The Russell City Blues: Stories and Music of a Lost East Bay Community 

Celebrate the history and uncover the joy of a lost Bay Area community through on-stage interviews and storytelling with the people who lived there.
"Once home to around 1,400 predominantly Black and Latino residents in an unincorporated 12-block area of Hayward, Russell City was a cultural hub for blues music, where legends like Ray Charles and Etta James performed in clubs when they toured the West Coast," writes KQED journalist Spencer Whitney, who co-hosts the event. "In the 1950s, however, all that changed when Alameda County and Hayward city officials declared Russell City a "blight" and decided to transform the area into an industrial business park."
Featuring live music organized by the West Coast Blues Society, this event takes us back in time, honoring the musical legacy of the town where the blues thrived until the bulldozers rolled in.