The San Bernardino Black Culture Foundation is set to honor ten local leaders, educators, and organizations at its 34th Annual Black Rose Awards next month, recognizing decades of civic, educational, and health-care advocacy across the Inland Empire. The 2026 ceremony will be held September 12 at the Santos Manuel Student Union at Cal State San Bernardino, running from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., with entertainment provided by Makeda Francisco and her 1970s funk band.
Among this year's honorees are San Bernardino NAACP president Chache Wright and Keith Hosea, founder and president of Telios Training Solutions, according to the San Bernardino Sun. The foundation website separately lists Dr. Keith Moses as a winner. Also being recognized are Tawon Green, CEO and founder of Dreams Training Facility; Alton Garrett Jr., managing partner of Garrett Management Group; Anthony Morris, a mobile maintenance teams supervisor with the San Bernardino City Unified School District; and Jonathan Beauregard. Alisha James, a Spanish teacher at San Bernardino High School, rounds out the group of educators being honored this year. Marcelino “Mars” Serna, vice president of the Fontana Unified School District's board of education, is also being recognized.
The awards' two top honors carry historical weight tied to the ceremony's origins. The Jim King Founders Award will go to the J.W. Vines Medical Society and Foundation, recognized for its commitment to increasing the number of African-American health professionals in the Inland Empire and for addressing health-care disparities, per the Sun's report. The Dr. Juanita Scott Humanitarian of the Year Award will go to Carl M. Dameron, president of Dameron Communications and a former president of the Black Culture Foundation.
Awards Named for the Ceremony's Founders
Both top honors are named after the pioneers who helped shape San Bernardino's Black History celebrations decades ago. Jim King and Dr. Juanita Scott were among the key early leaders of San Bernardino's Black History Parade committee in the late 1960s, according to the CSUSB Libraries Omeka S archive. King later conceived the Black Rose Awards themselves in the late 1980s as a way to showcase local Black excellence, under the motto that “Black, like a rose, is beautiful” — a phrase that has carried the ceremony to its 34th year.
The J.W. Vines Medical Society, founded in 1987 as the Inland Empire affiliate of the National Medical Association, successfully lobbied California lawmakers and university officials to establish the UC Riverside School of Medicine and shape its diversity-focused mission, per UCR School of Medicine. Through its philanthropic foundation, formed in 2001, the society also operates the Elma Vines Summer Health Academy, an intensive mentorship program that gives college and pre-med students hands-on clinical and surgical shadowing across Inland Empire facilities, according to Dameron Communications.
Youth Scholarships and a Foundation Rooted in the 1960s
Beyond the marquee honorees, the foundation is also listing dual-enrollment student Myla Sherron-Howard and Cajon High School student Jaden Moore among its 2026 award recipients. The Dr. Margaret Hill Black Rose Young Adults Inspiration Award is named for the late San Bernardino educator and equity advocate Dr. Margaret Hill.
The San Bernardino Black Culture Foundation itself dates back to 1968, when local leaders concerned that public school systems were failing to integrate African American history into standard curricula banded together, according to the foundation's own account on sbbcfoundation.org. Since shifting its focus toward student educational support in the late 1980s, the organization has awarded more than 125 scholarships. Current foundation leadership includes president Christen Irving, vice president Joseph “JPash” Patrick, treasurer Dolores Armstead, and secretary Aicheria Bell.
A Growing Community Behind a Long-Running Tradition
The ceremony's continued relevance is underscored by shifting regional demographics. A 2024 study found the Inland Empire holds California's third-largest Black population, behind Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, and is on pace to become the state's second-largest Black population center, according to research cited by UCLA-affiliated researchers. Within San Bernardino itself, Black residents make up an estimated 10.6% of the city's roughly 223,000 residents — about 23,500 people — making them the group ranked below White residents among the listed groups in the majority-Hispanic city, per Census Dots data.
Tickets for the September gala range from $125 per person to $840 for a table of eight, with student tickets priced at $75 per person or $600 for a table of eight. Tickets and information about the Black Rose Awards and the foundation's other programs are available at sbbcfoundation.org.
