We invite you to add to this timeline your own curated images, videos, articles, and stories with a critical lens to how they have shaped the quality of life and access to opportunity for low-income people and people of color today. Can include: events and social trends, plans or policies, and personal histories - from global to neighborhood.
1st Benicia 2nd San Jose (March 1850), 3rd San Francisco (April 1850) 4th Oakland (1852)
~575% increase from 1850-1880, which is the largest % growth in City’s history
Infrastructure put in place during this period Historic Neighborhoods: Western Addition, Haight-Ashbury, Eureka Valley, Mission District Narrow streets Cable Cars Golden Gate Park (1887)
The Bay Area's population grows during the Civil War as many of the ports in the region become very important. Coastal fortifications at Fort Point and Camp Sumner were built at the edge of the Presidio, Fort Alcatraz in the Bay, and Fort Baker on the Marin Headlands.
After the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco, 150,000 people came to Oakland and approximately 2000 refugees settled in Chinatown. Because of the population boom Fruitvale, Melrose, Elmhurt, and areas between Brooklyn and San Leandro were annexed and now are part of Oakland. Oakland’s land mass increased from 22.9-60.25 square miles. By 1910, Oakland population doubled than in the 1900(150k people).
The 1906 earthquake displaced hundreds of thousands of people throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. However, the Chinese occupants of San Francisco faced the particular threat of permanent displacement. San Francisco had attracted an Chinese labor community as a result of the 1848 Gold Rush and western expansion of the railroads. By 1870, over thirty thousand Chinese laborers had established their own San Francisco Chinese-American community - Chinatown. Even before the earthquake, some city officials wanted to move the Chinese to Hunters Point and to obtain Chinatown’s valuable land. Now they had the perfect opportunity. The estimated 15,000 Chinese living in San Francisco’s Chinatown lost nearly everything in the earthquake and fire. Following the disaster, most Chinese left for Oakland and only about 400 remained in the city. Sadly, despite a military presence in the vacated Chinatown, there was extensive looting by city residents and even National Guard troops. The Army gathered the Chinese remaining in the city and moved them to segregated camps farther and farther from Chinatown; they finally ended up in a remote, cold and windy corner of the Presidio near Fort Point. Hugh Kwong Liang, fifteen at the time, recalled, “I turned away from my dear old Chinatown for the last time... city officials directing the refugees approached us and told us to proceed toward the open grounds at the Presidio Army Post.” The plan to relocate Chinatown ultimately failed after city officials realized the city would lose tax revenues and profitable Oriental trade. After the long drawn out and failed manipulative efforts by the Committee on the Location of Chinatown, the Chinese were allowed back to rebuild Chinatown, one of the icons of San Francisco.
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Esther Kwan shares her family's journey immigrating from China to America in 1940 and their experience being detained at Angel Island.
African-Americans begin moving to urban centers (mainly in the North and Midwest, but also in the Bay Area) 1. To escape racism (Jim Crow) in the South 2. To fill new jobs created by the tech revolution 3. To fill labor shortage created by WWI
Greater SF Plan Fails: Marin, Alameda, and San Mateo Counties would be boroughs of SF, which would serve as Manhattan
1914 – First World War Begins: Creates shortage of labor in heavy manufacturing, accelerates population migration to SF and East Bay
1915-1930 – East Bay Becomes Detroit of the West: A leading region for manufacturing (autos & ships), natural resources (oil), and trade (first deep water port in the Pacific U.S.) Automobiles: 1908 – Henry Ford Releases the Model-T 1916 – GM Opens Facility In East Oakland 1921 – Durant Motors Opens Facility in East Oakland 1929 – Chrysler Opens Facility in East Oakland Population Boom: Bay Area population grew by 140% from 1900-1930 Construction Boom, especially in Oakland: Many of the large downtown office buildings, apartment buildings, and single-family houses still standing in Oakland were built during 1920s 1921-1924 – 13,000 homes were built in Oakland
First labor organization led by blacks to receive a charter in the American Federation of Labor Led by A. Philip Randolph and C. L. Dellums
Depression led to more displacement of people looking for work
In January 1932, James Renshaw Cox, a pro-labor activist from Pennsylvania, led a march of 25,000 people through Washington, D.C. At the time, the demonstration, dubbed Cox’s Army, was the largest ever in the U.S. capital. Following the march, Cox founded the Jobless Party, and ran for president in 1932. Despite his campaign’s lack of success, Cox‘s views did influence the political scene. In 1932, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to his first term, and he enacted the New Deal programs partly in response to pro-labor activism.
