In 1900, just four years after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation, Alice Ballard, an African American woman and daughter of formerly enslaved people, owned 160 acres in the Santa Monica Mountains. Little has been known about this groundbreaking woman and her life, but CSUN alumnus Austin Ringelstein ’16 (M.A., Public Archaeology) is working to tell her story.
