement her gambling earnings. It was a far cry from Vingt-et-Un, where women had been banned, lest prostution lure her customers away from the card table. In Bannack, Dumont drummed up brothel business by driving her girls around town in carriages, never missing the construction camps along the route of the Union Pacific Railroad.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four years later, she took a chance on the Kootenai Mines in British Columbia. But as soon as she arrived and started building a new casino, the miners and prospectors found a more promising lode down the line and moved on. Dumont quickly ran out of cash and skipped town by mule train, without telling the contractors who’d been building her new venue. Dumont made her way to central Montana, where she made herself a fast fortune at the mining camps. One year later, she tracked down her old contractors in Reynolds City and paid them back in full, in what \u003cem>The Butte Miner\u003c/em> newspaper later referred to as “bankable gold dust.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>It was in middle age that Dumont acquired the cruel nickname that never left her: Madame Mustache. As she aged, the hair on Dumont’s upper lip had darkened and, after an angry customer threw the insult at her one day, the sobriquet stuck and followed her around the country wherever she traveled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s almost impossible to map Dumont’s exact movements during the 1870s—except to say that she showed up at card tables across the west. Boise City, Oklahoma. Cheyenne, Wyoming. Blackfoot City, Idaho. Eureka, Nevada. Tombstone, Arizona. Deadwood, South Dakota—where Dumont, incidentally, befriended Calamity Jane and taught her how to gamble. No wonder the \u003cem>Bodie Standard\u003c/em> reported in 1878 that, “Probably no woman on the Pacific Coast is better known.” And they were right. In July of that same year, a single week-long visit to Modesto earned Dumont two separate articles in the \u003cem>Modesto Herald \u003c/em>newspaper. She was merely passing through on her way to Bodie—the only town she never left.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After arriving in Bodie, Dumont began dealing 21 at the Magnolia saloon on Main Street. She was welcomed warmly. “She appears young as ever and those who knew her ever so many years ago would instantly recognize her now,” the \u003cem>Bodie Standard\u003c/em> cheerfully reported.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">O\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>n the morning of Sept. 8, 1879, a sheep herder discovered Eleanor Dumont’s lifeless body, head resting on a stone, a mile outside of Bodie. She had killed herself by drinking a combination of morphine and red wine, and left a note addressed to the public administrator. In it, she gave instructions about what to do with her worldly possessions and stated simply that she was “tired of life.” Friends reported that she had borrowed $300 to gamble with the night before (over $8,000 in today’s money), and was bereft after losing it all within a few short hours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The outpouring prompted by the death of Dumont was immense. Local women lovingly prepared her body for burial, while miners raised money to give her an appropriate sendoff. \u003cem>The Bridgeport Chronicle Union\u003c/em> wrote: “It is said that of the hundreds of funerals held in the mining sample, that of Madame Mustache was the largest. The gamblers of the place buried her with all honors and carriages were brought in from Carson City, NV, a distance of 120 miles.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dumont was buried in the section of Bodie’s cemetery reserved for outcasts and sinners. Still, newspapers across the country reported Dumont’s death with reverence and respect. The \u003cem>Bodie Morning News\u003c/em> reported that she “bore a character of virtue possessed by few in her line.” The \u003cem>Hamilton County Democrat\u003c/em> wrote: “Despite her strange surrounding and unusual mode of living, [Dumont] possessed the respect, as well as the admiration of her rough companions for years.” Montana’s \u003cem>Butte Miner\u003c/em> noted: “Truthful and honest, whatever other faults she might have had, always smiling, never forgetting the politeness of her native France, and her purse ever open at the appeal of sickness or suffering, Madame Mustache leaves friends in almost every class of Western society.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shortly after her death, the\u003cem> San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em> quoted a miner who had known and loved Dumont. He perhaps summed up her life best.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Her life was as square a game as was ever dealt. The world played against her with all sorts of combinations but she generally beat it. The turn was called on her at last for a few paltry hundreds … and she passed in her checks, game to the last.