In January 1932 the Upper Bronx Unemployed Council unveiled rent strikes at three large apartment buildings, demanding a 15% reduction in rent, an end to evictions, and the recognition of their tenant committee as official bargaining agent. The landlords moved to dispossess and got judges to grant eviction notices. When marshals and police arrived they found a huge crowd, over 4,000 strong, the majority of them enraged women from the community. When the marshals attempted to move out furniture, the crowd charged the police, fists, sticks and stones flying, shouting "Down with Mulroooney's Cossacks!" A compromise offer was advanced and accepted, and the crowd cheered the settlement, chanting the Internationale and waving copies of the Daily Worker in triumph.
1933 – Federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation Act: Agency created under the New Deal to refinance homeowner mortgages under default to prevent foreclosure, but also systematically undervalued communities of color, deeming them too risky for investment 1934 – National Housing Act: Created the Federal Housing Administration which created "residential security maps" to indicate the level of risk for real-estate investments in each major U.S. city New Construction Vs. Existing Housing Stock: The FHA also preferred new construction to the purchase of existing units, thereby writing the prescription for sprawl as well as residential racial segregation
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Agency created under the New Deal to refinance homeowner mortgages under default to prevent foreclosure, but also systematically undervalued communities of color, deeming them too risky for investment
Longshore workers striking in 1934 took a break on July 4th, 1934 for Independence Day before returning to picket lines. On July 5th, San Francisco police opened fire on striking workers, killing two and injuring 109 in what has since come to be known as Bloody Thursday. The deaths and subsequent turnout of 40,000 for the funeral procession turned public opinion in favor of the workers. At its simplest, the Longshoreman's Strike was an effort to unionize and empower West Coast dock workers who were employed through the company hiring hall, and subject to inhumane hours and conditions, all for poverty wages. But Bloody Thursday and the General Strike were also the culmination of the Great Depression economy and its oppressive effects on the population -- unfair labor practices, low wages, general corruption, cronyism and employment favoritism. A series of broken strikes preceded the General Strike of 1934.
Created the Federal Housing Administration which created "residential security maps" to indicate the level of risk for real-estate investments in each major U.S. city
General Motors, Firestone Tires, and Standard Oil of California purchase National City Lines for the purpose of acquiring and dismantling local transit systems throughout the United States and creating demand for the automobile
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Start of WWII (U.S. Enters in 1941) and the Second Great Migration: Bay is major mainland supply point and port of embarkation for the war in the Pacific and African Americans move to LA, Long Beach, Richmond, and Oakland to work industrial jobs in the defense industry
1940 – Henry Kaiser Establishes Richmond Shipyard in Richmond, CA: Largest shipbuilding operating in the U.S., builds ships in 45 days (fastest is 4 days) Better Jobs: Workers who were limited to segregated, low-skilled jobs in Southern cities were able to get highly skilled, well-paid at CA shipyards 1940 – African-Americans Become An Urbanized Population in the U.S. for the first time in U.S. history, with more than 80 percent living in cities 1942 – Executive Order 9006 and Japanese Internment: Japantown and Bay-View cleared out and African-Americans from South move in 1942 – Bracero Program: The importation of temporary contract laborers from Mexico to the United States (e.g., Stockton, CA)
The importation of temporary contract laborers from Mexico to the United States (e.g., Stockton, CA)
Created low-cost loan programs for veterans that allowed them to purchase newly constructed single-family homes in open spaces located at the edge of the city where land was less expensive, more abundant, and far removed from people of color. Over 11 million loans for new single family homes were issued in the following years after WWII, most of which went to white families Millbrae, San Pablo, Brentwood, Los Altos, Milpitas, Cupertino, Fremont, Newark all incorporated decade following G.I. Bill
My grandfather moved from Selma to Cleveland in search of a better job and a better life. There he met the loves of his life: baking and his wife.
1945 – End of WWII & Baby Boom: Soldiers began returning home post-WWII and many started families leading to the largest increase in the U.S. population in history Demand for Housing, Jobs, and Transit: Population grew in the Bay by 53% from 1940-1950 (900K people)
Prop 11 The Fair Employment Practices Act: Would make employment discrimination illegal, but loses by 70%
The 1946 Oakland General Strike began as 425 mostly women employees working at two department stores, Kahn's and Hastings, went on strike for wage equality beginning in November 1946. Following WWII prices rose and the union wages employees had been earning during the war declined. All the striking workers were asking for was a union contract and improved, living wages. In total, over 130,000 workers went out on the general strike in support of the department store employees for the next 54 hours. Large numbers of police brought in professional strike breakers on the morning of December 3, 1946, who beat the striking employees (and pedestrians) and cleared the streets of Downtown Oakland. The police set up machine guns across from the stores and tow trucks removed all cars in the area.
