RPA's Walking Tour highlights Black history
RPA's "Black. Not Sorry" Walking Tour highlighted Santa Monica’s Black history for Black History Month.
Santa Monica is well-known for its densely populated white community. However, an advertising company is looking to change that. RPA's "Black. Not Sorry" Walking Tour highlighted Santa Monica’s Black history for Black History Month.
With QR Codes placed across eight Black historical areas, RPA spotlights key moments in Santa Monica’s history – and people don’t have to be in person to join in.
On their YouTube, the advertising company gave each destination its own short video with brief explanations of why those spots in the city matter to Black history. Each video has the correlating QR Code in it, so viewers can screenshot and scan it for more information.
Camille C. Wright, associate community manager at RPA worked on the campaign and appears in the walking tour.
"Santa Monica's Black History Walking Tour was seriously one of the most impactful Black History Month projects that I got to create," Wright tells Marcom Weekly. "We created a story that centered around Black joy rather than Black trauma (and Black trauma seems to always take precedent when telling Black stories specifically). Being part of Black joy messaging is always my goal and I'm so happy RPA supported us in making these stories come to life."
Santa Monica’s Black community grew during the late 1800s, during the Great Migration, and the community set up hub spots for socialization and togetherness as a means to deal with the racism and white supremacy surrounding them.
One of the locations is Bay Street Beach, known as “The Inkwell” back then, was one of those spots where Black people gathered and socialized during the Jim Crow era.
The Belmar Triangle was also a social hub for the Black community, and where Black businesses thrived. La Bonita, for example, was a Bathhouse and cafe that brought in tourists from all over the United States and was a crucial aspect to the triangle’s growth.
Other Black-owned businesses included the Caldwell Dance Hall where music and fashion thrived and the Ebony Beach Club which was claimed by the city before it could have a public opening.
The tour highlights Santa Monica’s civil rights movement as well by spotlighting the first protest to happen in the city. The 10 Freeway also left its marker on Santa Monica’s Black community, having displaced multiple Black families and thriving businesses during its expansion.
With more consumers and younger generations looking for short clips that tell the most information in the shortest amount of time, RPA’s tour may be an example of how to engage an audience with cultural history.