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At 150 Wetmore
2007-10-12T00:50:04Z
<p>Admin: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:chinatwn$chinese-club.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''The artistic '''activity''' in the photograph--Gee's intimate rapport with the Asian bust and the rapt attention of his colleagues--contribute to the [[Yun Gee's Art| tension]] in the entire public image of the Chinese Revolutionary Artists' Club, between the explicitly Modernist ambitions in the paintings and the developing ethnic identification of its members. Two cultures have met, the photograph tells us, but it is entirely unclear if the meeting was '''productive.<br />
<br />
One other photograph of Gee and other Club members tells us a bit more, but not much. He is found amidst his fellow painters, modelling an impeccably clean white bust of a man. While the Club was collective in nature, the photograph tells us that Gee was often its center. The rest of the painters are ostensibly at work on their canvases, but he in fact remains their focus of attention. But it is an awkward kind of attention, which betrays a now-familiar underlying problematic. The seated painters have taken to westernized dress, their starched collars and neck ties donned even in the splattered environs of the Club's cramped studio. The standing Gee keeps to his distinctly Chinese smock, allowing the paint to coat but not strip away an outwardly ethnic identification. If the Club was indeed "Chinese" and "revolutionary," Gee was going to try to insist on what the combination of those terms at one time meant, or at least how it ought to be photographed. A revolutionary Chinese artists' club had to hold the contact of two generalized cultures, east and west, in some kind of awkward, explicit tension.<br />
<br />
Remove Gee and his friends, and 150 Wetmore Place takes on a decidedly different appearance. For the "Chinese" quality of the Club quickly fades and does not seem to remain or reside in the artworks themselves. The sketches and drawings attached to the walls are vaguely Cubistic in style and certainly Parisian in origin. Indeed, the still-lifes of tumblers and saucers seem more suited to a studio at the Bateau-Lavoir than one in Chinatown--this, remember, in 1926, when photographs of Parisian studios amply displayed a similar ambience. "Revolutionary," the art on the walls seems to tell us, belongs more properly to certain stylistic affinities with the Ecole de Paris. Only that white bust of a man, whose features on closer inspection can be construed as Asian, may give away the studio's regular inhabitants. But even the bust's presence is not without ambiguity, for it may well stand as a convenient model for a painter of Orientalist exotica ("orientalia," as Gee once said in disdain) (Brodsky 1979, 68). Given the strange conventionality of the interior, we cannot even tell if the unfinished paintings in the background belong to the Club's seated members, since each of their canvases is turned away from us and remains strategically hidden behind the monochrome of wood support panels. Gee himself is preoccupied by the one object decidedly non-Modern...<br />
<br />
--by Anthony W. Lee, excerpted from ''Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics, Culture, A City Lights Anthology''<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''Lee - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
<br />
City Lights Books,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer<br />
<br />
Lee,Anthony,W. - Writer<br />
<br />
[[Yun Gee and the Chinese Revolutionary Artists' Club | Prev. Document]] [[Yun Gee's Art | Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=At_150_Wetmore&diff=3895
At 150 Wetmore
2007-10-12T00:43:05Z
<p>Admin: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:chinatwn$chinese-club.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''The artistic '''activity''' in the photograph--Gee's intimate rapport with the Asian bust and the rapt attention of his colleagues--contribute to the [http://shapingsf.org/wiki/popup_orvid?.html tension] in the entire public image of the Chinese Revolutionary Artists' Club, between the explicitly Modernist ambitions in the paintings and the developing ethnic identification of its members. Two cultures have met, the photograph tells us, but it is entirely unclear if the meeting was '''productive.<br />
<br />
One other photograph of Gee and other Club members tells us a bit more, but not much. He is found amidst his fellow painters, modelling an impeccably clean white bust of a man. While the Club was collective in nature, the photograph tells us that Gee was often its center. The rest of the painters are ostensibly at work on their canvases, but he in fact remains their focus of attention. But it is an awkward kind of attention, which betrays a now-familiar underlying problematic. The seated painters have taken to westernized dress, their starched collars and neck ties donned even in the splattered environs of the Club's cramped studio. The standing Gee keeps to his distinctly Chinese smock, allowing the paint to coat but not strip away an outwardly ethnic identification. If the Club was indeed "Chinese" and "revolutionary," Gee was going to try to insist on what the combination of those terms at one time meant, or at least how it ought to be photographed. A revolutionary Chinese artists' club had to hold the contact of two generalized cultures, east and west, in some kind of awkward, explicit tension.<br />
<br />
Remove Gee and his friends, and 150 Wetmore Place takes on a decidedly different appearance. For the "Chinese" quality of the Club quickly fades and does not seem to remain or reside in the artworks themselves. The sketches and drawings attached to the walls are vaguely Cubistic in style and certainly Parisian in origin. Indeed, the still-lifes of tumblers and saucers seem more suited to a studio at the Bateau-Lavoir than one in Chinatown--this, remember, in 1926, when photographs of Parisian studios amply displayed a similar ambience. "Revolutionary," the art on the walls seems to tell us, belongs more properly to certain stylistic affinities with the Ecole de Paris. Only that white bust of a man, whose features on closer inspection can be construed as Asian, may give away the studio's regular inhabitants. But even the bust's presence is not without ambiguity, for it may well stand as a convenient model for a painter of Orientalist exotica ("orientalia," as Gee once said in disdain) (Brodsky 1979, 68). Given the strange conventionality of the interior, we cannot even tell if the unfinished paintings in the background belong to the Club's seated members, since each of their canvases is turned away from us and remains strategically hidden behind the monochrome of wood support panels. Gee himself is preoccupied by the one object decidedly non-Modern...<br />
<br />
--by Anthony W. Lee, excerpted from ''Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics, Culture, A City Lights Anthology''<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''Lee - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
<br />
City Lights Books,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer<br />
<br />
Lee,Anthony,W. - Writer<br />
<br />
[[Yun Gee and the Chinese Revolutionary Artists' Club | Prev. Document]] [[Yun Gee's Art | Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Yun_Gee_and_the_Chinese_Revolutionary_Artists%27_Club&diff=3894
Yun Gee and the Chinese Revolutionary Artists' Club
2007-10-12T00:42:30Z
<p>Admin: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:chinatwn$yun-gee-portrait.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Yun Gee, c. 1926'''<br />
<br />
We know very little about the activities of what was surely a remarkable artists' collective in San Francisco's Chinatown, the ambitiously named Chinese Revolutionary Artists' Club. The facts are scant. The Club was formed some time in 1926 and was devoted to "doing [modernist oil painting] that is essentially Chinese," as the San Francisco painter Otis Oldfield tried to explain. Its studio was located in a small, cramped room at [http://shapingsf.org/wiki/popup_orvid?.html 150 Wetmore] Place, on the western fringe of present-day Chinatown. Its initial membership was comprised entirely of young Chinese immigrant men, most of whom had taken to oils only a few years before, and as far as can be discerned, they took Chinatown's streets and several selected studio props--mostly objects from Chinatown's stores--as their primary subjects.<br />
<br />
Perhaps the Club's most important public event took place in late 1930 or early 1931, when it hosted a much-anticipated reception for the Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera. From what we can reconstruct, the reception was intended to be quite inclusive, since it was attended only in small part by the Club's members and in much larger part by Rivera's travelling entourage and doting guests. Judging by surviving accounts, the whole event must have bordered on the comic. The cramped quarters overflowed with unrecognized people; the food and drink ran out very quickly; and the young men had a difficult time maintaining decorum. Not only was the large Rivera physically uncomfortable in their tiny, square, lacquered stools ("he overflowed on all sides," as a guest happily recorded, which "must have cut him in two") but he was unable to communicate with his hosts, since none of them spoke Spanish, French, or Russian, his familiar tongues (Oldfield 1982, 144). To compensate, Rivera is said to have lectured in excited, demonstrative gestures, and he spoke sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in French, hoping that a familiar word or two would find a comprehending ear. He apparently listened patiently to the members' incomprehensible questions. And he concluded by pronouncing in lengthy and convoluted prose, as was his occasional wont, on the artistic and political implications of a mural practice, though none of the young men were likely to undertake anything so artistically ambitious.<br />
<br />
It is quite unclear how Rivera's grand visit affected the Club's members, if at all, but it is a fact that soon afterwards, they admitted their first and only female member. For its efforts at a new inclusiveness, the Club received a brief write-up in the ''San Francisco Examiner'', which praised the "boys" for their "bravery." This was accompanied by a declaration of the members' new determination to establish a "Chinese academy of art, where they can spread their theories of art to all Chinese students" (Gee n.d.). But the publicity and new resolve, perhaps initiated by the socially-minded Rivera, apparently came for naught. The Club disbanded sometime in mid-decade, during the city's darkest Depression years. In the late 1930s, some of its former members and fellow travellers continued to have individual but mostly modest impact on Chinatown's obscure artistic scene; and this consisted chiefly in encouraging a next generation of Asian-American painters. By the beginning of the 1940s, the Club was largely forgotten and very little of the painters' works survives. As far as we know, the young men themselves held rare, quite irregular exhibits during the Club's decade or so of existence, and only one among their small number, Yun Gee, ever went on to show his work with any kind of critical acclaim elsewhere. What happened to Mrs. Chan, the only female member, remains a mystery.<br />
<br />
This scant history, fragmentary and anecdotal as it is, would seem to argue for the Club's less than prolific (not to say occasionally comic) quality and provide a rather self-evident set of reasons for its relative art historical obscurity. Simply put, the Club does not seem to have left much of a mark on a larger artistic scene, either in the works they left behind or in the influence they had on others. Indeed, in the years since its quiet dissolution, it has remained important only as a footnote to readings of the more famous Gee (Brodsky 1979). And though he hardly merits more than a passing reference in histories of early San Francisco art, Gee can at least be identified against the backdrop of recognizable exhibitions and works. His more conventional career took him from the Club, to San Francisco's mainstream galleries, to Paris' famous Salons. He had his modest beginnings in a local, hardly noteworthy painting group, or so the history goes.<br />
<br />
Yet, we do a youthful Gee and the Club's other members an injustice if they are cast aside as just another of those Saturday afternoon painting groups; and we certainly normalize their ambitions if we only read them against the city's regular mill of professional exhibitions and criticism. They did, after all, comprise a ''Chinese'' painting collective and held some sort of vision about an Asian-American cultural life--visions that may not have accorded with the institutional requirements of the city's nascent dealer-critic system, visions that were surely rare and fraught with contradiction during a moment of explicit antagonism between insulated Chinese immigrants and their white counterparts, and between the collective nature of an ethnic cultural identification and the demands of an increasingly consumer-driven art marketplace.<br />
<br />
--by Anthony W. Lee, excerpted from ''Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics, Culture, A City Lights Anthology''<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''Lee - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
<br />
City Lights Books,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer<br />
<br />
Lee,Anthony,W. - Writer<br />
<br />
[[info on Chinese Rev. Art Club | Prev. Document]] [[At 150 Wetmore | Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=19th_Century_Medical_Self-Help&diff=3892
19th Century Medical Self-Help
2007-10-12T00:39:35Z
<p>Admin: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:chinatwn$chinese-medical-clinic-1890s.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Chinese Medical Clinic in Chinatown, c. 1890s'''<br />
<br />
Another aspect of the story of the Chinese as medical scapegoats in San Francisco is the effect of public health policy upon the Chinese community itself. Throughout the nineteenth century, city officials were reluctant to finance any health services for the Chinese population even though Chinatown was popularly viewed as "a laboratory of infection." Early Chinese immigrants realized the necessity of banding together and providing for their own health care needs. In the 1850's they first grouped together into associations based upon loyalty to dan (family associations) or place of origin (district associations). In the 1860's, the district associations federated into the Chung Wah Kung Saw, which later became known as the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, or the [[The Six Companies | Chinese Six Companies]]. During this period, each of the district associations maintained a small "hospital" in San Francisco for use by their aged or ailing members, a facility usually consisting of little more than a few bare rooms furnished with straw mats.[[info on Chinese Rev. Art Club | 55]] The existence of these hospitals was in direct violation of city health codes, but local officials allowed them to operate. In fact, during the leprosy scare of the 1870's, health officers ruled that lepers should be "debarred from hospital maintenance" at city expense and that "the Chinese companies should be compelled to maintain them and send them back to China."[[info on Chinese Rev. Art Club | 56]] Thus, from August, 1876, to October, 1878, known lepers were housed in the so-called Chinese "hospitals"; thereafter, health authorities ruled that all lepers were to be isolated in the Twenty-Sixth Street hospital.<br />
