A History of the Fillmore Neighborhood in San Francisco | KQED
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ก.ย. 2024
- If you know anything about this neighborhood, it's probably because it houses an auditorium of the same name, where the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead helped shape American music in the 1960s. This documentary, produced in 1999 as part of KQED's series on San Francisco neighborhoods, goes even deeper to tell a dramatic story: the rise and fall -- and rise again -- of San Francisco's premiere Black community.
The program features a remarkable group of on-air participants and storytellers, from mayors and musicians to journalists and community activists, who experienced the Fillmore as both the best and worst of 20th century life. The documentary draws on a rich archive of photographs, film, and music of the neighborhood, helped in part by home movies and photographs from KQED viewers.
Narrated by Ossie Davis.
Ossie Davis narrating❤ doc from the 90s😢
The narrating is amazing.
I worked for KQED at the time the Neighborhood series was being created. Plans originally included most neighborhoods in SF but funding ran out after The Castro, The Mission, Chinatown and The Fillmore. I begged the producer to interview several key people who knew and lived North Beach history before they were gone. I believe he talked by phone with Fred Kuh (owner of the Savoy Tivoli and the Original Spaghetti Factory) but funding was not found.
Was getting Ossie Davis to narrate a bulk of the budget?
Aacch. Darn. I grew up in the Richmond but am dug into North Beach. That's too bad. 🪘 ☕️ 🇮🇹
History is erased by ignoring it. It helps gentrification to forget.
The Saloon and the condor would've been great to hear about the early days
The feature film Last Black Man in San Francisco hits different after watching this. Thank you for creating and uploading this documentary.
My family bought a house in Fillmore in 1962.6 generations stayed in the home bought by my great grandfather and now in 2024 I reside at the home with my aunt. We are the last black family left on our block. It's weird and sad
We as black people are judged as who we are just like DOG'S ARE. A PITBULL IS STRONGER THAN A CAT. SO THIER YOU GO MOST 0:49
Growing up in that area at such a young age I didn’t understand a lot of things. This documentary helped me fill in the blanks.. 🙏🏼
Thank you for watching and sharing.
Watching this documentary breaks my heart knowing this is happening across most low income areas across the country
My thoughts too! Any urban city USA.
Just like the imprisonment of so many black men during the crack epidemic, this is "no" coincidence. But a well executed plan!
It wasn't a low income neighborhood when the Japanese resided there before the blacks came afterwards. It was a thriving middle class neighborhood when the Japanese occupied the neighborhood and the neighborhood would still exist if the Japanese weren't forced to evacuate the premises and shoved off to the concentration camps. The neighborhood became dilapidated after the blacks moved in.
@@CruzRosa-kk1nlThe neighborhood became dilapidated after drugs & jealousy over black property & business ownership in a prime location & it was undermined from a combination of redevelopment, gentrification, drugs, public housing & red lining. So as you spew your bigot rhetoric throw some truth in there as well please
@@CruzRosa-kk1nlIt didn't become dilapidated until slumlords showed they racist behind
I was born 1952 and raised in the Fillmore and problem with the Fillmore is someone’s always trying to change it. It didn’t need changing it had its own culture. We had banks, clothing, stores, TV, shops, Booker T. Washington hotels which I used to live in. We didn’t need nothing but For people to keep the ideals to them selves
I lived in anchorage, AK when I was young in an area that was "low rent". My parents divorced after we moved there from Oregon in 1961. I too was born in 1952, The great AK earthquake happened in 1964 a 9.2 earthquake that lasted 5 long minutes. Once I got to a safe place I had 4 minutes to just think and watch what was happening around me. I was 11 but for some reason my first thought was that this is what it was like in the 1906 San Fransico quake. I do not know where I even heard about that quake but it stayed with me in that experience. We lived in an area that did not suffer too much damage but my mom now had no job and we were really poor for a few years. But like you we had a great time and knew all the shop owners. We played outside with other kids and organized our own games like kickball, etc. I saw the town change drastically over the years because of emergency federal assistance and then big oil came in during the 70's. It is now totally different.
