Promised Land, Hallowed Ground

Join historian, heritage conservation consultant and Conservancy member Alison Rose Jefferson, M.H.C. | Ph.D., and invited guest speakers at a symposium where they will discuss and respond to the context of American history and culture in relation to Belmar History + Art, a public history and art project in Santa Monica. Hosted by the Institute for the Study of Los Angeles (ISLA) at Occidental College, this free virtual public program is one of the public campus events Dr. Jefferson, the ISLA Scholar in Residence, is participating in to share her work to re-center the African American experience in local history and heritage conservation efforts.
The Belmar History + Art project is a civic commemorative justice initiative, featuring emotionally resonating multifaceted education, inspirational and remembrance programming. This project reconstructs, reclaims and reinserts a more complex American story about the erased historical Black life in the South Santa Monica Beach neighborhoods which contributed to making the bay city’s development and cultural life from the 1900s to the mid-twentieth century.
Underpinning the content of Belmar History + Art programming are the stories of people, places and events that are an outgrowth of Dr. Jefferson’s research from her recent book, Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era and new research done for the project.
Click here to register for the free event online today!