hello i'm gerri lynch and we're here today to honor an outstanding woman and icon from here in the bay area dr barbara cannon on our show she's so lusty it's taking three of us to interview her to get some dr barbara can and has lived we're not going to be able to do all of it because she's it's very we see her mostly as an educator but her life has been much much more than that and we hope to explore more of that today barker dr barbara can but let's bring a big surprise on everybody you are musician who plays eleven instruments is that correct there were sixteen at six point six million one point ok they regard telling us about your musical career because we're going to get back to your educational career it started in high school i played there was no one who wanted to play the piccolo when the flute other we had a marching band in my high school in texas which was weldon named after james weldon williams who was named after james weldon johnson who wrote lift every voice and sing in an all black school and we had we saying that lift every voice and sing quite often i used to accompany the choir on the piano because i majored in the piano f went to a nearby college jarvis christian college until we had a lessons there for years one of my instructors had been a juilliard and he winston mays was his name the but i really enjoyed lessons with him and when every one of the teachers would no longer be available there were others who would come to that college so there were there was another family that we took turns my parents would drive me us one weekend and their two daughters and then the their think the favorite was actually the piano and the second was the flute that i saw a flute concert that you gave and it was just sex how did you know yes i did have sarah says yes it was required for my bachelor's degree in music i had to give a either play the sixteen instruments or give a recital so i chose the reciting line and that's why i had to do that what was it about the music that attracted you to it it was my high school band teacher who wanted me to play the in the piccolo but i had already been attracted to the piano years ago because of a cousin she was very talented with being able to hear and play jazz and other blues and things like that so she taught me one of the pieces that she used to know i'm reading pieces of them all at the same time oh my god this is taking a lot of time to read about ten books all at the same time wow so you have the music experience in your in your life and then you have the educators so how did you know and also there's french as well so you have three different streams coming in and i guess you just dedicated yourself to each of these disciplines so when it was the music time you gave one hundred percent with the french tell us about that experience yes what happened is as a music major i took italian at the santa school state just because i knew the a lot of the expressions in the music where you tell italian words so i took that first and i think it's very musical also that was very fascinating that i want uptaking french with dr him on day who has happened to be italian and i wound up be in the class with judge travis remember judge then travesty r and i was twenty quite well in the class and i think he was kind of admiring feeling a little i guess i was doing so well and he didn't think he was doing as we'll a s all at all but i don't know how he went ahead with it but what happened is over the years when i first started teaching i had boys glee elihu harris was in my boys glee club and he was eleven he was the youngest one in the group you remember who he was the mayor of yes yeah and his mother would come and go with us on field trips with the boys glee but she'd also sit in the room and at times as well she was a music teacher at one point just because of the romance of the language of the latin base was just easy for you to just study french well i think it had to do with the italian course that i took that has a musical ok it's so tied in with music anyway there to i believe i did i kept taking french but then i found out that as i b when i became a teacher i was taught the music first i had girls glee first the boys liam and a few years later bully eight grade girls early and seventh grade girls and the boys glee i think we finally had someone else who came on as a new teacher and took the boys but that was a good experience  the one year the i went to another school junior high school in berkeley village near high and the original band and orchestra teacher when on sabbatical so i took the that gave me the opportunity to work with the instrumental music because up to that point i had just been relegated to all choral music and that was a good experience because i got to work with rodney franklin remember the jazz young man ok he started in the sixth grade because he had a  at longfellow elementary school that came to our they fed over to our school will or junior high so that was a good experience i really enjoyed the orchestra in the band but i really prefer the orchestra to the band because the brass instruments  worked there teaching music and french i was awarded a sabbatical that i had i think i had to apply for that and then i was able to get that after the seven years so i went well even before that though i had a pretty approach process call program called classrooms abroad to friends so i went to eastern france the university of business song which is about three hours from geneva so at that summer i've forgotten what year that was but i think it was about nineteen had brought these girls to their home but they seemed to be fascinated just because i was so different from everyone they've ever seen before because they didn't see too many african americans except with soldiers who were there american soldiers because there was a place there where the war was had been fought i guess a bun point out of was lafayette or who it was but they had a place where they had seen the soldiers from america well i don't think black people travelled abroad as quite as much before forty two after that war and dickey the soldiers probably came home and said well now i've seen certain countries i want to go back and not in a war time and it was fear and that's when black people started to travel so you were there at a very crucial time when a lot of people had never seen black people parts of europe so i find that fascinating because it tells me a lot about barbara that she's not just interested in learning a language you learn languages even better if you understand the culture here and i think that this that kind of thinking that and i lived in the international center in paris and there i made a point of staying away from people were only talking english there was there with muses music majors who were there and they were into their music but they also only taught french when you really had to but i think some of them were not committed to speaking french because that wasn't why they were there so i tried to stay away from that because i wanted to speak french the whole time so the other thing i did with the university of paris or the servant was to take the tours that they had i went to greece and i went to italy when i when i went to the greek islands i took a boat trip the boat trip was very enlightening as we stopped at many of those beautiful island and on the ship i tried a member i think we did speak french too because most of those students were at the university of paris and it was a wonderful experience so good to have that opportunity as well but here i like about what you've done and she probably did this  she just didn't instinctively rather being taught is and i think we're getting more and more into this you know like when i was in the library in honolulu all japanese students and i became whose mother to one of the were quite an active in the community as well as in the education in berkeley unified school district you