CHURCH

THESE ARE THE FACES FROM THREE "OLD SCHOOL” churches in West Oakland — snapshots taken on Easter Sunday, 2015. They are West Oakland's "solid citizens." The men in these photos have probably always worked; the women have either worked or been active in church and volunteer organizations. Most are well educated. Their roots go back to Texas or Louisiana, the southern end of the railroad line that took rural blacks to California during WWII in search of jobs. In the 1940s, in Jim Crow south, segregation wasn't just about not being able to vote or having separate schools. It was about having to step off the sidewalk to let a white person pass. None of these solid citizens say racism is over because too many black people are in desperate straits.