MARCH 2022 ISSUE
Ten Years Later: Trayvon Martin's Legacy
Photo by Adrian Florido/NPR
Francis Oliver founded a small Black history museum in Sanford, Fla., the city where Trayvon Martin was killed. She has preserved the items from the roadside memorial that popped up after his death…
This was well before she or anyone knew that Martin's killing would be the catalyst for a movement that would grow and evolve over a decade. It would start with the creation of Black Lives Matter, lead to the global uprising over George Floyd's killing and culminate almost 10 years to the day after Martin's death with federal hate crimes convictions for three white men who hunted down Ahmaud Arbery ...
"Thirty, 40, 50 years from now, the stuff will be preserved," Mary Oliver said. "The legacy of Trayvon Martin is going to be like the legacy of Emmett Till." …
Excerpted from NPR article, To read more, click on Adrian Florido’s full article, which appeared on NPR on 2/26/22.
VINTAGE BLING: The Real Thang
Artwork by Tania Love Abramson
Tania Love Abramson, MFA, is a visual/conceptual artist, performer, videographer and writer/poet, as well as a Lecturer in the Honors Collegium at UCLA. She is the author of three art books, Shame and the Eternal Abyss, Concern, and Truth Lies, as well as the co-creator and co-instructor of the UCLA Art & Trauma class. More of her work can be found at tanialoveabramson.com.
It was tough getting away in December of 2021. Omicron was on the move; at-home tests for Covid were in short supply. A road trip seemed like the best bet. We could pack our own food. Wouldn’t have to rely on restaurants. And if we got lucky, we might even find a spot that was relatively secluded.
The question now was where to go? We’re not exactly spring chickens, and we’ve lived in California for many decades. The list of places we haven’t been keeps getting smaller and smaller. But we lucked out. Neither of us had ever been to the mountain ranges east of San Diego. So why not, we thought. We bought some snow chains, booked a place in Julian, and off we went.
Julian rocks in the Fall. Apples galore; cider, pie, and more. When we showed up near the end of December, it was, fortuitously enough, quiet as hell. Exactly what we were hoping for. Businesses had closed down, and tourists stayed away. One of the few times we ventured out, we found a down-market vintage shop right on the highway. A bunch of haphazardly connected buildings, all of which were void of heat. The displays were chaotic, too. The owners, however, were nice, and best of all, there were two braying donkeys. Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane, respectively. Descendants, no doubt, of Julian’s gold-mining history.
Why, exactly, are we telling you this? Well, among all of the discarded dolls, china, salt and pepper shakers, and WWII helmets that were scattered about this vintage depot, we did, nonetheless, find a treasure among all of the expendables. A license plate topper. Not that we knew what a license plate topper was; quite the opposite, in fact. We had no idea what it was, except to say that this one looked like it was made of cast iron, most likely in the 1930s or 1940s. Though it definitely had some kind of coating on it, rust had been eating away at it for decades.
The writing on the topper was what sealed the deal for us. Though the upper half of the topper simply said - American Beach, Fla., with a swordfish and a woman in a bathing suit carved right next to it – the showstopper was the writing underneath, Negro Ocean Playground. We had never heard of the Negro Ocean Playground, but we instinctively knew that it was a genuine piece of Black history; The Real Thang, as it were. When we brought our topper home, we began studying it.
The short story is this. For much of the 20th century, Florida prohibited Black citizens from using publicly owned segregated beaches. If you were Black, and living in, or visiting Florida, you couldn’t use white-only drinking fountains, bathrooms, or sections of the movie theaters, either. God damn you, Jim Crow.
But then came along a Black owned Florida insurance company. They had the cash, so in 1935, they bought themselves a 33-acre beachfront tract. They named it American Beach. Its slogan was, “Recreation and relaxation without humiliation.”
Hundreds of thousands of Blacks eventually started going there, coming from all over the United States. In due time, hotels were built, and food vendors set up shop, too. Black newspapers and magazines also joined in, each extolling the Negro Ocean Playground. Ebony, Jet, The Chicago Defender, The Pittsburgh Courier. Billboards began appearing as well. Eventually, American Beach became a year-round thing. Homes and other businesses were built to facilitate that expansion.
Those vintage license-plate toppers are now being regarded as historical signposts for the Negro Ocean Playground. Which then begged the question, what should we do with the topper that we own? This is where Tania comes in. Vintage Bling: The Real Thang was her inspiration.
Nameplate jewelry immediately came to mind. The biggest, baddest, heaviest nameplate-necklace – replete with historical cred – the world had ever seen. But rather than trying to dress it up entirely with gilded spit and polish, Tania decided, instead, to give it the requisite bling, while simultaneously letting the wear and tear on the topper to remain evident. Foremost, Tania wanted to celebrate the history of the Negro Ocean Playground; in particular, to remember and commemorate it.
The story of the Negro Ocean Playground also reminded Tania of the recent repatriation of ocean-front property in Manhattan Beach, CA. Back in the day, it was called Bruce’s Beach. The property and resort were owned, from 1912 to 1927, by a black couple, Willa and Charles Bruce. Segregation, coupled with racial animus, eventually forced them out, along with all the other Black families who were enjoying their time in the sun at that beach.
Bruce’s Beach and American Beach have many parallels, the most obvious being their equally regrettable histories. It just so happened that one of them was on the Pacific, and the other was on the Atlantic. Now, thankfully, Bruce’s Beach has been handed back, albeit generations later, to the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce.
Is it the beginning of a noble trend? To give back land stolen from rightful owners. If so, the US better start rolling up its sleeves. Right from the get-go, America was stealing territory that justifiably belonged to others, thereby continuously revitalizing George Santayana’s quip: Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it. Vintage Bling: The Real Thang is meant to refresh our memories. It was created to reiterate that this slice of US history should never, ever be forgotten
There’s one more point that we’d like to make. Nameplate jewelry is culturally significant to Black and Latinx communities, often serving as a rite of passage, and a celebration of identity, through the display of culturally unique names and spellings. In that respect, nameplate jewelry is often worn with a sense of pride. There’s even a project, and a forthcoming book, #DocumentingTheNameplate. Envisioned by Marcel Rosa-Salas and Isabel Flower – who also happened to have written the first academic paper on this subject – their objective has been to provide a space where personal stories about jewelry, and beyond, can be shared. That knowledge also sparked Tania’s concept for this artwork. Vintage Bling: The Real Thang is ultimately another piece in the puzzle of the American Beach, Negro Ocean Playground story.
Essay by Paul R. Abramson and Tania Love Abramson
By Miguel R. Llull
Cops fall into the “us vs them” situation every day. It’s hard, in fact, to escape it. Every time you are in the public - in your patrol car or walking a beat - all you get are dirty looks, or middle fingers and fuck offs. Stuff like that goes a long way toward pushing police officers to only care for those who empathize with them. While that may be understandable, I’m here to tell you that it’s dangerous; plain and simple. Departments, I believe, should have programs that are specifically designed to address this issue. (They may now, in fact, have some, but I don’t remember any such programs when I was working as a Police Officer or Sheriff).