Uncovered after 50 years, an absorbing and illuminating photographic archive of Black West Oakland in the 1970s.

5:30-6:30 Reception/exhibit opening.

6:30-8:00 Ken Light will present the photos followed by a discussion between Light, Noni Session and Professor Bill Drummond moderated by Dean Michael D. Bolden.

Pegasus will be selling books|hosting a book signing.

About the Book

In 1974 Ken Light, a young underground press photographer recently arrived in California, was encouraged by residents of West Oakland to document daily life in the neighborhood. A white activist building relationships in an eminent Black community, Light was invited into homes and churches, flagged down on the street for impromptu portraits. The resulting images, taken over two years, ended up unpublished and nearly forgotten for half a century.

Now made public for the first time in Soul City, they form a stunning and historically important archive of Black urban life in a major American city in the 1970s. These photographs reveal the deep pride running through West Oakland, despite the formidable attempts of local governments and agencies to tear the neighborhood apart. Soul City presents the everyday experiences and emotions of West Oaklanders: hard work, love, determination, resistance, humor, delight. Including over 120 images, and featuring a stirring foreword by celebrated author and longtime Oakland resident Ishmael Reed, Soul City is a deeply absorbing and enlightening contribution to Black history.

About the Speakers

Professor Ken Light

Ken Light has worked as a documentary photographer and filmmaker for over fifty years, focusing on social issues facing America. His books include Course of the Empire, What’s Going On? 1969–1974, Valley of Shadows and Dreams, Witness in Our Time, and Picturing Resistance. His work has been presented in over 250 exhibitions worldwide, and he is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts photographers’ fellowships, a National Endowment for the Arts survey grant, and the Dorothea Lange Fellowship. Light is the Reva and David Logan Professor of Photojournalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Visit his website at kenlight.com.

Bill Drummond in high school.

Bill Drummond teaches at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He attended McClymonds High School in Oakland from 1958-61. During that time, he served as student body president and played on Mack’s football and tennis teams.

Afterward he attended the University of California, Berkeley and graduated with bachelor’s degree in 1965 and a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1966.

Drummond’s newspaper career includes stints at The (Louisville) Courier-Journal, where he covered the civil rights movement, and the Los Angeles Times, where he was a local reporter, then bureau chief in New Delhi and Jerusalem and later a Washington correspondent. Drummond was appointed a White House Fellow in 1976 by President Gerald R. Ford, worked briefly for Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and eventually became associate press secretary to President Jimmy Carter. In 1977 he joined NPR and became the founding editor of Morning Edition.

He joined the Berkeley faculty in 1983. During more than 40 years on the Berkeley faculty, Drummond has been a leader and defender of faculty independence and governance. Drummond was selected by his peers on the Berkeley faculty to serve as Chair of the Academic Senate for two consecutive terms, 2006-7 and 2007-8. He is the only person in the history of UC Berkeley to have completed two consecutive terms in that leadership role. He is the first African-American to have ever held the post of Chair of UC Berkeley’s Academic Senate.

Noni Session

Noni Session is Co-founder and Executive Director of the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative that supports BIPOC and allied communities to finance, purchase, and steward collectively owned land and housing. A 3rd generation West Oaklander and cultural anthropologist, Noni carried out her doctoral studies in international humanitarian strategies in global development. After a 2016 run for Oakland city council where she garnered more than 43% of the District 3 vote, Noni saw a clear path to ameliorating resource disparities and slowing rapid racialized displacement in her West Oakland community through building cooperative networks and galvanizing collective economic action. In addition to co-founding EB PREC, Noni is also a founding board member of BlacSpace Cooperative, and a Founding Steward of Emerald Earth Sanctuary, a Black-led rural intentional community, in the heart of Mendocino County.