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n September of 1915, Kala Bagai stepped off the steamship Korea onto Angel Island and entered a whole new world. Kala, who had journeyed to America from Peshawar, India (today part of Pakistan), was 21, already a mother of three, and did not speak a word of English. Her husband Vaishno was determined to seek a better life for his family, far away from the British colonial rule of their home country. Unbeknownst to the young couple at the time, their lives in America would go on to exemplify the struggles of many South Asian immigrants during the first half of the 20th century. But it was Kala alone who defined how best to survive them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kala was born in Amritsar, Punjab, and married Vaishno when she was 11 and he was 12. Child marriage had long been the norm in India—1892’s Age of Consent Bill only went so far as to raise the age a child could be married from 10 to 12. \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Marriage_Restraint_Act\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">It would take until 1929\u003c/a> for India’s marital ages to be set at 14 for girls and 18 for boys. Despite the earliness of their pairing, the Bagais proved to be a good match—a fact demonstrated by Vaishno’s insistence on bringing his family to America with him. Most immigrants at the time left their wives and families back home. Bringing the whole family was a luxury afforded to Vaishno because of his status as a member of Peshawar’s educated upper classes. (He brought $25,000 in gold to America with him.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13904183']The Bagais’ decision to move to San Francisco was inspired by one of Vaishno’s childhood friends, Ram Chandra Bharadwaj. Bharadwaj had immigrated to the city and co-founded the Gadar Party—a political organization focused on removing British colonizers from India. The Gadar Party’s location in the Bay Area did not prevent its articles from reaching the Indian people. In July 1911, for example, party co-founder Har Dayal wrote in Calcutta’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.saada.org/item/20101216-153\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Modern Review\u003c/em>\u003c/a> about why America offered better living conditions than India under British rule.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Under the Union Jack, [Indians] have no status, as they are servants in the house. An Englishman never forgets that a Hindu is his ‘fellow-subject,’” Dayal wrote. “Very few [Indians] possess an adequate notion of the good that is being done to the cause of their country by the few Hindus who live scattered on this vast continent in small groups … America is perhaps the only country in the world from which a solitary wandering Hindu can send a message of hope and encouragement to his countrymen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After receiving such communications, the Bagais’ hopes must have been high about their new home. And while Kala almost immediately found joy in San Francisco’s beaches, the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, and the wonders of the post-earthquake rebuild, she later described her first impressions of California as “strange.” And it’s no wonder. On the Bagais’ arrival, the family was initially split up and held in detention over a weekend while Angel Island’s immigration station was closed. Vaishno was held with their eldest son Brij, and handled all communication with the immigration officials. Kala was held with their two youngest sons, Madan and Ram. In a 1982 interview with her grandson, Kala noted that the first word she understood during her two-day detention was American slang for food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When the eating time came,” she said, “they said ‘Chow, chow, chow,’ so I understood that means to eat … I didn’t like the food at all. But I saw that they were selling some fruits, so I bought some fruits. But I did not know how much money to give. So I took the money and put it in my hand … and let him take whatever he wants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the Bagai family were released the following Monday, the sight of Kala was enthralling not just to San Franciscans, but to the whole country. As one of the first Indian women to move to California, her appearance was deemed worthy of coverage in the \u003cem>San Francisco Call-Post\u003c/em> and even East Coast publications. On Oct. 3, 1915, \u003cem>The Washington Post\u003c/em> reported:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Mrs. Hander Kala Bagai, coming all the way from northwestern India, has introduced San Francisco to the latest thing in jewelry—the nose diamond. “Have your surgeon,” says Mrs. Bagai, “pierce your nose horizontally above the nostrils and just under the bridge; then order from your jeweler a little, straight gold bar with a diamond set in one end; run it through the perforation and you’re right up to the minute in fashions.”\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>On Christmas Eve that year, Oklahoma’s \u003cem>Leader-Tribune\u003c/em> newspaper also wrote about Kala’s nose stud, in a report that was smattered with a heavy dose of racism:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Nose gems as desirable ornaments have just been introduced into this country. It is the latest effort of man—or woman—to achieve good looks. The fad came from northwestern India. That is the country, you know, where people starve themselves to make it rain or change their luck. Mrs. Mander Kala Bagai brought it from that country to San Francisco, and they do say that some San Franciscans are wearing the nose diamond this very minute.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>This kind of prejudice would be a constant source of disruption and upset for the Bagais during their earliest years in California. After living in a single furnished room and then a rented apartment, Vaishno’s successful general store on Fillmore Street let the family to buy a home in Berkeley—a house they would never actually live in. On move-in day, arriving with all of their belongings in tow, the Bagais found themselves barred from their own home. Racist neighbors had locked them out. In 1982, Kala explained why they left and never returned. “I told Mr. Bagai, ‘I don’t want to live in this neighborhood. I don’t want to live in this house because they might hurt my children.’” Instead, the family settled back in San Francisco, in an apartment above their shop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13906420\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13906420\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-800x574.png\" alt=\"An Indian man wearing smart slacks, vest, white shirt and bow tie stands before the counter in a shop.