<br />
Not only were local authorities ambivalent about admitting Chinese patients to municipal facilities, but they also were hesitant about providing sanitary services within the Chinatown area. Dr. A. B. Stout, a prominent physician and member of the California Board of Health, testified before a congressional investigating committee in 1877 that "the city authorities undertake to clean the city in other parts, but the Chinese are left to take care of themselves and clean their own quarter at their own expense."[[info on Chinese Rev. Art Club | 57]]<br />
<br />
Whenever a major epidemic threatened San Francisco, however, health officials descended upon Chinatown with a vengeance. During the smallpox epidemic of 1876-1877, for instance, city health officer J. L. Meares bragged that not only had he ordered every house in Chinatown thoroughly fumigated, "but the whole of the Chinese quarter was put in a sanitary condition that it had not enjoyed for ten years."[[info on Chinese Rev. Art Club | 58]] Similar comments were made at the time of the bubonic plague in 1900-1901 when nearly every house in the district was disinfected and fumigated.<br />
<br />
In the nineteenth century medical care in Chinatown was largely provided by herbalists and pharmacies in the classic tradition of Chinese medicine. As late as 1900, no Chinese physicians appear to have been licensed to practice medicine in the state of California; in fact, not until 1908 was the Medical Department of the University of California in San Francisco to graduate a physician of Chinese origin.[[info on Chinese Rev. Art Club | 59]] Some Chinese of the merchant class did seek treatment from Caucasian physicians, usually for surgical care not available from Chinese practitioners.[http://shapingsf.org/wiki/chinatwn$footnotes.html |60] In the I880's a few church missions in Chinatown also began offering the services of white female physicians for pediatric and obstetrical care. Throughout the nineteenth century, however, the vast majority of Chinese were unwilling to consult Caucasian doctors because, as one historian has noted, "the language barriers, the higher fees, and strange medications and methods were too much to assimilate."[http://shapingsf.org/wiki/chinatwn$footnotes.html 61]<br />
<br />
The reluctance on the part of the Chinese to seek medical attention outside of Chinatown accounted in part for their low admission rate to the San Francisco City and County Hospital and to the Almshouse during the last century. An examination of the statistics on admissions to the city and county hospital for the years 1870-1897 reveals that less than .1 percent of the hospital inpatients were of Chinese origin, whereas the Chinese population in the city varied from 5 to 11 percent of the total population. Statistics on admissions to the Almshouse disclose an even lower admission rate: of 14,402 admissions from 1871 to 1886, only 14 cases were of Chinese origin.<br />
<br />
Obviously, the low admission rate of the Chinese to municipal facilities cannot be attributed entirely to reluctance to seek Western-style care. An 1881 article in the ''San Francisco Chronicle'', headlined "No Room for Chinese: They are Denied Admission to the County Hospital," referred to a resolution of the Board of Health, adopted several years earlier, that had essentially closed City and County Hospital to Chinese patients.[http://shapingsf.org/wiki/chinatwn$footnotes.html 62] The article pointed out that in the fall of 1881 the Chinese consul had petitioned the Board of Health on behalf of an ailing Chinese immigrant who desired to gain admission to the city and county facility. Fearing an influx of Chinese patients with chronic diseases, the board passed a resolution that all Chinese patients who thereafter requested care were to be assigned to a separate building on the Twenty-Sixth Street hospital lot.[http://shapingsf.org/wiki/chinatwn$footnotes.html 63] Apparently, this policy remained in effect throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century. A document dated 1899 noted that the City and County Hospital only opens its doors to a limited number of [Chinese] patients. The remainder of the patients are taken to the small, dismal Charnel-house established by the Chinese Companies, and known as the "Hall of Great Peace," or else to the Leper Asylum or Pest-House.[http://shapingsf.org/wiki/chinatwn$footnotes.html 64]<br />
<br />
Although the ban on Chinese patients at both the City and County Hospital and the Almshouse was common knowledge, city officials continued to claim that San Francisco opened its municipal facilities to the sick and poor of any nationality.[http://shapingsf.org/wiki/chinatwn$footnotes.html 65]<br />
<br />
Because of the difficulties inherent in obtaining care at municipal expense, the Chinese community sought from an early date to fund a well-equipped hospital within the Chinatown area. Dr. Stout, in his congressional testimony in 1877, mentioned that the Chinese desired very much to establish a general hospital and a smallpox hospital, similar to those built by the French and German communities. Reportedly, the Chinese were willing "to pay liberally and freely" to establish a hospital, with patient care to be provided by both white and Chinese physicians.[http://shapingsf.org/wiki/chinatwn$footnotes.html 66] (In order to secure approval from the Board of Supervisors for the erection of such a hospital, the Chinese community recognized that their Physicians would have to work in conjunction with state-licensed Caucasian physicians.)<br />
<br />
Nothing more is heard of any hospital plans until the early 1890's when land was purchased in the southern outskirts of San Francisco in the name of the Chinese consul general of San Francisco. Plans were drawn up for a hospital, and funds were collected both locally and from foreign sources. When construction of the hospital was about to begin, "city authorities forbade further proceedings on the ground that the promoters only intended to use objectionable Chinese systems of medical treatment."[http://shapingsf.org/wiki/chinatwn$footnotes.html 67] It can be surmised that the real objections were to the proposed location of the hospital outside the perimeter of Chinatown.<br />
<br />
In 1899, the community planned to rent a house in a "suitable locality" to be fitted up as a hospital and dispensary where only practitioners with American or European diplomas were to be allowed to visit the patients. The dispensary was to give free advice and medicine to indigent clinic patients; the hospital was to consist of twenty-five beds for use by both clinic and paying patients. The Chinese Hospital (Yan-Chai-i-yn) was incorporated under California law in March, 1899. At that time, twenty-one persons (including twelve Caucasians) pledged to become members of the hospital by payment of an annual subscription of $5. Except for the Chinese consul general, the officers of the hospital's first governing board were to be prominent members of the white community.[http://shapingsf.org/wiki/chinatwn$footnotes.html 68] This project, too, must have been shelved because no further trace of this hospital can be found.<br />
<br />
[[19th Century Medical Self-Help, Part II continued]]<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''California Historical Society,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
<br />
California Historical Society,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer<br />
<br />
Trauner,Joan,B. - Writer<br />
<br />
[[Chinese as Medical Scapegoats, 1870-1905 Prev. Document]] [[19th Century Medical Self-Help, Part II Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Women%27s_Liberation_Origins_and_Development_of_the_Movement&diff=3884
Women's Liberation Origins and Development of the Movement
2007-10-07T22:32:21Z
<p>Admin: 1 revision(s)</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:wimmin$women-on-shore-1909.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Interested women help bring in a beached ship, 1909.'''<br />
<br />
In 1968, as women's liberation groups were springing up across the country, Mimi Feingold founded San Francisco's first small group by gathering some women with connections to the antiwar organization ''the Resistance.'' In the Bay Area, as in the rest of the country, the founders of women's liberation were veteran activists from the civil rights movement and the New Left of the early 1960s. Feingold herself had participated in the Freedom Rides, the Congress for Racial Equality, and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), as well as the draft resistance movement.1<br />
<br />
Pam Allen, who became nationally known as the author of a pamphlet on consciousness-raising, joined this original group at its second meeting in September of 1968 she had just moved to San Francisco from New York, where she had been a founder and active member of the group New York Radical Women. She too had a history of involvement in the civil rights movement, with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She "brought to the group a political commitment to building a mass women's movement."2 In total, five of the original members of this first San Francisco group had been involved in the civil rights movement in the South.3 This group named itself [[Sudsofloppen: Consciousness-Raising and the Small Group as Free Space Sudsofloppen]].<br />
<br />
Sudsofloppen members possessed a radical left perspective on society. At the same time, however, their experiences in the male-dominated movements of the left had also given them a distrust of traditional forms of organizing. Allen wrote that, "Because many of us were ex-'movement' people we had tremendous hostility toward the concept of organizing women. . . . We were all well schooled in the inhumanity of the left movements, in their disregard for the needs of individuals."4 <br />
<br />
Such contradictions were felt by radical women across the country. Although women had been involved in the political movements of the 1960s from the beginning, their experiences had not been entirely positive. Young women had gained increased independence, organizing skills, and a radical understanding of society. But their treatment by radical men -- both in movement groups and in personal relationships -- contradicted their expectations of community and democracy in the movement and provided the impetus for women to begin to organize their own movement.5 The skills and networks with which they built the women's liberation movement were grounded in their political history on the left. Women's styles of organizing also responded to the oppression they had experienced in male-dominated movements by emphasizing egalitarian relationships and personal development.<br />
<br />
The women of Sudsofloppen's "driving need to extend our contact to other women who were thinking as we were" led them to call for a conference of women involved in women's liberation in the Bay Area, which took place in January, 1969.6 A second conference occurred in March, and these gatherings continued on a semi-regular basis throughout the year. The year 1969 also saw a wide range of women's liberation actions and activities in San Francisco. For example, on February 14, women in San Francisco staged a demonstration at the Bridal Fair exposition there, in conjunction with a similar protest in New York. They used tactics ranging from picketing and guerrilla theater to leafleting.7 In December, activists staged a teach-in on the oppression of women at San Francisco State.<br />
<br />
At the end of 1969, the participants in women's liberation in San Francisco defined their movement as: A women's organization which grew out of the radical student movement. . . . One year old in San Francisco. Predominantly young, white and middle class. An organization of the isolated and alienated women of the movement who rebelled against the stereotyped role they were expected to play. Many women's liberation groups throughout the area. Concentrate on small group involvement of women. . . .8 <br />
<br />
Women's liberation was identified as an "organization" rather than a movement, but this "organization" consisted of many small groups instead of a single unified structure, although the choice of terminology may also have reflected the beginnings of the city-wide umbrella organization known as San Francisco Women's Liberation (SFWL). By 1970, there were an estimated sixty-four small groups in the Bay Area.9<br />
<br />
On May 16 and 17 of that year, members of women's liberation in San Francisco came together for a "mass meeting" lasting a total of twelve and a half hours. The diversity of groups present was remarkable. Sixteen "small groups" (meaning primarily consciousness-raising groups) were represented, including Sudsofloppen, and eighteen action groups were present. Attendees included the consciousness-raising group Gallstones, the explicitly-leftist Young Socialist Alliance and Socialist Workshop, the SDS Women's Caucus, the Student Mobilization Caucus, Red Witch, and Gay Women's Liberation. More task-oriented groups included a Women's Center Committee, Small Group Workshop, Media Workshop, Free Women's Press, and Women's Street Theater. The result of this marathon meeting was a four-part organizational plan for SFWL. One step was the establishment of a newsletter -- the first issue was sent to 483 women and circulation increased to over 1200 by the end of 1970.<br />
<br />
SFWL remained essentially a coalition, with the real work of the movement being done in the action groups and consciousness-raising groups. This reliance on the small group persisted over time only with constant evaluation of its strengths and weaknesses. As early as October 1969, the Bay Area movement conceived the "group-in," which women attended with their small groups to talk about the small group as a movement organization. The series of group-ins held that year considered the needs filled by the small group, how political the small group is, and "is the small group a dead-end or is it a constantly growing organism?"10 The question of the tactical relevance of the small group -- whether the collectivist small group could be an effective organization for achieving political and social change -- was an important issue in the local women's liberation movement. Many women concluded that being out "in the streets" is the male version of political action, but if the personal is political, the small group is a political structure by virtue of its bringing women together, in a setting separate from men, to talk about (and redefine) the political.<br />
<br />
As women sought to expand their activities beyond consciousness-raising, the solution was not always to alter the role of the traditional small group. Instead, the women formed action and task-based collectives. Sudsofloppen wrote in 1969 that "we see the collective as an ideological base for action which would be planned in work projects, such as an abortion workshop."11 These additional groups generally remained small and maintained the collectivist structure, but they moved away from the tactic of consciousness-raising and emphasized more tangible goals.<br />
<br />
Instead of relying on large, centralized organizations, the women's liberation movement chose a structure consisting of a proliferation of small groups ranging from consciousness-raising groups to alternative press collectives, from action groups to alternative service providers, to meet the different tasks facing the movement. The women of the Bay Area feminist newspaper ''It Ain't Me, Babe'' asserted a vision of the women's liberation movement that declared their opposition to mass umbrella organizations: "We must keep in mind that we are a movement not an organization. Our movement can and will be composed of many action organizations differentiated by their political orientation -- rather than a single organization that attempts to represent everyone's politics."12 <br />
