OAKLAND (KCBS RADIO) – Willie Davis, a dedicated worker at Oakland’s Parks and Recreation for almost two decades, has become the city's first "Black Hero of Chinatown."
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The award is part of a larger effort to bridge gaps between different communities and single out people that might otherwise be overlooked.
Davis was nationally recognized for helping cultivate Lincoln Square Park into a "safe, community-focused haven for children, youth, families and seniors from all over the city, and across racial divides," according to Tiffany Eng, co-founder of Friends of Lincoln Square Park, said.
"He helps create this joyful place, he helps build our community, and he helps nurture this safe haven that Lincoln Square Park really is," Eng, who nominated Davis, told KCBS Radio.
At a celebration in his honor at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center on Monday evening, Davis, who works as Recreation Specialist II, seemed surprised to see everyone making such a fuss about him.
"I'm just a normal person," he told KCBS Radio. "Somebody chose me to be a Black hero in Chinatown, but I'm nothing special. I just do what I do."
Davis said when he walks around Chinatown and speaks Chinese to some of the people he sees, "they smile cause they didn’t think that I knew how to speak to them in their language."
He added that's just his nature.
"Willie is Willie," Karen Dea, President of the Wa Sung community service club, which also nominated him, told KCBS Radio. "He deserves (this) because of his character, his personality."
The organization People Matter started these awards in Chicago in 2019 and brought them to Oakland and San Francisco for the first time this year.
"A lot of times a lot of black folks get overlooked in these communities, so we wanted to highlight the black people that work in these communities and also to highlight solidarity and community and show that we’re in this together," People Matter Co-President Consuela Hendricks said.
The award not only served as an opportunity to recognize a local hero, but also fight against narratives which have pitted Black and Asian communities against each other in the wake of a rise in AAPI hate incidents over the last two years.
Angela Lin, the organization’s other co-president, said hate is an issue that faces both AAPI and Black communities, so it's a time to come together.
"That's very much a purpose of the celebration series is to combat these anti-Black narratives in Asian American communities, as well as just the larger narrative that people have in general that communities of color don't like each other," Lin said.
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