\" width=\"800\" height=\"574\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-800x574.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-1020x731.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-160x115.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-768x551.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM.png 1194w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vaishno Bagai standing at the counter of his general store in 1923. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the South Asian American Digital Archive)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]K[/dropcap]ala always made sure to leave her door open to other immigrants moving to Northern California. Personally facing down hostilities like the confrontation in Berkeley only compounded her dedication to her community. In 2020, one of her grandchildren, Rani Bagai, wrote about Kala for \u003ca href=\"https://www.berkeleyside.org/2020/03/12/opinion-berkeley-might-name-a-street-after-kala-bagai-this-is-her-story\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Berkeleyside\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. She noted that her grandmother started her “tradition of welcoming other new Indian immigrants and visitors with a home-cooked vegetarian meal and instant friendship,” because of her own pangs of “feeling lonely in a strange land.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once the Bagais were a little more comfortable and Vaishno had established an import-export business, the family donated money to the Gadar Party and were regulars at the organization’s headquarters, which also housed its official newspaper, the \u003cem>Hindustan Gadar\u003c/em>. In 1917, the headquarters moved to 5 Wood St. in San Francisco, where the Gadar Memorial building still stands today. Those offices were, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cgisf.gov.in/page/gadar-memorial-hall/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">according to the Consulate General of India\u003c/a>, “an environment for thinkers, activists and volunteers who came to live, work, organize and help run a printing press that sent their messages around the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13897608']In March 1921, Vaishno Bagai gave up his Indian citizenship to become an American citizen. At the time, wives of immigrants, like Kala, automatically became naturalized when their husbands did without filing an application of their own. Sadly, the Bagais’ American dream was short-lived. In February 1923, the Supreme Court reached a decision in the \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Bhagat_Singh_Thind\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">United States vs. Bhagat Singh Thind case\u003c/a> that no person of Indian origin was eligible to become an American citizen. This not only affected new immigrants, but retroactively revoked citizenship for the Bagais and other families just like them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The court’s decision plunged the Bagais into financial difficulties. They lost their right to own property, they lost their general store, and they lost the ability to return to India. Within five years, Vaishno could see no way out. Kala saved him from a suicide attempt on Feb. 1, 1928. The \u003cem>Petaluma Argus-Courier\u003c/em> reported: “He had gone to Land’s End with the intention of jumping from one of the high cliffs to the jagged rocks below. He had been restrained, he said, by his wife.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just six weeks later, Vaishno’s lifeless body was found in a gas-filled San Jose apartment, alongside a letter detailing why he felt he had no choice but to take his own life. The \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> later published the suicide note that bid farewell to his “nice and lovely wife” and “extra good children.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I came to America thinking, dreaming and hoping to make this land my home,” Vaishno wrote. “In the last 12 or 13 years we all made ourselves as much Americanized as possible. But they now come to me and say I am no longer an American citizen … Now what am I? What have I made of myself and my children? We cannot exercise our rights, we cannot leave this country … Is life worth living in a gilded cage? Obstacles this way, blockades that way, and the bridges burnt behind.