Black arts and culture in the Bay Area is not gone, Zakiya Harris told a bus full of people on a recent Saturday, as it pulled away from the Museum of the African Diaspora in downtown San Francisco, and headed for Dogpatch. It is scattered, and it is fighting to stay.
In 1980, more than one in ten people living in San Francisco were Black. In Oakland, nearly one in two were. Those numbers are now closer to 6 percent (in San Francisco) and 20 percent (in Oakland).
The bus tour, organized by the BLACspace cooperative, which Harris co-founded, is about connecting that scattered community.