@@bluewaters3100 it was beautiful I went to Polytech high school, best mechanic shop in the world
My favorite album was recorded in the Fillmore--"Aretha Franklin at the Filmore West." Loved the area.
Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles LIVE I remember my playing this album
That album was recorded at the Fillmore West on Market Street, not at the Fillmore Auditorium on Fillmore...2 different places.
This is the only documentary that I have seen who accurately linked Jonestown to the disbandment of the Filmore!
Same! I had never connected those dots before.
I'm a Jonestown junkie, watched all documentaries, and interviews, old tapes, sermons and fascinated by his transition to maniac from his early years, then his churches in SF was also like compounds, very much demographics like filmo area, basically a microcosm of it. It all started there first, the brainwashing, the locking in cells, the torture, all started before he even bought property in south America
I agree
Devastating
What happened to Fillmore happened everywhere…. and strategically so. Our communities were purposely and systematically decimated! I’m still angry because it’s still occurring now through gentrification…. called “urban renewal” then…. but it’s the same old monstrosity of a plan to destroy our economy and way of life! Angers me immensely!
I Hear You. It's happening now AGAIN in my Black neighborhood where I was born and raised! In the 60s "Urban Renewal" razed Half of our neighborhood to build an approximately 4mile highway from one end of the city to the ! We call it "the highway to nowhere". Of course, this highway that plowed through neighborhoods of Black, brown and poor people in the city, then winds it way through the suburbs of white, affluent homes without touching those properties!
Gentrification is alive AGAIN in my neighborhood with the promise/anticipation of the Commuter Rail arriving this summer which brings with it a Flood of Boston affluent businessmen and others seeking to purchase "cheap/derelict homes" to buy, renovate and rent to people that don't look like the people who have lived, worked and built this city (New Bedford, MA) for more than 150 years!
I Own my tenement home and I can't count how many offers to purchase my property for these reasons. I REFUSE every one. I'm a black woman who is 70 years old. My mortgage for a 2 family home/potential for 3 including taxes and insurance is less expensive than what it costs NOW for a One Bedroom apartment just a half mile away from my home!
History repeats itself and the powers that be see it as progress while its inhabitants see it as displacement with NOWHERE TO GO!
Exactly what I was thinking. Gentrification
@karenalves8100 Stand your ground! May The Lord Jesus bless and keep you 🙏🏾!!!!
@@misslady5029 Blessings to you as well Miss Lady! Blessings, love and light to you and yours as well. 💕
💯💯💯💯
I used to work at a Japanese restaurant on Fillmore St. Named Toraya restaurant. Across the street was Jack's Bar and jazz club. An also was Leon's BBQ. Next door was a Baptist church. This was in the 1970's. I remember on the weekends the ally was full of Cadillac's. An Jack's was jumping. I was 16 years old. The restaurant was between Bush and Pine streets. An the ally was called Wilmot.
I remember Toraya. I used to work at Leon's... 🍗
*Alley Ally has a different meaning.
This made me miss my grandma
me too, my grandmother was born in the moe....my bloodline landed in fillmoe in 40s.
@@ofranciscofasho I can feel that
mah mom & uncle's g ma as well 🥺🙏🏽
@@Sharon-rp7ir ❤️
Born and raised…right smack dab in the Fillmo’ in the fifties. A black kid with Japanese friends, along with Jewish friends, along with friends. A magical neighborhood. Redevelopment ruined it.
So sad! I don't have words! 😮😢
@@bjw3243People use to have neighbors of all nationalities, races, religious affiliations showed diversity
@@aarondigby5054 as you said, magical!
Seems like those neighborhoods were good people trying to make a life and too busy to engage in race wars with like-minded families. What a shame how we've become 😢@aarondigby5054
God bless you! You must miss it.
I was raise in the Pink Palace on Turk Steet in the 60's
Appreciate the documentary 😢😢😢🙏🏿🙂
Thank you for this documentary.
So grateful for this reporting.
No better voice for this doc than “The Mayor” himself. Mr Davis
Ossie Davis was the king ❤
"Imminent Domain" needs to be removed from the Governments Right to steal property from American Citizens.
