-
Black and white photograph showing the first service at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Redlands in 1943. In the early days of Redlands, Our Lady of Mercy served as a spiritual home to the growing Mexican community but by the 1930s, it became apparent that the congregation needed a new space. Funds were raised one dollar at a time through donations collected by volunteers. St. Mary's Church opened its doors in 1943.
-
St. Mary's Church was built in the 1940s when the congregation of Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church grew too large. "Lupe Yglesias reflected on the origins of St. Mary's Church, 'Well, you know, before I forget, I was just thinking, all the Mexican ladies got together. We needed a church. So they would all - Concha Viramontes and some other ladies - would go once a month to collect from every Spanish family. One dollar a month to build the church. So actually, the Mexican people helped come up with that church, then it became St. Mary's.'" (Vasquez and Carpio, 32)
-
Black and white photograph of road construction on Central Ave right in front of Palmer Leland "Richey" Richardson's Garage. Across the street is the La Posada Hotel. On the back is written, "Richey's Garage. 17 W Central Ave on left, Redlands Calif. looking West. Preparing for Hwy 99 which took off the front half of the garage. Looking West. Palmer Leland Richardson owner took foto." Highway 99 was once the road that is now Redlands Blvd. Highway 99 was established in 1926 as a route that ran from the Mexican border all the way to Washington state. The road was decommissioned in 1964 after the creation of the 1-10 and I-5 freeways and redesignated as Redlands Blvd.
-
Talene Beuche Salmaszadeh lived and worked in Riverside for over twenty years and is an avid supporter of the local LGBTQ+ community. Through her role as a longtime host of Back to the Grind’s open mic poetry nights, her work at Back to the Grind, and as an organizer of the Saturation Fest art show, she was incredibly involved in Riverside’s LGBTQ+ art community for the past 20 years. She begins by discussing how she came to Riverside in 2001 and became involved with the local LGBTQ+ community through her regular visits to the Menagerie and activity with Riverside’s Underground Poetry Organization (RUPO). Salmaszadeh details the establishment of Back to the Grind coffee shop as a queer-friendly arts and community space which early on hosted RUPO’s community open mic poetry nights. She then describes how the Saturation Fest art show came to be, a process in which she was closely involved with as an organizer over the years. Salmaszadeh then touches on the murder of Jeffrey Owens, and the impact his death had on the local LGBTQ+ community. She closes out by discussing several key players in the local LGBTQ+ community and reflecting on the great ability of the Saturation Fest and Back to the Grind to be safe spaces for LGBTQ+ youth and as well as for the broader community.
-
In 1994 Darren Conkerite and his partner Scott opened Back to the Grind Coffeehouse which they created as a safe space for youth, the LGBTQ+ community, the arts, and political organizing. This interview begins with Conkerite discussing his family’s history in Lake Elsinore and his background in cheesemaking. He then details his meeting of his partner Scott and their decision to open Back the Grind in Riverside. Conkerite elaborates on how from the beginning he and Scott fostered community at Back to the Grind, supporting all types of people, the arts, and political organizing. He also discusses his history with Madeline Lee and David St. Pierre, two owners of the Menagerie gay bar, located next door to Back to the Grind. Conkerite provides details on the development of Riverside’s downtown area, which back in 1996 was not the vibrant space it is today. The interview concludes with him reflecting on several individuals active in LGBTQ+ organizing in the area and the role of Back to the Grind as a community space.
