Elizabeth Pepin

From the 1930s through the late-1960s, the Fillmore district of San Francisco was an ethnically-mixed working class neighborhood, alive with minority-owned businesses, a with a bustling neighborhood feel where different groups got along as a matter of course. Starting in the early '40s, the Fillmore became a hotbed of blues, R&B and jazz clubs where local musicians flocked and famous musicians came to jam after their paid downtown gigs, blowing until dawn in bars and cellar sessions alike.

The Fillmore was relatively undamaged by the 1906 earthquake, and many beautiful Victorian homes were built in the area to sell to people who had been displaced by the quake and the fire that followed. In Harlem of the West's introduction, we read this:

"Within a few years after the earthquake, the neighborhood became a melting pot. Japanese Americans living in Chinatown before the earthquake moved to the Fillmore, settling around the few Japanese-owned businesses already in the neighborhood . . . . Pilipnos, Mexicans, African Americans and Russians joined the Japanese Americans and the Jewish population. With its integrated schools and some integrated businesses, Fillmore soon had a reputation as one of the most diverse neighborhoods west of the Mississippi."

The World War 2 years brought a great influx of African American families, both looking for work in the Bay Area's war plants and navy yards, and fleeing the Jim Crow oppression of the South. And while they certainly found plenty of prejudice and rejection based on race in San Francisco, the Fillmore neighborhood was in many respects an oasis of community and inclusion. The exception was the Japanese population, who were yanked out of their businesses and homes during the war and sent to internment camps. Some were able to return and reclaim their businesses after the war, but most never came back.

Soon, as mentioned above, the neighborhood exploded with music clubs. Harlem of the West is a beautiful collection of photographs from the area's heyday, along with dozens of short oral histories from many of the musicians and other local residents who were still available to be interviewed when the authors were first doing their research in the early 2000s. We are lucky that most of the clubs had photographers who took photos of the patrons and musicians. The middle section of the book goes through the neighborhood, club by club, telling the stories of how each was established, and the colorful characters who ran them and performed in them. A reading of this book is a visit back in time to a wonderful era of jazz and inclusiveness in San Francisco history.

Of course, Golden Eras come to an end, and the Fillmore was done in by the usual culprits, prejudice and greed. Even while Fillmore residents were enjoying what many described in retrospect as great times in their lives, the City of San Francisco's Redevelopment Commission was taking pictures of the buildings and labeling them decrepit and liable for demolition. The buildings were, indeed, old and in need of repair, but the people who lived in the neighborhood loved them. From the mid-60s through the late-70s, whole blocks of the neighborhood were summarily knocked down. Geary Street which runs through the neighborhood was widened into a 6-lane highway as it goes through the Fillmore in order to allow drivers to essentially bypass the neighborhood on their way from the western urban suburbs to their jobs downtown. More houses and businesses were destroyed so that an ugly mall, intended to be a Japanese community center and known citywide as Japantown, could be built. When I lived in San Francisco from 1986 through 2008, Japantown was a dingy affair full of cheesy gift shops and mediocre restaurants. Certainly not worth eviscerating a vibrant neighborhood for. Well, developers gonna develop, I guess.

At any rate, Harlem of the West does a great job of invoking the Fillmore's glory days as a haven for music, inclusivity and vibrant African American urban community.… (altro)