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vaishno’s death caused an uproar. On April 27, 1928, a friend named J.S. Hundal wrote a letter to the editor of Oregon’s \u003cem>Corvallis Gazette-Times\u003c/em>. Hundal described Vaishno’s suicide as an act of “protest.” He declared: “By what law of humanity and nature can you justify such a policy of accepting a man as citizen today, and make him an outlaw tomorrow … Think of the tragedy, the deception, of embittered life and blighted hopes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1982, looking back, Kala recalled being devastated by her husband’s death, as well as “lonesome” and “lost” without him. Now, she was without a country or her partner. But she wasn’t ready to give up. Using money from life insurance policies taken out by Vaishno, Kala invested wisely and figured out how to start again on her own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='news_11840927'][dropcap]D[/dropcap]etermined to succeed, Kala honed her English skills, attended night school, stayed in touch with the members of the Gadar Party, and sent each and every one of her boys off to college. (Madan graduated from both Stanford and M.I.T. The engineer was eulogized in a 1941 issue of \u003cem>Stanford Illustrated Review\u003c/em> after his tragic death, aged 33, of pneumonia while seeking work in India.) But what Kala did best of all was make new South Asian immigrants feel welcome in a new country. She acted as the guide to living in America that she’d never had, and she brought countless people together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her \u003cem>Berkeleyside\u003c/em> article, Rani Bagai wrote: “As a little girl, I recall meeting South Asians from every walk of life—filmmakers, politicians, classical dancers, yoga teachers, authors, priests and lecturers—as well as from every origin—Gujaratis, Bengalis, Punjabis, Tamils, Sikhs, Muslims, Buddhists and Parsis. All were her friends, and frequently, at her dining room table.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once she had raised her children, Kala married another member of the Gadar Party, Mahesh Chandra. In 1946, she and her surviving children were finally granted American citizenship after Harry Truman signed the \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luce%E2%80%93Celler_Act_of_1946\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Luce-Celler Act\u003c/a> into law. A year later, India gained its independence from the U.K. and together with Mahesh, Kala moved to Los Angeles. It was there, as more and more Indian and Pakistani immigrants made their way to the U.S., that Kala’s tireless community-building earned her the nickname she’s remembered by today: “Mother India.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rani noted in \u003cem>Berkeleyside\u003c/em>:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>She had many close American friends and never went on a social visit without a gift box of See’s candy. Working with both American and South Asian immigrant women like herself, she went on in the 1950s and 1960s to become an active community builder in Southern California, hosting Indian American cultural events, receptions, and benefits at community halls, theaters, and homes. She built bridges wherever she could between her adopted American culture and the great diversity of Indian culture.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>By the age of 90, Kala Bagai Chandra’s list of achievements was both impressive and joyful. She helped fight for the freedom of her homeland with the Gadar Party. She was an example of resilience to her children and a wider community of immigrants. And she helped forge a path, and act as an indefatigable example, for those who followed in her footsteps. Most impressive of all, she almost single-handedly built one of the first Indian American communities in the U.S., providing all those newcomers with safe spaces, cultural connections and a place to keep traditions alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After she died in 1983, an obituary printed in \u003cem>India West\u003c/em> described exactly what had made Kala so special.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Armed with her personal philosophy expressed in the saying ‘If you are good … the whole world will love you,’ Mrs. Chandra radiated warmth, kindness, and good will to everyone. Her home became a ‘little India’ to the community, and she became the symbol of Mother India.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "How Kala Bagai Chandra Became ‘Mother India’ to South Asian Immigrants | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>n September of 1915, Kala Bagai stepped off the steamship Korea onto Angel Island and entered a whole new world. Kala, who had journeyed to America from Peshawar, India (today part of Pakistan), was 21, already a mother of three, and did not speak a word of English. Her husband Vaishno was determined to seek a better life for his family, far away from the British colonial rule of their home country. Unbeknownst to the young couple at the time, their lives in America would go on to exemplify the struggles of many South Asian immigrants during the first half of the 20th century. But it was Kala alone who defined how best to survive them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kala was born in Amritsar, Punjab, and married Vaishno when she was 11 and he was 12. Child marriage had long been the norm in India—1892’s Age of Consent Bill only went so far as to raise the age a child could be married from 10 to 12. \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Marriage_Restraint_Act\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">It would take until 1929\u003c/a> for India’s marital ages to be set at 14 for girls and 18 for boys. Despite the earliness of their pairing, the Bagais proved to be a good match—a fact demonstrated by Vaishno’s insistence on bringing his family to America with him. Most immigrants at the time left their wives and families back home. Bringing the whole family was a luxury afforded to Vaishno because of his status as a member of Peshawar’s educated upper classes. (He brought $25,000 in gold to America with him.