and i began to attend those first planning meetings, because it was something that wascu ing in the 14th assembly district. and gradually became involved in that planning operation. >> and you became involved for a reason. i mean, you spoke up and said look, there areto nuance this story. >> the reason that richmond had been selected, though there were boomtowns around the country, it was here in richmond that there was enough still standing structures to interpre history. the structures that would have told my story, thca african-ame story, had been long, long ago so in order to see that history was moree, inclusihere was more than the story of rosy the riveter, the white woman's story, there was the story of 120,000 japanese-americans being interned, the explosion where 320 lives were lost. the story of african-americans who had come out of the sharecroppers, out of the south to answer the call for those storiesg were go untold. to see that history was inclusive, became part of the >> you grew up in the bay area in the 1940s, '50s. what was life like here? what happened when you trieto