 The activists here were often not well known. They were everyday people who were working class, they were mothers, they were fathers, they were high school students, they were college students, but they made an impact that was felt throughout the nation and that was felt throughout the world. Okay, so that's me. I, City College of San Francisco, I graduated of San Francisco State and native to the Bay Area. So just a little bit about origins, how people of African descent come here to be in the area and so World War II changed the West from a colonial economy to a one based on export and the use of raw materials to a more technologically advanced industrial economy. So World War II is what changes not just the economy but the demographics. It changes neighborhoods. What's interesting though for talking about African-Americans is that there were always people of African descent here in California, right? From the time that California was founded and we'll look at that. But what happens during World War II is that you have a huge influx that makes African-American people the second largest population here. So what that did was upset the racial norms that had been set in place. You didn't necessarily have to have black and white signs that segregated people because people had an unspoken and unwritten understanding of where they can go and where they couldn't go. And the longtime residents had or many of them were upper middle class too. And even the ones that weren't had negotiated sort of their position within the Bay Area. All that was upset during World War II because not just African-Americans, many groups of people came here for economic opportunities. But for African-Americans that meant a lot more because prior to 1910, 90% of African-American people lived in the South as a result of debt systems of labor, convict leasing, all these vestiges of slavery that were re-implemented after its legal defeat. And so World War I, World War II were these larger peaks in that migration out of the South trying to escape Jim Crow. But what African-American people found was that although they were able to create better opportunities for their children, right, like better access to education, less more protection from extralegal activity, and they were able to create even if by default an unintended consequence of redlining ethnic enclaves that were places to be celebrated, they still experienced Jim Crow in the form of inadequate housing, in the form of police brutality, in the form of inadequate education, a lack of employment. So these were all social forces that greatly impacted the livelihood of people but were very much real and present and indigenous here. And I think that, so it's important for us to also make note that the African-American people that came to San Francisco Bay Area took the longest route of the Great Migration, so they took some of the greatest risk. The this wave of the Great Migration people drove sometimes for days because they could not stop in certain places that were blackout towns and they often had to leave behind family members. So the people that came here were coming here to stay, they planted really deep roots, and they were thinking generationally, they were thinking about their children, they were thinking about their futures, and many of them came in hopes of better opportunities. So California has always historically acted as a refuge or the West even before California was a state when it became a state. And even during like the Underground Railroad, people ran away to the West, you know. And but the economic opportunity provided by World War II is what drew many people. So this was a second gold rush in this area and people followed their family members. They worked in the service industries when they got here. They worked as domestic workers like my grandmother. They worked as truck farmers like my grandfather. And so we can see that in 1940, the population was a little under 5,000. But by the time we get to 1950, just, you know, within a decade's time, you see how dramatically that population increases. That keeps happening until you get into the 70s where it peaks, and then from there on, we see it dwindle down. So at one point, African-Americans were the second largest population of people here. So you had vibrant African-American communities, working-class people who were able to purchase homes, who were able to establish businesses. And so it's important to note that although this talk is about sort of the oppression that they experience, it's equally as important to talk about their reactions, their responses to that, and also how they combated that and maintained their humanity, their dignity, their sense of self, their families, and their communities. And that's why I'm even still here today, standing in front of you today. And so that number at the bottom, which is a little hidden, is 96,000, which is at the peak. So second largest population here. Here's an image, and if you guys don't know, a lot of my research was done right here at this library. So this is the second best library in the country, second to New York. We have some of the best archives here. All of these photographs, many of the images are from the San Francisco History Center upstairs. You might find friends. I found my friends, families, and newspapers. I'm just saying. So the San Francisco Public Library is a gem. So I hope that we use it. So much of what you find here is from there. Here's an image of migrants in Hunter's Point coming, always looking dressed. And what's important to make note of is that these people were hopeful, right? That they had big promises and lots of large hopes. So a little bit background that I found that I think is interesting. And we're going to start. It's not chronological necessarily, but we're going to go back and forth so we can get a sense of, okay, in the more modern civil rights movement, what was happening, but also what was the foundation. This leads us to some other questions, right? And I got to explore that this summer at an institute I got to be a part of at Harvard University called What Happened to the Civil Rights Movement? And we had such esteemed guests. And we were talking about, so this larger question of when did the civil rights movement even begin, right? So is it in 1915 when people were fighting against the film Birth of a Nation? Or is it 1954 with the Brown versus Board, Supreme Court decision? What constitutes a civil right? Is it a long civil rights struggle? Or is it more nuanced? So these are all questions I think we can think about, right? I tend to err on the side of a little bit of both. This is a long civil rights struggle. All these things are interconnected, but it's equally as important for us to take, not to homogenize it and to look at how all these individual pieces, how they're different, but also how they're connected to one another. So a little bit of interesting pieces about San Francisco. The NAACP chapter in San Francisco starts in 1929, established by Reverend John M. Brown of the Bethel AME Church, which is still in existence. The original site is near the Embarcadero. And this was the first AME Zion Church west of the Rocky Mountains was actually established here in San Francisco by African Americans too, right after, very soon after California becomes a state. So since California has become a territory of the U.S., there has always been a sustained black presence here, right? So