-
Connie Confer moved to Riverside in 1969 and since then has been an active organizer for LGBTQ+ and women’s issues in Riverside, holding leadership positions in organizations such as the Inland AIDS Project and the Political Action Coalition for Elections (PACE). The oral history begins with Confer discussing how she came to Riverside in 1969. She reflects on homophobia she experienced early on in the area. She then describes how after the Stonewall Riots in 1969 and California Proposition 6 in 1978, she became involved in political organizing for LGBTQ+ rights. Confer details her belief in the political and social power of the act of coming out, and her coming out in Riverside’s conservative climate. She then recounts her career working as Assistant City Attorney for Riverside for over 20 years and the work of the Inland AIDS Project and the Political Action Coalition for Elections, both of which she was president of. Confer then discusses the local battle over the AIDS Anti-Discrimination Ordinance, the backlash from the conservative Riverside Citizens for Responsible Behavior, and the work of her partner Kay Berryhill-Smith on the Human Relations Commission at the time. She also describes the work of the Inland AIDS Project in supporting and providing care for individuals with HIV/AIDS during the AIDS epidemic. Confer then details the AIDS Name Project Quilt and its community impact, which was brought to the Riverside Convention Center in 1987. She discusses the political fundraising work of PACE and its connection with the Menagerie. Confer recalls gay pride celebrations in the Riverside area which took place in the 80s and 90s and the Inland AIDS Project AIDS walks in downtown Riverside. She then describes PAC, a social group for LGBTQ+ men and women, women’s music, and lesbian cruises in the 1980s and 1990s. Confer discusses her work in women’s rights issues, including with the Spouse Abuse Coalition and Riverside County Coalition for Alternatives to Domestic Violence. The oral history closes with Conner reflecting on the state of LGBTQ+ rights today, including the fight for transgender rights and the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade.
-
Jane Carney moved to Riverside in 1977 as a business lawyer and was highly active in political organizing in the area. She ran for California State assembly in 1992, helped bring the Federal District and Appellate Courts to downtown Riverside and had a large role in the legal history of Riverside’s AIDS Anti-Discrimination Ordinance battle in the early 1990s. The oral history begins with Carney discussing how she came to Riverside and her early legal career in the area. She details meeting Connie Confer and their work to help confirm California Supreme Court Justice Rose Bird, afterwhich Carney became closely involved in election campaigns and political fundraisers. Carney then provides details on the work of the Riverside Coalition Against Discrimination and the homophobic climate in context of the ballot battle of the AIDS Anti-Discrimination Ordinance in Riverside. She details the overruling of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and the important role of Riverside’s Virginia Philips in writing the case opinion. Carney also discusses her close involvement with the formation of the Riverside Justice Center through the Riverside County Bar Association. The oral history closes out with Carney reflecting on the role of drag in the acceptance of lesbian and gay people as well as the climate of coming out in the 1980s in Riverside.
-
Phillip Bailey has been a long time drag organizer and celebrity in Riverside since moving to the city in 1996. He discusses his long involvement in Riverside’s drag community and its beginnings in Riverside’s Menagerie and V.I.P. gay bars during the late 1980s and 1990s. Bailey details the activism role of the Riverside drag community during the AIDS epidemic, during which drag performers held fundraiser events for the Inland AIDS Project. He discusses how the LGBTQ+ community’s organized after the murder of Jeffrey Owens in which a “We Will Not Be Silent” march took place in the city and the Jeffrey Owens Community Center was founded. He talks about Riverside drag events that he has organized, including the annual Throwdown Drag Down Drag Race, his Fant-A-Shes productions beginning in 1997, and various drag shows at the V.I.P. and Menagerie bars over the years. Bailey also discusses key factors to drag history in the Inland Empire, including the famous Halston drag family, the impact of Ru Paul’s Drag Race locally, and the triangulation between Riverside, Palm Springs, and L.A. 's drag communities. He also notes the historic and contemporary relationship between the drag community and trans people and comments on the current attacks on drag performance and trans rights in the United States today.
