
Jan Batiste Adkins
Jan Batiste Adkins, educator and lecturer, was born in Pullman, Washington, and grew up in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of African Americans of San Francisco, African Americans of Monterey County, and African Americans of San Jose and Santa Clara County, all published by Arcadia Publishing. Each of these books are a pictorial historical account of the leaders of Bay Area African American communities since the 1780s to present. Jan holds a master’s degree in Education and a master’s degree in comparative literature from San Jose State University. For the last twenty-five years, Jan Batiste Adkins has taught English throughout California high schools and community colleges.
Writing in the genres of historical nonfiction and poetry have been a hobby of Jan’s since the early 1980s. Over the last few years, Jan has developed a passion for literary research as evidenced in the content of her Master’s Thesis Literary Prose and Poetry in San Francisco’s Black Newspapers, 1862-1885 completed in 2009.
Her books explore the early African American settlers in San Francisco, Monterey, and San Jose and Santa Clara County, and the development of these communities during the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Each book has over 150 photographs depicting life in the black communities of these Bay Area cities and counties. The contributions of black residents from before the gold rush to present are highlighted as well the the evolution of a sense of community.