Laborfest: Walk Japantown & the Fillmore

Japanese and African American Worker’s Stories
Walk in San Francisco’s Nihon Machi (Japantown)
By Alan Sable (City Guide)
San Francisco’s Japantown, one of only three remaining in the United States, dates from the great earthquake and fire of 1906, when the Japanese population united west of the fire line. Uprooted by World War II & FDR's illegal mass imprisonment of Japanese & Japanese-Americans without trial, the Japanese were replaced mostly by newly arrived African-American workers, who brought their vibrant musical heritage with them. The area was one of the first to experience the dramatic changes of 1950s urban renewal programs which continue. In recent years the area has seen a wealth of Japanese architecture next to the classic Victorians and a rebirth of African-American culture in the Fillmore Jazz Preservation District.
The Fillmore District was also a Jewish immigrant neighborhood in the 1920s and 1930s, which bakeries survived into the 1950s and early 1960s. There was a Jewish temple where the post office now is at Geary near Fillmore.
From:
http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Fillmore:_A_Jewish_Neighborhood_in_the_1920s
Hamilton Junior High School, Geary near Scott.
The school was built in 1875 and torn down in 1930. It stood next door to Girl's High School, now Benjamin Franklin Junior High. The student body was predominantly a mixture of white, black and Japanese, reflecting the ethnic makeup of the portion of the Western Addition District.
From Jerry Flamm, Good Life in Hard Times, Chronicle Books, San Francisco
See also:
http://www.laborfest.net/2010/2010schedule.htm