exhibit curators Caption: Benjamin Cawthra, project director of the upcoming civil rights exhibit, center, and curators Bethany Girod, left, and Michelle Antenesse, hold artifacts that will be on display at the Fullerton Arboretum. Photo by Karen TapiaDownload Photo

Bringing the Past to Life: A University Initiative

Show of Freedom

Museum Exhibition on California’s Role in Civil War and Civil Rights History Open Through May 30 at Fullerton Arboretum

April 21, 2011 :: No. 126

What: “New Birth of Freedom: Civil War to Civil Rights in California,” a free, public exhibit featuring oral histories and artifacts dating back to the Civil War, opens April 27 at the Fullerton Arboretum’s Orange County Agricultural and Nikkei Heritage Museum. Cal State Fullerton’s Center for Oral and Public History is sponsoring the exhibit. Additional events related to the exhibit, including a May 4 panel discussion on housing rights, are being planned.

book Caption: This book, “American Slave Written By Himself,” by Frederick Douglass published in 1845, will be on display. Photo by Karen TapiaDownload Photo

When: April 27, 2011-May 30, 2012
Opening reception: 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 27
Exhibit hours: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursdays and noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays

Where: Fullerton Arboretum, 1900 Associated Road, Fullerton

Caption: Civil rights artifacts, such as this patch and button, also will be on display. Photo by Karen TapiaDownload Photo

Opening Night:
6:30 p.m.-8 p.m.: Musician Stan L. Breckenridge, Afro-ethnic studies lecturer, and singer Ki Johnson, will sing “Go Down Moses” and a medley of freedom songs from the Civil War era; history majors Tom Fujii, Chris Horton and Radiance Santifer and alumna Maria Quintero (B.A. history ’10) will recite excerpts from oral histories and 19th- and 20th-century documents; and the exhibit’s curators will speak about creating the exhibit.

Who: The exhibit's project director is Benjamin Cawthra, assistant professor of history and associate director of the university’s Center for Oral and Public History. The curators are graduate history majors Michelle Antenesse and Bethany Girod. The exhibit’s designer is Becki Hartke. Also working on the exhibit are students in Cawthra’s public history class.

Why: “The Civil War era and civil rights movement traditionally are not associated with California history,” says Michelle Antenesse, a graduate history major and co-curator of the exhibit. “This exhibit is an opportunity to place California in the national narrative of these two eras.”

Issues:
The exhibition’s content includes:

the debate over slavery in California
the status of ethnic minorities in the Gold Rush era
California’s participation in the Civil War
Japanese-American internment during World War II
Southern California-based court cases that opposed discrimination in education, jobs and public accommodations
the stories of everyday Californians who put themselves on the front lines during the Civil War and Civil Rights eras

Interactive: Visitors will be able to listen to oral histories of local, regional and national civil-rights advocates. They include: those who helped integrate the Placentia School District in the 1950s, Westminster's public schools in the 1940s, and the LA Fire Department in the 1950s; and a Freedom Rider who fought to desegregate public transportation in the 1960s. Recordings of Cal State Fullerton professors and students performing readings of speeches or writings by Frederick Douglass and numerous other civil-rights figures also are featured.

Artifacts: On display will be artifacts ranging from a helmet worn by an African American firefighter in the 1940s and a replica of a uniform worn by a California soldier fighting in the Civil War, to United Farm Worker buttons, political cartoons, photographs, books and newspaper clippings.

Parking: Limited free parking for visitors to the Fullerton Arboretum from 8 a.m.-5 p.m.

Additional: This project was made possible with support from the California Council for Humanities, an independent non-profit organization and a partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

More Information: http://fullertonarboretum.org/museum_nikkei_future.php

Media Contacts:
Benjamin Cawthra, History, 657-278-7893, or bcawthra@fullerton.edu
Mimi Ko Cruz, Public Affairs, 657-278-7586 or mkocruz@fullerton.edu

Top of Story

Audio

Civil rights activist Edward Johnson's police mug shot after being arrested in 1961. He was a Freedom Rider who rode buses in segregated southern U.S. states in an effort to desegregate public transportation. His oral history is part of the upcoming “New Birth of Freedom: Civil War to Civil Rights in California” exhibit at the Fullerton Arboretum.

