A public history student’s research helps shed light on the life of a civil rights legend in Sacramento

Jonathan Morales

June 26, 2024

There is nothing unusual about the house at 4216 Lotus Ave. in the Sutterville Heights neighborhood of Sacramento. Passersby probably don’t know that for decades it was the home of a civil rights legend.

But with the help of a Sacramento State student, that could change.

Research by Alyssa M. Garcia, who just completed her second year of her master’s degree in public history at Sac State, played a key role in a recent short documentary about Virna Canson, the Sacramento civil rights pioneer who lived in the house from 1954 until until his death in 2003.

Garcia’s work, like her classmates’, was used to support the effort to have the property designated a National Historic Landmark.

“I hope people understand the impact of Virna Canson’s contributions to society and the fact that in the West she is the female version of Martin Luther King Jr.” Garcia said. “She is the ‘Mother of Civil Rights in the West.’ He deserves recognition, he deserves to go down in the history books.”

Garcia decided to engage with the story after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020 and the protests and nationwide debate about race.

“I felt that the best way for me to understand, navigate and move forward in this type of atmosphere was to learn the history of this city and be able to have really important conversations based on that knowledge base,” she said.

Garcia graduated from Sac State with a bachelor’s degree in history in 2022 and immediately began the university’s master’s degree in public history. A key element of this program was a partnership with the African American Experience Project in Sacramento, through which students helped identify significant people and places in the city’s black community.

Beginning in the 1950s, Virna Canson was a key figure in many civil rights struggles in California, including housing discrimination and affirmative action. From 1974 to 1988, she was director of the NAACP’s western region.

In the spring of 2023, Garcia was assigned to the Canson house, quickly learning that the work would be harder than that of her classmates. Her research revealed that the Canson family had built an apartment building on the back of their property, which they rented without racial restrictions at a time of widespread housing discrimination.

“I had a bit more of a workload than my peers because I also had to take care of the housing that came with it,” she said. “I thought, ‘Why me?’ But honestly, it turned out to be just a gem of a design.

Garcia reviewed property records for the home and apartment and spent a day at the Oakland African American Museum and Library, which houses Canson’s papers and collections. There, Garcia researched Canson’s life to help determine the historical significance of her home.

“I really did it file by file, image by image. I looked at everything and left no stone unturned in her collections,” she said.

Research conducted by Garcia and her fellow Public History students was the basis for submitting applications to the U.S. Department of the Interior to have these locations listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

These conclusions are ongoing, but Garcia’s work has found another outlet. While she was conducting research, Sacramento filmmaker Chris Lango began working on a short documentary about Canson, funded by a grant from the city’s Office of Arts and Culture.

In August 2023, Lango asked James Scott, archivist of the Sacramento Public Library, if the library had information about Canson. Scott replied that one of his most recent interns – Garcia – had just completed a research project on the Canson house.

Lango, also a video producer for the Sacramento History Center, contacted Garcia and quickly knew he wanted to include her in the film. She was the second person he interviewed, meaning that in addition to being singled out, her work became the starting point for Lango’s future research.

“I was lucky enough to interview her before I interviewed other people,” he said. “Researching what she did and talking to her motivated me to do more research and find more listings for the Canson house and the apartment building out back and record more footage.”

Lango’s video was posted to YouTube in honor of Mother’s Day and was intentionally chosen to reflect Canson’s status as the “Mother of Civil Rights in Sacramento.”

Rebekkah Mulholland, director of the master’s in public history program, said the African American Experience Project, of which Garcia’s research was a part, is a great example of how the program not only provides students with real-world skills but also instills in them the importance of service Community.

“Because we are community-oriented, our students understand the responsibility of their work, not only at Sac State but beyond,” Mulholland said. “They take their education and training with them into the world, showing that Sac State has prepared them for the workplace, thereby influencing others to want to join our program.”

Garcia is on track to graduate this fall. She wants to become a professor, but her master’s thesis also inspired her desire to continue documenting public history.

She said that taking part in Lango’s film was part of that inspiration.

“Being featured in the documentary not only validated my work, but also highlighted the importance of preserving and understanding the significant contributions made to protect our civil rights figures, especially local ones.”