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# SM black leaders set challenge for peers
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/sm-black-leaders-set-challenge-for-peers/
- Published: 2002-06-24T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T00:21:53.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Education, Santa Monica Airport, #archive-import

*New meanings are given to emancipation celebration*

*By TRAVIS PURSER Special to the Daily Press*

Pierce Watson, an engineer and a black man, moved to Santa Monica 40 years ago to begin designing aircraft for Douglas Aircraft Co., which then had offices near the airport.

He is a graduate of Tennessee State University. Life has been good for him and his wife, Iva Watson. They own a home. They regularly attend Baptist church.

Retired for 15 years, he likes to reflect on the condition of blacks in Santa Monica. They lack a sense of community, he said, because they lack self-confidence. And for that, they need to better educate themselves.

Nobody was denying that discrimination exists. But the people who celebrated Juneteenth at the Virginia Avenue Park Saturday morning all echoed a similar theme: No matter how flawed the world remains, blacks are responsible for improving their place in it.

“If you’ve got something to offer, I don’t care what color you are, you’ll get a job,” said Watson. “I speak from experience.”

Fifty of Santa Monica’s 3,800 blacks gathered in the park’s community center near Pico Boulevard and 20th Street to indulge in a soul-food breakfast, while community leaders, students and entertainers shared their experiences with the audience in sometimes fiery presentations.

The invitation-only event later evolved into a planning session aimed at expanding future celebrations of Juneteenth.

The observance commemorates the June 19th, 1865, anniversary of the emancipation of slaves in Texas. Juneteenth was the first celebration of African- American emancipation. It is sometimes called “Black Independence Day.” Television stations in San Francisco aired parades last week, while locally, the event remains relatively obscure.

The city of Santa Monica, NAACP and local businesses paid for the Virginia Park brunch, which was organized by the Juneteenth Committee, a Santa Monica advocacy group.

Scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuits and grits were an appropriate accompaniment to the day’s talks, said ex-mayor of Santa Monica, Nathaniel Trives. “How many of you have a single meal every day with every member of your family? It’s always important to meet and talk about what you do,” he said in his keynote address.

The audience responded to Trives and other speakers with enthusiastic outbursts: “Go on, brother!” “You said it!” “Amen!”

Trives said Santa Monica is a good city for blacks to live in, because its size allows them to stay in touch with the overall black community.

But Santa Monica has fallen victim to “institutional racism” with terrible consequences, he said. “When I grew up in this town, Latinos and blacks were brothers, not killing each other.”

While in office in the 1970s, he made it his policy to appoint a “person of color” to every board in the city, he said. “It meant something to us to share the power at the table.”

Juneteenth, he said, is not just about celebrating the history of blacks. It is important to respect all cultures, because “when I disrespect one culture, I disrespect myself.”

Other community leaders spoke on an array of social issues from education to housing.

Black culture is good at taking care of its own people, but that means blacks sometimes don’t take full advantage of social services available to them, said Barbara Harrison, of Wise Senior Services. For example, black seniors could take better advantage of a neighborhood shuttle service her organization offers.

Right now, many areas of city government, from the airport commission to the housing commission, are trying to fill vacancies. Dr. Dorothy Morrison encouraged blacks to increase their government representation by applying for the positions.

“Nobody’s going to come on a white horse and ask you what you want,” she said.

Racism is no longer as blatant as it once was, but it has become part of the bureaucratic system, which treats blacks suspiciously at best, said Robbie Jones, an advocate for better education. But she didn’t accept that as an excuse for black students to fail in school.

“When you don’t do your homework, that’s not racism,” she said. It was a concept she applied to the entire black community. “I’m not trying to start anything here today. I’m just saying we have to be responsible.”

Santa Monica Mayor Michael Feinstein, who declared June 22 to 29 to be “Juneteenth Week,” was scheduled to speak at the brunch Saturday, but never arrived. He did appear at the opening of the transmit mall.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 24, 2002.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/062402.pdf?ref=smdp.com)