How Eugene Lasartemay Built a Home for Black History
Eugene Lasartemay was a marine engineer with a passion for history.
How Eugene Lasartemay Built a Home for Black History
In 1937, Eugene Lasartemay stood on the docks of San Francisco and did something no Black man before him had officially done: he boarded a ship as a licensed marine engineer. It was a career defined by internal combustion, pressure gauges, and the relentless machinery of the Pacific trade. But while Lasartemay spent his days ensuring engines ran smoothly, he spent his nights worried about a different kind of breakdown—the fading memory of his own people.
From the Boiler Room to the Archive
Lasartemay’s journey from a licensed engineer to the "Dean of East Bay History" wasn't a career change; it was a mission of survival. Born in Hawaii and moving to California in the 1920s, he entered a state that was rapidly growing but systematically erasing the contributions of its Black residents.
By 1946, Eugene and his wife, Ruth, realized that if they didn't start saving the evidence of Black life in Oakland, nobody would. They didn't start with a museum; they started with a trunk. They collected:
- Church bulletins that tracked the migration of families from the South.
- Photographs of Black businesses that the local papers refused to print.
- Oral recordings of elders whose stories of the 19th century were dying with them.
Building the East Bay Negro Historical Society
In 1965, the year of the Watts Riots and a turning point for the Civil Rights Movement, Lasartemay and a small circle of friends—including the formidable Dr. Marcella Ford—codified their hobby into the East Bay Negro Historical Society (EBNHS).
For years, the society was nomadic. It lived in the Lasartemay’s living room, then in a small storefront on Grove Street (now Martin Luther King Jr. Way), and eventually in the Golden Gate Branch Library. Lasartemay was the engine room of the operation—organizing files with the same precision he once used on steamships. He understood that history wasn't just "old stuff"; it was political power.
The Allensworth Crusade
Lasartemay’s most visible victory was perhaps the resurrection of Allensworth. In the late 1960s, the town founded by Colonel Allen Allensworth in 1908 was a ghost of its former self, threatened by environmental neglect and historical amnesia.
Lasartemay didn't just want a plaque; he wanted a State Historic Park. He used his technical background to help oversee the research and planning committees, ensuring that the reconstruction of the town was historically accurate. When the park was dedicated in 1976, it was a testament to Lasartemay’s belief that Black history was not a "side story" to California’s growth, but its very foundation.
A Living Legacy
When Eugene Lasartemay passed away in 1993, he didn't just leave behind a collection; he left a permanent institution. His life’s work became the bedrock of the African American Museum & Library at Oakland (AAMLO), housed in the grand, Beaux-Arts Greene Library building.
Today, researchers from around the world visit AAMLO to look through the "Lasartemay Family Papers." They find the records of a man who spent 50 years as a Scoutmaster, a man who sailed the seas, and a man who understood that a community without a history is like a ship without a rudder.
Eugene Lasartemay proved that you don't need a PhD to be a historian—you just need the tools of an engineer: a steady hand, a sharp eye for detail, and the refusal to let the fire go out.
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