Kenneth Green Sr.: Deferemery Park

3rd floor gallery

We are very honored and excited to host the work of Kenneth P. Green, Sr., staff photographer for the Oakland Tribune, from 1968-1982. Green captured on film a profoundly dynamic period in both Bay Area and national history. His images tell a story of community mobilization for change that continues to shape our region's identity and self-perception, whether through pride in the aspirations articulated, or grief over the lives lost and the many ways we continue to struggle with structural inequities, violence and racism.

The Green family recently opened this immensely rich photographic archive for public use, conservation, and dialogue. Ken Green was never without his camera; this time in our collective history is detailed in images too numerous to yet be fully grappled with. It's been a great privilege to sit with Green's wife and son, LaVerta and Ken Jr., and close friend, Fred T. Smith--himself involved in the Black Panther Party--listening to stories of both the photographer himself, and a recounting of what stories the images tell. We look forward to bringing them to campus during the exhibition's run for a panel discussion about the images’ context and ongoing resonance.

DeFremery Park, 1965-1970: The Photographs of Kenneth P. Green Sr., was curated by staff members at the Townsend Center for the Humanities at UC Berkeley, and subsequently on view at the San Francisco Foundation. This exhibition, which opens next Tuesday on the 3rd floor, has a dynamic visual and conceptual relationship with Ajuan Mance's 1001 Black Men. It will also inform the next exhibition, which will feature CIIS Artist-in-Residence, Taraneh Hemami's collaborative investigation of the Iranian Student Movement of the 60s and 70s in the Bay Area, which often operated in solidarity with the Panther Party and the contemporaneous Students for a Democratic Society. Though emerging from a spiritual rather than political inquiry, CIIS itself came out of this dynamic and aspirational time.

Many of the images in this exhibition are celebratory in feel. Oakland's DeFremery Park was a central site for rallies, political demonstrations, andsocial and educational programs through the late sixties. Among the images are intimate portraits of Angela Davis, Huey Newton, and Bobby and Betty Seale captured in casual moments; included too, are group portraits of children and young adults that speak to the larger community that gathered in the Park and collectively aspired to re-envision a more just world.

Also part of the exhibition is an image of two men who were victims of a shooting in the Park; though not graphic, it bears witness to another important facet of the story. We know that grief and outrage over the shootings of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, and too many other African American men remains close to the surface and therefore the image might be disturbing. Yet we also believe art has a crucial role to play in bringing communities together to talk about complex and often challenging ideas. We hope this exhibition will—like 1001 Black Men—serve as a catalyst for layered discussions of representation, media, and power, both in a historical context and the present.

Deirdre Visser and Carolyn Cooke

Curator of The Arts at CIIS and MFA Program Chair