The Oakland Tribune’s First Black Photojournalist Captured Black Women’s Style

“You could tell that Kenneth Green Sr. really loved the Black community in these photos,” she says.

Green Sr. knew the community well, too. He grew up in San Francisco, graduating from Balboa High School in 1958 before getting his photography degree from Laney College. He later settled in Oakland on Fruitvale Avenue and 19th Street with his family.

The African American Center, on the library’s third floor, displays more of Green Sr.’s photos — specifically, rare photos of the African Liberation Day demonstration in San Francisco in 1972 that further underline the significance of his work in capturing Bay Area history. 

“I haven’t been able to find other images of African Liberation Day in San Francisco, you know, besides these photographs,” Sherman says. “We’re very lucky that he was there.”

When I ask Green Jr. what he believes his father would think about this exhibition and all the work his son has been doing to keep his memory alive, he says his father would “be speechless.”

“I think he would literally be shocked and in awe of celebrating the life work of Ken Green,” he adds. “Something that he did from his heart, that was a passion, that led to being really a very important memory and jewel of Bay Area, Oakland, San Francisco history.”

A history anyone can now see and enjoy, for free.

“Toward a Black Aesthetic: Kenneth P. Green Sr.’s Photographs of the 1960s and 70s” is on view at San Francisco’s Main Public Library through April 21. A related author talk between Dr. Tanisha Ford and Dr. Tiffany E. Barber will be held at the library on Feb. 28.