THE INTERPLAY OF HOUSING, EMPLOYMENT AND CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE EXPERIENCE OF SAN FRANCISCO'S AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY, 1945-1975

Abstract

The war industries associated with World War II brought unparalleled employment opportunities for African Americans in California's port cities. Nowhere was this more evident than in San Francisco, a city whose African American population grew by over 650% between 1940 and 1945. With this population increase also came an increase in racial discrimination directed at African Americans, primarily in the employment and housing sectors. The situation would only get worse throughout the 1950s and 1960s as manufacturing jobs moved to the East Bay where race restrictive housing policies kept African Americans from moving with them. In San Francisco, most African Americans were effectively barred from renting or buying homes in all but a few neighborhoods, neighborhoods often characterized by dilapidated structures and over-crowded conditions. Except for the well educated and lucky, employment opportunities for African Americans were open only at or near entry levels for white collar positions or in unskilled and semi-skilled blue collar positions. Despite such challenges, San Francisco's African American population nearly doubled between 1950 and 1960. This community would push hard against the doors of discrimination and find that with concerted effort they would give way. During the 1960s and 1970s, civil rights groups formed coalitions to picket and protest thereby effectively expanding job opportunities and opening the housing market for African American San Franciscans. This dissertation examines the challenges and exigencies of San Francisco's growing African American community from the end of World War II through 1975. It describes and explains obstacles and triumphs faced and achieved in areas such as housing, employment, education and civil rights. No scholarship presently available presents as detailed an examination of San Francisco's post-Industrial African American population as does this work. It is not however, meant as a comparative study among Bay Area cities but rather narrowly focused study examining San Francisco's African American population to the exclusion of other Bay Area cities with sizable African American populations such as Oakland, Berkeley or Richmond. This dissertation also adds to the body of scholarship about the intersection of race and geography as it relates to the post-Industrial African American experience.