Black Liberation Walking Tour: Live and Recorded Tours | David Peters (Fall Colloquium)

Presentation:
Can walking tours be an effective measure in countering the loss of historically and culturally significant spaces? How does the expansion of public awareness of the past feed into activism surrounding present day development? What are the benefits of transitioning a live neighborhood tour into a self-guided tour? 

On Juneteenth of this year, the Black Liberation Walking Tour launched in West Oakland. The project is a new walking tour, or community-led cultural asset map, of the Hoover Durant neighborhood that celebrates its multi-generational Black history and culture. The tour is self-guided via mobile phone, has nine locations, incorporating QR codes, and takes about an hour. Visitors on the tour listen to a story at each location altogether experiencing a narrative that begins with the early West Coast civil rights movement through the second wave of the Great Migration to the Black Liberation actions of the present day. A project of the West Oakland Cultural Action Network (WOCAN), the BLWT uses oral history to capture the lives, art, and culture of long-time residents, historical figures, and rapidly disappearing former Black cultural spaces. David shares his experiences in curating and producing the tour and his current efforts to use the tour as part of a public mobilization strategy towards the reestablishment of the Hoover-Durant Public Library branch. 

Find more information on how to take the Black Liberation Walking Tour here.

Biography:
David Peters grew up in the Hoover-Durant neighborhood of West Oakland.  He’s a master storyteller who created the Black Liberation Walking Tour to share the vibrant history of this neighborhood that was torn up by freeway construction, like so many other African American districts. He’s on the steering committee negotiating community benefits around the proposed Oakland A’s ballpark at Howard Terminal.

Learn more about upcoming speakers here.

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