The African-American Trailblazers- Los Angeles Oral History Project chronicles the lives of significant individuals who contributed to the growth of Los Angeles’ Black community in the past 50 years.
The individuals highlighted strengthened the community in the areas of law, medicine, civic and community affairs, civil rights, religion, politics, economic development,entertainment, education, and city government. Their stories may be unfamiliar to you, but they are the people who did the work and moved LA’s Black community forward.
Since 2017, this project has been filming interviews with these leaders to bring attention to their work, record their stories, and pass on their wisdom to the next generation.
Project Team
Cora Jackson-Fossett
Cora Jackson-Fossett is the religion editor and a staff writer for the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper, the oldest African American-owned paper on the West Coast. She has won numerous awards for her work from the National Newspaper Publishers Association.
Previously, she served 15 years as the public affairs director for the Los Angeles Department of Public Works where she earned five Los Angeles Emmy nominations for producing public works DVDs. Cora also worked as a public relations representative for Los Angeles International Airport and public affairs specialist at the Chicago and Long Beach post offices. She retired in 2014 after 36 years of government service.
In 1987, Jackson-Fossett joined Brookins-Kirkland Community A.M.E. Church. She currently serves as a Sunday School teacher and on the Board of Stewards under Pastor Mary S. Minor. She also serves on the board of directors for L.A. County 211 Information Referral Agency and as a member of the NAACP Beverly Hills/Hollywood Chapter Theatre Committee and the Crenshaw Manor Homeowners Association. Jackson-Fossett earned a bachelor’s degree at Indiana University, completed graduate courses at Columbia College, and received an honorary doctorate from California University of Theology.
Her guiding principles are: Have faith in God, approach life with enthusiasm, treat others with respect, and never stop learning.
Valerie Lynne Shaw
Valerie Lynne Shaw has held numerous leadership positions in civic and community organizations in Los Angeles. She currently serves as the President of the Board of Library Commissioners for the Los Angeles Public Library. In 2015, Ms. Shaw was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to the Board of Governors for the California Community College System. She was reappointed to a six-year term in 2017. Previously, Ms. Shaw served as the President, Vice President, and Commissioner of the five-member, full-time, City of Los Angeles Board of Public Works from 1996-2013. She was the only commissioner appointed by three Mayors and the first African American woman President of the Board of Public Works.
Ms. Shaw has a Masters of Public Administration from the University of Southern CAlifornia and served as an adjunct professor in the Political Science Department from 2003 to 2012. She has also served as a Board member of LA County 211, California Community Foundation’s Centinela Medical Fund, the Los ANgeles African American Women’s Political Policy Institute (LAAAWPPI), PV Jobs, and the Wilfandel Club. Ms. Shaw was born in Los Angeles and is a member of a family that has a long and proud history of public service.
Erin Kaplan
Erin Aubry Kaplan is a contributing writer to the New York Times opinion page and a former weekly op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times, the first African American in the paper’s history to hold the position. Kaplan first appeared in a monthly independent newsmagazine called Accent L.A., a small publication dedicated to a large mission of providing thoughtful, literate, alternative coverage of Black Los Angeles. She began working full-time as a journalist in 1992 for the Los Angeles Times, for a short-lived but much-heralded section called City Times that was created in the aftermath of the civil unrest to expand meaningful coverage of the central city. Kaplan covered the Crenshaw district, South Central and events affecting Los Angeles’ disparate Black communities and Black communities at large. Kaplan was an original staff writer for New Times Los Angeles in 1996, and moved to the staff of the LA Weekly later that year. At the Weekly she indulged her interest in race matters and a host of other issues including culture, politics, and the arts.
Kaplan was a 2000 fellow in the Sundance Institute’s Creative Nonfiction Writing Program, and the 2001 recipient of PEN Center West’s award for literary journalism for the cover essay, “Blue Like Me,” a rumination on the connections between ancient American race struggles and modern-day depression. In 2001 she was runner-up for Print Journalist of the Year in the Los Angeles Press Club annual awards, and again for Columnist of the Year in 2002. Kaplan has been widely anthologized in books and her articles have appeared in many publications, including Ms. Magazine, UCLA Magazine, Barnard magazine, the London Independent, the Guardian, Salon.com, The Crisis, Newsday, Contemporary Art Magazine, the Utne Reader
and Black Enterprise. She is the author of “Black Talk, Blue Thoughts and Walking the Color Line: Dispatches From a Black Journalista,” (2011) and “I Heart Obama” (2016). Kaplan was born and raised in Los Angeles. She holds a B.A. in English and M.F.A. in Theater Arts from U.C.L.A. She was married to Alan Kaplan, a fellow Los Angeles native and history teacher, until his death in 2015.
Bailey Berry
Bailey Berry is currently the Librarian for Digital Publishing, Curation, and Conversion at Pepperdine University Libraries Special Collections. Berry received her MLIS from the UCLA School of Education and Information Science. Her research interests focus on digital collections at Libraries, Archives, and Museums, curating digital humanities research, and working to provide responsible access to primary sources online. Previously, Berry worked in cataloging and collections management at various cultural heritage organizations including Royale Projects Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the Smithsonian Environmental Archeology Lab in Edgewater, Maryland. Berry has also worked as an independent archivist advising families on inventorying and appraising their collections to prepare them for donation. She has had the privilege to work with several collections important to the history of California and Los Angeles, including the papers of Leslie N. and Margaret Ann Shaw.
Why donate?
Your donation will go towards filming more interviews with leaders in LA’s Black community and to making their stories public. In addition to being published on this website, all interviews are archived at California State University Fullerton’s Lawrence B. De Graaf Center for Oral and Public History.