The Santa Fe Improvement Club and racial segregation in Oakland, 1910 - 1917

Oakland was, and remains segregated. Read the sections below, about the Santa Fe Improvement Club, highlighted in yellow. According to Oakland Localwiki, "Santa Fe is a neighborhood of North Oakland near UCSF Benioff Oakland Children's Hospital." The headquarters of the Santa Fe Improvement Club were at 5457 Grove street. It is somewhat fitting that that address is now known as 5457 Martin Luther King Jr Way, and, according to the 2010 census, is a black community. Oakland is infamous for its history of redlining. Neighborhoods remain racially segregated. America remains racially divided. Racial hatred fuels our politics and helps keep the powerful in charge. I was motivated to research and share this following the murder of George Floyd, the protests in Minneapolis and Oakland, the response by the President to those protests, and the disproportionate number of African-American deaths due to covid19. 

Know your history.

LOG CABIN IN HILLS MADE ART STUDIO - Thomas Hal Boyd

LOG CABIN IN HILLS MADE ART STUDIO Thomas Hal Boyd Wed, Jan 6, 1926 – Page 32 · Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) · Newspapers.com

LOG CABIN IN HILLS MADE ART STUDIO

Berkeleyan, Whose Love for Outdoors Led Him to Paint Builds Home Above City Near Joaquin Miller's

Hal Boyd loves the outdoors.

He has loved it since, as a youngster, he worked with his elder brother on a homestead in the mountains of Siskiyou.

He found that he loved it so greatly he must find some means of expressing his feeling for it.

So he determined to learn to paint.

That, in brief, is the story of Thomas Hal Boyd, former University of California man, and youthful artist. High above the city, on the Joaquin Miller road, Boyd lives in a log house of his own making. Employed by the city as a forest ranger to watch over the wooded hills of Sequoia Park, he tramps the trails by day, in correct uniform and with pistol at his side. Always, however, his eyes are drinking in the beauty of nature's settings. Meadows, woods and canyons register themselves on his mind, to be interpreted in oils on canvas when Boyd is off duty.

TRAMPING TO REDWOOD PEAK, by Harold French, Sat, Jan 8, 1910, The San Francisco Call

TRAMPING TO REDWOOD PEAK Sat, Jan 8, 1910 – Page 2 · The San Francisco Call (San Francisco, California) · Newspapers.com

[This article was on a page of the San Francisco Call meant for kids, called Junior Section, thus the language seeming to be targeted toward young people. Harold French wrote this when he was 16. He was born in 1894. Harold was a critical figure in the history of Bay Area trails, nature, hiking and conservancy. He founded the Contra Costa Hills Club ten years after this article was published, which was instrumental in the conservation of the redwoods in Oakland. (See Oakland Sequoia Mountain Park; Part 1, the Bond Measure.) He was the namesake for the French trail, in Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park. Joaquin Miller was a famous poet, a self-promoting celebrity of the sort very common now. He bought a bare piece of hill land that he cultivated into a forest which is now Joaquin Miller Park. There are more articles by Harold French on this blog, and more to come. He didn't ride a bike, but he made an impact on my life, it so happens. - MF]

TRAMPING TO REDWOOD PEAK

BY HAROLD FRENCH 

Knave - Early Churches, Gamblers Built It, Brides From Germany, A Marriage Lottery, An Old Donner Trail, Culbertson Grade, Literary Treasures, Frank Norris Relics, Survived Two Fires, More About Scotty, Some Richmond History, The Castro Grant, A New Discoverer

Knave Some Richmond History shellmound Sun, Sep 15, 1940 – Page 17 · Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) · Newspapers.com

Knave - Early Churches, Gamblers Built It, Brides From Germany, A Marriage Lottery, An Old Donner Trail, Culbertson Grade, Literary Treasures, Frank Norris Relics, Survived Two Fires, More About Scotty, Some Richmond History, The Castro Grant, A New Discoverer

As you can see in the embedded, original page from the Sep 15, 1940 Oakland Tribune, this article was five print columns with headings. You could scan it left to right and pick a segment to read. In blog form, it's a top-to-bottom text, so the stuff at the top might get scanned, but the stuff below might not. This is the situation with Knave pages! I will start summarizing the headings as I have, here, so that you have a sense of what's worth skipping ahead, and in this case "Some Richmond History," "The Castro Grant," are worth skipping ahead, as is "An Old Donner Trail" and "A New Discoverer," Personally, I got to this Knave page by searching for "indian village."