<br />
The women's liberation movement consisted of an eclectic mix of consciousness-raising groups, action organizations, and alternative institutions almost from its inception, and this diversity was itself a reflection of the movement's roots in the left and the counterculture. In fact, the greatest legacies of the women's liberation movement have been the success of consciousness-raising in transforming the expectations and lives of individual women and the development of a culture of feminist bookstores, women's studies programs, rape crisis centers, and similar institutions in San Francisco and across the country.<br />
<br />
''--Joanna Dyl ''<br />
<br />
1. Sara Evans, Personal Politics: ''The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left'' (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), p. 204.<br />
<br />
2. Alice Echols, ''Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975'' (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1989), pp. 73-74; Pamela Allen, ''Free Space: A Perspective on the Small Group in Women's Liberation'' (Albany, CA: Women's Liberation Basement Press, 1970), p. 1.<br />
<br />
3. Pam Allen, personal interview by Deborah A. Gerson, June 16, 1994.<br />
<br />
4. Allen, ''Free Space'', p. 4.<br />
<br />
5. Evans, ''Personal Politics''.<br />
<br />
6. Allen, ''Free Space,'' p. 8.<br />
<br />
7. Judith Hole and Ellen Levine, ''Rebirth of Feminism'' (New York: Quadrangle, 1971), pp. 128-129, 410; Celestine Ware, ''Woman Power: The Movement for Women's Liberation'' (New York: Tower, 1970), p. 48.<br />
<br />
8. SPAZM, December 18, 1969.<br />
<br />
9. Deborah Goleman Wolf, ''The Lesbian Community'' (Berkeley: University of California, 1979), p. 66.<br />
<br />
10. SPAZM, October 1, 1969.<br />
<br />
11. SPAZM, December 7, 1969.<br />
<br />
12. "The Women's Movement," ''It Ain't Me, Babe'', March 15, 1970, p. 2.<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''San Francisco Public Library,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
<br />
Dyl,Joanna - Writer<br />
<br />
[[Sudsofloppen: Consciousness-Raising and the Small Group as Free Space |Prev. Document]] [[Godmother of SexEd: Maggi Rubenstein |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Great_Expectations:_The_Women%27s_Action_Coalition&diff=3882
Great Expectations: The Women's Action Coalition
2007-10-07T22:32:19Z
<p>Admin: 1 revision(s)</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Was the Women's Action '''<br />
<br />
Coalition a victim of its<br />
<br />
own success?<br />
<br />
Introduction<br />
<br />
Larger than anyone had any right to expect, seemingly indomitable, and uproariously funny, the San Francisco Women's Action Coalition sprung from the foam fully formed in August 1992. Inspired by the success of ACT UP's bold and creative form of direct action and echoing the countercultural groups of the '60s and early '70s, WAC promised to launch a visible and remarkable resistance to the erosion of women's rights and to an ambivalence about feminism that had reached epidemic proportions. It was to be one of the first all-embracing direct-action feminist groups to come along in decades.<br />
<br />
Nearly 500 women were drawn to that promise, cramming into Southern Exposure Gallery for WAC's inaugural meeting after a glowing SF Weekly cover story described the nascent local group -- six women sharing tea and cookies and radical notions of equality at an apartment in the Haight -- and the New York WAC group that inspired San Francisco WAC and chapters throughout the country. That very week the group began its marathon run of cranking out action after media-drenched action -- street theater, picket lines, fax zaps, letter-writing campaigns, marches, rallies, guerrilla postering, spray-painting, abortion clinic defense. The breakneck pace seemed impossible to maintain for the long haul.<br />
<br />
Indeed, it was. WAC cruised on the endorphin rush of its visible and remarkable successes for more than a year -- helping to defeat Gov. Pete Wilson's crusade to cut Aid to Families with Dependent Children, almost singlehandedly saving San Francisco's Rape Treatment Center from the budget axe, and bringing dozens of women's issues into the public eye. Then the group started feeling the burn. Numbers started to drop off. What had been a steady group of 200 and a phone tree of perhaps 100 more fell to 50, total. Meetings moved from the spacious Women's Building auditorium to the tiny Build gallery. In July 1994 the group acquired a small office in a space shared by other activist groups -- and lost it just a few months ago when it was unable to make rent.<br />
<br />
'''Can we talk? '''<br />
<br />
I'm the first to arrive at a Tuesday night meeting held this winter at Julie Willing's Castro District apartment. Tall and thin, with jet-black hair and porcelain-pale skin, Willing was one of the de facto leaders in the early days of WAC. At many meetings she would serve as facilitator, a role that was equal parts referee, coach, and party host when the group numbered more than 200. Often accompanied by her young daughter, she somehow managed to maintain control of meetings that often veered toward chaos.<br />
<br />
Tonight she exudes that same sense of control -- tinged by a suspicion deeply rooted in WAC's love-hate relationship with the media. As a facilitator she would ask at the beginning of each meeting if there were any members of the working press or the FBI in the room, and if so, would they please identify themselves? A loaded pause would follow as 200 heads turned expectantly, searching for infiltrators. And if one slowly rose from the masses, as would occasionally happen, especially in the group's infancy, that person would usually be told to leave.<br />
<br />
As we wait for the other members of the group to arrive, Willing works on the letter; I flip through the WAC archives: two meaty volumes of gushingly positive press clippings.<br />
<br />
They're a shocking reminder of what WAC accomplished in a few short months. For its first action, on Aug. 8, 1992, WAC crashed the American Bar Association's convention downtown, demanding that the group support abortion rights and include a national lesbian and gay lawyers' group in their official roster of organizations. The ABA did both. On Sept. 12 WAC staged a demonstration on the one-year anniversary of the navy's Tailhook sexual-harassment scandal to force the navy to officially punish all the perpetrators involved. After nearly two years of hedging it did. And Oct. 8, 30 days before the 1992 presidential election, pink-slip-clad WAC women stood outside a Republican fund-raiser at Bimbo's 365 Club in North Beach, handing out paper pink slips to give the GOP its notice for failing to meet the needs of women. Garnering more press than perhaps any other WAC demonstration, that action established the group as a raucous new voice on the feminist scene.<br />
<br />
But that, as they say, was then. This is now: one by one the three other regular WAC-meeting attendees arrive, letting themselves in and going into the kitchen to pour themselves drinks -stiff drinks. Lisa Reagul, 27, a recent UC Santa Cruz grad, and Rebecca Shuman, a 25-year-old ACT UP-San Francisco veteran, are two of the newer members of the group. Karyn Gerred, the third, has been in WAC from day one, a gutsy presence at almost all the meetings and actions. In many of the archival photos, Gerred, now 29, is shown being dragged off by the police in handcuffs, most notably after infiltrating the Bimbo's reception, where she stripped down to her pink slip, stood on a table, and clutched Men Grant, another WAC diehard, in a steamy embrace. She laughs as she says she bears the title of most arrests on behalf of the group.<br />
<br />
Neither she nor the others seem to want to revisit the past, however, even -- perhaps especially -- to consider what might have gone wrong. When I ask the group how they got to this juncture, if there were any turning points they could recall, any decisive moments, the women's eyes wander from the text-filled computer screen to the window to their watches.<br />
<br />
It's really hard when you're left with a small amount of people to try to figure out why people don't come anymore, Gerred says simply, "leaning on the door frame cupping a glass of scotch in one hand and a smoldering cigarette in the other." She shrugs. "You just keep on because you know you want to do it."<br />
<br />
As for why others don't seem to want to do it anymore, no one seems certain. There would be a few people who would do it, then other people would come in and take their places, Reagul says. Then people stopped taking their places. It was just high burnout.<br />
<br />
Shuman contends that the group's decline has less to do with the group itself than with the fickle media and the passing political moment. There was a period when people were angry and thought they could make a difference through activism, she says. And there was some minimal coverage of it. But really, the kinds of changes we've all been working for are serious structural changes. The media has never covered those structural changes.<br />
<br />
Willing is not even interested in venturing a theory. She seems impatient to get on with the meeting. I don't think about it at all, actually," she says. "I just think about what we're trying to do next.<br />
<br />
Everyone tonight seems to agree: this is the Women's Action Coalition. Action -- not analysis -- was how WAC built its well-deserved reputation of being, at least temporarily, a nearly ubiquitous feminist presence. Armed with a messianic mission statement (We are witnesses to the current economic, cultural, and political pressures that limit women's lives ...), a menacing motto (WAC Is Watching. We Will Take Action), and a striking logo (a wide-open eye), WAC thought big from the start. It wanted to be a kind of Big Sister looming over the bedrooms and the legislatures of America, fighting sexism on every front. Of course, doing so would demand Herculean effort -- and the sidestepping of more theoretical, longer-term concerns.<br />
<br />
WAC's ongoing commitment to this strategy ensures that the group, despite its depleted numbers, continues to get work done: One afternoon a year ago, along with the Coalition on Homelessness, it hijacked the seats of the Board of Supervisors, dressing up as each of the supes and symbolically passing 12 progressive taxes to pay for city services (I was Annemarie Conroy, Gerred says proudly. You know, angry woman in business suit drag). In the spring of 1995 the group unfurled a banner from the top of the building that houses the San Francisco AIDS Foundation demanding that the organization maintain its drug-treatment services for women. WAC has continued to do lots of late-night guerrilla postering, letter writing, and fax zapping.<br />
<br />
But none of these demonstrations have earned the group the sort of media attention earlier WAC actions did -- and media coverage was, at least initially, WAC's raison dtre. Good coverage, that is. Bad coverage, such as a July 1993 ''Village Voice'' article titled WAC Attacks Itself, need not apply. In that piece the New York group came across as disorganized and defensive bordering on paranoid. It was the final nail in the coffin for that group: WAC New York, which Just three years ago boasted more than 2,000 members, has totally disbanded.<br />
<br />
To its credit, San Francisco WAC shows no sign of dissolving, but the women tonight aren't brimming with ideas on how to rebuild, either. The prevailing sentiment is fatalism -- We're old hat, Gerred sums up dryly -- but as always, the work needs to get done.<br />
<br />
'''Race matters '''<br />
<br />
It was an ugly incident, Mary Newson, 25, remembers over coffee at a Mission District cafe where we met on a recent evening. Newson was active not only in WAC from the start but in the Women of Color Caucus, a separate committee, closed to white women, that met regularly to talk about race issues that came up in general meetings and to formulate its own action proposals. While the caucus didn't formulate the proposal that sparked the November 1992 blowout, it was well acquainted with the contentious issues that were raised.<br />
<br />
What happened was this: still giddy with the successes of the WAC actions of the summer, a group of women met to draw up plans for a huge march to celebrate International Women's Day in March 1993. The groups made up of both white women and women of color, imagined an action that would include an outpouring of women in large numbers and that would emphasize coalition and unity among women, according to a flyer the committee printed out for the general WAC membership. The march would be called One Hundred Million Missing Women and would generate content from the foundational theme of resistance to the war against women globally.<br />
<br />
Twenty-five years ago the idea to hold a simple, old-fashioned march for women's rights would have been considered par for the feminist course, but for WAC it was a highly ambitious proposal, for it was the first time the group would take the offensive. Indeed, it turned out to be not so simple at all. When the committee presented its ideas at the general meeting -- which included addressing issues like the killing of female infants in China and genital mutilation in other countries -- it came under attack for cultural insensitivity and racism. The evening degenerated into a screaming match between women who believed feminism transcended cultural and racial differences and women who believed that as first-world women they could only speak for themselves. Many women sat in stunned silence as the very premise of WAC, an open alliance of all women, was undermined. Dozens never came back.<br />
<br />
To Newson, the incident was part of a long-delayed process of cultural and racial education. A lot of stuff was being brought to the table, she says, and I think that's one of the only ways that it's going to be brought to the table. Indeed, one could argue that the confrontation would not have been so dramatic had some of the issues been dealt with earlier. At the very first meeting at Southern Exposure, several women of color drew the predominantly white group's attention to its overwhelming whiteness.<br />
<br />
It's a bind, Newson continues. You're in the bind that you're in this women's group that's predominantly white.... You don't want to have to educate white women -- but you're going to have to anyway. In subsequent meetings there was talk of building coalitions with groups made up of women of color to increase WAC's diversity, but that concern fell down WAC's priority list as the group got caught up in its own cyclone of spinning out action after action.<br />
<br />
While the Women of Color Caucus had continued to discuss diversity issues and build coalitionsmost notably with Asian Immigrant Women Advocates, a group of women garment workers fighting for equitable pay in the sweatshop-ridden garment industrybigger issues rarely got discussed in the general meetings. Moreover, the issues that did get talked about were not hammered out by consensus, the torturously egalitarian method of choice for many feminist groups of the '70s and antinuclear groups of the '80s. Instead, plowing full speed ahead, WAC operated by majority rules, so that with each vote there was a minority that got crushed and a disagreement that did not get resolved.<br />
