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Street Academy Fair Connects Students to Community Service

Published

10 years ago

August 25, 2016

A back-to-school night for students at Emiliano Zapata Street Academy in Oakland is more than just shining apples and tidying books. Instead, the students sit in on lectures, engage with their community and become prepared for graduation in the process.

At the “Social Justice Fair,” as the event is called, local organizations meet with students to share their group’s mission and provide pathways to hands-on learning and volunteer opportunities within the community.

“We are doing work-based learning,” said Lara Lawal, Street Academy’s internship, college and career readiness coordinator. “We want to teach students, and we want them to do work in the actual field they are interested in.”

Students must complete 60 hours of community service and 60 hours of political action in order to graduate from Street Academy.

In order to help students complete that requirement, the Social Justice Fair introduces them to the very community-based organizations that they may end up spending the rest of the year with.

“I’m excited for kids to have a deeper learning experience and to develop their understanding of how organizations work to move towards change in the community,” said Street Academy principal Gina Hill.

This year, however, things were a little bit different than previous Social Justice Fairs, where organizations would set up small information booths outside for students to meander through.

Instead, attendees this fall traveled from classroom to classroom with a “passport” (a.k.a. their class schedule for the evening), taking mini-lessons from organizations like Youth Speaks, Girls Inc. of Alameda County, the Native American Health Center and many more.

“Having the presentations inside is more intentional, and the students build community with the actual providers because they will be working with them for a year,” said Lawal. “We want to set our students up for success, and we want to set up these organizations for success.”

Students learned how to apply for internships dealing with art and resistance with organizations such as Crucible or ArtEsteem, listened to victims of police violence who are trying to transform conditions in their community with groups like Urban Peace Movement, and even got a short health and yoga instruction from the Niroga Institute.

Street Academy isn’t the only school in Oakland offering work-based learning to students. Thanks to some additional funding from Measure N, which voters passed in 2014, several Oakland high schools now have programs like Street Academy’s that are designed to prepare students for college and real-world jobs.

“Sometimes there is a hopelessness that pervades these students’ age group, that they don’t have the power to make things change, that there will always be violence or poverty,” said Hill. “But this gives them some hands-on skills to produce the change and to be the change. I think that’s the most important part.”

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Black Artists in America, Installation Three Wraps at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens

TRI-STATE DEFENDER — With 50+ paintings, sculptures and assemblages, the exhibit features artists like Varnette Honeywood from Los Angeles, whose pieces appeared in Bill Coby’s private collection (before they were auctioned off) and on “The Cosby Show.” Also included are works by Alonzo Davis, another Los Angeles artist who opened one of the first galleries there where Black Artists could exhibit.

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March 24, 2026

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By Candace A. Gray | Tri-State Defender

The tulips gleefully greet those who enter the gates at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens on an almost spring day. More than 650,000 bulbs of various hues are currently on display. And they are truly breathtaking.

Inside the gallery, and equally as breathtaking, is the “Black Artists in America, From the Bicentennial to September 11” exhibit, which runs through Sunday, March 29. This is the third installment of a three-part series that started years ago and illustrates part of the Black experience through visual arts in the 20th century.

“This story picks up where part two left off,’’ said Kevin Sharp, the Linda W. and S. Herbert Rhea director for the Dixon. “This era is when we really start to see the emergence of these important Black artists’ agency and freedom shine through. They start to say and express what they want to, and it was a really beautiful time.”

With 50+ paintings, sculptures and assemblages, the exhibit features artists like Varnette Honeywood from Los Angeles, whose pieces appeared in Bill Coby’s private collection (before they were auctioned off) and on “The Cosby Show.” Also included are works by Alonzo Davis, another Los Angeles artist who opened one of the first galleries there where Black Artists could exhibit.

“Though [Davis] was from LA, he actually lived in Memphis for a decade,” said Sharp. “He was a dean at Memphis College of Art, and later opened the first gallery in New York owned and operated by black curators.”

Another featured artist is former NFL player, Ernie Barnes. His work is distinctive. Where have you seen one of his most popular paintings, Sugar Shack? On the end scene and credits of the hit show “Good Times.” His piece Saturday Night, Durham, North Carolina, 1974 is in this collection.

Memphis native James Little’s “The War Baby: The Triptych” is among more than 50 works featured in “Black Artists in America, From the Bicentennial to September 11” at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, the final installment of a three-part series highlighting the impact and evolution of Black artists through 2011.

The exhibit features other artists with Memphis ties, including abstract painter James Little, who was raised in a segregated Memphis and attended Memphis Academy of Art (before it was Memphis College of Art). He later moved to New York, became a teacher and an internationally acclaimed fixture in the art world in 2022 when he was named a Whitney Biennial selected artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Other artists like Romare Bearden, who had a Southern experience but lived up North, were featured in all three installments.

“During this period of time, he was a major figure,” said Sharp. “He wrote one of the first books on the history of African American art during a time when there were more Black academics, art teachers, more Black everything!”

Speaking of Black educators, Sharp said the head curator behind this tri-part series and Dixon’s partner in the arts is Earnestine Jenkins, Ph.D., an art history professor at the University of Memphis, who also earned a Master of Arts degree from Memphis State University (now UofM). “We began working with Dr. Jenkins in 2018,” he said.

Sharp explained that it takes a team of curators, registrars, counterparts at other museums, and more, about three years to assemble an exhibit like this. It came together quite seamlessly, he added. Each room conjured up more jaw-dropping “wows” than the one before it. Each piece worked with the others to tell the story of Black people and their collective experience during this time period.

One of the last artists about whom Sharp shared information was Bettye Saar, who will turn 100 years old this year. She’s been working in Los Angeles for 80 years and is finally getting her due. Her medium is collages or assemblages, and an incredible work of hers is on display. She’s married to an artist and has two daughters, also artists.

The exhibit catalogue bears some of these artists’ stories, among other scholarly information.

The exhibit, presented by the Joe Orgill Family Fund for Exhibitions, is culturally and colorfully rich. It is a must see and admission to the Dixon is free.

Visit https://www.dixon.org/ to learn more.

Fun Facts: An original James Little design lives in the flooring of the basketball court at Tom Lee Park, and he makes and mixes his own paint colors.