founded an organization for african american educators and other members from the community and i believe we at name was the aces the black aces in you were the founder of that organization can you tell us what that acronym aces stand for i know it's a cold truth and educational society a quarterly in education no society i was one of the founders the founder who came up with the idea she was the one who ran the high potential program for students who were high potential her name was attorney june law yeah i don't know if you have ever heard i remember and i think she went to sacramento to work up there but i lost contact with her over the years but she was amazing and the this was her idea to to put this group together she was like an ace herself you know putting things together and making the work and we worked with trying to remember the assembly room and from the city of berkeley he was up solved literacy program you were a board member it was headquartered out a whole new york well actually i didn't get on the board but i did hear about it because of you i met you at merritt college at the and the center that i was part of my new responsibility when i moved from college alameda i went to merit college and i was working in the spanish speaking center in the fruitvale air here and also in the african american community the honorable william bennett then it when that's right and we presented your poster that you had developed as an educator like i am teachable and you had seven concepts about i may not know the way now but i am teachable i forgot the other lights but it was very powerful and when we got to the very one at the end you had them say so i am teachable seven times  behind open doors and they don't realize that the door is open they called us about through that i walked out a walk in here so because we knew that people walk down by that center all the time and many times they didn't know what it was and they might come in out of curiosity to ask what is she was so welfare receiving county assistance and she had multiple children at least four and she would bring them to class with her and  i recall that you work with her there and she got a scholarship fund interned ship at harvard she wanted to become a physician and she was so things thanks to the cannon until they gave her a scholarship they had and she completed it with four children a single mother and now she's a is yes and i think that's what she's doing now but i need to get back in touch with her because when she came back to california she did make the reconnection because her mother was very active with the siblings that she had and would come to the center just to visit we had a lot of people who just come by and provide that spirit you know from the community the other thing we happened to do with mr edward you dale i don't know if you marry him he was in the area he was like the minister also yea that he wrote a successful proposal for us that we got the deals with the literacy issue in the community and it was an outstanding project because it was a national project and we went to different places  to deal with the findings about the other places that had this grant from the u s office of education so that was a wonderful experience working with mr edward you deal and now he's still doing marvelous work in houston texas and his children do our job we go in and then we sometimes get to revisit with some of the former students and they're doing quite well but we just we just don't know i know you've had an influence on my life as an educator by giving an opportunity to teach at merritt somebody told me there's about twenty five years before you really make a good teacher but not just any teacher of a college teacher and i you know continued on doing my work and everything but when when i met you in the probably in the mid one nine hundred eighty s and you took an opportunity to a chance to hire me and i was right there at that same center the doctor make night was and then of course on the main campus i was teaching a course in the african american studies department which led to my teaching theater related things and so it launched a career for me because i've been on stage over a thousand times just in this play and so he was talking to his wife they were just trying to get a place to to rest and so forth but i remember hiring a professional actor to anchor the students dell and others and that actor wound up getting a job in new york and he said well since you're not paying me any money in new york is i got to go so the students i told them that his name was to wreak mcgee and i said mr mcgee is not going to be able to perform we still have five weeks left so we'll just go with what we have it's peace and so forth they said well mr lanch we'd like you to do something then and i said well i have i'm not an actor but they convinced me to take well and i think you have it you know these were junior high you had junior high students to come and perform as well yes yes they were they were the actors yeah that's the other thing you were so resourceful they bring in the generations together the young people along with the college student yes and then the homeless issue you brought in the issues that are affecting them and then i really liked what you did with the black and white face because those were playing the role of the math like they had a mask on and i've wish i could remember what they were trying to it's going to fail you know paul as african americans have had to wear the mask all the pain all of the sadness that we could not express that particularly stemming out of slavery but even in the present day we still wear that mask and i think that maybe what was the influence to get young people understand we need to take the mask off and be who we are already and that's why it was so important to them that their lives that i have touched you happened because of the baton that you gave to me to run the good race because you were the educated abroad mean well and we had the homeless population they were on welfare for this i guess for the county and we had to offer those classes at the merit college can india education youth gangs yes and you had the expertise to turn their lives around as well so then everything you did about has been about change and making things work like your blueprint for your students yeah you're blueprint for action where and and all this time i know it's one of you i have no idea of all these connections you have yet and you know and you're my mother and even i don't know all these connections you're talking about but the thing i think the thing other thing somebody ought to teach a course to young people by the time in seventy three to ten to recognize you never know when you're meeting someone is going to change your life where and you know you know you know that's what it's always an individual that talking but then you listen to the students the rest of the class and i kept thinking i've never seen a teacher listen to only the students that he did not come back into dominating argument over the talk and i thought those students revealed a lot about their own skills and it sounds as though you pull that out of them they didn't realize that was going to happen but it was a real awakening because i think that is a luxury that children are starving for you know for someone to actually listen to them because they something about that and yes i don't know if you did a video of it or not i don't know when did i wrote him letters that i wrote a letter to my grandsons yeah and that was what i felt about i went back to brooklyn stayed with them a while and try and find out who they had become as young as they were in college and i just said this is some of the but call the rules of the game of your out you know the things because a lot of times young people are they mean well and then but they don't know that there's certain things that have and have we will not know with that