that's a point I really wanted to get into. So what is a civil right if we're talking about civil rights? Traditionally and more generally, civil rights have been defined as protection from discriminatory treatment, the rights of a citizen. But in the United States, citizenship has been defined very narrowly for a long time. In 1790, citizenship was defined as free, white and male. That was a criteria to be a citizen in the First Naturalization Act. Since then, that definition has broadened and often restricted and is very much, is still contested to this day as people worry about their citizenship as we speak. And so it has only been through struggle and social movement for civil rights and citizenship that it's become more inclusive. It has never been something that's given. And that war for citizenship, that battle for citizenship, there are battle grounds here that's been waged right here in the San Francisco Bay Area, but that history is not talked about as much. So we've established World War II, double V for victory, victory over our enemies overseas, but also victory over our enemies at home, democracy, right? The second wave of the Great Migration, bringing African Americans here, but also that within San Francisco and within the Bay Area, both discrimination that was sanctioned by the law and unsanctioned by the law has always existed. You can look at the treatment of Chinese Americans and Chinese immigrants. You can look at even the way Southern and Eastern Europeans were treated. So we have all of these wonderful neighborhoods that we celebrate, but they actually are rooted in the history of trying to segregate people and keep them away, right? So that's an important piece of that history. So going back to San Francisco and that history here, in terms of employment, which was super important, right? Especially now, and this is particularly important, employment, housing, police brutality, one point I want to make throughout this whole thing is that a lot of the same struggles that people were fighting 50, 60 years ago are still being fought today. And although they're just not as visible because the black population is dwindling, but they're still there, and the same social forces that keep certain people, keep African Americans in a lower social status still exist, and we'll talk about that more, but focusing in on employment. So many of us are familiar with this term last hired, first fired, and this was a common saying among African Americans. So what employment is important, because that's what drew many people here, sharecropper can go from making $1 to $10 a day by working in places like the naval shipyards, the marine shipyards. So we're talking about big economic opportunities for people, which is why they left and took such risk. That could mean, that could change everything, not just for one person, but for their children and their children's children. So economic independence, the economic stability were a part of what African Americans defined as freedom, and that's so important for us to make note of, and that's why they came to San Francisco. San Francisco is also a very beautiful place, many neighborhoods like Bayview Hunters Point, more places where people continue to grow, you know, their vegetables, they had fruit trees, so they brought their southern ways and their culture with them. So in the stores, you might start to see things like collard greens and sweet potatoes and hot sauce, the things that these people brought with them. So these people brought with them great hopes, but they also transformed the landscape of the city, they added greatly and enriched the culture here as well. Look at the Fillmore, for example, you know, the culture, the music, the jazz. I mean, so if we think about the impact that African Americans had, those remnants are still with us now, and that's equally as important to highlight. But I think that while the war industry provided employment and there were nondiscriminatory clauses, it did not prevent people from experiencing discrimination once they got that employment. So there are instances of African American women who were more than qualified to get positions, but they were denied sort of those superior positions or the positions of supervisors or managers to somebody who just started because they were white or because they were male. Something that's more well known as a Portugal mutiny that happened in 1944 where African American and men enlisted in the U.S. Navy would load munitions and their supervisors, oftentimes who were white, they had a game between them, where they, who can load these munitions the fastest. That munitions were very powerful. There were warnings and even reports that said the conditions in which they loaded the munitions were quite dangerous. And in 1944, two explosions happened and killed hundreds of people, the majority of them African American. So I'm gonna read just a little bit about that. And this is from somebody who experienced it, descendants, Cyril Shepard. Men were screaming, the lights went out, and glass was flying all over the place. For Shepard and other seamen, a mile away from the munitions loading pier, the monstrous blast was traumatic. Was traumatic enough? Loaders and others at the pier that night, 320 men lost their lives. The 1944 Port Chicago explosion was a result of unsafe loading practices. When they, so these workers are killed, you guys can see the numbers here, 202 African Americans out of 302. The white men in the Navy are allowed to take time off and don't have to work. The African Americans are instructed to clean up the mess and are asked to go back to work the next day. You can imagine how traumatic that might be, people that you know. They refuse to do so, and they're charged with mutiny. This is just one example. So they have jobs, they have this opportunity, but within that they still have to, they're still experiencing the same discrimination that they might experience in the South, the same type of treatment that they were trying to escape. And with the close of the war industry, employment opportunities went away. And so you had a generation of young people who were growing up with that economic base pulled from out of them. So as we go into the 60s, away from the 50s and into the 60s and 70s, you have a new generation descendant of these migrants. And in 1966 alone, a California Special Youth Employment Offices estimated at least 12,000 unemployed youth, majority of them African American, majority of them living in low-income neighborhoods in San Francisco. And in 1960, the San Francisco Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity reported that discrimination in San Francisco may be less overt, but it exists. So it was well documented that there were discriminatory employment practices, but there was very little done to prevent that from happening. But the people organized against that, and we'll talk more about that. Let's go forward. So activism against discrimination was happening all throughout the Bay Area. So in 1960, there was a boycott and picket at the Crest and F.W. Woolworth stores for their discrimination against African Americans. My great aunt talks about getting dressed to put on her gloves and her nice dress to go down to the Woolworths or go downtown. People used to get dressed up to go downtown, but not being able to sit at the lunch counters and eat. You could walk through, but you couldn't sit down