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The Bagais’ decision to move to San Francisco was inspired by one of Vaishno’s childhood friends, Ram Chandra Bharadwaj. Bharadwaj had immigrated to the city and co-founded the Gadar Party—a political organization focused on removing British colonizers from India. The Gadar Party’s location in the Bay Area did not prevent its articles from reaching the Indian people. In July 1911, for example, party co-founder Har Dayal wrote in Calcutta’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.saada.org/item/20101216-153\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Modern Review\u003c/em>\u003c/a> about why America offered better living conditions than India under British rule.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Under the Union Jack, [Indians] have no status, as they are servants in the house. An Englishman never forgets that a Hindu is his ‘fellow-subject,’” Dayal wrote. “Very few [Indians] possess an adequate notion of the good that is being done to the cause of their country by the few Hindus who live scattered on this vast continent in small groups … America is perhaps the only country in the world from which a solitary wandering Hindu can send a message of hope and encouragement to his countrymen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After receiving such communications, the Bagais’ hopes must have been high about their new home. And while Kala almost immediately found joy in San Francisco’s beaches, the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, and the wonders of the post-earthquake rebuild, she later described her first impressions of California as “strange.” And it’s no wonder. On the Bagais’ arrival, the family was initially split up and held in detention over a weekend while Angel Island’s immigration station was closed. Vaishno was held with their eldest son Brij, and handled all communication with the immigration officials. Kala was held with their two youngest sons, Madan and Ram. In a 1982 interview with her grandson, Kala noted that the first word she understood during her two-day detention was American slang for food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When the eating time came,” she said, “they said ‘Chow, chow, chow,’ so I understood that means to eat … I didn’t like the food at all. But I saw that they were selling some fruits, so I bought some fruits. But I did not know how much money to give. So I took the money and put it in my hand … and let him take whatever he wants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the Bagai family were released the following Monday, the sight of Kala was enthralling not just to San Franciscans, but to the whole country. As one of the first Indian women to move to California, her appearance was deemed worthy of coverage in the \u003cem>San Francisco Call-Post\u003c/em> and even East Coast publications. On Oct. 3, 1915, \u003cem>The Washington Post\u003c/em> reported:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Mrs. Hander Kala Bagai, coming all the way from northwestern India, has introduced San Francisco to the latest thing in jewelry—the nose diamond. “Have your surgeon,” says Mrs. Bagai, “pierce your nose horizontally above the nostrils and just under the bridge; then order from your jeweler a little, straight gold bar with a diamond set in one end; run it through the perforation and you’re right up to the minute in fashions.”\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>On Christmas Eve that year, Oklahoma’s \u003cem>Leader-Tribune\u003c/em> newspaper also wrote about Kala’s nose stud, in a report that was smattered with a heavy dose of racism:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Nose gems as desirable ornaments have just been introduced into this country. It is the latest effort of man—or woman—to achieve good looks. The fad came from northwestern India. That is the country, you know, where people starve themselves to make it rain or change their luck. Mrs. Mander Kala Bagai brought it from that country to San Francisco, and they do say that some San Franciscans are wearing the nose diamond this very minute.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>This kind of prejudice would be a constant source of disruption and upset for the Bagais during their earliest years in California. After living in a single furnished room and then a rented apartment, Vaishno’s successful general store on Fillmore Street let the family to buy a home in Berkeley—a house they would never actually live in. On move-in day, arriving with all of their belongings in tow, the Bagais found themselves barred from their own home. Racist neighbors had locked them out. In 1982, Kala explained why they left and never returned. “I told Mr. Bagai, ‘I don’t want to live in this neighborhood. I don’t want to live in this house because they might hurt my children.’” Instead, the family settled back in San Francisco, in an apartment above their shop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13906420\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13906420\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-800x574.png\" alt=\"An Indian man wearing smart slacks, vest, white shirt and bow tie stands before the counter in a shop.\" width=\"800\" height=\"574\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-800x574.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-1020x731.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-160x115.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM-768x551.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/Screen-Shot-2021-11-22-at-10.53.06-PM.png 1194w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vaishno Bagai standing at the counter of his general store in 1923. