Belmar Park Makes its Mark
Historic Belmar Park, shown here on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021, in Santa Monica, Calif. At the east end of the park by 4th Street is a freestanding sculpture, titled ‘A Resurrection in Four Stanzas’ by April Banks, made of painted steel and aluminum. (Marco Pallotti | The Corsair)
What started as an idea to convert the Santa Monica Civic Center parking lot into a Sports field, turned into a bigger effort of recognizing the struggles that the African American community faced in Santa Monica due to displacement. Historic Belmar Park was this bigger project created to commemorate the history of the African American communities that once lived in Santa Monica.
In the Jim Crow Era of the 1950s, African Americans had roots in local common areas from the Santa Monica pier to neighborhoods around Santa Monica High School to Bay Street Beach, also known as “The Ink Well”. Santa Monica served as a safe haven for African Americans to escape Jim Crow laws. More specifically, the Belmar Triangle was where they could rent, buy property, and enjoy the beach.
Many migrants were able to become entrepreneurs and open small businesses, such as Ebony Beach Club. The Belmar Triangle was thriving until the late 1950s. The community of Black-owned businesses and shotgun homes were burned down due to gentrification.
In their place was built the Los Angeles County Courthouse and the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. The Civic Auditorium has been the public site of cultural events throughout the years, including one with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964. The Auditorium was in full swing until 2013 when it lost redevelopment funds to rehabilitate the facility.
Santa Monica Arts Commission elected artist April Banks to join historian, Dr. Alison Rose Jefferson, on the Belmar History+Art project. Before the art installation and plaques were pitched, both Jefferson and Banks took part in community engagement. These engagement activities focused on art, oral tradition, storytelling, and conversation.
The workshops were meant to “start conversations with people about history. First about awareness and then about collecting history we don’t know... I felt it was really important to choose a symbol that could represent a lot of people, this larger idea of security and displacement, that may be focusing on a single figure or person couldn't do,” said Banks.
‘A Resurrection in Four Stanzas’ includes four separate full-scale sculptures to embody the historical shotgun home. The sculpture of the porch roof has a piece of prose written by Banks: “In my daydreams, I long for my grandparents’ front yard, the stage for a story waiting to be told. With a glass of sweet tea and a giggle of gossip, we sit in the cool evening breeze, whispered from the nearby sea waves.”
It was important to her to highlight the juxtaposition of light and dark, not just with the shadows, but with the stories and overall displacement. “There's the destruction and the removal but then there's also the joy. So, I wanted to write a piece that kind of puts people in that space of empathy, to have a real understanding of these real lives,” Banks said.
The city of Santa Monica's newest recreational facility, Historic Belmar Park, shown here on Tuesday, February 28, 2021, in Santa Monica, California, will be officially opened on February 28th. The park honors the memory of the black community that lived in the area, and who were displaced in the 1950s to make way for the Santa Monica Civic Center. (Marco Pallotti/The Corsair)
“Belmar 2070” is a result of the project put together by Santa Monica High School and Crossroads School of Arts & Sciences students that will be included in a Time Capsule to be reopened on Juneteenth, 2070. The students put together a zine with illustrations projecting what significant African American areas would be like if they hadn’t been erased. Along with the youth zine, the buried time capsule included letters from the community, historical photographs, and items to mark the era of 2021 such as N-95 masks and a newspaper with Amanda Gorman on the cover.
A curriculum was put in place in collaboration with UCLA’s Master Teachers and Jefferson which will help students in Santa Monica and surrounding school districts. The curriculums installed by the project were meant to be catalysts for conversations of historical injustice that had not been previously mentioned in history books.
“So, in the context of this project, generally, African American History gets left out of the narrative. I mean, just think about how some kids don't even learn that there was enslavement in [the education] industry, and if they learn about enslavement, they don't learn that that was an economic system that built the United States,” said Jefferson.
In regards to future collaborations with SMC, Shannon Daut, a Santa Monica Cultural Affairs representative, said, “We'll definitely think about the future with SMC and seeing how this program might expand because it's been talked about, but I think it's a really important piece of the puzzle.”
The park’s virtual grand opening celebration took place on Feb. 28, via Zoom. The field itself opened on March 1 with its first Lacrosse game. The art installation and guiding plaques surround the field and are open for all to see.
Corrections:
The Belmar Triangle was thriving until the late 1950s. An original version of this article stated that this happened until the 1960s.
The Belmar Triangle was replaced by both the Los Angeles County Courthouse and the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. An original version of this article stated that only the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium replaced it.
