Bridges Digital Archive: Audio and Video Recordings

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Document Type

Oral History

Publication Date

7-13-2022

Abstract

In this interview, Carolyn Annette Kennedy-Tillman is the guest. She has a large history in the San Bernardino community and the Inland Empire. Tillman started the interview with her familial background, with is that she had parents in the military and is the fourth of seven children. She moved around to different states on or near Air Force bases and later moved to Loma Linda to attend Loma Linda University. She also mentioned that she had stayed in the Inland Empire ever since the year 1980. With much of her extended family living in San Bernardino, she and her siblings grew up with familial influence. Tillman fondly remembered visiting her grandparents in San Bernardino and spoke about how her grandmother instilled manners and the Seventh-Day Adventist faith in her grandchildren. The community was always to lend a helping hand to their neighbors and Tillman spoke on summer programs and activities she remembered participating in. As an adult and graduate of Loma Linda University, Tillman worked in the health field much of it later being within public health for the African American community. She worked many jobs revolving around public health, such as in schools. Tillman also speaks about her time working with organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Westside Action Group. The organization the National Council of Negro Women was an organization she worked for and later joined. While working in Loma Linda, the interviewee had to deal with racism. Particularly, she had to deal with a lack of funding for her work as well as an old classmate undermining her work. Luckily, the Westside Action Group was able to help her with that problem. After talking about how her husband had helped with the creation of Arroyo Valley High School, Tillman talks about the problems she saw in education. She gives both personal and nonpersonal examples of how education in San Bernardino has set children behind and how much of it may have to do with segregation and integration from decades past. The interview ends with Tillman discussing the economic problems of San Bernardino and the need to preserve community history.

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