On the Great Migration
"[The Fillmore] in the 30s and 40s was considered an undesirable area. So it was full of immigrants. Immigrants from all over lived here. Then, I’d say it was probably WWII, 41, 42, 43, something like that... that the migration—it’s called the Great Migration of African-Americans escaping Jim Crow, let’s be clear, from Louisiana and Texas. My family came from Louisiana. Monroe, Louisiana. And when we came, we came with our savings, because we had money, because in the South we actually had property. We had money. And so we came with money... There’s some pictures that would be great for me to show you, some of the ones we dug up actually: the whole family just coming to work in the shipyard and to work in the orange groves.
That was the whole thing. And to get away from Jim Crow. It’s like “Sunshine! California! Let’s go!” Get here, and San Francisco specifically, would not rent to Blacks.
The only place that Blacks would be rent to, now this is just during that time when Japantown became Japantown. They were still part of the immigrants that lived in this area. Japantown came and then Japantown was shut down when they were put into internment camps. It was the same time when Blacks migrated here from Texas and Louisiana, couldn’t find a place to live except what was considered a “blight area” because of the vacancies that were left. Isn’t this... San Francisco, I love our history. It’s really important for us to know our history.
So that’s when we spent our money. We bought the Victorians that were vacant. It became the Harlem of the West. Then when WWII was over, of course, we welcomed the Japanese back because this is basically their neighborhood. So we have been living in harmony with the Japanese and the African- Americans really really well. But that’s the history of the stuff of that big migration. It was a big migration. Most of the Californians that you talk to, they’re either from Texas or Louisiana."