and eat. That was an unspoken sort of rule. She also talks about trying to go to Ocean Beach There used to be the Museum Mechanique and they used to have this big magnifying glass and there was a small place where they sold soda pop and other things there. And she was a little girl and went there to try to buy a soda and they said, you know, we don't serve you here. So again, there's no signs, but people knew and understood or were told where they could and could not go. Now this is happening simultaneously and in solidarity with sit-ins and boycotts and pickets that are happening in the South. So that's a very important point to make note of that there were movements in solidarity with freedom struggles in the South but those movements in San Francisco and in the Bay Area were not just in solidarity but they were also fighting against the same type of discrimination in Jim Crow that people experience here. And so activists were going back and forth from the South to the North to the West and so that's an important thing that keeps coming up and this is on Pal in Market Street. In 1961, Martin Luther King Jr. speaks at the Freedom Rally at the San Francisco Cow Palace where they were raising money for the Freedom Riders. He made frequent visits to San Francisco and we learned yesterday and talked about how Martin Luther King was even, this was one of the places that he was thinking about coming to settle in. And so Martin Luther King had a great presence here and he wouldn't be here if there wasn't a need for him to be here. Do you understand what I'm saying? So and we'll talk about the Cow Palace and space in place momentarily because it's interesting who's there in a few years too. In 1963, at the Mel's Drive-In, popular San Francisco eatery, they had discriminatory hiring practices where they would only hire African-Americans to work as dishwashers and as cooks in the back and a group of mostly college students organized the ad hoc committee to end discrimination. Now these college students weren't just African-American. These college students, like many of the student movements across the country, were multiracial and particularly in the Bay Area. So you had people who were African-American, people who were European-American, people who were Asian, people who were Filipino and Filipina, people who were Native-American, people who were Latino, Latina, all working together very often. So even another question, right, rhetorical, when does the civil rights movement begin? Why is it that we only think Jim Crow is in the South, but who is an activist? Who was even fighting for the black freedom struggle? And I think often we even racialize who that is. The Bay Area created a model for interracial solidarity that we see implemented all throughout the nation. And the Bay Area was not... But that's not really highlighted a lot. So you have students from UC Berkeley in San Francisco State. We all know what struggles would happen on those campuses, picketing. These were some of the largest protests of its kind in San Francisco at the time. And they were able to make gains. They did change their hiring practices afterward because they wanted people to go to eat at these restaurants, right? And so we're able to... The next time you go to a mill's drive-in and you see somebody of color working there in the front or as a manager, it's a result of these struggles from the students. So just some images. You guys can see here that you have students protesting. So where are the Negro waitresses? Again, people in solidarity from all different backgrounds and student protesters there outside. So I think the images are very powerful and these are images of things that we might think are limited to Selma or Montgomery, but they were here the same time happening simultaneously. In 1963, the Civil Rights Movement and the struggle for equality here made a gain. The Rum for Fair Housing Act was implemented after Rum for Democrat out of UC Berkeley and it was specifically targeted at housing discrimination. Housing is a very important thing to talk about and all of us know today how big of an issue housing is. It was even... And it was equally as significant in this time as well. We talked specifically about African-Americans and the American dream and for African-Americans, many of whom who are coming from these debt systems of labor or tenant farmers owning, having something that is your own, having a home, something that you could pass down was one of the most important things. It was a key component to the African-American dream, right, home ownership. And many people, particularly in Bayview Hunters Point, were able to do that. So you had people, Bayview Hunters Point, you have some of the highest home ownership, of course that is... those things are changing and then probably in a few years we'll have some different figures, but to this day, you have people who own their homes. They took that money, they invested it in capital and many people still own their homes, especially in Bayview. My grandmother was able to buy a home in what is now Pacific Heights, California Street used to be a predominantly Black neighborhood. That area was a part of the Western Edition. So housing, both in the past and present, was a key issue and African-Americans often where they were upper or middle-class, where they were living in public housing, experienced Jim Crow-style discrimination when trying to attain decent housing. So, but in 1963, we make a game. This is great. But in 1964, California nullified this act with the passage of Proposition 14. Now, I mean the logic or the argument used to pass Proposition 14 was that it eroded the rights of private homeowners. But really, this was about being able to maintain segregation. So in name, it was about property rights, but in practice, it was very much conscious of who was living where and very much conscious of race. So race wasn't necessarily written into the law, but this was an act to keep people segregated. So we think of California as this liberal place, but California actually is a very conservative place. If you actually look at illegal history and what it's committed itself to and what it hasn't committed itself to. That same year, more protest, same student, many of the same students at the Palace Hotel. And they were also protesting discriminatory hiring practices. This was once an important source of employment for African-Americans, but after 1915, as a result of the Panama-Pacific international exposition, they sort of let decrease, decrease, decrease the amount of African-Americans that they would hire. This mass arrest took place. They were actually very successful in getting the hotel to change some of its practices. And you can see here some of those gains made in these items below. So again, students, all ethnicities from various colleges and universities working together in solidarity to combat Jim Crow-style discrimination and racism here in the San Francisco Bay Area. What I like about this picture is the sign and it says, ain't nobody gonna, ain't gonna let nobody, ain't gonna let no one turn me around. This, these freedom songs were sung in the South and these freedom songs were sung in the North. I think it's very important for us to know that the activism that is more, that we're much more aware of. And that's not to say that it's the same. This goes back to that same idea of is it a long civil rights struggle should it be nuance? It's not the same. But we have to understand the importance and significance of both in order to have a truer and useful and better understanding of this very important history that obviously we need because 50 years later we have not gone from slavery to freedom. We are still in a place where we're trying to struggle and understand how did we get here? Maybe Martin Luther King's question is more appropriate. Where do we go from here? And so this history I think is even more important now than ever. Let's go on. In 1964 many of us also know about the San Francisco Auto Role demonstrations. Also against employment discrimination. 