Lee, a refugee from Shanghai, hung out with Maya Angelou and was crowned Miss Chinatown before winning a 1973 City Council election.
History
Posted inCommunity
Student exhibit at Berkeley Hearst Museum aims to decolonize Philippine history
A new student-led course is examining UC Berkeley’s colonial past in the Philippines using archival photos and artifacts.
Posted inCommunity
Halloween was once a chaotic night of pranks and violence in the East Bay
Hordes of mischief-making children, punishing adults, rashes of theft, vandalism, and police crackdowns — Halloween in Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda was once mayhem.
Posted inCommunity
Fate of historic Berkeley building (and family home) hangs in the balance as tax debt looms
A new roof on Finnish Hall, owned by a defunct nonprofit and mired in property tax debt, should shore up the structure. But the future of the landmarked building, also the home for 30 years to a family of caretakers, is anything but certain.
Posted inCommunity
At 114 years, 7 months old, Berkeley supercentenarian Mila Mangold has died
Mangold was the second oldest person in the United States at the time of her death on July 2, 2022.
Posted inCity
Berkeley Troll House, where the ‘psychedelic elite’ partied, has sold for $1.4 million
Owsley Stanley, famed Grateful Dead soundman and the first person to privately manufacture LSD, lived in the Poet’s Corner cottage during the Summer of Love.
Posted inCity
Why hasn’t UC Berkeley built more student housing?
For much of Cal’s history, providing housing for students was not a priority. Troubled finances in the last few decades have hobbled Cal’s efforts to catch up.
Posted inCommunity, The Oaklandside
Find out where your grandparents lived in Berkeley with new 1950 census records
Details from 72 years ago are available for the first time and paint a clearer picture of life in Alameda County and beyond.
Posted inCommunity
A Berkeley architect is obsessively tracking the East Bay’s backyard water towers
Aaron Goldstein has been peering over fences to admire the area’s remaining windmill-topped water towers, vestiges of an era before municipal water. Now he’s writing a book.
Posted inBusiness
Black Berkeley town father invented the lawnmower grass-catching pan in 1889
Henry Peterson arrived in Berkeley in its earliest days and co-founded the city’s first church.
Posted inSchools
How the war in Ukraine is being taught in Berkeley schools
History teachers have been fielding questions about Russia’s nuclear capabilities, Putin’s motivations and whether the draft would return if the U.S. joins the war.
Posted inCity
Bancroft Library exhibit marks 80th anniversary of Japanese American internment
Uprooted: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans chronicles the life and stories of thousands who were imprisoned during World II.