SUSAN D. ANDERSON
Principal Investigator, CAAM
A fourth generation Californian, Susan D. Anderson has traveled to every region of the state from the Oregon border to the frontier with Mexico, and from the Mojave Desert to the Pacific Ocean. Growing up in the Bay Area, she spent a considerable amount of time in wilderness, on family fishing and hunting trips, later as a student, camping in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains, and backpacking the John Muir trail in Yosemite while studying literature, art, the humanities, and world politics. During her years in Los Angeles, Anderson curated "100 Years of the California Dream," the statewide touring exhibition commemorating the centennial of Col. Allensworth State Historic Park and was a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times Sunday Opinion section. In her career as a curator at several institutions, she acquired and developed landmark collections documenting California's African American history including the Tom Bradley Administrative papers, the Miriam Matthews Photograph Collection, the Walter Gordon Photograph Collection, papers of civil rights leaders Rev. Jerry Ford of Los Angeles and Rev. John Doggett of Oakland, the records of the League of Allied Arts, and ephemera and artwork from Black Lives matter protests.
Anderson is an author, curator, speaker, and public historian who for many years has been documenting, teaching, interpreting, and writing about California's African American past. Some of the venues where she has delivered public lectures include: the Kelley House Museum in Mendocino, the Presidio in San Francisco, the Wilshire Ebell Club in Los Angeles, the Healdsburg Museum, the Huntington Library in San Marino, the Phoebe Hearst Museum, at UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and Scripps College in Claremont. Her work is frequently featured in media including interviews on CBS Sunday Morning, opinion articles in the Los Angeles Times, and articles in the New York Times, as well as appearances on Air Talk on LAist and Bay Curious on KQED.
As History Curator and Program Manager at the California African American Museum, Anderson serves as Principal Investigator of the African American History & Engagement partnership with California Parks and Recreation Department, leading a collaborative effort to restore the Black presence across state parks to help visitors experience rich cultural narratives contained in outdoor spaces. She is a member of the Editorial Board of California History journal, and a member of the Council of Friends, Bancroft Library UC Berkeley. She is former Director of Collections, Library, Exhibitions, and Programs at the California Historical Society in San Francisco, former Interim Chief Curator at the African American Museum & Library at Oakland, and former Curator at UCLA Library Special Collections in Los Angeles. For several years, she operated Memory House, a curatorial and public history consulting firm, preserving and making history accessible and engaging for all. Her book Nostalgia for a Trumpet: Poems of Memory and History is available from Northwestern University Press. She is completing a book for Heyday Books in Berkeley, African Americans and the California Dream.