200 demonstrators took to the Cadillac dealership on SF Auto Role to protest discriminatory hiring practices. And we also see by 1964 the Black freedom struggle in San Francisco being embraced by other groups of people. I also make an important distinction between the Black freedom struggle and the civil rights movement. They're two separate things. One thing that's important for us to make note of is that the Black freedom struggle which has been happening in this country since 1619 since the first people of African descent were brought here in chains and sold to English in the English colony is that the Black freedom struggle later created a blueprint. It left a model and it left a language of activism and protest that other disenfranchised groups could use as a basis. The civil rights movement is a larger movement that came to encompass many other groups of people but that came out of a Black freedom struggle. No other group of people in this country has been defined as property under the law. No other group of people in this country in the numbers 4.5 million has gone from property to citizenship. Now that not play I don't play oppression Olympics don't get me wrong. I hate when that we don't do that in my classroom but I think that it's so important for us to understand and make that distinction. So it comes out of that. So anyway you got that point we'll come back to it. The dealership did commit to better hiring practices but really didn't you know stick to their agreement but the impact and significance of this movement was important and there's again there's so much more to this history but I think it's important that we there's so we can't cover it all in an hour. So read the chapter in the fall and check back in and I hope this quenches your thirst so you come to the library you read more you go into the archives because it's all there and there's a lot more work that has to be done. Before I go away from employment I want to read you a quote from resident local Hunters Point resident when she talked about opportunities of employment. Again many young people here were able to get better education than their parents and grandparents but I think this point made by local Hunters Point resident is very important for us to consider in 1963 young people go to school together they graduate off the same stage and then when it comes to jobs the blackface is not qualified but they graduate and then my daughter has to clean up the same girls house that she graduates with on stage. This was the reality people I've interviewed were told to sit in the back of the classroom at places like Mission High School or to get on the bus in the back of a minibus so we may not have had all the visible signs that we that are usually synonymous with Jim Crow but the practices were real and experienced by the people so that's important for us to make note of. In 1964 you have the Republican National Convention Barry Goldwater is nominated and Martin Luther King again which I actually didn't know until I started doing this research is here speaking at the speaking at the Republican National Convention trying to attempting to persuade people to vote in the Civil Rights Act of 64 it goes through but I think again the importance of the fact that the fact that Martin Luther King is here speaks a lot to how important not just activism was but also how the power that was wielded from this region right there were very powerful people who were committed to maintaining the status quo in California from people who were governors from people who were I mean so that's also important that those forces committed to white supremacy and black subordination were not only in the south and California you know was one of those places where many of those people at work and existed there was a lot of activism against it in 1964 many members of the KKK supported Barry Goldwater and this is a demonstration in front of city hall in double ACP members and KKK members and in front of the Cal Palace remember the Cal Palace the same place that the Freedom Riders Rally was to raise money you also had people all ethnicities all backgrounds all ages demonstrating and organizing for civil rights so those freedom songs echoed here in the west and those struggles were indigenous and individual to the west and San Francisco Bay Area so a lot of this work I told you comes from this 1966 moment so that's where we're leading up to that moment in 1965 residents of the Sunnydale Yerba Buena and Alice Griffith also known as a double rock housing communities I make a point to not call them projects or ghettos because they're communities of people their families many of them who live there for generations who have positive family kinship networks I was raised in one of those communities and I don't think everybody that comes from those communities is bad or is a criminal so I think it's important that we even reframe how we define and categorize people from where they come from and so these people in these communities take over a meeting of the San Francisco Housing Authority complaining of conditions within some of those conditions in that meeting they complained of they wanted some of their demands they wanted covers over the drains extermination of roaches and rats installation of at least one detachable window screen for each room in each apartment establishment of a coin operated washer and dryer in various locations throughout the Hunter's Point area establishment of a more responsive courteous and effectual relationship between the San Francisco Housing Authority and tenants these are basic necessities what a lot of African American people wanted was just to be able to live not just live but to live with dignity to be able to raise their families in a place that they could be proud of and a place that was decent and clean and safe and so the activism I think this is also very unique to the Bay Area female activists were at the forefront of the civil rights struggle in the Bay Area whether you look at the Black Panthers two-third of which were women at its peak whether you look at places like the San Francisco Bay Area and Hunter's Point where you had women like Eloise Westbrook and such who are members of the Big Five who were not just leaders in their community but were at City Hall were in D.C. advocating for housing advocating for the rights of families and children so women activists many of them who remain nameless and faceless were leading the struggle here and San Francisco I think is a great illustration of how ordinary everyday people whether they be students or mothers actually made big changes in the Bay Area that was felt all throughout the country and the nation but we don't know their names in 1966 60 Bay View Hunter's Point community members in mass attend a meeting with the