More knave articles here

Knave - early history books, Calaveras Chronicle, Gay Christening, Lake County Native American History, A Matter of Fish, Versatile Dr. Semple, Letter Carriers Outing

Knave - indian villages, etc Sun, Aug 18, 1957 – 65 · Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) · Newspapers.com

AMONG the most prized volumes in Dr. Rockwell D. Hunt's collection of Californiana are two that pertain to San Francisco, both comparatively rare now. "I think they are of special value, speaking historically," he says. "The short title of the first of these is 'The Annals of San Francisco,' published by D. Appleton & Company in 1855. The authors are Frank Soule, John H. Gihon, M.D., and James Nisbet. The wide scope of this volume is indicated by its subtitle, 'Containing a Summary of the History of the First Discovery, Settlement, Progress and Present Condition of California and a Complete History of All the Important Events Connected Therewith, It's Great City, to which are Added Biographical Memoirs of Some Prominent Citizens.' It is illustrated by 150 fine engravings. A very useful Appendix includes the story of the Great Seal of the State, the text of the California Constitution of 1849, the Act of Corporation of the City of San Francisco, and a complete roster of the Society of California Pioneers, with dates of their arrival and their places of residence. In no other single book can so much detailed information pertaining to San Francisco during early American years, chronologically arranged, be found. It may be regarded as indispensable to the researcher. My copy of this valuable book, printed well over a century ago, was acquired in early days by my father, a pioneer of 1850. On its fly-leaf appears still, in his handwriting, in pencil, his name and address: 'D. R. Hunt, Oneida Valley, Sacramento County.' On the same page appears the following, in my uncle's handwriting: 'Presented to P. J. Hunt by D. R. Hunt, Hamilton (New York) March 23, 1866.' This book has been in our family from my early childhood. My brothers and I enjoyed its pictures many a time on the floor of our 'sitting room' in the Freeport home. Bound in beautiful morocco, with full gilt edges, its present-condition, after all its handling, is remarkably good. Naturally, I'm proud to be the owner of this volume. It is of great value to the student and historian, but to me it possessed a sentimental value that cannot be told in terms of dollars.

A tour of Fernandez Ranch singletrack, from my door

The full photo album, with full-sized photos and videos is here: A tour of Fernandez Ranch singletrack, from my door. Most are also below, at lower resolution.

To Wildcat Beach in Point Reyes, from our doors in the Oakland hills; a weekend bikepacking trip with Joe and Mark

On Saturday, March 14th and Sunday, March 15th, 2014 my friends Mark (father) and Joe (son) and I rode our bikes from our (well, Mark's and my) doors in the Oakland hills to Wildcat Beach in Point Reyes, spent the night on the beach at the campground, and then back home. Mark and Joe were originally part of an Oakland boy scout troop that laid aside some of the traditional norms, and had proper adventures in the mountains. Ever since, the dads continued to meet up for a big weekend trip. We organized our bikepack to coincide with their backpack, and met them at the beach. Admittedly, we traveled light. I carried some baguettes, meat and cheese I picked up in San Francisco, but we mostly relied on the largesse these fine gentlemen packed in from their cars. It was a very nice dinner, fire, bonding experience, breakfast and goodbye, with them! I wish I'd been part of that scout troop. (I got an email, later, when I shared these photos, "Hey, that's my CEO!") We took BART to and from the city, rode across the Golden Gate Bridge, and did dirt, mostly the same route, both days. I finished with a St. Patrick's Day dinner at my friend Mike's house, Lauren was there, and some other friends. Dinner was soda bread, corned beef, cabbage and Guiness. It was a wonderful finish! It was so much fun, and I can't wait to do another trip like this again. It's been six years! I am hopeful I might someday do a trip like this with my kids.

OLD TIME SPANISH PICNIC - Alisal, the Sycamores - Frank Bernal - Rancho el Valle de San Jose

I found an article titled OLD TIME SPANISH PICNIC in the September 23, 1878 edition of the Oakland Tribune, about a family picnic in Pleasanton, among members of the Bernal, Amador, Alviso and other Californio families. It fired my imagination. Imagine the stories, music, food, dancing. That led me down a little bit of a rabbit hole. Here's some interesting history for you.

OLD TIME SPANISH PICNIC Mon, Sep 23, 1878 – Page 3 · Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) · Newspapers.com

The Anti-Mask League of San Francisco in 1919, during the third wave of the Spanish Influenza pandemic

Right now, with the covid19 pandemic we are seeing resistance to wearing masks, enduring quarantine. Here in the USA we have possibly the highest rates of infection and death, with the least amount of testing, and our federal leadership is uring people to return to work, and our president is supporting armed protestors who want to end restrictions on their ability to congregate, work, send their children to school. They protest against wearing masks. This is not the first time we've had protests agaist masks, during a pandemic. It happened in 1919, right here in the Bay Area, in San Francisco to be specific during the third wave of the Spanish Influenza pandemic. Peter Lawrence Kane wrote a great article about this subject, The Anti-Mask League: lockdown protests draw parallels to 1918 pandemic.