As a result of the general strike in Oakland and throughout the United States, Congress passes the Taft-Hartley Act. Taft–Hartley was one of more than 250 union-related bills pending in both houses of Congress in 1947.[4] The bill was a conscious effort to decrease the gains made by the labor movement, particularly by the National Labor Relations Act, or NLRA/Wagner Act, which was established as Constitutional despite Republican efforts in 1937 to destroy it. With this failure, the Republicans turned to crafting their own bill to mitigate the influence of labor unions.
Lakewood 1950 1954 – Lakewood Plan Leads To Proliferation of Cities: Allowed smaller cities to contract with the county to receive basic services such as fire and police protection Cityhood Fiscally Infeasible Prior to the Plan: Most suburban communities were being annexed by large cities (SF, Oak, SJ) because they couldn’t afford to provide local services 70 cities in the Bay prior to Plan Cityhood Meant Full Control Over Property Taxes and Land-Use: The high cost of providing local services meant that such new cities would have to charge very high tax rates, so only the wealthiest of communities could become cities prior to Lakewood Plan Proliferation: Over the next fifteen years, 32 new cities incorporated in LA, 31 of them contracting with the county for services. The Lakewood Plan Was White Political Movement: Provided means for separation and exit from broader political arenas rather than for building a common purpose throughout the metropolitan areas Class Stratification: Divided metropolitan areas into jurisdictions of “service seekers” and “tax avoiders” Concentration of race and poverty: In the fifteen years after the Lakewood Plan went into effect, the State’s black population became concentrated in just a few cities, and the number of nearly all-white jurisdictions grew
Brown v. Board of Education (1954), now acknowledged as one of the greatest Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century, unanimously held that the racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Although the decision did not succeed in fully desegregating public education in the United States, it put the Constitution on the side of racial equality and galvanized the nascent civil rights movement into a full revolution.
Pic: I-80 First freeway to open under the federal highway act 1956 – Federal Aid Highway Act: a 41,000-mile, $26-billion interstate highway program coupled with subsidies for road and highway maintenance. Largest Public Works Program: At the time, the program was the largest public works program undertaken in U.S. history and significantly decreased the cost of driving, which made the automobile more affordable for suburban families East Bay Context: Many of the highways planned during this period were built right through low-income communities and communities of color, where land values were low and where communities were less politically empowered to prevent planning departments from building in their communities. Highways built in the Bay Area, mainly the 880, 580, and 24 highways divided West Oakland neighborhoods and increased pollution for nearby communities of color 80-20% Split: In the post-war era, 80% of transportation expenditures went to highways while 20% went to mass transit.
1957 - San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District Formed 1960 – AC Transit Takes Over The Bankrupt Key System 1964 – Construction of BART begins with President Lyndon Johnson presiding over the groundbreaking ceremonies at the 4.4-mile test track between Concord and Walnut Creek in Contra Costa County. Cost was $1.6 billion ($15 billion adjusted for inflation in 2004)
Due to the placement of the US Postal Office in 1960, many residents and businesses were forced to move from 7th Street in West Oakland. This is a brief story of what happened to a local community church
Ever Lee Hairston talks about her experiences as a young black woman. She shares with us her story of protests, sit-ins and the struggle for equity.
Ramon Calubaquib moved to SF's Tenderloin in the 70's just in time for "urban renewal" that gutted communities of color and working class neighborhoods like the Western Addition, Japantown, Manilatown, and SOMA. Ramon talks about the impact of "urban renewal" on the dispersion of Filipinos to suburbs of Daly City, explaining similarities and differences to other ethnic groups connection to the city after "urban renewal." He's been the Program Director of Asian Youth Prevention Services for nearly two decades.
More than a quarter-million people came to the nation’s capital on August 28, 1963, to protest discrimination, joblessness and economic inequality faced by African Americans.
During his first State of the Union Speech, President Johnson declared the War on Poverty, making poverty a national concern. He set in motion a series of bills and acts, creating programs such as Head Start, food stamps, work study, Medicare and Medicaid, etc.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson just a few hours after House approval on July 2, 1964. The act outlawed segregation in businesses such as theaters, restaurants, and hotels. It banned discriminatory practices in employment and ended segregation in public places such as swimming pools, libraries, and public schools.
Proposition 14 Passes By 2-1 Margin: Authored by the California Realtors Association, Prop 14 amended the California state constitution, nullifying the Rumford Fair Housing Act. Proposition 14 was declared unconstitutional by the California Supreme Court in 1966
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act into law, permanently barring barriers to political participation by racial and ethnic minorities, prohibiting any election practice that denies the right to vote on account of race.
Elaine Brown (Former Chairman of the Black Panther Party, Author, Activist) explains how & why she ended up joining the Black Panther Party as well as why the Black Panther Party was needed.
By 1967, King had become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967.
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Elaine Brown (Former Chairman of the Black Panther Party, Author, Activist) discusses the successes of the Black Panther Party and what advice she has for those who wish to carry on the in legacy of the Black Panther Party
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