Too late.
IKR, government domain is a drag and it devastates poor or thriving neighborhoods
@@claire5399 Revelation 9:21
“Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.”
I came right towards the end. I remember the Uptown Theater, when they destroyed all of those Victorian homes by "Emminent Domain" to build the Japanese Center. All of those lies that SF told. I also remember those who could afford it, had their homes moved. All b4 I was 10 years old.
Emminet domain only applies to the poor....
Beautiful documentary
Redevelopment has damaged more than it saved.
It's always that way. The rich get richer as the only benefiaries of change, and the poor to middle class have nowhere left to go and feel comfortable.
"Imminent Domain" needs to be removed from the Governments Right to steal property from American Citizens.
That’s the true purpose of it unfortunately!
Something that this history of SF omits is that the Black Americans who migrated there early in WW2 were SOLICITED to migrate by the US Govt which dropped fliers from planes in Southern States telling them about all the good paying jobs at the shipyards in CA. Then in 1945 the war ended and all those Black Americans were DUMPED on the street to fend for themselves after the White men coming back from the war were given their jobs. These were mainly rural folks who got stranded in an urban environment where they couldn't grow a vegetable. THAT was the beginning of the Welfare State in CA. All the original Black neighborhoods in the Bay Area are near the WW2 shipyards like Hunters Point, Oakland, Richmond, & Vallejo.
I only heard this story one time and it was in 1970 from a native White San Franciscan who spent the whole war on an Army base in Alabama. I'm inclined to believe him because he Really Hated Black People and a random comment by me caused an emotional explosion of hate in him that then caused him to spontaneously tell me this story.
If true, then this was an example of Social Engineering coming from the top, much like letting 10 million illegal migrants flood across our Southern Border. It's all about the Game of Money & Power, folks, and you & me are just pawns.
God Bless America !!!
... joekulik999 [at] GeeMale.
Very interesting to hear this! This would coincide with my family’s personal history, as they came from Arkansas and Texas and resided in Richmond, Oakland and SF. The women worker in factories, and the men were longshoremen. My dad and all of his siblings were born in hunters point. Thank you for sharing this!
I've also heard that exact story from an older guy that I used to do some landscaping work for when I was younger.... I mean it was literally the exact same story, except it came from a black guy.
Amen! Thank you for teaching this hawaiian what the black folks went through! I am so sad it hurts my soul😢❤😢❤
Thank you for the information. I was born and raised in San Francisco, ultimately residing in the Bayview/Hunters Point district prior to leaving for college. My uncle, originally from Georgia actually worked in Hunters Point at the shipyard in the 50's, 60's and early 1970's What you said makes many of the demographic pieces fit, particularly as I remember the distribution of Black's throughout the Bay Area during my childhood.
Thank You for sharing.
America is reaping what is sowed. 😢
My first apartment in San Francisco was at 1550 Fillmore.
The brick building across the street from the Fillmore Auditorium....kitty corner to Jack's.
Paid 565/ month for an efficiency in 1993.....great place at the time.
Completely different now in that neighborhood.
This sets a powerful backdrop for the Aretha Franklin “Live at Fillmore West” record. An incredible album with real soul.
I love listening and reading about our history. Love this very much
this is a great documentary!
Wow. I never knew about this.
Thank you for the education.
My father come from Louisiana and my mother, all the children that was born in the 50s has really happy and we was all spoil. Everybody was happy.
Wow, this sounds just like Boyle Heights here in Los Angeles. This is a wonderful documentary.
I never knew this history about San Fransico, thanks for this video.
i am speachless.
Tell us about the development of hunters point and Bayview
Grew up in the Bayview on Ingalls…
Yes! Grew up on Kirkwood 🫶🏾
I for sure lived in hunters point. Navy road and west point road
We had a motorcycle club, called the rattlers the head of the club with my uncle. It was like security for our neighborhood, and we liked it just the way it was.
This was so enlightening and educational…. I enjoyed this documentary and I wonder if any of my relatives from Alabama resided there in the 1940s and beyond?