San Francisco Housing Authority an Equal Opportunity Commission to protest the unlawful eviction practices of the San Francisco Housing Authority because people were just being evicted from their homes unlawfully one case is when Olly Wallace a resident of one of these housing communities after he had paid his rent he paid it late but he had paid it the rent was accepted we all many of us rent in San Francisco so we know once you accept that rent I'm good right Olly Wallace however they evicted him after he paid the rent would not give him the rent back because it was late in addition he had all these charges for the removal of his property and everything else so what did the community members do they did not idly sit by they staged a sit in and blocked the way of the movers and the sheriff to get into the building and he was able to keep his house so this is the kind of community that is here African Americans were united in their own struggles and people's neighbors were a part of their family right parents used to introduce kids to other kids they played together they went to school together they worked together it's a community that was organized and it was a community that had a real sense of pride and looked out for each other and that's important so let's look at some of this footage all right so this is that take over that meeting don't worry it's on this is a part of it we met here with Mr. Cain members of his staff and three commissioners yesterday afternoon for two and a half hours with the EOC area board it was agreed at that meeting that the housing authority would hold up all evictions and all dispossess actions pending a reexamination of them we also told the EOC that when we were reexamining all of our rent procedures and that when we had we would issue new ones and that we would determine that whatever procedures we adopted would be administered at the project level with morph and decency in due regard to individuals' dignity and that's all that's going to be said about that at this meeting today so he's trying to get out of the meeting we're just now out now this is going to be we have a favor to make on behalf of the press we're not this is not going to shut them down for one issue we're not going to discuss the Hunters Point problem today no we're not we're not and they say yes you are going to listen sorry I may have a vote on the motion and not only the press motions made the meeting is adjourned no no this meeting did not be adjourned no this is a telegram I'll listen to you but not on a meeting I got the telegram and I've read it I'm going to have to because nobody's going to leave this room unless you listen to me I'm going to leave it I'm going to leave it I'm going to leave it I'm going to leave it I'm going to leave it I'm going to leave it so they decide to block the doors to force them to listen so they're trying to get out and they use the press and we have long complained and long been ignored we again rehearse our complaints number one evictions can no longer be done in the high-handed manner which has become routine right we we protest any eviction which is done without exalting all methods of resolving the personal problems involved Mr. Walder do you have anything at all to say to this statement come on big shot make a statement I have no other statement to make other than the one I made at the beginning of this meeting when the long run these people or any other people can't look to the housing authority to cure the economic and social ills implicit in our society all right we're not going to spend too much time on him because we'll get back to the we've heard this argument before so we can get away from that so after after they follow in a section the housing authority agree to halt further evictions because they did not want another meeting taken over with 60 people again pending a reexamination of their policy Ali Wallace was able to keep his home so again that direct nonviolent protest in the Bay Area was actually able to make gains and these were regular ordinary everyday people you know who we would all relate to who we can all relate to so the housing goes on African Americans experience residential restrictions and racial discrimination in the public sector as we saw but also in the private sector in 1942 the San Francisco housing authority adopted what was called a neighborhood pattern and this was on paper so this is state sanctioned style segregation which limited African Americans to West Side Courts and Chinese to the Pinyon housing communities now this was an open and sanctioned practice by the San Francisco housing authority and it was actually challenged in in 1952 so this was a major victory for the San Francisco NAACP Maddie Banks and James Charlie Jr were sued the San Francisco housing authority after being denied occupancy in the North Beach housing project which was their right which made sense for these residents they were coupled together and I want to read you some of the testimony of the director of the San Francisco housing authority so you guys can get a sense of that this was not just people choosing to live in these areas on their own so in testimony taken under oath the executive director of the San Francisco housing authority John Beard openly admitted to segregating tenants based on race when asked if a Negro with the best types of qualifications and this is under oath say it as a Negro veteran who has been disabled veteran who has been displaced and who applied for housing in Holly Court one of the four housing developments designated for whites only under your instruction would you admit him to Holly Court Beard replied we have no displaced Negro applicants question if you applicant would apply would if such applicant would apply would you admit him to Holly courts answer no question because he is a Negro is that correct or because he is non-white is that correct yes I would prefer to put it that way because he's non-white so it's so important for us to know that it was thought that this was better for everybody to separate people if they're happier in this way go back a little bit not everybody felt that way let's see the San Francisco housing authority in 1949 actually the San Francisco Board of Supervisors excuse me in 1949 prior to this did cast a vote to oppose racial segregation in any program undertaken by the San Francisco redevelopment agency so there were people on the inside who were wielding power who were opposed to this and they wanted to make discrimination a misdemeanor this was struck down by the state community the state community redevelopment act so similar to the the rumford fair housing act similar to this there were these sort of measures that were in that direction of equality but they were often struck down for bogus reasons so that's one example some of the conditions so we can see this is from the spokesman which is a local paper to the bay area that's actually being digitized now at the library so you can all go back and check this out and these were conditions that people lived in this was not in the chronicle not in the examiner but the power of local papers right one of they didn't have twitter they didn't have facebook they didn't have instagram but they had newspapers and they used them the sun reporter the spokesman these were papers that people read nationally right and we're a part of that so you guys can see the fungus on the walls now in talking to both my students