1960s
In 1962, the San Francisco Housing Commissioners wrote a letter to the mayor of Oakland expressing their mutual desire to discourage Black migration from the U.S. South. In the letter they speculated that limiting migration by Black people would reduce the issue of integrating public housing. Over the next decade, the fight to integrate the projects did become less of an issue as white families fled The City with access to home loans and other publicly subsidized benefits that kept them out of poverty. In San Francisco, as in other places throughout the U.S., Black residents fought against the many injustices during the “Civil Rights era”.
In 1965, Black residents picketed in front of Potrero Terrace and Hunters Point public housing projects to draw attention to the SFHA’s discrimination in keeping Black residents from getting jobs with the agency. The racist exclusion of Black applicants from SFHA jobs and housing was affirmed by an investigation by the California Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC). In 1966 amidst high rates of Black unemployment, poor housing conditions, and police brutality, the Hunters Point Riots of 1966 erupted on Sep 26 after the SFPD shot and killed a local Black teenager, Matthew Johnson Jr. During the riot, thousands of National Guard officers were brought into The City primarily occupying the Fillmore and Bayview neighborhoods. The media use racist language describing the scene as “jungle warfare” and politicians threatened to use military-grade weaponry to suppress the uprising. The police enforced a curfew for Hunters Point and Fillmore, and the post-1966 riot racist policing of these areas continues to this day.
In November of 1966, public housing residents from the Hunters Point Tenants Union went on rent strike. The strike ended with residents winning the promise of better maintenance from SFHA. Local and federal politicians promised jobs and opportunities for the Black community in San Francisco, but of 2000 jobs promised only 19 were delivered. Also in 1966, Ronald Reagan mobilized conservative voters across CA for his campaign for Governor against Pat Brown, he used the Watts Riots, Hunters Point uprisings, and anti-war protests as a stirring point for his anti-Black and anti-poor “law and order campaign”. Reagan’s governorship and later presidency was disastrous for low-income communities, particularly Black communities as he rolled back public assistance programs and racialized and demonized the welfare state. The Civil Rights era brought about the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which finally outlawed discrimination in public housing.