Bobbie Smith, Still Breaking Through in Education

Bobbie Smith
Photo by Carolyn Smith Watts

Bobbie Smith 

Elementary School

 

Official Naming Ceremony Bobbie Smith Elementary School December 8, 2014, 10:00 a.m.

The Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) board voted unanimously on Tuesday, September 2, 2014, to recognize the first African American LBUSD member, Bobbie Smith, by naming a school in her honor.

When asked about her groundbreaking accomplishments, Smiths modestly replied, "Yes, I believe that is true and I am honored to have a school named after me."

Long Beach Unified School District

Bobbie Smith 

First African American 

Long Beach Female 

Elected to Public Office

Four-Term Board President

Long Beach Unified School District 

Bobbie Smith received tenure after only two years and was with  for twenty-two years. 

Long Beach City College

First African American Long Beach City College LBCC Librarian

First African American LBCC Head Librarian 

First African American LBCC Faculty Senate Member & President

Bobbie Smith was born in the Jim Crow Deep South--Mississippi--in 1932, during the midst of the Great Depression and the height of the Jim Crow era, when hooded mobs rode the countryside burning and lynching; and most little black girls could only look forward to becoming some one's maid. However, Bobbie Smith does not interpret her heritage as a misfortune, but instead calls it a blessing because it taught her so much about surviving impossible odds.

Chicago Public Library

"It (Mississippi) was very segregated," she said. "African American and white children attended separate schools. When I finished eighth grade (age 13), there was no high school in my Mississippi community. I went sixty miles away from home to finish high school." 

During high school, she worked for room and board. After high school she was awarded a scholarship for college that didn't pay everything. So, there was more work to get through undergraduate studies. 

Bobbie Smith said Mississippi was so segregated at that time that the State government paid African Americans to secure graduate and professional training outside the state. Taking advantage of this financial opportunity, she enrolled at Eureka College in Illinois, graduating in 1955, when she joined the ranks of other renown alumni who went on to become attorneys, doctors and President of the United States.

Some young scholars of civil rights history think racism only occurred in the American Deep South. What BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way indicates is that assumption is inaccurate. Racism did occur in the past and still does occur in the present wherever a person's race or ethnic background matters enough to change the way people treat the person. Each of the women in the project talked about her personal experiences with racism and discrimination in Southern California. Without being deterred from their goals, however, each woman in her own way acted with the same conviction as Rosa Parks when she ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

When Smith and her husband arrived in Los Angeles, she said they were thinking, "What have we gotten ourselves into? Well," she paused, "looking back, things worked out pretty well."

"The night in 1965 when my husband and I drove into Los Angeles," Bobbie Smith said. "Was the night that Watts exploded into riots." 

Watts Riots 1965

Between August 11 and 17, 1965, Los Angeles experienced the worse urban rioting on U.S. soil in 20 years and some of the worse racial tension the nation had witnessed, on television, of course. Ignited by the arrest of a young African American man by a white California Highway Patrolman, rioting broke out in the impoverished South Central neighborhood of Watts and caused nearly a week of violence, fire, mobilization of the National Guard, 4,000 arrests and 34 deaths. The Los Angeles riots was a prelude to nationwide rioting in the northeast, the mid-west, central plains, the southwest and the south.

Bobbie Smith went on to earn a master's degree in library science from the University of Illinois at Champagne and got a job at the Chicago Public Library where she worked "in that cold weather."

Carolyn Smith Watts 
Historical Society of Long Beach

Bobbie Smith is featured in BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way, a collection of historical profiles on African American women who made a noteworthy difference in the racial history of Long Beach, California. This collection, edited by Sunny Nash with the foreword by Carolyn Smith Watts and preface by Julie Bartolotto; was released in 2008 at the Historical Society of Long Beach. A documentary film of the work premiered at the Atrium Theater of the Long Beach Public Library, also in 2008.

BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way began with a series of photographs taken by Carolyn Smith Watts at Shoreline Village in Long Beach. One of Watts' photographs, selected for the Tuttle Cameras project and book, One Camera, was exhibited with the other images from the book at the Historical Society of Long Beach, and published on the cover of BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way. 

"As I called each woman to invite her on Wednesday, September 24, 2007, to take a picture and have lunch Watts said. "Each seemed honored to be included. Then I called Sunny Nash, my friend and mentor. She brought her video camera. Every time Sunny and I talked (after that), a new idea was born and then another and another. Before we knew it, I had scheduled Sunny to do portraits and video interviews with the twelve women in their homes, and film twenty-five of their children and ten community leaders."

BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way

"This is a project that I saw from the very start as being of great magnitude and influence," Nash said. "It didn't matter that it wasn't my idea. What matters is that Carolyn saw something important, acted upon it and included me."

Bobbie Smith Elementary School will be the new name for the former Peter H. Burnett Elementary School.