-
Benita Ramsey has served the Inland Empire as an activist for over 30 years, working with organizations including the Rainbow Pride Youth Alliance, Divine Truth Unity Fellowship Church, and TruEvolution. She begins by discussing the Unity Fellowship Church movement, a faith based movement dedicated to supporting individuals with HIV/AIDS from the 1980s to today, and her involvement in its Riverside chapter. Ramsey then details the role of HIV/AIDS activism today in the Inland Empire, in which supporting an aging population as well as youth is central. She outlines the beginnings of TruEvolution, which she was an original board member of, that grew out of the Inland and Desert AIDS Projects. Ramsey also remembers the AIDS Quilt Project as well as several key figures in LGBTQ+ Riverside history including Kay Smith and Jeffrey Owens. She discusses the need for and formation of Rainbow Pride Youth Alliance, an organization that was the first of its kind in focusing on the needs of LGBTQ+ youth in the I.E.. Ramsey ends the interview by reflecting on the current state of I.E. LGBTQ+ organizing during a time of rampant anti-LGBTQ+ hate and anti-trans legislation, noting that organizations such as Rainbow Pride Youth Alliance, TruEvolution, and Divine Truth Unity Fellowship Church will continue to support and uplift the I.E.’s LGBTQ+ community, preach love, and overcome hate.
-
Chani Beeman discusses the overlaps between and intersectionality of the LGBTQ community, women’s rights, and the empowerment of people of color. She discusses her family life, and that by the time she started college, she had two young children and had gotten remarried. She describes her exposure to the LGBTQ community during the 1980s AIDS crisis, and coming out when she was 28 years old. She mentions pressure from her family to conform to a more heteronormative lifestyle. While Chani Beeman was at Cal State San Bernardino, she became politically active and was openly gay. She describes her involvement in the socialist organization Solidarity, which emphasized the intersectionality of women’s rights, socialism, and anti-war movements. Chani Beeman also discusses her involvement in the Inland AIDS Project and Women Enraged! She shares details about her many collaborations and community organizing with other regional groups, commonly around social justice. She describes her involvement after the brutal murder of Nancy Willem in actions led by Women Enraged, including the Clothesline Project which brought attention to violence against women. Beeman also describes Women Enraged’s guerrilla theater, which included street demonstrations; other examples she offers include how WE wrote statistics about violence against women on dollar bills and distributed them in public. One of the slogans on the bills was “Stop sucking, start biting”. She is an active community organizer and member.
-
Rennie Green describes his childhood in the San Bernardino Valley during the 60’s and 70’s, and the schools he attended as he was growing up. His family had a small farm, which everyone tended to. After graduating from San Gorgonio High School, he began to work at Jet Propulsion Lab, where he helped build the jets used in satellites and rovers. He describes the community he was surrounded by in the Valley Truck Farm area of San Bernardino, such as the churches his family attended and the tight-knit neighborhood.
-
Longtime Eastside Riverside residents Suzie Medina and Melba Scott discuss their life experiences growing up in the Eastside community and its changing nature today. They begin by first detailing their family histories of moving to Eastside before discussing school degradation in Riverside public schools and the Freedom Schools they attended as children. They discuss the racism and discrimination they experienced during this time, but highlight the strong multiracial community support and solidarity networks that Eastside experienced. Later on they detail the changes that took place in the Eastside community, with many new residents moving in without connection to the community and its support system, in addition to the growth of gang activity. Further, they discuss the failures of nonprofits and other outside organizations to support the Eastside in their refusal to listen to resident needs. They also highlight the role of Lincoln Park as a central Eastside community site for celebrations and activities throughout the oral history. They discuss Eastside locations such as the Eastside bungalows, Hollows and Green Hollows, and March Air Force base’s and other industries’ roles in the area. In closing, they conclude by sharing stories of racial segregation and discrimination at Riverside’s Mission Inn.
-
Pictured here in a partially colorized black and white image are the 1929 dieciséis de septiembre queen and her court in Redlands, California. Queen Lucy Hernandez and her court, consisting of Encarnacion "Chon" Manzano (left), Mary Macias (second from left), Josefina Lara (second from right), reigned over a daylong fiesta complete with a parade, music, and dancing. September 16, dieciséis de septiembre, or Mexican Independence Day, was and continues to be a major event on the social calendar of Mexican American barrios across Southern California.
-
"Amelia (Sadie) Cordero is shown here in front of the family home at 305 High Street in the early 1930s." (Vasquez and Carpio, 25) Amelia wears a drop waist dress with her hair pulled back in finger waves.