No one has hurt us more than the government!!!
It's always intentional 😢 which makes it more sinful. The country was created against tyranny but here they are
I love the fillmore ❤ I was raised in the fillmore in the 1977 tho I was born in Los Angeles CA thank you for sharing this about the fillmore I remember going too the juneeth festival every year black real Excellent ❤🙏🏽✊🏾👑 great commentary I love it
I love this stuff wish they more media like this!!
Is that the voice of OSSIE Davis narration 😮
Yes, Ma'am! It IS!!👍😊
YEA It Is!
The History of the Fillmore what an incredible documentary… I ❤ history and I didn’t know about the Japanese, Black Americans or the People Temple and how it relates to the Fillmore District… All three were seeking a better LIFE within the Fillmore District… Bittersweet memories but an amazing documentary… “Thank You”❤❤❤
Heavy
I just finished reading On The Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton and it brought me here. I suggest you read it, it is a great story that takes place around this time frame. This video highlights the disconnect from the politicians to the actual community members.
THANKS FOR THIS DOCUMENTARY!...IT WAS VERY INFORMATIVE! THANKS FOR SHARING! GOD BLESS AMERICA/USA!!
What the people want and what the government is gonna do, are two different books!
Fantastic show.
Ooh. I gotta take a break. I'm getting too angry. 🙏
It made me angry too...cause this kind of Black Removal - Displacement is still happening ! A lot of this history ( not all ) happened on the Democrat reign. So many stories like this in Urban Black American history. A lot of New Immigrants dont understand or care about this history and it lays bare why Black folk aint got nutin'....But the Other group mentioned in this documentary is thriving just fine ....
@@j.w.2391Both the Republican and Democrat Party are guilty of practicing racial gentrification against Blacks. They just use different buzz phrases for it. Democrats say "urban renewal". Republicans say "opportunity zones".
Born in 1954 in SF. Grandfather had a furniture and moving business on Fillmore and Haight. I was young but I remember.
When I was 19 and got off the bus from School, they kept inviting me to Jim Jones Church. I kept saying No.
When I finally accepted they gave me a bowl of soup. It was laced with Thorazone. I NEVER WENT BACK.
I was born 10 years after you in San Francisco. My Dad (who is in this documentary) was a pastor and he took the church to visit the People's Temple ONCE. Our choir sang there for some event. Afterward, he said there was something very off about that church and we never went back. I remember him and my mother talking about it on the way home. They were both seriously creeped out.
The city In current bad condition and needs federal funds for repairs is Richmond, California it’s sad to see the current situation in Richmond 😢
Why should federal funds fix this? The rest of the country didn’t cause this shit show. Bad voting for bad policies by the people that live there did! MY vote didn’t cause this so MY tax dollars don’t need to fix it!
These issues were created decades and decades ago. So ...
@@thelogoman1 Actually it did happen because of Federal Funds, because richmond was a Navy city and the Navy left
And never fixed, @@katsiduzynski488, soooooo... I'll give you hint, institutional racism. You look bad here.
@@thelogoman1 ok, Theory Von
Wow such a sad and terrible story. I’ve never heard this story and it reminds me so much of what happened in San Diego when they cleared the Chicano community to make way for the 5 freeway and Coronado bridge. Fortunately we were able to save one tiny piece of land that has served as an anchor. Chicano Park.
Love this type of history. I was born in the late 80s never heard of Flimore until today
This happened all across the U.S. Super glad they mentioned Bop City.
It all makes sense why Texas and Florida doesn’t want history taught like this in schools.The banning of books a damn shame.This is American history.
It's bad. The last time America's mask fell. was the 50's and 60's.
At the U.N. countries kept asking the USA 🇺🇸 why they are doing to their minority populations.
The civil rights bill was due the USSR playing the dog attacks in Mississippi or crazy stuff in Alabama 😮.
The USA could not get any thing done.. they looked like hypocrites.
So president Johnson signed anything that would help the reputation. Civil rights act came due to UN trolling not MLK or JFK.
Those figures are all over US history and the country never move to change anything.
They still bulldozed POC communities even in 2024.
