How A Union Built Integrated, Affordable Housing
By Peter Cole for Jstor Daily - In the 1960s, battles over racial equality and “urban renewal” ripped San Francisco apart. Beginning the decade prior, residents of the Fillmore, the only black-majority part of the city, suffered from a “slum clearance” program, labeled “Negro removal” by the legendary writer and activist James Baldwin. In response, a small but powerful labor union—the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, or ILWU[1]— attacked the city’s lack of affordable housing and pervasive residential segregation. In the heart of San Francisco, this union financed an integrated housing development for working-class people.