Faces of Fruitvale: Peralta Hacienda Historical Park

The Purpose and the Players

Many Fruitvale residents agree with project coordinator Holly Alonso that in Fruitvale "identity is no longer supported by a web of connections between residents, and that, given such conditions, the possibility of a commons – a space held in common and a sense of joint responsibility for the common good – is ruled out. Violence, apathy, destruction of public places, inter-ethnic rivalry and resentments form a ragged counterpoint to the efforts of the artistic, cultural, social and service agencies in the neighborhood."

The multi-ethnic Fruitvale district (population 55,000), located at the geographic center of the city of Oakland in the San Francisco Bay Area, is home to Latinos (36%), African Americans (32%), Asians (20%), European Americans (9%) and Native Americans (2%). Faces of Fruitvale is a community heritage project organized by the Friends of the Peralta Hacienda Historical Park in Oakland to illuminate the historical and contemporary ethnic differences and commonalties among Fruitvale residents.

	"The New Generation of Fruitvale" Mexican folkdancers on site where the old adobe wall of the Peralta rancho headquarters stood 150 years ago.

Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, once inhabited by Ohlone Indians and subsequently a Spanish-Mexican rancho. In the spring of 2000, Friends of Peralta Hacienda Historical Park and several partnering organizations launched Faces of Fruitvale to unite the district’s ethnically diverse residents by exploring the relevance of the Peralta Park site to their own histories and lives. Volunteers In Service To America and neighborhood volunteers, coached by participating scholars, initiated oral-history collecting throughout the district, inviting residents to share their stories and photographs. Project activities enhancing the collection process included an on-line digital repository for the stories, three 20-minute radio programs featuring the collected stories, a photo exhibit of Fruitvale today, four public history events that celebrate cultural identity and unity, and two community-wide cultural festivals. Organizations helping to carry out program activities included the Spanish-Speaking Citizens Foundation, the Unity Council, the Oakland Museum of California and Calvin Simmons Middle School. The project has been supported by grants from the California Council for the Humanities and the Oakland Arts Commission.

Neighborhood and VISTA volunteers, coached by participating scholars, initiated the oral history and story collection project by making door-to-door visits throughout the district, inviting residents to share their remembrances, stories and photographs. Fruitvale residents also have the opportunity to share their stories at monthly project meetings, poetry workshops and story exchanges. These community stories are the resource for project publications, exhibits and other productions.

Measuring Success

Alonso says the project has already prompted positive interactions among different ethnic groups and deepened residents’ understanding of their local history. She believes this success to be the result of the project's commitment to including the full array of the district’s cultures in a respectful way. For example, all public events are simultaneously translated in Spanish, English and Mien. (The Iu Mien are an ethnic Chinese people, who, like the Hmong, are Vietnam War refugees from the mountains of Laos.) Alonso recalls "how a frisson went through all the Mien speakers when their language first came over a public event loudspeaker," and she remembers a black Fruitvale resident remarking "that Spanish sounded like music, that she had never heard Spanish before." Alonso noted that, in fact, the resident had probably heard Spanish most of her life, but not in a setting where people were exchanging ideas openly in a friendly manner.

Alonso states that the aspect of the project that engages people the most is the individual interview, but that it also presents problems: Those interviewed gave a huge amount of information, emotion and depth, and were pleased that their legacy was being registered. But many older community members felt that their privacy was being invaded by outside interviewers and declined the invitation. Alonso cites several older members of the African-American community who expressed concern with sharing difficult stories and suggested that the project focus on the stories of children so that adults did not have to reveal painful parts of their history.

The power of the project to move people and institutions toward action together is illustrated in the story of Peralta Creek. Elderly resident Alma en Paz told of what the creek had meant to her as a youth, wading and exploring from age five to 15 in the decade of the ’40s. The creek in our time has become a concrete culvert, and the recent stories are of young people using the spot to abuse drugs, sex and one another. As a result of the public airing of these dramatic ironies, teacher David Montes de Oca from Calvin Simmons Middle School started the Urban Arts Academy, an after-school activity using the arts, history, myth, and archeology to engage students. Alex Zaragosa, a historian and project participant from the University of California, Berkeley, who had recently been named the Vice President for Outreach of the University of California system, decided to make the project a model program for the ways in which U.C. can work with middle schools to put underrepresented youth on the road to higher education.

Civic engagement and systemic change of this sort continues to be generated by the project. But perhaps the best measure so far of Faces of Fruitvale’s success, Alonso concludes, is the growing commitment in the community to continue the work after outside funding is expended.

Lessons Learned

Half-way along in the eight-month project, participants have learned:

• It is imperative that each ethnic group is involved at the staff level.

• The respect conveyed by providing multiple translations is irreplaceable.

• A greater feeling of trust and unity must be engendered before the more personal and painful community stories can be exchanged across racial and cultural lines. It helps to start story exchanges with less personal topics rather than individual histories, which can be very painful in a group setting.

Original CAN/API publication: February 2001