When the museum went looking for a new curator with teaching experience and a fresh perspective on Black history, Boyd-Pates got the job. He later became director of the history department.
In three years, Boyd-Pates and his team made eight history exhibitions. His first, “No Justice, No Peace,” commemorated the 25th anniversary of the L.A. riots. He connected them to the Watts Rebellion of 1965 and the lesser-known Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 “to give a more comprehensive look at what it meant to be Black and brown if you were in Los Angeles, California.”
Explaining the process of creating a museum exhibit, he said he dug into Dominguez Hills archives for artifacts and spoke to demonstrators, family members of Rodney King and Latasha Harlins, and the Los Angeles Police Department community. Designers then created an exhibition that not only looked good but was relevant to a broad range of audiences.
Future exhibitions focused on gospel music, Black women in cinema and the history of slavery in California.
Boyd-Pates’ biggest contribution to CAAM was helping make exhibits relevant to more than its traditional audience of older people, said Leslie Edmonds, a docent at the museum. She cited the 2019-2020 exhibit “Cross Colours: Black Fashion in the 20th Century” that even caught the attention of Vogue.
It showcased a clothing brand introduced in the late 1980s, early 1990s known for bright colors and graphic designs that, as the museum put it, “reflected not just trends in fashion, but also a cultural embrace of Afrocentrism in response to unjust Reagan-era policies, rising poverty, policy brutality, and substandard educational opportunities.”
“He was able to take a historical vision and transform it to a variety of media,” Edmonds said. “There was music, there were visuals, there were videos. It covered everything.
“There even was an interactive element where people wrote down how their clothing represents who they are.”
Boyd-Pates followed up, she said, by moderating panels of speakers who could dive even deeper into exhibit themes. To attract millennials in particular, Boyd-Pates helped introduce “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop,” featuring opportunities for people to dress up, dance and eat while exploring the displays.
“There were so many people standing in line they covered the length of the museum, they were out the door,” Edmonds said. “The sheriffs came out not to break things up but to help with crowd control. And they said, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this.’”