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the South Asian American Digital Archive)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">K\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>ala always made sure to leave her door open to other immigrants moving to Northern California. Personally facing down hostilities like the confrontation in Berkeley only compounded her dedication to her community. In 2020, one of her grandchildren, Rani Bagai, wrote about Kala for \u003ca href=\"https://www.berkeleyside.org/2020/03/12/opinion-berkeley-might-name-a-street-after-kala-bagai-this-is-her-story\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Berkeleyside\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. She noted that her grandmother started her “tradition of welcoming other new Indian immigrants and visitors with a home-cooked vegetarian meal and instant friendship,” because of her own pangs of “feeling lonely in a strange land.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once the Bagais were a little more comfortable and Vaishno had established an import-export business, the family donated money to the Gadar Party and were regulars at the organization’s headquarters, which also housed its official newspaper, the \u003cem>Hindustan Gadar\u003c/em>. In 1917, the headquarters moved to 5 Wood St. in San Francisco, where the Gadar Memorial building still stands today. Those offices were, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cgisf.gov.in/page/gadar-memorial-hall/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">according to the Consulate General of India\u003c/a>, “an environment for thinkers, activists and volunteers who came to live, work, organize and help run a printing press that sent their messages around the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In March 1921, Vaishno Bagai gave up his Indian citizenship to become an American citizen. At the time, wives of immigrants, like Kala, automatically became naturalized when their husbands did without filing an application of their own. Sadly, the Bagais’ American dream was short-lived. In February 1923, the Supreme Court reached a decision in the \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Bhagat_Singh_Thind\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">United States vs. Bhagat Singh Thind case\u003c/a> that no person of Indian origin was eligible to become an American citizen. This not only affected new immigrants, but retroactively revoked citizenship for the Bagais and other families just like them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The court’s decision plunged the Bagais into financial difficulties. They lost their right to own property, they lost their general store, and they lost the ability to return to India. Within five years, Vaishno could see no way out. Kala saved him from a suicide attempt on Feb. 1, 1928. The \u003cem>Petaluma Argus-Courier\u003c/em> reported: “He had gone to Land’s End with the intention of jumping from one of the high cliffs to the jagged rocks below. He had been restrained, he said, by his wife.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just six weeks later, Vaishno’s lifeless body was found in a gas-filled San Jose apartment, alongside a letter detailing why he felt he had no choice but to take his own life. The \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> later published the suicide note that bid farewell to his “nice and lovely wife” and “extra good children.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I came to America thinking, dreaming and hoping to make this land my home,” Vaishno wrote. “In the last 12 or 13 years we all made ourselves as much Americanized as possible. But they now come to me and say I am no longer an American citizen … Now what am I? What have I made of myself and my children? We cannot exercise our rights, we cannot leave this country … Is life worth living in a gilded cage? Obstacles this way, blockades that way, and the bridges burnt behind.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vaishno’s death caused an uproar. On April 27, 1928, a friend named J.S. Hundal wrote a letter to the editor of Oregon’s \u003cem>Corvallis Gazette-Times\u003c/em>. Hundal described Vaishno’s suicide as an act of “protest.” He declared: “By what law of humanity and nature can you justify such a policy of accepting a man as citizen today, and make him an outlaw tomorrow … Think of the tragedy, the deception, of embittered life and blighted hopes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1982, looking back, Kala recalled being devastated by her husband’s death, as well as “lonesome” and “lost” without him. Now, she was without a country or her partner. But she wasn’t ready to give up. Using money from life insurance policies taken out by Vaishno, Kala invested wisely and figured out how to start again on her own.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">D\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>etermined to succeed, Kala honed her English skills, attended night school, stayed in touch with the members of the Gadar Party, and sent each and every one of her boys off to college. (Madan graduated from both Stanford and M.I.T. The engineer was eulogized in a 1941 issue of \u003cem>Stanford Illustrated Review\u003c/em> after his tragic death, aged 33, of pneumonia while seeking work in India.) But what Kala did best of all was make new South Asian immigrants feel welcome in a new country. She acted as the guide to living in America that she’d never had, and she brought countless people together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her \u003cem>Berkeleyside\u003c/em> article, Rani Bagai wrote: “As a little girl, I recall meeting South Asians from every walk of life—filmmakers, politicians, classical dancers, yoga teachers, authors, priests and lecturers—as well as from every origin—Gujaratis, Bengalis, Punjabis, Tamils, Sikhs, Muslims, Buddhists and Parsis. All were her friends, and frequently, at her dining room table.