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Outstanding Community Service Award: Shirley Moore

Shirley Moore

To learn why Shirley Moore won an Outstanding Community Service Award this year, you have to put things in historical perspective.

The history professor has used her knowledge and love of the past to bring the long-ago into the here-and-now for her students and the overall community.

After finishing her doctorate at UC Berkeley 18 years ago, Moore came to Sacramento State where she was instrumental in creating the California Underground Railroad Digital Archive. The campus library’s collection of articles, drawings and other information about African -Americans’ contributions to California’s rich history is accessible over the Internet at http://digital.lib.csus.edu/curr/.

The project started out as the vision of her husband, Joe Louis Moore, a former scientific photographer with training in the arts. “He’s very much interested in melding history and art together,” says Moore. “Our interests just kind of combined.”

She was the supervising historian for the project, a continuing effort involving the campus, State Library, and other Sacramento State departments. “It was a wonderful experience and we hope to really get more materials available,” says Moore.

Kevin Starr, California state librarian emeritus, declared that Moore’s work put Sacramento State in the vanguard of community-university collaboration, bringing the complexity of the state’s history to the public.

Moore also coordinated the first programs at Negro Bar State Park on Lake Natoma for the Juneteenth program, commemorating African-American freedom. “We started those to raise awareness of the African-American presence in that area,” says Moore.

That presence included a land grant to Alexander Leidesdorff, an early pioneer of African-Danish descent who was granted property from the Mexican government that stretched from Bradshaw Road up to Folsom, says Moore.

Her latest project is the California Central Valley Museum of Working Class Art and Culture, a 12,000-square-foot treasury that will anchor a multi-use complex in Sacramento being built by developer Alan Warren.

Looking for something a little different from a traditional museum, Moore, her husband and Warren wanted something that would honor the working class people from Redding to Bakersfield – “people who might not have been included in the historical record,” says Moore. “You have a rich cultural heritage, an array of arts and culture, and we’re defining those terms as broadly as possible.”

In this case that would include the foods and working-class music cherished by the more than 80 ethnic and cultural groups Moore has identified. She and other museum supporters hope to open the center by Labor Day 2009.

Moore also makes presentations to a number of community groups, agencies, and, more recently, to eighth-grade teachers, about African-American history.

Her classroom and community work support one another. “I really don’t separate the two,” says Moore. “My work in the community makes me a better teacher because there are wonderful stories that can be used to illustrate historical points and I always try to bring that back to the classroom in some way.”