By Ken Epstein

Prominent civil rights attorney and activist Walter Riley recently went on radio station KPFA 94.1 to discuss his new book co-authored with local veteran organizer Jesse Strauss: “Civil Rights and Structural Attacks: Conversations with Walter Riley.”

Widely known in Oakland for his unifying leadership on issues of social justice and human rights, Riley is also recognized for his famous son, Raymond “Boots” Riley, a rap artist, political activist, and successful filmmaker, whose latest film, “I Love Boosters,” is now in theaters and capturing national attention.

Born in North Carolina, Riley has lived in San Francisco, Chicago, and Detroit, but his longtime home is Oakland, California.

Over the years, he was a leader in the South against Jim Crow, participated as a student in the historic 1968 San Francisco State University strike that created Black Studies and Ethnic Studies in the U.S. and scored victories in the fight for open college admissions.

He was also a labor organizer and was involved in early Black Panther Party formations, anti-war protests, and was a leader of the Progressive Labor Party, a pro-Mao, Marxist Leninist party.

In an interview on KPFA’s “Upfront” with host Brian Edwards-Tiekert on June 18, he discussed some of his formative experiences, born in 1944 to a family of sharecroppers who worked on a tobacco farm near Durham, North Carolina.

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“I came from a farming family, the ninth child of 11 children,” Riley said. “My mom and dad got married as teenagers, and they were together for their entire lives. Growing up in this large family, we had to deal with various aspects of what it meant to live in an economically depressed area with parents who had come through what they called “Hoover times” (the Great Depression) in the South.

“They were proud of every one of their children when they took some stand, to develop and show some sense of dignity,” he said.

In his neighborhood, slavery was not a distant memory. There are many people “who knew firsthand what it was to have family members that had lived as enslaved people and lived in communities where enslaved people had lived.

“(Under tenant farming), the landowner negotiated for the entire family: the farmer, the wife, the children – everybody was involved on the farm. Kids were often engaged. We had to shovel, hoe tobacco to keep the weeds from taking over, to make sure that tobacco worms didn’t eat up the tobacco. If a child was old enough to plow, they would walk behind a horse or mule and plow a field, working from sunup to sundown,” he said.

The houses did not have indoor bathrooms, running water or electricity. “A lot of the names in the Black community were the same names as these slave owners. We could see the names of folks on the streets, street names of people who had enslaved people, and they were symbols to me of a world that did not see me as a human being, that has not treated my ancestors as humans, has treated us as chattel to be sold, to be owned, to be property,” Riley said

“When we were counted by our government, we were counted only for the purposes of allowing white people, white men, to have a vote.”

By 1950, when he was 6 years old, his family moved to another house, leaving tenant farming. His father took a job in construction.

“My parents wanted the younger kids to have education,” he continued. “The older kids had to work on the farms. By the time I came along, I was the second child born in a hospital. “My parents looked forward to younger kids to have more sense of independence from the economic and social depravities that they saw around them.”

Watching television, he became aware of the suffering under Jim Crow, including the lynching in Mississippi of Emmett Till in 1955 and Mack Parker in 1959.

When he was 13, he joined a picket line in town in front of a variety store chain that did not hire Black people and became active in the Civil Rights Movement. By time he was in high school, he had become a leader in the local chapter of the NAACP and met Malcolm X and later Medgar Evers, leaders who were both assassinated.

Married and with a child, he moved with his family in the early 1960s to San Francisco, attending San Francisco State University while working full time.

He participated in the San Francisco State University strike, the longest student strike in U.S. history, where students and their supporters prevailed in the face of mass arrests and daily violent police attacks.

While many people remember the strike for its historic victory – the creation of the first Black Studies and Ethnic Studies programs in the country. “But open admissions was the thing,” he said. “Open admissions had to do with people being able to go to school for free. People should be able to go to school just because they come here and say, ‘I want to go to school. I want an education’ (because) we live in a rich country.”

Studying Marxism, including dialectical materialism, he gradually began to understand structure of the system that needs to be changed, he said. “It requires a lot of study, and it still does.”

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By Linda Parker Pennington

The Fillmore Community Ambassadors held its first annual Juneteenth Wesley Johnson White Horse Awards ceremony on June 19 inside the newly reopened Fillmore Heritage Center.

The event featured awards for former San Francisco mayors London Breed and Willie Brown, along with Third Baptist Church Pastor Emeritus, Rev. Dr. Amos Brown.