<br />
That strategy, according to Newson, had a hidden cost. If you're relying solely on direct action and not on learning from other strategies from the past or talking in depth about different issues, I guess you kind of lose your context in a way, she says. You're in it, you're there, you're reacting, but you're kind of popping from action to action to action, and that wears on you.<br />
<br />
Newson's observation seems to hang significantly in the air. How long will it last? The four women of today's WAC seem to believe that as long as they continue to struggle along, someday the rising political waters will lift their boat. No doubt those waters will rise again, perhaps buoying WAC to future fame. But when those waters recede, as they surely will, chances are the outcome for WAC won't be any different -- unless the group resolves, or at least discusses, some of its long-simmering conflicts over race, class, process, and the growing influence of the mass media on activism. Otherwise, like countless groups that came before it, WAC will find itself celebrating its brilliantly brief career, pondering its unrealized potential, and wondering what went wrong -- again.<br />
<br />
''--Shea Dean''<br />
<br />
[http://shapingsf.org/wiki/./VIDEOS/WOMACTCO.AVI WAC &Demo]<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''Dean,Shea - Writer ''<br />
<br />
Sullivan,Elizabeth - Writer<br />
<br />
[[Carol Seajay, Old Wives Tales and the Feminist Bookstore Network |Prev. Document]] [[Maestrapeace on the Women's Building |Next Document]]</div>
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A Woman's View 19th Century San Francisco Women Photographers
2007-10-07T22:32:14Z
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<div>[[Image:wimmin$unknown-woman-1870.jpg]]<br />
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'''Carte-de-visite portrait (enameled card patent) of an unidentified woman, San Francisco, c. 1869-1870, by Julia A. French.'''<br />
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In 1839 very little was happening in Yerba Buena, an unassuming Mexican town on the San Francisco Bay. It was mainly populated by cows, with a few ranchers, a grubby settlement of Yankee sailors and some unfortunate Ohlone Indians toiling away and dying off at the decrepit Mission Dolores. This same year, halfway across the globe, a most stunning discovery was announced. Frenchman Louis Daguerre had perfected his technique of combining a lethal concoction of silver nitrate and affixing it to copper plates to capture images. He named his invention the daguerreotype, the world's first form of photography.<br />
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This discovery was destined to have a profound effect on the lives of women living in the foggy, sandy hamlet soon to be re-named San Francisco. Photography became an emancipator of women on the western frontier -- an exciting and viable alternative to the few work roles that were socially acceptable for the so-called weaker sex.<br />
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Women were involved with photography in SF almost since the first introduction of daguerreotypes, during the Gold Rush. They became an integral part of the trade, working as studio photographers, traveling photographers, proprietors, gallery owners, retouchers, colorists, photo-mounters, and near the end of the century they joined the swelling ranks of amateur art photographers. From 1850 to 1900 there were 77 working female photographers and 205 women earning a living in photography-related trades. An additional 52 women are documented as amateur or fine art photographers.<br />
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Women both shaped and were shaped by the advent of photography in 19th century San Francisco. The photographers described here are remarkable for their achievements, particularly so in light of the chauvinistic, male-dominated city in which they worked and lived. The women include the earliest pioneer daguerreotypist, an experimental X-ray photographer, a Chinese photographer in a divided city.<br />
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'''Pioneer Daguerreotypists '''<br />
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1850: The Gold Rush was in full swing and wild-eyed adventurers had transformed San Francisco from sleepy village, to a lawless, chaotic city of almost 35,000 dwellers. It was a city of tents, mud, and hastily slapped together wooden buildings teeming with immigrants, hope, greed, money and men. There were very few women and even fewer respectable ladies. In the midst of this turbulence, Mrs. Julia Shannon, the first known female photographer in all of California, made her appearance advertising in the January, 1850 issue of ''San'' ''Francisco Alta'': <br />
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'''"Notice -- Daguerreotypes taken by a Lady. -- Those wishing to have a good likeness are informed that they can have them taken in a very superior manner, and by a real live lady too, in Clay street, opposite the St. Francis Hotel, at a very moderate charge. Give her a call, gents." '''<br />
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Alongside the swarms of miners hibernating in SF for the winter, Julia Shannon joined the tiny ranks of San Francisco daguerreotypists, arriving just one year after the first male photographer Richard Carr. On his arrival in 1849 Richard recorded in his diary the exorbitant prices for common goods -- boots for $16, blankets for $40, and also noted, "Yankee freedom is such that you can't get treated with civility at any price."<br />
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It seems that Julia was a jack of many trades: in later advertisements, along with daguerreotypy she also offered midwifery services. She was fairly successful and well off until the disastrous May 1851 fire that incinerated one-quarter of the town, burnt down the two houses (valued together at $7,000) she owned on Sacramento Street. Unfortunately, this is almost all that is known about Julia, as there is no further record of her after 1852, and none of her daguerreotypes are known to have survived.<br />
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It is possible that Julia was not the first woman photographer in San Francisco, since many photographers never advertised in newspapers, and only five percent of all known daguerreotype images identify the daguerreian. Also, many women worked in the family photography studio without ever receiving mention in advertisements or business directories.<br />
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In order to really appreciate what an accomplishment it was for Julia to have her own Daguerreian studio, its important to understand this early form of photography. For the first 50 years, photography was not the point and click affair that it can be today. It was a combination of science and art, two fields that were particularly unwelcoming towards women. It was difficult for anyone to master the early forms of photography: cameras were bulky and cumbersome; processing formulas were complex, dirty and exacting. Wet-plate negatives had to be coated with emulsion immediately before exposure and then developed directly afterwards in potentially lethal mercury solutions. It was hard-core, gritty work. Women in San Francisco were mastering photography in a struggle to make their own living at a time when corsets were still required clothing, years before the end of slavery, long before cars were invented and a full 70 years before women were allowed to vote.<br />
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There was very little artistic experimentation occurring in the West -- in fact, amateur photographs were practically non-existent until the late 1880s. Photography was too expensive, too dirty, and too toxic to be a hobby: not many people were inclined to fiddle around with it in the name of fun. Most early San Francisco photography was straightforward, professional studio portraiture work. Studio space, in fact space in any building, was extremely scarce, and the early photographers needed large windows with bright sun exposure. Studio work was generally between the hours of 10am to 3pm, to take advantage of the best natural light. In many respects the portraits themselves are interchangeable. Daguerreotypes are notable for their uniformity: the sitter is almost always posed against a light background, from the waist up, gazing straight ahead. Yet each daguerreotype is a unique image. Unlike modern photography, which prints a positive picture from a negative, Daguerreotypy used no negative; the plate exposed in the camera is also the finished product.<br />
<br />
Average exposures lasted 30 seconds. The sitter was admonished to stay absolutely motionless with his/her head squeezed into a head clamp (there are very few spontaneous grins in old photographs). If successful, the resulting image was protected by a layer of glass, and enclosed in a frame or velvet-lined leather case that opened and closed like a book. Holding a daguerreotype is the only way to truly appreciate the minute detail and mirror-like quality, and by tilting it to the side you can see the image laterally reverse from negative to positive. It was often referred to as the "mirror with a memory."<br />
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From the beginning, this new phenomenon had broad appeal among the working class and the wealthy. For the first time ever, even the poor were able to possess a likeness of themselves. As Susan Sontag noted, photography implied the capture of the largest possible number of subjects. Painting never had so imperial a scope.<br />
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Only one other woman besides Julia Shannon was listed in the 1850s, an unnamed photo colorist working for Freddy Coombs, (an early daguerreian turned eccentric, who became the social rival of the equally flamboyant Emperor Norton). She is mentioned in a November, 1850 advertisement in the ''Daily Herald'': <br />
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'''"F. Coombs, Daguerrean, at Wells & Co.s new building, corner of Clay and Montgomery streets, has the pleasure to announce that he has secured an additional coloring Artist-- a young lady who has presided over the finishing department of the first Gallery of Boston several years. He hopes in the future to accommodate every applicant with a Picture which will bear comparison with the choicest..." '''<br />
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There were precious few ladies in the early years of San Francisco, clearly the presence of a woman photographer was a novelty. Women who worked were considered brazen and remarkable by some and completely reprehensible by others. Only a handful of women photographers were known to have worked in the entire state during the 1850s, but San Francisco, until well into the next century, was the [[Women's Photography After the Gold Rush hub of photographic activity]] in California.<br />
<br />
''by Mary Brown, 1997''<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''Palmquist - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
<br />
Brown,Mary - Writer<br />
<br />
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WOMEN IN S.F. IN 1851
2007-10-07T22:32:12Z
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<div>[[Image:wimmin$gold-rush-woman.jpg]]<br />
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A woman from San Francisco during the Gold Rush.<br />
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When I first arrived here, there were only ten or twelve French women in San Francisco, but quite a number of American women had been here for some time, and were living in attractive houses with a certain amount of comfort and even luxury. They all had come from New York, New Orleans, Washington, or Philadelphia and had the stiff carriage typical of women in those cities. Men would look hopefully at them in the streets, at least men who had just come to California, but they much preferred the French women, who had the charm of novelty. Americans were irresistibly attracted by their graceful walk, their supple and easy bearing, and charming freedom of manner, qualities, after all, only to be found in France; and they trooped after a French woman whenever she put her nose out of doors, as if they could never see enough of her.<br />
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If the poor fellows had known what these women had been in Paris, how one could pick them up on the boulevards and have them for almost nothing, they might not have been so free with their offers of $500 or $600 a night. A little knowledge might have cooled them down a bit. But I'm sure the women were flattered by so much attention. Some of the first in the field made enough in a month to go home to France and live on their incomes; but many were not so lucky, and one still meets a few who have had a bad time and who are no better off financially than the day they stepped ashore. No doubt, they were blind to their own wrinkles and faded skins, and were too confident in their ability to deceive Americans regarding the dates on their birth certificates.<br />
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Many ships have reached San Francisco during the past three or four months, and the number of women in town has greatly increased, but a woman is still sought after and earns a lot of money. Nearly all the saloons and gambling-houses employ French women. They lean on the bars, talking and laughing with the men, or sit at the card tables and attract players. Some of them walk about with trays of cigars hanging in front of them; others caterwaul for hours beside pianos, imagining they are singing like Madame Stoltz. Occasionally, you find one who hides her real business and pretends to be a dressmaker or a milliner; but most of them are quite shameless, often scrawling their names and reception-hours in big letters on their doors.<br />
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There is a certain Madame Cassini who runs a collar shop and claims to be able to predict the past, present, and future and anything else you like.<br />
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All in all, the women of easy virtue here earn a tremendous amount of money. This is approximately the tariff. To sit with you near the bar or at a card table, a girl charges one ounce ($16) an evening. She has to do nothing save honor the table with her presence. This holds true for the girls selling cigars, when they sit with you. Remember they only work in the gambling-halls in the evening. They have their days to themselves and can then receive all the clients who had no chance during the night. Of course, they often must buy new dresses, and dresses are very expensive out here.<br />
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For anything more you have to pay a fabulous amount. Nearly all these women at home were street-walkers of the cheapest sort. But out here, for only a few minutes, they ask a hundred times as much as they were used to getting in Paris. A whole night costs from $200 to $400.<br />
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You may find this incredible. Yet some women are quoted at even higher prices. I may add that the saloons and gambling-houses that keep women are always crowded and are sure to succeed.<br />
