Department FieldsAnnouncementswww.alisonrosejefferson.com
Check out my website, "Celebrating the California Dream: A Look at Forgotten Stories."
Bay Street, Santa Monica, CA Cleanup Site, Sometimes Known as the "Inkwell," A Popular Beach Hangout for African Americans from the 1920s to mid-1960s
The California Coastal Cleanup Day/Coastweeks 2012 events, September 15 and 16. Public History forging new partnerships, new allies, and new audiences and action for preservation of our cultural sites and ecological environment in Santa Monica, CA.
Featured Historian in "White Wash," the documentary movie exploring the complexity of race in America through the eyes of the ocean
Released September 2011. Available on DVD and Video On Demand (VOD) at Amazon.com, VirgilFilmsEnt.com and Netflix.com.
Interviewer for Santa Monica Beach Stories, City of Santa Monica
Oral Histories with long time Bay Cities Resident Navalette Tabor Bailey and Former Mayor Nat Trives
UCSB ranks #35 in the world out of 400 research universities in 2011-12 Times Higher Education study.
Despite budgetary woes, a total of five-UC system campuses (UCLA, Berkeley, San Diego, Santa Barbara and Davis) are in the top 40 out of 400 research universities in the world in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2011-12.
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Public History/American History/California History
Doctoral Graduate Student
Advisor: Randy Bergstrom
In winter 2012-2013 I begin to write my dissertation, and continue the process towards earning a PhD in Public History/American History at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Presently my research and professional interest revolves around the intersection of historical memory, American history, Black Angeleno history, historic preservation and cultural tourism in Southern California during the twentieth century, great migration and Jim Crow era. (more...)
My dissertation is titled “Race, Leisure, Power and Place: Remembrance of African Americans, the American West and the California Dream from the Jim Crow Era to the Age of Obama,” and it examines several African American leisure sites of the past in Southern California, and how they are remembered in contemporary times. The places I examines illustrate a range of kinds of leisure production purposes and societal encounters. My research extends the narrative of the African American experience in American historical writings and memory of the American West, and the U.S. in general. My dissertation expands the examination of the struggle for recreational facilities, accommodations and public space for all Americans within the context of long civil rights movement historiography.
Before beginning my UCSB studies, I held the position of historian at Historic Resources Group in Southern California, where I worked on historic preservation planning, oral history projects and interpretative projects. I drew on my regional history expertise to execute literature and on-site research to document and evaluate historic resource sites, and to write various types of technical and cultural resource reports, landmark nominations and interpretative material content.
In 2009 I was an interviewer for the University of California, Los Angeles, Center for Oral History Research with the “Black Los Angeles Oral History Project: Black Politicians & How They Make Community;” and the City of Santa Monica Beach Stories Oral History Project. In 2007 I created the actual language engraved on the plaque: “The Ink Well”: A Place of Celebration and Pain, that graces a marker in the City of Santa Monica located along the bicycle and pedestrian path, Ocean Front Walk (at the end of Bay Street). The monument commemorates the Jim Crow era beach site used by African Americans as a gathering place and Nick Gabaldon, the first identified surfer of African American and Mexican descent.
My independent research, of people and places which have been overlooked in the ‘collective memory’ of the heritage of the Southern California region, also resulted in the 2005 designation of Phillips Chapel, a 100-year-old African American church as a Landmark in the City of Santa Monica, California. An article on my research appears in the Southern California Quarterly publication, Summer/July 2009 issue. I have been a featured speaker at several programs, including the Beach Culture events series at the Santa Monica Annenberg Community Beach House in July 2009.
On a project that creatively connected neighborhoods with their heritage I was an assistant curator on the 2006-2007 exhibit, 'Intersections of South Central: People and Places in Historic and Contemporary Photographs' featured at the California African American Museum at Exposition Park in Los Angeles. A catalog developed for the exhibit featured essays I contributed.