and community members people still live in these types of conditions they're painted over or they're patched up or they're just being torn down and then people aren't given vouchers and they're pushed out this is what's happening right underneath our noses and if you drive on the freeway and you see these old army barrack style housing those are the remnants you know of these things so what do you do with the displaced people where do these people go and why is it that this history isn't more known and you know when I meet other scholars and professors and this is from the spokesman that same meeting that we saw from other places they are so surprised that San Francisco has low income housing communities they're so surprised that uprising like this happened in San Francisco so again the question is not why San Francisco are how but why have we overlooked it we want to believe that San Francisco is this liberal place we want to believe that there's at least one place that is immune from it but this is a national problem it has always been an American problem and until we start to understand that no matter how liberal any place is you can still have oppressed groups of people within that right and so I keep I'm gonna keep coming back to that point like I tell my students if I say it multiple times it's important so this was a great gain Maddie Banks was able to get housing what I found going back even more interesting so activism in 1947 46 interracial and community groups adopted a statewide platform now this is housing to fight restrictive covenants in the private housing sector they formed the California Federation for civic unity now so again the activism you had it local within small communities small communities work together and those communities statewide work together fighting and I think that is so key to know that of how organized how intersected all these struggles were and how people collaborated together was for me just exciting to find I never heard of the California Federation for Civic Unity in my studies in California but thinking about how big California is that's important so these were Chinese communities African American communities Japanese communities Japanese American all coming together all of whom who experience the same social forces right so again civil rights is not just black and white these binaries that we use to understand our past are sometimes useful but I think that this highlights the fact that various groups of people all of whom were disenfranchised were coming together in a common fight in a common cause and California was a model for that sort of interracial and intercommunal organization and here you go Mr. Perquette 1957 Willie May center fielder for the San Francisco Giants well-known very wealthy man you know no reason why he should not have been able to purchase a home in San Francisco he was denied purchase of a home in st. Francis Wood isn't it interesting that st. Francis Wood is the same place that the owner of Mel's Drive and lived in too who was being picketed so you know it's an interesting dynamic here this image is from the San Francisco Chronicle and let me read you a little something about this this incident got national attention and was known as a Willie May's incident the property owner argued when asked why did you discriminate against him argued that he was under tremendous pressure from the neighborhood not to sell to Negroes the local NAACP president John Adams Jr and field secretary Lester P. Bailey observed that segregated islands of residency were springing up all over the city May's was only able to finalize the purchase of his home after much public pressure this gained national attention that Willie May's couldn't gain a home so in an effort to maintain a liberal image of the city of San Francisco the then mayor George Christopher offered May's haven in his own home May's respectfully declined no thank you and following the purchase of the home which after pressure they finally said okay and what's interesting is the signing over of the house was also a very public event because they wanted to show hey no we're not racist we're not the Jim Crow south so Willie May's it's a public event and the mayor was relieved after this press conference and said that this city of Saint Francis has retained its reputation as an understanding and progressive city thank goodness but for African Americans who weren't Willie May's who weren't well known figures these practices continued on if they they did not have the press following them and many middle and upper class African Americans were systematically denied housing in neighborhoods all throughout San Francisco and these practices continued out of the eyes of the press and so therefore African Americans were primarily limited to neighborhoods like the Fillmore like Bayview Hunter's Point and if you wanted to be a homeowner maybe Lake Shore you know Lakeview so these sort of small places where you can go 65 the WhatsApp Rising well known we all know about this tragic event the scale of it Los Angeles whole other city whole other dynamic but the same social forces that segregate people police brutality in Los Angeles was rampant there was a different way in which people were police based on their race in Los Angeles but I'm not talking about the WhatsApp Rising today necessarily we are familiar with that but I wanted to think about what the impact of what Watts that uprising might have had on young people here in the Bay Area who were just just a few miles north so many public officials and residents who were not African American were shocked oh black people here are angry what's going on how can this happen for blacks it Watts was an awakening a warning a realization and a confirmation I'm not condoning violence but I think it's important for us to understand how this type of pressure built up over time can explode if you don't get at the source of it I think that it's really important for us to not blame the people oftentimes young often misguided who engage not misguided right but who often engage in this type of these acts but I also want to push us to rethink what how we even categorize it when we look at a riot people taking to the streets how do we think this country was formed Colonials rebelling violently sometimes against their mother country so the riot speaking more broadly has been a part of the political artillery so to speak of the United States but we call some people patriots and we call others criminals they're all fighting for the same thing right and so you know yes I don't condone violence I'm a nonviolent person but I think where is it coming from and how where do we see that throughout history so Watts come to symbolize and glorify the rising up of an oppressed people such an ideology can serve as a rallying point for collective action it can help ensure solidarity act as a model for further violence and justify similar future acts so also oftentimes the people are targeted as they're just violent people but this is happening within the larger context of violence there was a culture of violence that was rampant throughout the country that was rampant throughout the whole world so again let's think more about civil rights the civil rights movement was not limited to one geographic area within the United States nor was it limited to the United States the civil rights movement in America is happening in the context of global liberation