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The famous beauties of San Francisco today are Marguet, Hlne, Marie, Arthmise, Lucy, Emilie, Madame Mauger, Lucienne, Madame Weston, Elonore, Madame St. Amand, Madame Meyer, Maria, Angle, and others whose names I have forgotten.<br />
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There are also some honest women in San Francisco, but not very many.<br />
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--''From Albert Benard de Russailh's ''Last Adventure<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''Gaar Collection,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
<br />
de Russailh,Albert,Benard - Writer<br />
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[[Men : Women in Early San Francisco |Prev. Document]] [[Good Vibrations: Center of Pleasure Activism |Next Document]]</div>
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Women and Performing Arts
2007-10-07T22:32:10Z
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<div>[[Image:wimmin$fox-theater-1929.jpg]]<br />
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'''Women posing as construction workers for publicity shot of rebuilt [[Aerial midtown 1920s Fox Theatre]], 1929.'''<br />
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''''''<br />
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== Photograph of Lotta Mora, a nineteenth century singer. Photograph of women posing as construction workers for a publicity shoot in 1929. ==<br />
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[[Image:wimmin$lotta-mora.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Lotta Mora, 19th century singer'''<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''San Francisco Public Library,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
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Gaar Collection,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer<br />
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WOMEN CLAIM THE VOTE IN CALIFORNIA
2007-10-07T22:32:07Z
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<div>[[Image:wimmin$suffragettes.jpg]]<br />
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'''1896 meeting of Suffragist leaders: standing (l to r) Ida Husted Harper, Selena Solomons, Carrie Chapman Catt, Anne Bidwell, (seated) Lucy Anthony, Dr. Anna H. Shaw, Susan B. Anthony, Ellen Clark Sargent, and Mary Hay.'''<br />
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American women gained their right to vote in 1920. But in California, women had already won the right to vote in 1911, nearly a decade earlier.<br />
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The 1896 and 1911 suffrage campaigns demonstrated the mature political savvy women had acquired. Both campaigns drew help from suffragists all over America, but the assistance to the 1911 effort was formidable. Women remembered who defeated them in 1896.<br />
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Out of all the California counties, two killed the suffrage attempt in 1896--San Francisco and Alameda. The Liquor Dealers League, really the producers, proprietors and patrons of drink, defeated suffrage. Between 1896 and 1906, the movement languished in California as across America. But, after the earthquake in 1906, a suffrage convention of considerable size convened in San Francisco. The fight was on. The strategy would aim hard at the state's small towns and Southern California. Aided by the automobile and telephone, north and south suffragists merged to form an impressive campaign machine. The work was intense and highly individual. Church to church, school to school, club to club, door to door, person to person; all received handbills and newspaper articles about the suffrage movement. Little towns where nobody ever saw a suffragist learned about women's rights and the importance of the right to vote. The College Equal Suffrage League staged unique publicity events, often using their "Blue Liner," a special touring car.<br />
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The night before the election, the famed Madame Nordica, in town for ground-breaking for the Panama-Pacific Exposition, unexpectedly appeared in Union Square. She entreated all to give women liberty--the vote. Nordica closed by singing "The Star Spangled Banner" to the cheers of the assembled crowd.<br />
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The next day, October 10, 1911, suffragist precinct workers geared for fraud and mayhem at the ballot boxes in San Francisco and Alameda counties. An impressive corps of ballot box watchers, 1,066 men and women, scrutinized every voting poll in San Francisco. Watchers tallied at least 3,000 fraudulent ballots. The day after the election, City newspapers declared the California women's franchise vote dead. As anticipated, S.F. county voted 35,471 No; 21,912 Yes. Alameda voted 7,818 No; 6,075 Yes. But suffrage workers smiled when the other votes started to roll in. Slowly they came, as they had been sought. The small towns and valleys delivered the victorious votes that returned a majority of 3,587. In 1911, California women joined the franchised women of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Washington. In 1912, Oregon, Kansas and Arizona women won their vote. West coast women claimed their franchise. The potential power of that vote did not go unnoticed.<br />
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In those nine Western states resided six and one-half million women voters. That translated into 45 electoral votes. In 1916, Alice Paul, Chair of the Washington, D.C. Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, created the National Women's Party (NWP), a political party with only one agenda--the passage of the Susan B. Anthony 19th Amendment. NWP boasted 50,000 members, and raised three-quarters of a million dollars. Masterly and persistently, Paul executed her resolve, sending NWP members to be the first women in history to picket the White House. Carrie Chapman Catt, head of the National Association, engineered an incredibly complex and effective machine throughout the United States. Paul used "the young are at the gates" confrontational methods while Catt brokered adroitly in rooms dominated by either tea or cigars. Because of both drives, President Woodrow Wilson finally surrendered his support on behalf of the women's suffrage cause.<br />
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After Congress passed the proposal on June 4,1919, each state had to ratify the amendment. Some state legislatures offered continued resistance, This was not the case in California. On Nov. 1, 1919, Governor William D. Stephens called a special session of the legislature to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. Before the vote more than one-hundred members of the state suffrage association hosted a luncheon honoring the entire legislature, the governor and other executives. California ratified the Susan B. Anthony Amendment with little contention.<br />
<br />
The hour of the woman had arrived.<br />
<br />
© 1995 Mae Silver<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
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''California Historical Society,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
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Silver,Mae - Writer<br />
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California Historical Society,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer<br />
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[[1894 Midwinter Fair: WOMEN ARTISTS, an appreciation |Prev. Document]] [[REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS RANT |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Sudsofloppen:_Consciousness-Raising_and_the_Small_Group_as_Free_Space&diff=3864
Sudsofloppen: Consciousness-Raising and the Small Group as Free Space
2007-10-07T22:32:04Z
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<div>[[Image:wimmin$old-wives-tales-1979.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Early days at Old Wives Tales, c. 1979'''<br />
<br />
Wary of the factional struggles engulfing the New Left in the late 1960s, the women of Sudsofloppen chose a "nonsensical" name because "no notion of who or what we were could be derived from the name separate from the work and ideas we produced."1 The conference called in January 1969 by Sudsofloppen facilitated communication between women's liberation groups in the Bay Area, but it also led to tension within Sudsofloppen over how their group should relate to the larger movement. The women undertook a systematic effort to clarify the function and needs of the group, a task which culminated in the writing of the Sudsofloppen Paper in April.<br />
<br />
The women committed to offering each other a "free space" for a few hours each week and characterized the group "as a place in which to think: to think about our lives, our society and our potential for being creative individuals and for building a women's movement."2 Essentially, Sudsofloppen defined itself as a consciousness-raising group devoted to sharing and analyzing the experiences of its members and building feminist theory from that analysis. The group proceeded to develop guidelines and structures for a model of consciousness-raising. Just as the small group became the definitive organization of women's liberation, consciousness-raising was the best known of its innovations. The process touched people across the country and drew a diversity of women into the movement.<br />
<br />
In her essay ''Free Space'', Pam Allen of Sudsofloppen identified four processes for developing a theory from personal experience: opening up, sharing, analyzing, and abstracting. She wrote that "the intention here is to arrive at an understanding of the social conditions of women by pooling descriptions of the forms oppression has taken in each individual's life." The close linkage of theory and experience also served to connect the liberation of the individual with the liberation of the society, the personal with the political. Allen referred to the merging of the personal and the political, concluding that "personal liberation will happen simultaneously with the changing of society, not independently."3 The group as a whole reached similar conclusions in the Sudsofloppen Paper:<br />
<br />
The revolution with which the group is related is the revolution that is happening in the lives of the members of the group. The basic changes that are occurring [sic] in self-respect and self-conception are the most revolutionary changes that women can go through.4 <br />
<br />
In Sudsofloppen, the women limited the function of the group by declaring that it was not an action organization, but they also saw themselves as having a responsibility to build a political movement through involvement in other women's liberation activities. The members, most of whom had long-standing connections to various left movements, recognized the political implications of the personal changes they were undergoing:<br />
<br />
This group has had a radicalizing effect on us. Now we understand in our gut something we used to give only lip service to: that there is no personal solution to being a woman in this society. We have realized that if we do not work to change the society it will in the end destroy us. . . . And so the group becomes an essential unit in our fight to create alternatives.5 <br />
<br />
Small groups such as Sudsofloppen represented the majority of the movement institutions created to provide women with a vehicle for personal and political growth. The movement in San Francisco reflected the struggles of Sudsofloppen and other groups to reconcile the movement and the group, political organizing vs. free space.<br />
<br />
Pam Allen and the women of Sudsofloppen were exceedingly aware of the organizational issues underlying their chosen group structure. They clearly delineated the role the group would play in their lives and in their participation in the movement, and they did not attempt to make the small group fulfill a function, such as large-scale political action, for which it was unsuited. Although Sudsofloppen was part of a larger movement with broad, revolutionary goals, its members believed that "the small group is neither an action-oriented political group in and of itself nor is it an alternative family unit. Rather, this is where ideology can develop."6<br />
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1. Pamela Allen, Free Space: A Perspective on the Small Group in Women's Liberation (Albany, CA: Women's Liberation Basement Press, 1970), p. 9.<br />
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2. Allen, Free Space, pp. 1, 7-10.<br />
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3. Allen, Free Space, p. 7.<br />
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4. Sudsofloppen, "The Sudsofloppen Paper," Appendix. Free Space: A Perspective on the Small Group in Women's Liberation, p. 47.<br />
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5. Sudsofloppen, "The Sudsofloppen Paper," p. 45.<br />
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6. Allen, Free Space, p. 13.<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
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[[Chinese Immigrant Teaches Herself Photography |Prev. Document]] [[Women's Liberation Origins and Development of the Movement |Next Document]]</div>
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A San Francisco Matron
2007-10-07T22:31:59Z
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<div>[[Image:wimmin$mabel-marshall-1941.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''A Valentine's portrait of Mabel Marshall for her husband in 1941.'''<br />
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''My mother was born Mabel Melody. Her last name was Melody. Her parents were Irish. They were both born in the U.S. in Boston. She was born in San Francisco, April 2, 1879. She grew up in the Potrero where many Irish had settled. She married my father who was from Liverpool, England. He was 15 years old when he came to U.S. His father came a year or more earlier and became a citizen which allowed my father to become a citizen also. They married in 1902. At that time he was working at the Emporium as an electrician. My mother had graduated from Polytechnic High School and was working at the Bush Street telephone office as a supervisor. She quit when she married and they had a flat on Steiner Street where they lived during the earthquake. My grandfather Marshall was a tea taster for the Great American Tea Co. Later he had his own grocery store. My grandfather Melody was an Engineer on the Santa Fe Railroad. After the earthquake my family moved to a flat on Dolores Street. In 1916 when I was 9 months old we moved to 1224-l6th Avenue. a two-story six-room house which we rented. In 1924 we moved and bought 1232-16th Avenue, which is the picture I sent. It had seven rooms, two stories. After WWII, being alone, my mother moved to an apartment at 16th and Lincoln Way, just across the street. She lived there where she died at age 96. She preferred to stay close to Golden Gate Park. ''<br />
<br />
There is no denying that much has changed in the world-renowned city of San Francisco since World War ll. No longer present in this glamorous, panoramic, historical metropolis is the well-regarded matron, fittingly defined as a typical San Franciscan.<br />
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This native born woman had a deep abiding love of her famous city by the bay and would rather live within its limits than anywhere else. New developments in the suburbs never tempted her from her native soil, where she preferred to live and where God willing, she would die.<br />
