SAN FRANCISCO -- Come to the Water: Sharing the Rich Black Experience in San Francisco (ASPIRE SAN FRANCISCO) is cited in a Sunday, March 4 New York Times online story on the five African-American local organizations founded in 1852 as part of the National Underground Railroad.
Come to the Water is a textbook designed to meet the California history/social science standards as a psycho-social intervention to meet the objectives of the Education Code. A reporter for the Times local partner, Bay Citizen, attended a session of the seven-week course on teaching S.F. black history at Hannibal Lodge No. 1, the oldest Prince Hall lodge in the West. The course concludes with a summary on Monday, March 5 at 4:30 p.m. in the Latino-Hispanic Reading Room of the San Francisco Main Library to mark Black American Day.
In section 37221, the state Education Code designates: "(d) March 5, the anniversary of the death of Crispus Attucks, the first black American martyr of the Boston Massacre, known as "Black American Day" on which day schools shall include exercises and instruction on the development of black people in the United States."
Filled with primary source documents and exercises using local landmarks, Come to the Water is designed for use in tandem with online exhibitions such as Gold Rush Abolitionists: the California Movement to Emancipation, the four-volume Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4 and Black Heritage as Gap Closer, a study of educator capacity to provide culturallly responsive content, and a 16-week series From Civil War to Civil Rights, scheduled for April on ReUNION: Education-Arts-Heritage.
