Former San Francisco Poet Laureate devorah major will be joined by Bay Area jazz treasures Richard Howell on saxophone and Mark Izu on bass in a poetry performance piece featuring African-Americans who lived and thrived in San Francisco between 1845 and 1900. Focusing on less known stories of Blacks who lived and worked in downtown San Francisco, ms. major will bring to life the voices of Alexander Leidesdorff and his mother Anna Marie Sparks, George Washington Dennis and his mother Sylva Dennis and father, Green Dennis and Charlotte Brown as well as the invaluable historian Delilah Beasly, and the most famous San Franciscan of that era, Mary Ellen Pleasant.