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Her distinctive characteristic style, friendliness, generosity and goodness charmed all who met her. She was the mother of children of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire and of the Great Depression as well.<br />
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The experience of these disasters did not change her attitude toward this remarkable city. To abandon it would have been unthinkable and her love was only strengthened by the impact of the calamities it suffered.<br />
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She delighted in the diversity of her surroundings long before politically correct became the buzzword of an activists crusade. She would sing the praises of the merchants in Chinatown with shops of beautiful jade and rare silk.<br />
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Weekly trips were made to North Beach delicatessens to sample fine Italian cheese and spicy condiments. The general hubbub and foreign atmosphere of the neighborhood was an excitement she could not resist.<br />
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She was well educated and appreciated the historical link of Mexican culture with the City of Saint Francis in place names, architecture, art and food.<br />
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No matter where her destination or whatever her purpose, she would never leave the house without being properly clothed. A hat and gloves were always worn with the outer garments. Sometimes a luxurious fox fur or a mink stole would be added for extra warmth.<br />
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Her usual mode of transportation was the streetcar or cable car with a five cent fare. A visitor, by chance sharing a seat with her, would be most grateful for the company of someone who would with tremendous pride point out spectacular views along the route, in case they might be missed.<br />
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This matron decked out in her citified finery, has become a legend of history herself with her everlasting pride in a noteworthy and fabulous city.<br />
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The decline in dress and social protocol of today would be considered an embarrassment. Amazement and shame would be felt at the indifference of a no longer polite society.<br />
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The rough and uncouth language of the present population, not only of the young, but of those educated masses who should know better, would be found disturbing.<br />
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The phenomenal Summer of Love and the invasion of the Haight-Ashbury by the hippie counterculture would be looked upon as disquieting but temporary. It was bound to run its course.<br />
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Many may find amusement in the appellation of typical San Franciscan. They will argue that it is illogical and obsolete. Some declare that San Franciscans in general are now devoted to individualism, which is expected to lead to greater progress.<br />
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This may be true, but this matchless icon is a composite matron who embodies all the traits admired as important in her time.<br />
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Those of us who inherited our roots from this admirable woman will love and cherish her as a loyal and devoted daughter of the City of Saint Francis.<br />
<br />
''Rosemarie Green ''<br />
<br />
[[Image:wimmin$1902-mabel-marshall-wedding.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Mabel Marshall in her wedding portrait in 1902.'''<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
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''Rosemarie,Green - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
<br />
Rosemarie,Green - Publisher or Photographer<br />
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green,rosemarie - Writer<br />
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[[EXOTIC DANCERS' ALLIANCE |Prev. Document]] [[KATE KENNEDY |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Gold-Rush_Era_Prostitutes&diff=3858
Gold-Rush Era Prostitutes
2007-10-07T22:31:58Z
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<div>[[Image:wimmin$prostitutes-salon.jpg]]<br />
<br />
Barbary prostitutes<br />
<br />
As the epicenter of the mythically lurid times of the goldrush, and the locus of free love in the 1960s, San Francisco has inspired a long and impressive sexual mythology. This mythology has its roots in the Amazon myth, articulated by popular 16th century Spanish author, Garcia Ordez de Montalvo. He wrote about California as a land of only women, strong and forceful and untamed. Spanish explorers brought these romantic notions about exotic women with them to California, giving birth to centuries of Golden State mystique.<br />
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Gold-rush San Francisco had its own version of this mythology: that of the bawdy pioneer prostitute. The suggestion conjures images of lavishly dressed women draping the arms of tough looking gamblers drinking whiskey and throwing bags of gold dust on the card table. Indeed, some of this mythology rings true. Prostitutes occupied a privileged place in gold-rush society, with economic opportunity beyond that of any other working American females. And they certainly belonged to the pioneer, gold-miner elite, involved in legendary bar-fights and shoot-outs in the honor of their slighted lover. One San Francisco madam, Belle Cora, was hung for these crimes.<br />
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Still, prostitution quickly developed into one of the most degrading and subjugated professions in San Francisco society. Whether its practitioners were indentured Chinese women, economically and socially oppressed Latina women, or kidnapped and enslaved white women, prostitution for some became a form of imprisonment and punishment as opposed to a profession. At the same time, the number of prostitutes multiplied and developed a hierarchical system in which many women were disempowered by the lack of economic opportunity. From 1848 to the late 1850s, prostitutes experienced an unprecedented ascension in power and a brutal fall from grace in San Francisco.<br />
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Before the gold rush and the subsequent urban development (1848-1849), the Bay Area had no organized prostitution as such. The population was mostly Califoros, with Native Americans at the bottom of the social hierarchy. There is some evidence, however, of men in the Native American population prostituting their wives to sailors when ships came to port. Richard Henry Dana, Jr. published his observations of California, ''Two Years Before the Mast'', in 1840. He wrote, "I have frequently known an Indian to bring his wife . . down to the beach and carry her back again, dividing with her the money which she had got from the sailors." There is also record of informal prostitution among the upper class Spanish and Mexican families. In the same year, another observer, James Douglas, recorded: "It is said that many even of the most respectable classes prostitute their wives for hire, that is, they wink at the familiarity of a wealthy neighbor who pays handsomely for his entertainment."<br />
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With the development of gold mining in 1848-1849, San Francisco underwent many changes that led to a flourishing prostitution business. The most important factor was the influx of young men who came as gold-seekers. In 1849, miners migrated from the South and the East, with forty thousand immigrants arriving by ship alone. Because of the rough conditions and the transitory nature of gold speculation as a profession, women (particularly respectable women, such as wives with children) were scarce in San Francisco. One source cites a 50-1 [[Men : Women in Early San Francisco male-to-female ratio]]. The surplus of lonely men comprised a plentiful market for prostitution.<br />
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The business opportunities of gold-rush San Francisco were also an important factor in the flourishing of prostitution. The prospect of gold brought both immigrants (new business) and wealth (expendable income) into the city, and therefore the profit potential for entrepreneurs was high. Financial growth was, indeed, enormous, and demand had so outdistanced supply that prices were going higher every day . . . wages, prices, and profits skyrocketed. In addition, there was no organized business class or established sex industry to thwart enterprising individuals. Consequently, the potential for upward mobility was great among all professions and in particular among prostitutes.<br />
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A third factor for the growth of prostitution was the less restrictive atmosphere of San Francisco as opposed to Eastern cities. The community was relatively amenable to prostitution. One reason for this unique environment was the transitory nature of the male population. The great bulk of gold seekers came out with the same purpose in mind . . . to spend as short a time as possible scooping up the golden nuggets; and to return home to live on the wealth they had acquired. Very few intended to make California their home. In this ephemeral atmosphere people were more likely to succumb to the practices that would have condemned them under the watchful eyes of their home communities. A person's reputation was not necessarily at stake in this fleeting, far-off land, and this led to the suspension of social and moral restraints.<br />
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A second reason for the less prohibitive nature of the city was the tremendous economic and population growth, and the municipal government's inability to keep up with the changing city. City services, including police and fire protection--San Francisco was leveled by fire five times between 1849 and 1850--simply did not exist. Prostitution was more acceptable and able to flourish.<br />
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In this fertile environment, organized prostitution began in the mining towns during the first half of 1849. These women, referred to as pioneer prostitutes or seoritas, were mostly indentured Latin Americans who were forced to entertain men in the rough mining camps. Some became mistresses of certain miners, a situation which implied a relationship and a larger degree of respectability. The most famous of these mistresses was Juanita, who became the first woman hanged in California after stabbing a man who was about to attack her man. In addition to being the first prostitutes, they were also the only ones who worked in the mining camps.<br />
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In the meantime, a different culture of prostitution was developing in San Francisco during the second half of 1849. During that time, a wave of European and white American prostitutes arrived in the area and took advantage of the chances for social mobility in the sexually permissive city. In September of that year, observer Caleb T. Fay wrote, "The only aristocracy we had here at the time were the gamblers and prostitutes." According to other observers as well, prostitutes were part of the upper echelons of San Francisco society. Not only were they the most elegantly dressed women in San Francisco . . . both on the street and in the gambling saloons where they worked, but they actually set the style for the ladies in the city. Furthermore, their social circles involved the most prominent men in town. Another observer, Hubert Howe Bancroft, wrote that "Deference was paid by all classes to the female form, even though its dress covered corruption; nor was it very damaging to any man's reputation . . . to be seen in conversation with a public woman."<br />
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San Francisco's infamous gold-rush casinos played an integral role in the establishment of the business of prostitution. The earliest urban prostitutes worked in the gambling parlors. A French journalist made the following observation: "Women, who are chosen from among the most attractive, are employed to take care of the gambling tables, and naturally men gather in a circle around them." It was a fiercely competitive position, as the women were paid for their presence both by the casinos and by their male customers. Officially, they were hired either as decoys (sitting at the tables entertaining the men) or waiter-girls (serving food and drink). Unofficially, the women made sexual arrangements individually with the customers. Some establishments even provided make-shift rooms for the private use of the women. The situation was mutually beneficial, allowing women a venue to solicit men and helping casinos attract customers. Competition was fierce on both sides of the relationship, and each helped the other establish themselves. Indeed, one historian observes that the competition among women for positions in the most elegant saloons and among proprietors for women in the cheaper establishments was the initial step in the development of a hierarchy among San Francisco prostitutes.<br />
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In fact, gambling also played a central role in the development of prostitution's most elite element: parlor houses. In time the parlor houses would be noted for their social exclusiveness, only those who belonged making it past the colored servant at the door. In general, these chic bordellos were run by a madam in conjunction with a male financial backer, usually a gambler. Often wealthy gamblers backed their mistresses (kept women) in such business endeavors. Two famous madams, Irene McCready and Belle Cora, were both financed by their high-rolling lovers. McCready was the mistress of A.J. McCabe, who owned the infamous El Dorado, and Cora was the mistress of mining-town gambler Charles Cora.<br />
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Traditionally, the madam was never a prostitute in her own house; instead, she ran all of the business aspects of the operation, a task which took considerable skill and executive ability. She was responsible for managing the women, caring for the house, and keeping the authorities at bay through bribes and social connections. One of her most important duties was collecting payments from the clients, instead of having the women themselves ask for money. This maintained the [["Respectable" Attitudes Towards Early Prostitution social distinction. ]]<br />
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''-- Mindy M. Krazmien''<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
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''San Francisco Public Library,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
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Krazmien,Mindy - Writer<br />
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Prostitute_March_1917&diff=3856
Prostitute March 1917
2007-10-07T22:31:55Z
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<div>[[Image:wimmin$prostitutes-demo-1914.jpg]]<br />
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'''On a January 1914 morning, more than 300 prostitutes dressed and perfumed in their finest, marched to the Central Methodist Church to confront Reverend Paul Smith, who had launched a campaign against sin and vice on the Barbary Coast. (It was reported that his sermons were so provocative that prostitutes flocked to the vicinity of his church after the services, where they found eagerly aroused customers).'''<br />