The Koret Heritage lobby at the newly reopened center at 1330 Fillmore St. held a standing-room-only, culturally diverse and multi-generational audience while the art gallery featured photos of Fillmore community members in action, red Japanese lanterns, art and calligraphy, and Chinese artwork, giving the space a multicultural feel.

Addressing more than 100 Black and Asian attendees, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie stated “San Francisco is reliant on the Black community, and we must invest in this community.”

District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood acknowledged that “the Fillmore community has had a difficult history. Thanks to Rev. Amos Brown’s continuous focus on accountability and resistance, you hold us accountable and continue to inspire us.”

Mahmoud is referring to the Fillmore’s Japanese residents who were forced from their homes and sent to concentration camps during World War II. Black people occupied those homes until the return of their Japanese neighbors and then gave them back, while homes that had been unoccupied were lost. The presence of the Asian community on Juneteenth is a testament to that shared history.

In receiving his honor, Amos Brown elicited a powerful spontaneous call-and-response, where members of San Francisco’s many Black churches proudly shouted out the names: “Bethel AME! Providence Baptist! Jones Memorial! Glide!”

Awards program Master of Ceremonies Shawn Richards of Brothers Against Guns warmly introduced Breed, highlighting her many accomplishments, particularly on “March 16, 2020, when she became the first mayor to shut down a major U.S. city due to COVID-19, saving thousands of lives.”

The audience was captivated by Breed’s emotional speech touching on past traumas, present conditions, and future hopes for the neighborhood where she grew up.

She recalled another trauma of the neighborhood during the City’s redevelopment era in the 1960s, where Black residents were forced to move with a promise of being able to return that was largely unfulfilled.

“We remember when this land was just a field because they bulldozed hundreds of Victorian homes that Black people owned. They built the Fillmore Center, where most Black people can’t afford to live or start their own business. But we are still here.”

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By Sean Vaughn Scott, Special to The Post

For more than 60 years, the Black Repertory Group (BRG) has changed lives through the arts.

Founded in 1964 by educators and visionaries Birel L. Vaughn and Nora Vaughn, BRG has become one of America’s oldest continuously operating Black theater institutions. For generations, it has preserved culture, developed talent, and provided opportunities for young people to discover their voices and their potential.

The results speak for themselves.

Legendary performers such as Whoopi Goldberg and Danny Glover worked with and were inspired by BRG’s founders. More recently, Grammy award-winning artist Kehlani attended the Black Repertory Group Summer Day Camp for several years.

Long before international recognition, Kehlani performed on the BRG stage. During a summer day camp production of  “Princess and da Frog,” she portrayed Ray, the lovable firefly whose light guided others through the darkness. Her journey is proof that today’s camper may become tomorrow’s artist, entrepreneur, educator, or leader.

Located at 3201 Adeline St. in Berkeley, BRG continues that mission through its Youth Summer Day Camp of the Arts.

BRG is currently accepting applications and maintains an open enrollment program. Students may enroll throughout the summer as space permits and immediately become part of the BRG family.

We are also proud to be a multicultural opportunity program, welcoming children and families from all backgrounds, cultures, and communities. Through theater, music, dance, public speaking, visual arts, technical theater, and leadership development, students gain confidence, discipline, creativity, and lifelong skills.

As our programs grow, so does our need for volunteers.

We are seeking community members to assist with youth mentoring, registration, costumes, set construction, painting, props, ushering, photography, social media, marketing, technical theater, and fundraising activities. Whether you volunteer for a few hours or throughout the season, your support directly impacts the lives of young people.

BRG also partners with churches, civic organizations, alumni associations, fraternities, sororities, and community groups through theater party fundraisers, group sales, and buy-out performances. These partnerships have helped organizations raise funds while supporting arts and cultural programming.

The theater also serves as the home of the Berkeley NAACP Chapter, which meets every second Saturday of the month from 1 to 3 p.m.

For more than six decades, the Black Repertory Group has remained committed to one belief: every child deserves an opportunity to shine.

The next great artist may already be among us.

The next Kehlani may already be walking through our doors.

We invite you to volunteer, enroll, participate, and become part of the legacy.

For more information please go to www.blackrepertorygroup.com, call (510) 652-2120, or email info@blackrepertorygroup.com

Sean Vaughn Scott is the director of the Black Repertory Group.

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