The Black is Beautiful Gala and Fundraiser will help raise funds to support Black-led organizations and initiatives to help re-imagine our collective investment in community care. Saint Paul AME Church, Juneteenth Santa Barbara, Sojourner Kincaid Rolle Youth Artivism Scholarship, and the Community Emergency Needs Fund will receive the funds raised from the Gala. Below you will find information about how the Community Emergency Needs fund has been sustained throughout the years with support from Healing Justice Santa Barbara.

Since the 1940s the Black/African American community in Santa Barbara has been engaging in organizing and civic leadership. HJSB seeks to continue the legacies of our ancestors by honoring the traditions that were created in our community at a time when the Black organizations were thriving in an abundance of joy and love that built a resilient and sustaining Black/African American community. Santa Barbara’s Black community members had a longstanding history of organizing around advocacy, equal opportunity, and safety for the betterment of Black lives. The key to the success and sustainability of the community was their investment in institution building. Organizations like the George Washington Carver Club, which flourished in the the 1940s, worked to address educational inequities and raise scholarship money to send African American youth to college. The club held balls and galas frequently to help raise awareness to causes and to gather in community.