struggles it's happening in the context of a war that has international implications the president of the United States is assassinated Malcolm X is assassinated the Watts rebellion is happening the Vietnam War is happening so this is it's just a violent time so when we're like why these uprisings they're not just a product of the black community they are a product of the larger just what was happening in the world again so placing things into a context is so important for our understanding so that summer we're leading up to 1966 in July there was a near riot when robbery suspect Frank Jackson was shot in the stomach by an off-duty police officer in the Fillmore 200 young people gather and he states and this is quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle when they interview a young person and this is a 1966 July he says you know what happened in Watts in Chicago that's gonna happen here too so there was this again the consciousness what was the impact on people here and it's unfortunate how correct he was because in September 27th 1966 in San Francisco the exact same thing would happen Matthew Peanut Johnson this presentation is dedicated to his life and dedicated to the life of Linda Brooks Burton who opened up those archives for me and to the life of Matthew Peanut Johnson he like Oscar Grant this is why I started off was looking for work the week before he was killed he was a beloved member of his community he descended from the original sort of migrants he was one of those original families as people I interviewed for oral history told me and he made the wrong decision one afternoon like many teenagers do he was joyriding in a car suspected to be stolen from Bacon and Gerard in the Portola neighborhood and off duty or on duty veteran officer Alvin Johnson saw them they're young they get scared they stop and they flee from the car leaving the car where it is he pursues them he eventually pursues Matthew Johnson is the only one left he states that he fires four warning shots in the air as Matthew Johnson is running away and a fifth happens to hit Matthew Johnson in the back he falls into a ravine this is happening at around three o'clock in the afternoon so it's broad daylight and um Menelec Walker lifelong resident of Hunter's Point who Menelec Walker and others who I've interviewed have helped me greatly he says I remember the day it was warm it was during the summer and people was having balloon fights on third street common typical day in an urban setting in America but underneath all that outward expression was a feeling of being mistreated if it was a it was a direct result of built up frustration fear and anger by the second day there's a state of emergency that is called all nearly two thousand national guards are brought to the area California Highway Patrol San Francisco Police but what's interesting about the first day is that it wasn't as violent I believe it could have been contained young activists were trying to work with the San Francisco police they called the mayor down they wanted answers they said what is going forward we need to give the community answers otherwise we're not going to be able to contain this let us pull they formed a special youth youth officers special youth they formed groups and started to police themselves because they learned from what happened in Watts they were trying to prevent more violence the next day September 28th 3rd and Newcomb there was word of a sniper and the sniper myth is something we can talk about another day there was no sniper ever found but that was enough for National Guard to shoot into a crowd of people on 3rd and Newcomb over the three days 10 people are reported shot oral histories maybe say more but we know for sure that 10 people were shot and this exposed the long term problems of inadequate housing unemployment and police brutality in the area by the last day the violence had stopped but a deep wound was left one that is still healing to this day Bayview Hunters Point was a thriving community you didn't have to take the bus to go downtown to get what you needed for your house all of that used to be there but the storefronts that are boarded up the broken windows are all remnants of this uprising in 66 and people in the community don't talk about it it's been silenced because of how painful and traumatic it was to have tanks and people with bayonets coming down your community coming down your street children people afraid they have their children in the windows because they didn't want them to think that was a sniper and be shot there were 200 children inside the Bayview Hunters Point Community Center right outside where the National Guard shot into the crowd and there were bullet holes that went through the children are lying down on the ground so this event in San Francisco is not well known but I think it says a lot about the reality of America that racism can exist anywhere no matter how gilded its face is right this is a beautiful place and I'm proud to be from San Francisco but I don't think that we can be who we say we're going to be until we acknowledge and embrace this history and support and embrace these communities that have survived this a month and a half later we all know the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense Forms in Oakland now look don't I must say I am not arguing that the 1966 uprising is that the Black Panther Party is a direct result of the uprising that's not my argument there are other you know that's not that's that's not the truth I am saying that it did help and was a part of a larger sort of Black militancy that laid the foundation for the party don't think that Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton community college students did not know about this did not spend time in San Francisco and that helped to motivate and confirm something that they were already doing and I made this plug yesterday but I'll make it again they were community college students so we think about these things happening only at universities but we need to know that there will simultaneous and sister movements happening at the community college campuses which speaks to the importance of community colleges these were people the Black Panther Party wouldn't have formed if it hadn't been for community colleges so also support your local community colleges City College of San Francisco which I work at many people who are in the audience are from City College of San Francisco and it's one of the biggest community colleges in the nation the African American Studies Department founded in 1969 in San Francisco was on the coattails of San Francisco State people who helped to found the first and only school of ethnic studies at City College of San Francisco also went to City College so we need to recognize that education is all right and that it is super important to creating social change later on and this is all looking at the impact for me the San Francisco State Student Movement is where everything comes together it was led by Black the Black Student Union or the Black Student Association and other affiliate student groups it was a longest student strike in U.S. history at the time they demanded curriculum faculty not just faculty tenured faculty you know and I think this speaks to the importance of students of young people this was young people leading the movement Ella Baker told the often advised young people to maintain your autonomy to fight for