Bobbie Smith and Dale Clinton
Thomas R. Cordova / Staff Photographer
Press Telegram

Bobbie Smith and her friend Dale Clinton attended the LBUSD board meeting when the announcement was made of the school's renaming. The board also honored Eunice Sato, the first female mayor of Long Beach, with a school named in her honor. 

Community organizer and civil rights activist, Dale Clinton is another of the influential women published in BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way. Her correspondence with President Lyndon Johnson on his "War on Poverty" has been collected by the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.

BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way

Profiles of African American
Women who made a difference
to the history of Long Beach, California

Edited by Sunny Nash
Foreword by Carolyn Smith Watts

(l-r, rear) Evelyn Knight, Patricia Lofland

Bobbie Smith, Alta Cooke, Carrie Bryant

Vera Mulkey, Wilma Powell, Doris Topsy-Elvord

(seated l-r) Autrilla Scott, Maycie Herrington

Dale Clinton & Lillie Mae Wesley (not present) 

Sunny Nash and Carolyn Smith Watts are in the process of creating a major exhibition of the research and images gathered for BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way. The exhibition will include portraiture by Sunny Nash taken of the women during their interviews, historical photographic restorations from their personal photo albums, photographic reproductions of documents, artifacts, and a display of Carolyn Smith Watts' images from her Shoreline Village photo shoot.

"These women broke through racial and gender barriers and persevered to open up opportunities for those who came after them in education, social service, civil rights, public service, shipping industries and community building," said Julie Bartolotto, Executive Director of the Historical Society of Long Beach. "Their book documented the many significant histories that contribute to a more complete narrative of Long Beach's past."

Quoted in a Press Telegramn article by Nadra Nittle, the Superintendent of LBUSD, Chris Steinhauser, said Bobbie Smith is “a pillar of this community, a person who all kids in all walks of life can look up to, one they could grow up to be like." 

Official Naming Ceremony for Bobbie Smith Elementary School Monday, December 8, 2014, 10:00 a.m.

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Alta Cooke Broke Through in Education

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s had ended before a black woman first became principal of a  high school in Long Beach.

Alta Cooke Posed for Article
in the Press-Telegram, Long Beach

Alta Cooke, first black female high school principal in Long Beach, was an influence on many young lives in that city. No black woman had been promoted to the position until 1987.

For this project, the women were asked to select pictures from their personal albums to include in the book. In a Press Telegram (Long Beach) newspaper article, Alta Cooke chooses pictures from her family album.

in looking through her private collections, Cooke re-discovered a little-known part of her career--law enforcement and recently renewed an old partnership between the Long Beach Unified School District and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

Teenage Alta Cooke

In viewing these historic photo album pictures Carolyn Smith Watts and Sunny Nash discovered a treasure of not only memories, but historical accounts that exist nowhere else. Carefully collected and stored, mostly for their children and families, women like Alta Cooke have meticulously documented a segment of Long Beach experience, previously unknown outside these privately preserved archives, images that will be included in the exhibition to augment and complete the story of their journeys and their city's.

Featuring women like Alta Cooke in BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way will help to expose the community to their stories and contributions to race relations in America.

Alta Cooke, College Graduate

"Women who want to be successful in today's world should listen to what their mothers, fathers, grandparents and mentors have to say about life," Cooke said. "Apply these lessons to what you want to do for yourself and then go out and do it. Accept professional challenges. Be prepared for life. Remember, there are going to be many challenges."

Born and raised in Long Beach, California, Alta Cooke went off to New York for two years and studied music in Potsdam, New York. "I went there for two years and had a wonderful music experience," Cooke said. "[But] it was too cold there for me, so I came back to California and enrolled at the University of Redlands."

After graduating from the University of Redlands, Cooke earned a Master of Science in Music Education at the University of Southern California. 

BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way

Profiles of African American
Women who made a difference
to the history of Long Beach, California

Edited by Sunny Nash

Foreword by Carolyn Smith Watts

(l-r, rear) Evelyn Knight, Patricia Lofland

Bobbie Smith, Alta Cooke, Carrie Bryant

Vera Mulkey, Wilma Powell, Doris Topsy-Elvord

(seated l-r) Autrilla Scott, Maycie Herrington

Dale Clinton & Lillie Mae Wesley (not present) 

In preparing BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way, the Carolyn Smith Watts and Sunny Nash team learned that people of color all over the nation, including Southern California, have felt or, at least, have seen the effects of race at some time in their lives throughout American history.

Examples of racial awareness can come at work, home, school, church, public facilities and any place people of different ethnicity may be in the same places at the same times. 

Many times, today, people are not even aware of their biases. They simply gravitate toward people who are more like them. If BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way does nothing else, it will make people aware of the other person and may help people better understand what others have gone through in the past and why they are still sensitive to racial slights in the present.

