California is finally confronting its history of slavery. Here’s how.
The newest monument to Black history in Los Angeles is small enough to fit in your pocket. Rather than a physical structure, the monument is projected onto the landscape through the viewer’s phone using augmented reality (A.R.) technology. Created by artist Ada Pinkston, the work celebrates the life of Biddy Mason, a formerly enslaved woman who helped build modern Los Angeles through her philanthropy and entrepreneurship.
The Biddy Mason A.R. installation is one of several new initiatives to transform California’s commemorative landscape. Often called the “city of the future,” Los Angeles is now investing heavily in its past. Those efforts — cooperative ventures between a responsive local government and community leaders — offer a blueprint for other cities and states to follow as they, too, confront their troubled histories.
Beginning with the Gold Rush, hundreds of White Southerners raced westward. Many traveled with enslaved people who were forced on the journey. Although California outlawed human bondage in 1850, state courts upheld Southerners’ slaveholding. According to historian Stacey Smith, 1,500 African Americans — as well as an untold number of Native Americans — labored in bondage in California before the Civil War.
Los Angeles has created a blueprint for positive change. A responsive local government, united with expertise and support from multiple community-based activists, has begun to reimagine the memorial landscape. Whereas other efforts have been stymied by heavy-handed policies and legal challenges, the initiatives in Southern California remain locally-focused and achievable.
See the full story here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/05/24/california-is-finally-confronting-its-history-slavery-heres-how/
