The Home Front Festival Committee continues to release more details about the Home Front Festival-by-the-Bay taking place on Richmond’s southern waterfront beginning Friday, September 28, and ending Sunday, September 30. Three new event posters are available for downloading and printing. Please post these and share these with your friends and email correspondents.

• Click here for Saturday, September 29 activities, 11:00 AM Launch the Park, 11:00 AM Shipyard No. 3 after Pancake Breakfast on the Reed oak Victory starting at 9:00 AM.
• Click here for Sunday, September 30 Rosie and Home Front Worker Reunion 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM Ford Assembly Building
• Click here for a list of National Park Service Events on Saturday and Sunday
• For updated comprehensive information on the Home Front Festival, go to http://www.homefrontfestival.com.
• For information on the Rosie the River Trust Gala Dinner, go to http://www.rosietheriveter.org/gala.htm. Please RSVP by September 12. Your support will help complete Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park.
• Below is a story from the West County Times about the StoryCorps Griot Project.

Storytelling project gets under way

RICHMOND: African-Americans invited to recount experiences of World War II, Civil Rights

By Chris Treadway

STAFF WRITER

Article Launched: 09/06/2007 03:04:49 AM PDT

• Alameda filmmaker records WWII tales

A national project to collect stories about the experiences of African-American families could yield treasures for Richmond's national park and for researchers looking to collect and tell local history that largely has been overlooked.

The StoryCorps Griot project, which arrived in Oakland last month, will begin conducting interviews in Richmond on Friday.

Griot refers to a West African storyteller who, in that region's oral tradition, would pass along details of births, deaths and other events, thus preserving them from generation to generation.

The project's focus of gathering untold and undertold aspects of African-American experiences melds well with local efforts to research and document the black perspective of both World War II and the Civil Rights Movement in Richmond.

"StoryCorps is another kind of opportunity to gather that kind of information," said Carla Koop, outreach coordinator for Richmond's Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park.

There is an urgency in the effort to collect stories and recollections, as someone who was just 18 in the final year of the war would be 80 today. Personal accounts are key in bringing across what life in Richmond was like during the often-chaotic war years.

"The National Park System is trying to have people tell their stories instead of the park telling their story to the community," Koop said.

"What we're looking to emphasize with the StoryCorps project is just how important these home front experiences are to the park in the sense that it was founded on the stories of the people in the community who lived and worked in the World War II home front," she said. "We're kind of working against time."

Donna Graves, who helped establish the national park and is currently program director for Richmond's Memories of Macdonald Project, hopes interviews also will turn up personal insights on the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement.

"What was the Civil Rights Movement like in Richmond? There are untold chapters in Richmond's history; this is one in particular," she said, adding that mainstream news accounts from the period offer little to nothing from the African-American perspective.

She cited the racial unrest in 1968 that culminated in June with fires downtown. In particular, a fire that burned down the Travalini Furniture Co. at 1501 Macdonald Ave. was cited during interviews she conducted about the history of Richmond's downtown.

"Why did a thriving commercial core from World War II go into such a state of decline? When Travalini's burned down and then left, a lot of people felt that was really the nail in the coffin for downtown," Graves said.

Established in 1918, "it was one of the prominent furniture stores in Richmond."

Contemporary accounts of the unrest give a glimpse of what happened but don't delve into why events unfolded as they did. Graves is hoping to broaden the perspectives almost 40 years later to offer a more complete picture and understanding about downtown Richmond in the post-war years.

StoryCorps Griot, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, is a modern take on the Federal Writers' Project of the 1930s, with a yearlong mission of collecting at least 1,750 audio interviews from African-Americans in nine cities.

The recorded interviews will become part of the permanent collections in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., and the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Participants also will have an opportunity to keep a CD of their interview session.

Reach Chris Treadway at 510-262-2784 or ctreadway@ bayareanewsgroup.com.

STORYCORPS

StoryCorps Griot interview sessions will be conducted Friday and next Thursday at Neighborhood House of North Richmond, 820 23rd St. in North Richmond. Interviews are 40-minute sessions, and four to seven people will be scheduled each day. Slots remain for Friday; most slots for next Thursday have been filled. Those interested in scheduling an interview time should contact Betty Soskin at the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park by calling 510-232-1547 or e-mailing betty_soskin@nps.gov. People with recollections of the Civil Rights Movement in Richmond are invited to contact Donna Graves at macdonaldmemories@yahoo.com.