For decades, only a brick base and a plaque remained where the historic “Black Family” statue once stood in Mountain View. On Saturday morning, the statue officially returned to its pedestal.
The city of San Diego unveiled a restored version of the sculpture at Neal Petties Mountain View Community Park, kicking off the neighborhood’s Juneteenth celebrations with a ceremony that blended civic recognition, personal testimony and ancestral remembrance.
The original statue was created in 1974 by San Diego artist Rossie Wade and depicted two parents and their two children standing with each other in solidarity. Crafted from wood, it deteriorated over the years and was gone by the mid-1980s, leaving behind its base and the memory of a gathering place generations of Mountain View residents had claimed as their own.
The restored version, re-created in stainless steel by Mike Bradbury, a welding professor at San Diego College of Continuing Education, was designed to endure far longer. “The original one only lasted about 10 to 12 years,” Bradbury told the crowd. “This one’s going to last for decades to come. It is not going anywhere.”
The restoration was funded through a state grant secured by then-Assemblymember Akilah Weber and managed by the city’s Economic Development Department Cultural Affairs Division.
Yet even after funding was secured, the project stalled — residents and advocates waited nearly two years with little visible progress, a delay that many said felt emblematic of a longer history of neglect in the neighborhood.
County Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe, vice chair of the County Board of Supervisors, opened the ceremony and drew a direct line between the statue and the present moment. “Now more than ever, our community needs landmarks that reflect and remind us of what grounds us — and that is our families,” she said.
Montgomery Steppe presented a county proclamation declaring June 13, 2026, Black Family Statue Day throughout San Diego County, honoring Wade and his daughters for their efforts to preserve his legacy. Daniel Horton, chief of staff to Councilmember Henry L. Foster III, presented a matching proclamation on behalf of the the council’s 4th District.
The road back was a long one. Community member Jeffrey Hayes, widely credited as the driving force behind the restoration, had spent years advocating for the statue’s return. Paul Krueger, who partnered with Hayes on the project, put it plainly: “If we’re in debt today to any one person, it’s Jeffrey.”
Wade’s daughters, Carole Boyce and Lynn Wade Brown, attended the unveiling. Brown described the moment in October 2021 when she first learned the project was moving forward — a message from Krueger that arrived years into what had felt like an uncertain effort.
“In the rise and fall of all my hopes for this project to be completed, they were the ones that kept me buoyant,” she said of Hayes, Krueger and Bradbury.
Boyce read an original poem she wrote for the occasion, titled “The Black Family,” honoring her father’s vision of the family unit as an enduring foundation.
Before the unveiling, Makeda Cheatom, founder and executive director of WorldBeat Cultural Center and a Mountain View native, led the crowd in a libation ceremony honoring ancestors and future generations alike.
Horton, reflecting on his own family’s tradition of annual reunions, offered a personal note on what brought him to the ceremony. “It is the Black family for me and my bloodline and my family is why I am here today,” he said. “It is their work that I am standing on.”
Hayes, who still hopes to see the park designated as a national monument, closed with a message to his neighbors: “Community — it’s all we got. All of us together.”