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once she had raised her children, Kala married another member of the Gadar Party, Mahesh Chandra. In 1946, she and her surviving children were finally granted American citizenship after Harry Truman signed the \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luce%E2%80%93Celler_Act_of_1946\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Luce-Celler Act\u003c/a> into law. A year later, India gained its independence from the U.K. and together with Mahesh, Kala moved to Los Angeles. It was there, as more and more Indian and Pakistani immigrants made their way to the U.S., that Kala’s tireless community-building earned her the nickname she’s remembered by today: “Mother India.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rani noted in \u003cem>Berkeleyside\u003c/em>:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>She had many close American friends and never went on a social visit without a gift box of See’s candy. Working with both American and South Asian immigrant women like herself, she went on in the 1950s and 1960s to become an active community builder in Southern California, hosting Indian American cultural events, receptions, and benefits at community halls, theaters, and homes. She built bridges wherever she could between her adopted American culture and the great diversity of Indian culture.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>By the age of 90, Kala Bagai Chandra’s list of achievements was both impressive and joyful. She helped fight for the freedom of her homeland with the Gadar Party. She was an example of resilience to her children and a wider community of immigrants. And she helped forge a path, and act as an indefatigable example, for those who followed in her footsteps. Most impressive of all, she almost single-handedly built one of the first Indian American communities in the U.S., providing all those newcomers with safe spaces, cultural connections and a place to keep traditions alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After she died in 1983, an obituary printed in \u003cem>India West\u003c/em> described exactly what had made Kala so special.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Armed with her personal philosophy expressed in the saying ‘If you are good … the whole world will love you,’ Mrs. Chandra radiated warmth, kindness, and good will to everyone. Her home became a ‘little India’ to the community, and she became the symbol of Mother India.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"imageAlt": "KQED The California Report",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/26099305-72af-4542-9dde-ac1807fe36d5/kqed-s-the-california-report",
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}
},
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"id": "californiareportmagazine",
"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Magazine-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/tag/tcrmag/feed/podcast"
}
},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.cityarts.net/",
"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
"subscribe": {
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/City-Arts-and-Lectures-p692/",
"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
"id": "closealltabs",
"title": "Close All Tabs",
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"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/CAT_2_Tile-scaled.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"order": 1
},
"link": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"id": "code-switch-life-kit",
"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
"site": "radio",
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"link": "/radio/program/code-switch-life-kit",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnByLm9yZy9yc3MvcG9kY2FzdC5waHA_aWQ9NTEwMzEy",
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},
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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}
},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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},
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
"title": "Freakonomics Radio",
"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
}
},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
"info": "Hosted by Terry Gross, \u003cem>Fresh Air from WHYY\u003c/em> is the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. One of public radio's most popular programs, Fresh Air features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.",
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"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"here-and-now": {
"id": "here-and-now",
"title": "Here & Now",
"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
"id": "how-i-built-this",
"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510313/podcast.xml"
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
"meta": {
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/6c3dd23c-93fb-4aab-97ba-1725fa6315f1/hyphenaci%C3%B3n",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC2275451163"
}
},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Masters-of-Scale-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
"meta": {
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/0OLWoyizopu6tY1XiuX70x",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-Our-Watch-p1436229/",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/show/on-our-watch",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
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"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
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