The United States of 🐍 . Have 🐍 babies. There is no daylight between now and then in intentions.
People who are pushed aside just have a bigger 🔊 bullhorn called the internet.
Redevelopment/ gentrification/ migrate move in are tools to destabilized.. so those communities do not have deep roots. Deep roots come with strength.
San Francisco needs to see this. Then turn around and look how they have destroyed San Francisco and surrounding areas.
All in the name of “progress”
If u live there dig in and help to turn things around. Complaining doesn’t accomplish much.
Yes it’s so sad the way it looks now 😢
Excellent historical documentary
The same thing they did to The Filmore; they did here in Miami. Put an expressway thru Historic Overtown which to this day separates Miami Overtown neighborhood(a black neighborhood) from Miami Beach(which was whites only at the time after dark: blacks couldn't go at night unless they had a pass to work). Black entertainers could perform on the beach but would have to stay in Overtown at The Hampton House Hotel(Dr. King, Malcolm X, Jim Brown & Muhammad Ali all once stayed there & others). To this day there are less than 1% of black ppl who live on Miami South Beach. Too expensive!
Also South Dallas, Texas in the 60's-80's
My mother was born and raised in San Francisco and moved to Seattle when she married my dad in the late 70s so I used to visit San Francisco a lot, especially in summer I know almost every neighborhood of San Francisco but surprisingly I don’t know the Fillmore District. I only heard about it in rap songs I am mostly familiar with Mission St., Daly city, San Bruno, south San Francisco , Redwood City San Mateo, and etc.
Went to USF in the 90s. Used to eat at Flint's BBQ every chance I got!!!
Hey Fillmore, the last 10 years thank you for all the good years❤❤❤
Before redevelopment, my YTeen club met at the Buchannon YMCA/YWCA. I also spent some time in 1950 (age 10) staying with a mixed race family above a Holy roller church. We kids (2 white,one black) loved being invited in. They always had goodies, which we were invited to ahare and we enjoyd it very much when folks would get "the spirit". As I get old I appreciate my beautiful SF before they drove the people out and tore down victorians. Thanks for this. Oakland CA
My grandfather owned a bookstore in the Fillmore way back when it was a Jewish neighborhood. My parents were married at Temple Beth Israel in 1940.
Fillmoe Westside resident ☝🏿
Excellent Doc salute the great Ozzie Davis 🙏🏾
There's OG Reggie my old barber from the 1980's. 💯
Al, big man with the glass (and the most popular) is my grandfather. He had his own shop before "urban renewal"
Reggie cut my hair too around 1996/7. Great dude.
My barber from the 70’s “ Chicago 3”
I watched this episode when it originally came out, good episode.
Do you wanna know something about San Francisco? Fillmore asked Johnny Mathis he grew up there and I did his 50th anniversary with KQED.
Someone please tell me who sang that song at the very end of this magnificent ducumentry... l think it's called...
Maybe I'll See You Again ? I don't know if it's in the credits...
the singer sounds like a young
Nate King Cole.
The credits do scroll by rapidly, but according to them, the name of the song is "Tomorrow" by Hirsch Wilhite/Spitalfields, performed by Charles Brown.
I apologize...my phone likes to second-guess my spelling sometimes. The second name listed for the composer is Spitalny, not Spitalfields. 😊
Does anyone remember "Gold Land (Or Food Land)," right across from the OC Projects on Buchanan and Eddy?
This got me crying 😢😢😢
And Jim Jones the people's temple in the Bayview
@1:10:00 that charlatan exploited a disillusioned ppl who NEVR knew respect by its government.
People's Temple was on Geary and Fillmore. NOT IN THE BAYVIEW. The entrance of the United State Post Office is now built on the location of the old People's Temple. Will never use that Post Office due the history of its current location.....death.
@@drucella5581 Yep, my Dad took his church to visit the People's Temple at the Geary Street location. We only went once, he and my Mom both felt very strange vibes and never wanted to go back.
Oh what memories, grew up on Turk and Laguna. Weekly drag races along Turk St. to Webster St.Basketball, Softball and tennis at Hayward Park. Free Government cheese, weekly swims at the Jewish Community Center. That was the life!