<br />
''''''<br />
<br />
== 1914 photograph of San Francisco prostitutes marching on the Central Methodist Church. ==<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Women%27s_Photography_After_the_Gold_Rush&diff=3854
Women's Photography After the Gold Rush
2007-10-07T22:31:53Z
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<div>[[Image:wimmin$sarah-dutcher.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Sarah L. Dutcher, San Francisco saleswoman for C.E. Watkins, photographer, 1870s'''<br />
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By the 1860s the mother lode of gold had been picked clean. Those who had struck it rich settled San Francisco alongside those who hadn't. A civilizing calm, that came with SF's growing economic and social stability, enticed an increasing number of women to venture West. Though it's likely that there were other women photographers during the 1850s, the second documented was Mrs. A.M. Genung, a veteran Stockton daguerreotypist who arrived in 1860. Her daguerreian gallery operated at the corner of Clay and Kearney until 1861 when she too, disappeared from the records.<br />
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Probably an important reason why women were able to pursue photography in the early years was the lack of established academies, like those for science, sculpture, or painting, that could deny them admittance. Many women worked in family businesses and learned the photographic process from their husband or father (and often continued on alone after his death). In an era when there were very few women business owners, photography studios were one of the businesses that women owned and operated. A total of 6 female photographers are known to have worked in San Francisco during the 1860s, all of them married except for one. Quite a few of the early pioneer women had photography careers that spanned decades.<br />
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Carolina Klain began her 24-year photography career in landscapes and portraiture working with her husband, a traveling landscape photographer named Nathan Klain, in 1867. They operated the business out of their home on Natoma St. until his death in 1885. Carolina continued operating the gallery from her new home on McAllister, specializing in landscape views, until joining up with her son in 1891 to operate the Klain & Klain gallery.<br />
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Of particular note is Mary Anna Clifton Godeus, a San Francisco photographer, whose career began in 1866 and spanned 35 years. At 16 years old she was married. At 17 she was operating the South Park Photographic Gallery on Third St. with her husband John D. Godeus. They operated several galleries together until 1879. Godeus family lore suggests John then photographed prisoners for mugbooks at San Quentin Prison. By 1890 the Godeuses were again operating a studio together until John's death in 1895. (Godeus street was named in honor). Mary took over with her daughter Mary Clara, also a photographer, continuing to operate the Godeus Art Studio on Sixth Street until at least 1901. There are over 60 surviving images from the Godeus studios.<br />
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Women photographers unencumbered with a spouse were considered particularly daring and brazen. The first such unattached photographer, Anna McGinn, operated and owned several photographic galleries from 1863 until 1867. For unknown reasons, in 1870 she suddenly made a radical career change and worked for the next 30 years as an embroidery stamper.<br />
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By now, several advancements had been made in photographic technique. Ambrotypes were photos made in San Francisco around the late 1860s. They look similar to daguerreotypes with their sharp detail, but ambroytpes decreased exposure time down to a few seconds and were printed directly on glass instead of metal. The resulting glass image was a negative, but by placing dark paper or velvet behind the glass, the photographer was able to produce the appearance of a positive image. Although ambrotypes simplified the photographic process it was still messy, smelly and cumbersome. In the early days, photographers could be recognized by their blackened fingers caused by the use of silver nitrate It was popularly described as the "black art."<br />
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The most influential advancement in the late 1800s was the development of negative to positive photography -- printing with a glass negative onto paper. It was this new efficient photographic process that led to employment for a great many women in a wide range of social classes.<br />
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'''Women's Work '''<br />
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San Francisco was the incarnation of a man's world -- built by men for men. In the post-mining economy, wage-paying jobs were so scarce that men claimed many of the positions that in other parts of the country were traditionally held by women. One reporter noted the surprise of Easterners to see this role reversal, "It seems curious to visitors from East to see only men in our bookstores, dry goods and cloak stores, selling corsets and women's underclothing, and measuring off tape and ribbon by the yard." (''Daily Evening Post'', August 29, 1872.)<br />
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Around that time, much of the nation was engaged in a class debate over the proper roles for women. For poor women it wasn't much of a debate: there were many tedious and exploitative occupations considered suitable for the lower classes. Nationally, the leading occupations for women in the US in 1870 were:<br />
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1. domestic servants,<br />
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2. agricultural laborers,<br />
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3. seamstresses,<br />
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4. milliners,<br />
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5. teachers,<br />
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6. cotton mill operatives,<br />
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7. laundress,<br />
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8. woolen mill operative,<br />
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9. farmer & planter,<br />
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10. nurses.<br />
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However, for middle-class women who needed or wanted to work there were very few acceptable occupations available beside teaching or nursing.<br />
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The impact of photography on women's economic situation is most apparent during the 1870s when the photographic industry unfolded with the mechanization and mass production of paper photographs. Advancements in camera technology enabled a photographer to print an unlimited amount of photographs from a single negative. The technical problems of early wet-plate photography gave way to the assembly-line needs for the mass production of photographic calling cards or ''carte de visites''. These enormously popular and cheap paper photographs led to employment for many women in related photographic trades such as photo colorists, retouchers and photo mounters.<br />
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Furthermore, social critics argued that suitable occupations with higher wages needed to be created for adventurous women, so they wouldn't find themselves sliding down the slippery slope into a life of vice. One newspaper studied the wages and costs of life for women in San Francisco. "Wages of girls are from $3-$12 a week. Very few earn $12. The average is about $9. Ballet girls get $10 a week. Some are paid exceptional prices, as the forewomen in large dressmaking establishments, who sometimes make $18 to $20 a week, and the first class colorers of photographs who get from $20 to $25." (''Daily Evening Post,'' August 29, 1872) The paper also noted it cost women "from $5 to $6 a week for board and lodging and 50-75 cents for washing."<br />
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It became acceptable and even desirable for women to work in the photographic industry and women flooded the trade. By 1870 the general population had tripled from the previous 10 years -- almost 150,000 people now called San Francisco home. During this decade 15 women photographers and almost twice that many worked in the related trades, yet many more undoubtedly worked in the photographic industry without any record of their activities. By the 1890s, however, there were 141 documented women working, not as photographers, but in the photographic industry.<br />
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Women were often called upon for piece-work jobs in the mass production of celebrity or special event paper photographs. Stereographs of the Modoc Indian War photographed by Carleton E. Watkins were mass-produced and "finished in good style at Watkins' establishment on Montgomery Street, San Francisco, 20 women and a number of Chinamen being kept constantly at work," according to a June 25, 1873 report in the ''Yreka Journal''.<br />
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Women whose contributions are consistently overlooked are the wives of re-renowned photographers. Mary Jane Morgan for example, met her future husband, pioneer photographer William H. Rulofson, in 1867 while working as a receptionist at the respected Bradley & Rulofson Gallery. They were married the same year and although Mary is never listed as a photographer, she is acknowledged to have been an artistic force in the gallery. When William died after 11 years of marriage, Mary at 33 years old took control of his share of Bradley & Rulofson and remained in charge until 1889. A letter recorded in the gallery's business log remarked (in a time of very few businesswomen) on her exemplary business acumen:<br />
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''"Really I cannot see the slightest objection to her going to the head of the business [of Bradley & Rulofson]... you will find her quick eye and keen perception -- of great -- indeed incalculable value to your business -- and I think, moreover, the influence of her presence will be very beneficial." ''<br />
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Women often took to the road, expanding their business to rural areas. At 28-years-old, Emma Gills Smith was widowed, had two young children and was earning a living as a San Francisco photographer selling enlarged pictures, colored in India Ink, crayon and water colors. The Yreka newspaper noted her arrival in July of 1876: "Her trip to Northern California was for the purpose of visiting relatives here, and also to introduce her superior style of pictures, which all who take the pains to examine, and desire a good picture of their friends or selves, will certainly obtain one of her style in preference to the perishable common photographs, which soon fade and look dead."<br />
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The popularity of these colored, non-dead looking paper photographs employed hundreds of women in studios throughout San Francisco.<br />
<br />
'''The Rise of '''<br />
<br />
Amateur Photography<br />
<br />
By the 1880s, innovations in camera technology led to massive new changes in photography and an explosive surge in amateur photography. The process was enormously simplified with dry plates and smaller cameras: instead of coating their own negatives, photographers could now buy boxes of pre-sensitized plates. A pivotal event in 1888 was the introduction of the lightweight, manageable Kodak camera. Focus and exposure time on this camera was pre-determined, and darkroom space was unnecessary since the film and paper could be sent in for developing. The new, simplified process encouraged many well-to-do ladies and gentleman to experiment with photography as a hobby.<br />
<br />
The new photographic equipment was also cheap. For a reasonably small investment (about $10 or a week's wage for a ballet girl) women could purchase a small camera, tripod, lens, plates, and enough chemicals to start a business.<br />
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As photography became more popular and accessible, photography clubs formed and experimentation flourished. Although 50 years earlier photography was initially viewed as a substitute for drawing, by now it was often seen as a separate art form: a new channel of expression. The California Camera Club was founded in San Francisco in 1890 and soon found a growing number of women in its ranks.<br />
<br />
'''Traveling Photographer '''<br />
<br />
With the new portable cameras many women were able to explore and photograph rural areas without the need of a darkroom. Entirely on her own, San Francisco photographer Mary Winslow traveled and photographed Yosemite and rural California towns, bringing back landscape photographs to sell.<br />
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On her very first three week adventure Mary brought home enough orders to earn $125. If business was good she stayed in towns for four or five weeks, and at night if she was traveling between towns she camped in her buggy. Although this is how she made her living for at least three years, there is not a listing for her under photographers in any business directory.<br />
<br />
'''Bikes & Cameras: '''<br />
<br />
Women Hit the Road<br />
<br />
In the mid-1890s, the soaring popularity of amateur photography coincided exactly with the new-found craze of bicycling -- the two endeavors melded together perfectly. There were camera club cyclists and cycling club photographers. Groups of photographers rode out of town on their safety cycles with their hand cameras to photograph the great outdoors. In 1897, one amateur photographer, Rose Cantwell, was a member and 1st Vice President of the Camera Club Cyclists. Across the country there were emotionally charged debates about women's places in cycling and in photography clubs. But in many photo-journals (like ''American Amateur Photographer'') and outing magazines, both pastimes were commended as healthy pastimes for women. In the fading Victorian era, both bicycling and photography contributed a great deal to women's independence and both were emblematic of the major changes taking place in women's lives.<br />
<br />
'''Hortense Schulze '''<br />
<br />
An incredible record of Chinatown was made by Hortense Schulze, an amateur photographer who ventured into Chinatown to photograph children in their native garb. Chinese and white San Franciscans led totally separate lives, and Chinatown was definitely not a socially acceptable place for white women to visit. Nonetheless on her many forays to Chinatown Hortense took enough photos that were popular enough for her to begin a career in photography. Her new gallery opened in October of 1900 on Stockton Street:<br />
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"The studio everywhere shows evidences of a woman's hand and is undoubtedly one of the most artistic in the city... Mrs. Schulze, who gained a well-earned reputation several years ago for her Chinese photos, has probably the largest collection of pictures of Chinese children in the United States, and the demand for them has become so great that the studio was an absolute necessity... everyone is familiar with the pictures, and as they form the best possible souvenir of California, the demand has always exceeded the supply. This year Mrs. Schulze decided to mount some of the pictures on calendars. The result so far exceeded her anticipation's that she has decided to start at once and begin the manufacture of a supply for 1902."<br />
