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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Robin Buller in San Francisco

San Francisco razed its ‘Harlem of the West’. Detectives seek those who lost homes

Composite of two black-and-white images, with a red spine down the middle with script saying 'San Francisco redevelopment agency and the Bayview Hunters Point joint housing committee'. On the left a Black woman in a dress and trench coat stands in an overgrown back yard. On the right is a line of Victorian facades partially destroyed.
The San Francisco redevelopment agency seized property to build high-rise apartments and widen streets. Composite: The Guardian Photographs: Lee Sims Tenants and Owners in Opposition to Redevelopment (TOOR) Photographs/San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

When Hubeline Jasper was a child, her family was kicked out of their San Francisco apartment - but her mother was determined to stay. Even after the landlord turned off the utilities, they remained in their home in the Fillmore district, the city’s thriving Black cultural and economic hub. To make it work, her mother cooked over an open fire in the dining room, using skills she had learned growing up in rural Texas, and daisy-chained extension cords to borrow electricity from a neighboring building.

“In those days, families had to look out for each other,” Jasper recalled.

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