In Early America, the pre-Civil War era, Reconstruction and the Jim Crow days, the inability of the United States to take any meaningful steps in race relations was due to the Jim Crow system in place for more than 100 years, a system that was designed to curtail the advances freed slaves had won after the Civil War. The Jim Crow system ballooned during Reconstruction, with particularly harmful consequences. In cases of black men, the fear of lynching loomed; in the cases of black women, the fear of rape before being lynching loomed.

The Jim Crow system stymied any attempt at race relations by committed black and white citizens in a nation, still reeling from the effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Nearly a century and a half later, the emotions of younger generations are still tainted by Jim Crow. When a person of color feels a sting of racial discourtesy with poor service in a restaurant, is it such a surprise given our history? On the other hand, what about the person too young to remember Jim Crow? Should he or she be blamed for the past racial climate in our nation simply based on the color of his or her skin? Remember, a coin has two sides. BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way explores both sides.

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 www.breakingthroughlighttheway.blogspot.com

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Aurtrilla Scott Made Changes in Jim Crow Southern California



The Late Autrilla Scott
Long Beach Community Activist

"If you thought racism only occurred in the American Deep South, you're wrong," said Autrilla Scott. "Racism still occurs where race matters enough to change the way people treat each other."

The late Autrilla Scott is one of twelve women profiled in BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way, a collection of historical accounts of the lives and experiences African American Long Beach women, who made a difference in the racial history of Long Beach and Southern California. Scott and the others profiled in this collection helped to change Jim Crow Southern California, the way Rosa Parks changed the Jim Crow South.

"You don't know what it's like," said Autrilla Scott. "Unless you've been there."

Autrilla Scott & President
William Jefferson Clinton

The lives of these twelve civil rights era Long Beach black women are chronicled in a project that pays them tribute for their contributions to Southern California race relations. The book was edited by Sunny Nash. Carolyn Smith Watts, a Long Beach community activist and part of a new generation of black Long Beach women, wrote the Foreword. 

A Place Called Hope (Arkansas)

"This study is important to Long Beach, Southern California and the rest of the country," Watts said. "There have been many televisions programs and exhibitions for other areas of the Greater Los Angeles area, but few efforts have been concerned with black women in Long Beach. What an opportunity to study the lives of women like the late Autrilla Scott, who was the nanny for a two-year-old future President Bill Clinton."

Watts, an award-winning community activist and public servant, was a catalyst for the BREAKING THROUGH project in that she initiated the original photograph that inspired her collaboration with Sunny Nash for the book of historical profiles, film, public programs, appearances and, most currently, a traveling exhibition of portraits and historical photographs from the women's personal albums. "This is major for Long Beach," Watts said.

Autrilla Scott
High School Graduation

The BREAKING THROUGH project not only honors these 12 women but also explores race relations in America and Southern California, strained during the migration of black females coming from the segregated South during World War II primarily for employment. Long Beach was more progressive than towns in Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama and other parts of the Jim Crow South where some of the 12 black women were born and raised. However, employment, education and housing required racial change these black women helped to make in Long Beach. Many of these women modeled their lives and activities after Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

"We simply broke tradition by continuing to apply over and over again for jobs black women had never held in Long Beach," Scott said. "Long Beach, California, was not perfect, racially, but we did what we could to change Jim Crow. That's how we got them done in employment opportunities and neighborhood improvements."

Autrilla Scott, the only black woman in Long Beach 

With a street named in her honor

Photo source: Release (PRlog.org) accompanying:
 Historical Profiles of Long Beach African American Women 
by Sunny Nash & Carolyn Smith Watts

LBReport.com\

Autrilla Scott, Long Beach Community Presence & Civil Rights Pioneer, Passes

LBReport.com\

The late Autrilla Scott and other women in BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way are accomplished in a variety of areas--Congressional Gold Medal, nanny to a future president, papers in the Library of Congress, activist who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other national, state and local achievements and honors in education, government, civil rights and others.  

In preparing BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way, Watts and Nash learned that people of colors all over the nation, including Southern California, have felt the effect of racial oppression at some time in their lives throughout American history. In the beginning, the inability of the United States to take any meaningful steps in race relations was due to the Jim Crow system in place for more than 100 years. The Jim Crow system stymied any attempt at race relations by committed black and white citizens in a nation that reeled from the effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction for nearly a century and continues to be tainted by the emotions of coming generations.

Cover Photo by Carolyn Smiths Watts, Shoreline Village, 

Published in Tuttle Cameras One Camera Project, Exhibited at the Historical Society of Long Beach. 