I earned a Master's degree in Historic Preservation in 2007 at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. I have a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Pomona College in Claremont, California. Prior to returning to school to earn my master’s degree, I worked as a marketing and public relations consultant for a business improvement district in downtown Los Angeles, the Figueroa Corridor Partnership (FCP). Earlier in my professional life, I was employed in marketing, research and administrative capacities at several entertainment companies, and in the equity investment industry.
Teaching Assistantships- History 17B :: The American People, Sectional Crises Through Progressivism
(American History, 1850s-1920s) Topics examined include the expanding economy, westward migration, plantation slavery, the Civil War, the rise of big business, unionization, and Progressive reform to uncover how Americans debated their meaning.
Publications- “African American Leisure Space in Santa Monica: The Beach Sometimes Known as the ‘Inkwell,’ 1900s-1960s”
Southern California Quarterly, Vol. 91, No. 2 (2009): 155-189. A section of the Ocean Park beach in Santa Monica, California, served as an African American leisure space during the era of segregation. This article identifies the discrimination that African AMerican endured, but also celebrates both the local black community formation and the sociable relaxation that Los Angeles African Americans enjoyed at this site.
- Intersections of South Central Los Angeles: People and Places in Historic and Contemporary Photographs
with Christopher D. Jimenez y West, Matthew W. Roth and Morgan P. Yates. Los Angeles: Automobile Club of Southern California, 2006.
- Lake Elsinore: A Southern California African American Resort Area During The Jim Crow Era, 1920s-1960s, And The Challenges Of Historic Preservation...
Master of Historic Preservation Thesis (2007), University of California. As soon as African Americans could afford leisure experiences after the end of American slavery, they joined Euro-Americans at resorts and in travel to other places domestically and overseas. Being able to take a vacation or an overnight trip for pleasure became a critical marker and entitlement of middle class status.
This thesis examines the Lake Elsinore resort in Riverside County, California, and the involvement of African American actors in the area’s history and development during the period of legal segregation in the 20th century — an issue overlooked in the past. The cultural landscape of this African American resort community presents challenges and opportunities under current preservation policy for commemoration, because significant built artifacts are not extant in this heritage area. When physical traces are lost, how do we memorialize in the collective history a more expansive view of the citizenry, when historic preservation efforts in the United States emphasize tangible aspects of culture?
Professional Activities- Featured Historian in "White Wash," the documentary movie exploring the complexity of race in America through the eyes of the ocean
Released September 2011. The film explores the history of African Americans and water culture from slavery, civil rights wade-ins to surfing in the present. Available on DVD and Video On Demand (VOD) at Amazon.com, VirgilFilmsEnt.com and Netflix.com.
- Member, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, 2011 Visual Arts Panel/Organizational Grant Program
- Profile : National Trust for Historic Preservation Website, 2010
- Profile by Mark Kendall, Pomona Today magazine, 2009
See article on page 39 : "A Place In The Sun," Alison Rose Jefferson ’80 is Trying to Preserve the Memory of L.A.’s Segregated Beaches, and of One Beach in Particular...
- Created Text for Plaque, “The Ink Well”: A Place of Celebration and Pain, 2007-2008
Marker in the City of Santa Monica located along the bicycle and pedestrian path (Ocean Front Walk) at the end of Bay Street. The monument commemorates the Jim Crow era beach site that was an African Americans gathering spot and surfer Nick Gabaldon.
Conference and Public Presentations- Rediscovered Places: Reclaiming a Forgotten Past, Tuesday, May 17, 2011, 2-3.30 pm
2011 California Preservation Conference, Santa Monica, California, May 15-18, 2011
- Essay and Other Works Panel, Friday, May 13, 2011
Black California Dreamin' Conference
- Race, Place, and Tourism: Leisure Sites as Contested Sites panel, Friday, April 8, 2011, 8.30 -10.30 am
2011 National Council on Public History Conference, Pensacola, Florida, April 6-9, 2011
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