Listen to an excerpt of the late civil rights activists and publishers of the Fullerton Observer Ralph and Natalie Kennedy. Read transcript.

Other oral histories featured in the exhibit include:

Alfred Aguirre, who helped integrate the Placentia School District in the 1950s; Irene L. Bryant, daughter of Alex and Esther Bernal, who were discriminated against for owning a home in Fullerton and sued by their white neighbors in 1943; the Rev. James D. Carrington, who fought for fair housing while leading the Friendship Baptist Church in Fullerton; Arnett Hartsfield, the firefighter who helped integrate the Los Angeles Fire Department in the 1950s; Jim Matsuoka, who helped form Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress; Sylvia Mendez, who was 8 when when her parents, Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez, sued Westminster School District for turning their children away from an all-white school and won in 1947; Loren Miller, the son of a slave who in 1947 represented more than 100 plaintiffs seeking to invalidate housing covenants that prevented blacks from purchasing or renting housing in certain areas and became a California Supreme Court justice; Dorothy Mulkey, who was a plaintiff in the 1963 court battle involving housing discrimination in Santa Ana; and Everett Winters, a member of the Orange County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The full oral histories of Johnson and the Kennedys were conducted by historians and are part of a collection of the Center for Oral and Public History.

Housing Rights Discussed May 4

As part of “New Birth of Freedom: Civil War to Civil Rights in California,” a panel discussion on the county’s housing issues and the people who fought for fairness over the decades will take place May 4 at the Fullerton Arboretum. The 4:45 p.m. discussion will feature panelists:

Irene Bryant and Theresa Haught, daughters of Alex and Esther Bernal, the Fullerton homeowners who fought against racial housing covenants. They were sued by their white neighbors in 1943. With the help of attorney David C. Marcus, the Bernals were able to keep their home in the Sunnyside neighborhood. Their neighbors had attempted to remove them by invoking a housing covenant clause in their deed, denying those of Mexican descent the right to purchase a home in that neighborhood.

Rusty Kennedy, executive director of the Orange County Human Relations Commission and son of the late civil rights activists and Fullerton Observer publishers Ralph and Natalie Kennedy, who fought against Proposition 14, which attempted to do away with fair housing laws in 1964 and helped found the Fullerton Fair Housing Council.

Sammy Lee, the medical doctor who in 1954 was a two-time gold-medal Olympic diving champion, an officer in the U.S. Army and a goodwill ambassador for America sent around the world by President Eisenhower. The famous Korean American attempted to purchase a home in Garden Grove that year and was told that minorities were not allowed in the tract he had chosen.

Dorothy Mulkey, a plaintiff with her husband, Lincoln Mulkey, in the 1963 court battle involving housing discrimination in Santa Ana. Their case was used to show that Proposition 14, the initiative that eliminated all fair housing laws in the state, was unconstitutional.

Bob Johnson, a board member of the Fair Housing Council of Orange County, will moderate the panel discussion. Johnson became involved in fair housing issues in 1966 when he joined the newly formed Orange County Fair Housing Council. In 1978, he co-founded the Orange County Community Housing Corp., in an effort to provide housing for extremely low-income people and has been serving on the board since then.

The public is welcome to attend the panel discussion and view the exhibit, which is housed in the Orange County Agricultural and Nikkei Heritage Museum. It will be open from 4 to 7 p.m. on May 4. For more information, call the Fullerton Arboretum at 657-278-3407.

California State University, Fullerton

Show of Freedom

Museum Exhibition on California’s Role in Civil War and Civil Rights History Open Through May 30 at Fullerton Arboretum

Audio

Housing Rights Discussed May 4

Related