This week, we started where we left off last week during World War II and talked about the Second Great Migration, when millions of African Americans left the South and moved to urban areas around the country, including the Bay Area. In San Francisco, many found work at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. 2019 marks the 400th anniversary of the first ships carrying enslaved people from Africa landing in Colonial America, and our discussion in large part centered around the legacy of slavery and how its effects are alive in and relevant to our city and nation today.
In our opening circle, students reflected on the terms “African American” and “Black,” sharing what they know and questions they have. We introduced the linguistic term “skunked,” which refers to a word that falls out of favor due to negative connotations that begin to be associated with it. This came up because we looked at the labels (e.g. “Negro,” “Mulatto,” “Quadroon,” “Octoroon”) used on the US census over the past century to categorize people of African descent.
We watched an excerpt from a short film called Point of Pride: The People’s View of Bayview/Hunters Point that tells the story of five Black women leaders and activists who successfully lobbied for millions of dollars in federal funding for safe housing in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood in the 1960s and 70s. The film includes a brief interview with HMCRA’s very own Keith Perry (Coach K), who was a beloved member of our school community before he passed away in 2017.
In the kitchen, students made a vegan version of a quintessentially African-American dish, collard greens. The tradition of eating leafy greens with their cooking juices originated in African countries, and collards were brought to North America by Europeans. In the plantation kitchens of the American South, enslaved cooks would serve their White masters the greens and reserve the nutrient-dense potlikker for their children. When we prepare collard greens, we remember the painful, complicated, truly American story they tell.