(Standing left to right): Evelyn Knight marched with Martin Luther King from Selma to Montgomery; Patricia Lofland, first black member of Long Beach City College Board of Trustees; Bobbie Smith, first black LB woman elected to public office and has a school named for her; Alta Cooke, first black high school principal; Carrie Bryant, city’s first black private school operator; Vera Mulkey, the City’s first black Chief of Staff; Wilma Powell, the nation’s first female Chief Wharfinger; Doris Topsy-Elvord, first African American Long Beach Harbor Commissioner & first black female LB Vice Mayor; (Seated left to right): Autrilla Scott, city’s first black LB citizen with street named for her; Maycie Herrington, recipient of a Congressional Gold Medal; Dale Clinton’s letter to President Johnson is archived at the Library of Congress; and (not present): Lillie Mae Wesley, neighborhood parent for 30 years with LB Parks & Recreation.

Grand Opening

Long Beach Public Library

(101 Pacific Ave.)

3:00 p.m. Tuesday, September 29, 2015, 

Atrium Center & Theater, 

2:00 p.m. Press Conference

Loraine & Earl Burns Miller Special Collections Room

2:00 p.m. Reception 

Atrium Garden

The multifaceted signature project, BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way Exhibition, is comprised of archival portraiture, ancestral photographic restorations, artifacts, historic papers, archaic document reproductions, memorabilia, and newspaper and magazine clippings collected, organized by award-winning humanitarian Carolyn Smith Watts, and award-winning author and photojournalist Sunny Nash, on 12 African American Women who made a Difference in the Cultural History of Long Beach, California.

Leadership Long Beach

FISCAL SPONSOR

SIGNATURE SPONSORS

Port of Long Beach

The Port of Long Beach demonstrated its commitment to equal employment access and professional opportunity over the years by appointing the first female Chief Wharfinger in the nation, one of the Legends of this project; and continues that commitment with its support of this project.

Robin Perry & Associates

Sponsors, donors, partners and contributors committed to date are listed here. Others will be joining the list in the near future. All are welcome to LIKE the Legends on FaceBook.

Arts Council for Long Beach

In 2015, after Nash won a 2015 Arts Council for Long Beach Professional Artist Fellowship to design a Museum Catalogue and restore photographs, BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way became a Signature Project of photo restorations, artifacts, document reproductions, ancestral papers and online resources.

Molina Healthcare

For more than 30 years, Molina has been providing quality, affordable health care to individuals and families covered by government programs. 

DONORS

Historical Society 

of Long Beach 

Andy Street 
Community Association

BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way Exhibition previewed at the Andy Street Community Association's Bixby Knolls EXPO Event in February. Hundreds of spectators were able to get a glimpse of the coming exhibition, scheduled to open in September. 

At the June 5th First Friday Event in Bixby Knolls, there will be an exhibit preview at the Historical Society of Long Beach featuring 230 collective years of educational accomplishments of the 12 Legends of BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the Way.

Tuttle Cameras Long Beach

Based on the collection of historical profiles, published in 2007, edited by Sunny Nash, and foreword by Carolyn Smith Watts, whose award-winning photograph of the Long Beach Living Legends was published in the Tuttle Cameras book, One Camera Long Beach.

Chick-fil-A Towne Center, Long Beach

John Howard of the Chick-fil-A Towne Center Long Beach was present that crisp sunny day in September at the Shoreline Village photo session when the historic picture of the Legends was taken.

International Realty & Investments

The project also includes oral history, new photo/video capture and recently discovered images and artifacts that will also be included in a series of television programs on LBTV, the Television Station owned and operated by the City of Long Beach.







PARTNERS

City of Long Beach

Long Beach dignitaries will attend and participate in The Grand Opening. Southern California Media organizations will be invited to a Press Conference at 2:00 p.m. in the Loraine & Earl Burns Miller Special Collections Room of the Long Beach Public Library.

Long Beach Public Library, Main Branch

The Long Beach Public Library will host the event in its Atrium Center & Theater off of City Hall Public Plaza, 101 Pacific Ave., Long Beach, California. There will a VIP Reception in the Atrium Garden prior to the program and the screening of a film and online resources.

  

Long Beach City College

Long Beach Unified 
School District

Long Beach City College (LBCC) and Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) will play equally significant roles in as education partners in advertising the event to their respective constituents. Both have student bodies and faculty to which they will provide electronic announcements on their Internet and broadcast communication systems. Both LBCC and LBUSD can lay claim to several Legends, who either taught, served as officials or attended both LBCC and LBUSD. 

Los Angeles County 
Sheriff's Department

Los Angeles Sheriff's Department in collaboration with the Long Beach Unified School District will participate in a mini-exhibit and event at Jordan High School, where student government officers will also be present to participate in a seminar involving one of the Legends who was an official of the school.

This event commemorates the historical relationship between Long Beach Unified School District and Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.

UShistory

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© 2014 Sunny Nash. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

 BREAKING THROUGH Lighting the World