‘Our dreams were shattered’: the Black Californians forced from the city they built

A print by Keith Dennison of a Sherman tank preparing to destroy homes, from 1960. Photograph: Oakland Museum of California/Collection of the Oakland Museum of California

In the early 1940s, Gloria Moore’s parents migrated west from Arkansas, seeking – as many Black southerners did at the time – work, and a reprieve from poverty and Jim Crow.

They first found jobs working in the wartime shipbuilding industry in Portland, Oregon, before ultimately settling in Russell City – a small, unincorporated community in the San Francisco East Bay, and a bastion of Black and Latino culture and life. There, the Moores bought several acres of land, built a house and raised Gloria and her three siblings.