what you believe in because it's a young people that will lead us into the future so I think one thing I want you to walk away from this presentation is that it is young college students many of them again who are neighbors and faceless who laid a blueprint that would be duplicated on college campuses all throughout the country and that's indigenous to this area too and speaks to this history some of those young people might have been in the uprising in 66 some of those young people you know might have been in the Vietnam War so we have to start drawing the connections because you know we all live at the intersection of our life experiences so let's bring some things together and I do want to leave some time for questions so there's a lot more to this but we can't get it all in so the culmination San Francisco state an example of this culminating nature of activism and a model for the culminating social change that's happening by the time we get to the late 60s and early 70s you have students from San Francisco state who are community members maybe former community college students mothers from Bayview Hunters Point in support of the student strike speaking helping to organize Black Panther Party members making regular visits to the Black Student Association and the Black Student Union on various campuses but in particular and also the assassination of Martin Luther King and the impact that that had on people what that did to people how that galvanized and politicized people to create change so this was a part of a larger continuum of civil rights and activism in the Bay Area and there was a building of momentum so in the Bay Area you have the free speech movement you have the anti-war movement you have the Black Arts movement there this was such a hotbed for change you know for social activism people came here to learn how to do it and they took it to other places but again we don't really talk about the larger context we talk about these events in the Bay Area and these isolated little pockets but we need to start connecting the dots so we can have a broader sense and understanding so we're going to close by looking bringing for the voices of a couple different groups of people and I want to make a few closing points and then I'll take any questions that you guys have so the footage we're about to watch now are of Bayview mothers Eloise Westbrook and Ruth Williams two of hundreds points Big Five there are streets named after them these women were at the foundation of not only improving the neighborhood but they're right up there with Fannie Lou Hamer these women are the reason why we have redeveloped housing units they're a part of this legacy of black female activism indigenous to the Bay Area and so we're going to look at their voices I think they have an important message and this is at the San Francisco State Student Strike So I was very moved by not only just the passion that these women had something that's also interesting but their commitment to social change even as mothers who were busy raising families they took the time to create the change that they wanted to see and we still and we reap the fruits of their labor The Bayview Hunters Point Community Center shortly after the uprising loses its lease many businesses move out of the area there's a lack of investment and in many ways I feel like that community was punished economically was neglected economically as a result of what happened in 66 you punish the communities by not investing by not building better schools by increasing the police and that's the world that I grew up in so this history is about me trying to understand that So another ancestor that I think I'm layering on to this is Martin Luther King who I think has a very important message for us he was at a press conference in San Francisco and I want to close I want this will be the last clip we watch and I have a few closing points but I I believe he has an important message one in which I want to want you to carry and I'll tie on some other things I want you to carry your way with you today Well we all lost I can't segmentize isolate the civil rights movement as something over here in America as something over there if anything the civil rights movement is a conscience of America and if we've had a summer of violence which we had this summer and other summers it's a reflection on the whole nation we wouldn't have had that violence if the nation had moved forthrightly, progressively and honestly it taught a resolution of the problem and I still contend that our nation's summers of riots are caused by our nation's wonders of delay and as long as justice is postponed as long as these problems are there we are on the verge of social disruption and it hurts not only the black man it hurts our whole nation So both circumstances still exist today the potential for the same violence we saw in 1966 and 65 we've seen still is there and there are these tinderbox cities and communities and we may be the black population in San Francisco may be only six percent but the fact that half of the people in the prisons are still African-American speaks a lot to how these things still exist so one takeaway we need to support the black community go to Bayview Hunters Point and have lunch go visit it's probably warmer it's a safe place it's a place where you know we need to support it not just in name by speaking it but with your dollars by walking down the street by going to talk to some of the people there looking at the historic buildings visiting the library because action is more important now than ever you can you cannot afford to sit idly by anymore and you're either actively fighting against oppression or you are passively condoning and perpetuating it that's just there's no in between so racism both sanctioned and unsanctioned by the law existed in san francisco and throughout the entire state of california and throughout the country Jim Crow style forms of institutionalized racial discrimination and oppression were openly practiced in san francisco a known liberal state of the north highlighting the fact that an oppressive state can exist within the liberal state a liberal state can also be dependent upon the existent the existence and be dependent upon sustaining an oppressive state so this liberal state that we have now in many ways is dependent upon a lower disenfranchised group of people every time you go out to eat there is somebody there who is not getting paid what they should be getting paid to make whatever it is that you make so if we think we're immune from this somehow it's in our every day there are people every day who raise children that are not theirs every day that pick the greens that we eat every day that clean the buildings that we work in at night that are victims of these same systems and practices that african-americans were in the past 50 years ago to today the civil rights movement again is a product of the black freedom struggle they are not synonymous and the black freedom struggle gave a language the black freedom struggle in the west gave a language a model and a blueprint and a necessary pathway for a broader struggle known as a civil rights movement that united the causes of various disenfranchised groups of people revealing a common struggle and a common fight and in san francisco that war against oppression was waged the freedom songs of the south echoed in the san francisco bay area and the whole west thank you very much