It was Called ``The Harlem of the West'' -- Then Urban
Renewal Came to Save It: New PBS Documentary
Reveals the Story of Urban Renewal Through San
Francisco's Fillmore District
Thursday May 3, 3:35 pm Eastern Time
biz.yahoo.com
KQED San Francisco Presents 'The Fillmore' to Audiences Nationwide
on June 11
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 3, 2001-- ``We used to call it the
Fillmore. Then it became the No More.
Maybe soon it will be the Some More.``
Reggie Pettus, Fillmore Street barber
If you know anything about San Francisco's Fillmore District, 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. But The Fillmore, a new documentary airing in June on
PBS, goes even deeper to tell a dramatic story -- the rise and fall (and rise again?) of San
Francisco's premier Black community, as it faced the nationwide juggernaut known as urban
renewal.
The Fillmore is the fourth installment of KQED's Peabody Award-winning series
Neighborhoods: The Hidden Cities of San Francisco. Like the other episodes aired on PBS,
The Fillmore represents the story not only of a neighborhood, but also of a whole social
history. In the streets of the Fillmore can be found the stories of the Japanese in San
Francisco, from internment to integration; the jazz heyday created by the arrival of thousands
of Black workers during World War II; and the dramatic battle to save the neighborhood
from the bulldozers of urban renewal, a struggle faced by neighborhoods across the country
during the 1950s and 1960s -- and even today. The Fillmore airs on PBS nationwide on
Monday, June 11, 2001, at 10 p.m. (check local listings).
The 90-minute documentary is narrated by actor Ossie Davis and features music from the
jazz greats who frequented the neighborhood in its prime: Count Basie, Etta James,
Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington and others. The Fillmore showcases a remarkable group
of on-camera storytellers, from mayors and musicians to journalists and community activists,
who experienced the Fillmore as both the best and the worst of 20th-century city life. The
documentary also draws on an assembled archive of photographs, film and music of the
neighborhood, helped in part by contributions from home movies and scrapbooks of longtime residents.
The Fillmore chronicles key chapters in the neighborhood's history, starting with the great earthquake and fire of 1906. The
Western Addition (as the neighborhood is often called) was spared from devastation; for a brief time it became the city's central
commercial district, boasted a vibrant Jewish immigrant culture and eventually became home to one of the most ethnically
diverse populations of any neighborhood in the nation.
But World War II dramatically changed the district. Some 5,000 Japanese residents were forcibly relocated within weeks of
Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor -- only to be replaced by thousands of African Americans coming to San Francisco for war
jobs. The Black population of San Francisco grew tenfold between 1940 and 1950, and made the Fillmore San Francisco's
first large -- and visible -- black community.
Out of these circumstances, the neighborhood took on a brand-new character as ``the Harlem of the West,'' with its own
churches, theaters, grocery stores, restaurants, nightclubs and newspapers. The documentary shines a spotlight on the jazz
heyday in the Fillmore, which drew the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday into its clubs. The nightspots
of the era, such as Bop City, the Long Bar, the New Orleans Swing Club, the Blue Mirror and the Booker T. Washington
Hotel, to name a few, put the neighborhood on the map.
But even as San Francisco was discovering, for the first time, its black voice, the Fillmore was being labeled a ``slum,'' and
much of the neighborhood -- 64 square blocks -- was targeted for ``urban renewal.'' A massive federal program in cities
across America during the 1950s and 1960s, urban renewal hit the Fillmore hard, making it one of the largest redevelopment
projects in the Western United States. Coming less than 20 years after the neighborhood's Japanese residents were forcibly
removed, the first wave of redevelopment displaced some 6,000 residents, to make room for the Japan Trade Center and the
massive boulevard along Geary Street. The second wave affected nearly 14,000 more. The documentary retraces the battle
that erupted between San Francisco Redevelopment Agency director M. Justin Herman and Fillmore District residents, who
watched the neighborhood's decline into a troubled inner-city zone marked by dozens of leveled blocks sitting vacant for more
than a decade.
PBS Online will debut a new Web site for The Fillmore at www.pbs.org/kqed/fillmore. At the site, visitors will find in-depth
stories about the people from the Fillmore neighborhood; a timeline of events; clips from the film; photographs; music from the
era; a virtual neighborhood forum for interaction with other surfers/viewers; and lesson plans and resources for teachers. The
Fillmore Web site will go live on Thursday, June 7, 2001. |