-
Leo Cordero posing with a 1927 car outside his home on High Street. Like many working class people he benefited from the improved roads and access to motorized vehicles. "He and his family would travel to job sites across California." (Vasquez and Carpio, 43)
-
Black and white photograph of Sadie Cordero and her three children, a daughter and two sons, picking grapes in Salinas, California. Some Mexican American families in California would go pick various California produce in the Summer and Fall. Some picked apricots in Hemet, walnuts in Concord, stone fruit in Fairfield, and other crops. For many, following the crops was a matter of survival in the absense of local, full-time, year-round work. Families would spend summers and the early fall months harvesting crops throughout California and other parts of the West.
-
Black and white fourth-grade class photograph of Lincoln School in Redlands, California taken in 1935. This was the classroom of Nellie Hernandez. On the photograph, Nellie has labeled some students.
-
"Students cross Fern Street in front of Redland High School in the 1940s." (Vasquez and Carpio, 50)
-
Black and white photograph of a member of the Roque family posing in uniform during World War II under a tree.
-
Margaret Roque Castro pictured with her older sister, Guadalupe. The Roque family lived in the neighborhood known as "Barrio Judeo." Margaret Roque Castro described the neighborhood: "I was born in a little area right there on Herald Street, they used to call it El Barrio Judeo, because it belonged to some Jewish people. There were several houses, little old houses, but they were, you know, liveable. Then my parents bought that house on Herald Street, 1113 Herald Street. You know, the same street, but farther down." (Vasquez and Carpio, 22)
-
Aerial view of the Redlands Valley showing the 1-10 freeway, the city of Redlands and the San Bernardino Mountains including Mount San Gorgonio. Most likely taken in the 1960s.
-
Color photograph of the Lupe Sanchez Band with Blas Coyazo on guitar; Hemet Califorina, New Year's Eve 1964. Blas Coyazo said: "I play the bass guitar and the electric guitar and the electric guitar so for the last fifty years also, or more, out of the eighty-three years that I have, I've been playing with bands in the Inland Empire here. San Bernardino, Colton, Riverside, Hemet, Palm Springs, even Indio and Coachella, Perris, Pomona, Fontana, Bloomington, Corona...Saturday nights I used to go out moslty every week and earn perhaps twenty, twenty-five dollars extra...So I made that as a side work, you know, because I'd -- well, I learned how to play the guitar way back in 1927, '28."
-
Anthony Victoria shows the location of and discusses the BNSF intermodal facility in San Bernardino. He speaks about the company’s plans to expand into neighboring communities, and the reasons behind why some people sell their homes to the company while others are unable to, as well as the history of workers of color being exploited by industry in the inland empire. He mentions his own personal history with the pollution and environmental racism in the inland empire.
-
Anthony Victoria, an inland empire resident and enviromental justice advocate, discusses the railroad and warehouse industry in San Bernardino and the Inland Empire. He describes the pollution these industries put into the air, and the adverse effects pollution has on the communities of color where warehouses and railroads are built. He also advocates for a shift in the way the average person views their communities to become less consumer-driven and turn focus on decreasing emissions and challenging the large corporations exploiting their workforce. Efforts to reform the local laws and regulations in the Inland Empire, he argues, will allow for the betterment of air quality and force representatives to act in what is best for the communities, and not industry.
-
Graciela Mendez, a long-time Los Angeles resident, expresses her experience as a commuter on the 60 freeway that takes her from Los Angeles County to the Inland Empire. She briefly discusses her upbringing in Culver City Los Angeles and the introduction of the Freeway construction and how it transformed the landscape and everyday life, including traffic, time management, safety, and health impacts. In addition to this Graciela speaks on the negative health impacts of warehouses near Jurupa, Moreno Valley, and San Bernardino. Discussing the carelessness of the city and the consequences being pushed on the working class. Moreover her countless years of experiencing environmental inequity with warehouse implementation in low-income working-class communities as well as freeways and truck stops, she became part of the Peoples Collective for Environmental Justice to assist in creating a better future with reduced warehouse expansion and advocating for community health.