This takes me back. What about duke city barbeque, barber shop and bar? I lived on divisafero and Hayes.
Same thing happened in Little Rock Arkansas, but someone bought it b4 it was torn down
My family moved to SF in 1972 both parents had no job so we moved in the Turk st project's we were on Walfare and got food stamps and government cheese for a minute how come they didn't mention that the pink palace was on eddy st between Fillmore on Webster I could go on and on
Lived my entire life until 2017 there, and I've never saw a time where that area wasn't a slum it was just completely ignored by the city, from the 70s until I left in 2017
Damn I remember when they had Adidas store there… Harputs? Hahahaha….
"Why pay more, come to Fillmore!" From the commercial that used to run on Soulbeat (public access tv network). I think RUN DMC sang the jingle.
Do one on each neighborhood!
Same way
"Indiana Avenue" was handled.
Raise on Eddy Street a few blocks from Fillmore St., in walking distance. We had everything and they took it away from us. I am a 1950s baby.
They did a small version of that in my area. Used eminent domain to clear a square mile of housing to build a park. They let the park sit with minimal maintenance, closed the park amenities for 10 years and now it is being sold for condos. They displaced generations of Hispanic homeowners, many of them elderly. Now, they have another project in motion to do the same thing creating an ever-growing population of homeless. WHERE DO THE PEOPLE GO?
Time to rename Justin Herman Plaza
It's now the Embarcadero Plaza since 2017.
NO, STOP TRYING TO DELETE HISTORY...HISTORY IS HISTORY...YOU CAN NOT ERASE IT...JUST LEARN FROM IT!! GOD BLESS US ALL!!
@37:00 & 51:00
Pros and cons to renaming. I’m conflicted. The names evoke positive contributions, which ignores the human toll.
Great history video. Another American Horror Story.
Was once called "Harlem of the West" I have been there and remember when London Breed got the John Coltrane Church closed down.
I shook hands with Jerry Garcia two different occasions on Market Street, this must've been the place !!! That was back in 1994.
Charles Collins looks like and sounds like Ralph Carter.
I wasn't born this time but I can say that I was born in the Bay in San Francisco in 91 and I lived out here in the Bay area my whole life and I can say that what they're saying about it being a multicultural place and then everyone just not caring about race is so true
How educational. Why can't we preserve anything?
"Imminent Domain" needs to be removed from the Governments Right to steal property from American Citizens.
Because they don't want us to ..duh
Profit over people.
Amazing how this portion of American history has been omitted.Why aren’t these stories front and center with all of the other history known in our country?
Wrong aspect ratio, 30p instead of 60p; combing, double-images and stairstepping at certain shots. This is an unprofessional upload. Please, fix.
“Justin Herman Plaza” in SF…🤦♀️
If they're going to talk about the good they should also talk about the people they stepped on to get on top. Where's the good and bad parts of the city's history?
Who do you think are the bad ppl?
Everyone has their opinion on who the bad and good people are. Looks can be deceiving. Instead of one side to history, I would like to hear about the good and bad stories on what makes it Fillmore, Sf today instead of ppl staring at each other, walking around in fear, pretending to have fun, showing off. What do they want to say? I would like to know who the tourists think are the bad ppl. Anyone can put on a baseball hat and look like a local. This city is going through a lot of changes.
When the choir in the church is singing, please know:
It's "burden down" NOT "burn it down."
Ugh.....incorrect caption. 🤦
Ah the memories of The Filmore West, some good, a lot not so good. Urban renewal nightmare and it still looks incomplete.
Going to history..what about jazz..to my understanding san Francisco already had its history the castro..valley..i think for hundreds of thousands of years black community they have suffered a lot.
Filmore and Avalon Ballroom every weekend
Filmore slim and his green sued cadillac..llol
Asians, Africans, Irish, Germans, Mexicans Scotts,Swedes,Norwegians, Slavics, so on and so forth
❤❤❤❤
McLaughlin Causeway
Black people preserved that neighborhood and they could careless.