<br />
'''The Good, the Bad, and the Strange '''<br />
<br />
While many of these photographers were extraordinary, accomplished women, there were also quite a few slightly bizarre, not-so-successful but just plain intriguing female photographers. In the 1890s, for example, photographer Melinda E. Cramer operated the Cramer Photograph Studio along with her husband, but Melinda's true passion seemed to revolve around the cult religion Divine Science. She was a Divine Science writer, teacher, and editor of the cult's journal'' Harmony''. By 1900 Melinda was listed as President of Home College of Divine Science.<br />
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Mary E. Cooley Harris's career as a traveling photographer took a very bad turn after a pre-packaged batch of pre-sensitized plates failed to develop properly, and most of the portraits she'd taken were invisible. Soon after she abandoned photography and joined the hordes of other women working as a retouchers in the enormous T.C. Marceau photo gallery. Later, she became heavily immersed in the Hermetic Brotherhood, a philosophical cult associated with Madame Blavatsky's Theosophists.<br />
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In the mid-1870s, Sarah L. Dutcher worked for Carleton E. Watkins as a retoucher and photography sales agent. She was often referred to as the "tall lady," and was quite fetching to men, in particular to Mr. Watkins, who in a letter to his wife Frances (also a photographer), half-heartedly tried to calm her fears: "You are thinking altogether too much about the tall woman, and you are making yourself nervous and fidgety about matters and things you can't help." In 1875 Sarah was the first woman known to have successfully climbed Yosemite's Half Dome.<br />
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Floride Green was an amateur and commercial photographer for over 20 years. She first met her frequent traveling companion, Lillie Hitchcock Coit (who later commissioned the infamous Coit Tower) at their St. Helena high school. Her amateur photography career was uneventful until 1897 when a local newspaper noted: "The many friends of Miss Green will regret to learn of her mishap with the flashlight compound called Blitz-Pulver. This ardent lady amateur was severely burned about the hands by the explosive, but is now well on the way to recovery."<br />
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'''Future SF Photographers '''<br />
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At the turn of the century, a new generation of women started experimenting with photography. Women like Laura Adams Armer who later became a major force in Pictorialism and spent months living in Arizona, photographing the Hopi and Navajo on their reservations. She advocated photography as a means for artistic communication and once noted that, "Anyone of ordinary intelligence can manufacture a photograph. So many have discovered this fact that our highways and byways are littered with distorted reflections of nature. The camera has become the symbol of degenerate art." The concept popular among early amateur photographers that a beautiful photograph was a photograph of a beautiful thing, like a sunset or a flower, began to fade. More women turned to photography as an outlet for serious artistic expression and joined up with the Pictorialism and Photo-Secession movements.<br />
<br />
In 1900, fifty years after Julia Shannon began making daguerreotypes , there were 41 known women photographers and 75 additional women working in San Francisco's photographic industry.<br />
<br />
''--by Mary Brown,'' 1997<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''Palmquist - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
<br />
Brown,Mary - Writer<br />
<br />
San Francisco Examiner,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer<br />
<br />
[[A Woman's View 19th Century San Francisco Women Photographers |Prev. Document]] [[X-ray Photographer: Elizabeth Fleischmann |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Godmother_of_SexEd:_Maggi_Rubenstein&diff=3850
Godmother of SexEd: Maggi Rubenstein
2007-10-07T22:31:47Z
<p>Admin: 1 revision(s)</p>
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<div>''Maggi Rubenstein is a bisexual activist and co- founder of three major sex-education institutions in San Francisco: Glide Memorial Church's National Sex Forum, the San Francisco Sex Information Hotline, and the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. She is also a practicing sex therapist. She spoke about her extraordinary life in early 1997. ''<br />
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'''When and how did you start to work in the sex education community? '''<br />
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"In gratitude to Joel Fort who had gotten me out of the boring hospital I was working in as a nurse and given me a job in a clinic that he ran, I went to work in a free clinic he had started.<br />
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It was there that I met many of the people I work with now in the sex field, Ted Makelvena and others, including Toni Ayres and Carolyn Smith with whom I started the switchboard for San Francisco sex information.<br />
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I had always been interested in sex education and had taken some sex-ed courses. And I felt that I had an affinity for teaching, it was also a subject that I could talk about pretty easily. I always enjoyed sex myself and thought it was important, a very basic part of everybody's life. It never made sense to me to have a narrow view about what human sexuality meant--I always thought it was all interesting and essential as long as it was consensual.<br />
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I had come out as bi in '69 at the clinic where I was working. Nobody was talking about it. In '72 when I began to work with the National Sex Forum down at the Glide Urban Center I began to talk about bisexuality in the workshops we did. So even then it wasn't just about being straight or gay."<br />
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'''What did you do at Glide? '''<br />
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Well, Glide is a church and an urban center. It's down in the Tenderloin and it's very famous. Cecil Williams runs these amazing Sunday services down there and people come from all over to participate.<br />
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But we had rented space there, because Ted had originally worked at Glide as a minister. And then Cecil Williams and Ted and several other Methodist ministers were going off in all directions about social justice issues. Cecil went off into working more with poor and homeless people and in the Tenderloin. Ted and Phyllis Lyon, who was a mentor of mine (she and her partner Del Martin are two leaders of the lesbian community) helped to start the National Sex Forum (NSF), along with Larry Sutton and Louis Durham and some other people.<br />
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They were studying young gay and lesbian adults in San Francisco.<br />
<br />
And they felt that they couldn't study them as a population properly, they had to look at the whole picture, so they began to talk in their workshops about all aspects of human sexuality. I came along and included bisexual issues. And it was absolutely accepted. Everyone said "absolutely, makes sense," certainly.<br />
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So Ted, through Mike Phillips at Glide was able to get some money to start San Francisco Sex Information (SFSI), which Toni and Carolyn and I started, and he was also able to get some money to help start COYOTE ("Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics," a prostitute's rights organization.) So my interest in ALL aspects of human sexuality was really piqued in '72, in getting support to be running workshops at the NSF and starting SFSI and giving support to the rights of prostitutes and the rights of all women, around human sexuality."<br />
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'''Who came to the workshops at the National Sex Forum? '''<br />
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"We worked at UCSF, and everybody came to the workshops. Well, adults. But at first it was for health professionals, anybody who did counseling or therapy work, then we saw that those people were not set apart from the general population, they were just as ignorant of sexual issues as most of us are. We're all ignorant. We all grew up ignorant about sex, in this society. So we opened it up for everybody, couples, individuals, people of all kinds, college students.<br />
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It was general, basic sex education. We started with our 101 course. So people would come to study 101, which was our basic course; fantasy, masturbation, women's sexuality, men's sexuality, sex and disability, sex therapy. We had lots of films, panels, presentations, large group discussion, and two-day courses. Right from the get-down we talked about masturbation, fantasy, that's the first thing we talked about.<br />
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We also have in the basic workshop something we call the fuck-o-rama, the first evening, which is all about commercial films. There is so much mythology about pornography, and a lot of pornography is stupid and boring, but some of it is okay and some of it is pretty good. And it IS the way that people get information, a lot of people can't afford to go to counseling or come to workshops and may instead go to watch a film, or may go to a theater. At least they see, well it may be exaggerated, as all films are, larger than life and more gorgeous than life, but it does show what people do, sexually. So it does have benefit.<br />
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'''What are other things you did through the NSF? '''<br />
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We created a whole series through Larry Sutton, our media person, of sex education materials. Regular people, not actors, were hired, who don't work in the sex field, the sex industry, but are just people sharing their sexual patterns on film for education, not to be shown in theaters. And so a lot of the sex education materials we show are real people doing real stuff.<br />
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We also offered the 201 course which I still teach at the Institute. The 201 talks about childhood and adolescent sexuality, about gay, lesbian, bi parenting, about group sex, about transgender issues, about S/M, about prostitution, about counseling people with disabilities, about counseling people who have more unusual lifestyles, and that's also panels, lectures, and some films and a lot of group discussion. It's not good to show the second aspect before you show the first because the first sets the ground work for what comes after. So those two basic courses were what the NSF offered, and we still offer a 7 day workshop where people come from all over the country, it's a total immersion workshop -- morning, noon and night. There was always something to do about sex, whether it was field trips, or going out to dinner, or using strobe lights and crawling through erotic material, doing massage, hot tubs, as well as getting the basic information. This is once a year. And our process is called "SAR", for sexual attitude readjustment, which is our logo for all that we do at the Institute and at the NSF."<br />
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'''When did the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality start? '''<br />
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"We ran these workshops for many years, and people were saying, 'Gee, I wish there was some way to get academic credit, I wish there was a school of sexology.' So we were saying maybe we should start a school of sexology where people can really focus on education, research and therapy issues about human sexuality. So we started planning in '75. We started the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in '76.<br />
<br />
The Institute has certification programs, but also mainly it does courses and work leading to a masters in human sexuality and or a doctorate, an educational doctorate or a Ph.D. doctorate in sexology. And people come from all over the world for that and we are the only school in the world that offers this. ALL we teach is all you can think of about human sexuality, there's nothing left out. And we even have a bunch of youth from City College come in to some of our basic courses through one of my colleagues who also works at City College. This is all information people need much earlier than that. But that's how society is.<br />
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We also have about 7 or 8 different workshop programs that run the gamut from media work to practical skills workshops and therapy training workshops and gay erotology and women's group training for pre-orgasmic women's groups, sexual anthropology, and an STD course. Everything from going to Good Vibrations to going to an S/M educational evening to ETVC (a transvestite organization.) Getting to know what's out there in the community. We stand on the shoulders of Alfred Kinsey, we want students to look at it all."<br />
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'''When did you start doing sex therapy? '''<br />
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In the early 70's. I did Masters and Johnson type sex therapy with clients and also taught medical students, basic introductory courses. At UCSF, Parnassus.<br />
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Our model was: two therapists, two clients, seeing people every day, for 12 days. Or changing it, seeing a couple for 12 weeks with at-home exercises. But we found that one therapist can do it.<br />
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'''Why do people come for sex therapy? '''<br />
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Common concerns for people who come: erection concerns, inorgasmia, pain, poor communication, lack of interest. Communication is always the key, people have to be willing to talk to each other, boldly, about their sexual needs. If they can talk about sex with each other they can talk about anything. It can help their self-esteem in other ways too. It's also very important that people learn how to argue well, and to disagree well.<br />
<br />
Also, sometimes people marry each other for convenience or for security or because each other is each other's best friend and they may not feel a sexual charge. And that can be difficult. So sometimes people look at, do they have an open marriage? Do they have a monogamous marriage? What's going to fit for that couple? If one person wants to be sexual once a month in the traditional in-the-dark-man-on-top-Tuesday-night-for-ten-minute way, and the other person wants to go out and party, and get it on in the backyard in the moonlight. You know, as I say in my basic workshop, if you're talking about "intervaginal containment" and your clients are talking about fucking, you are not going to communicate. And likewise with partners you have to have a common language--and also give each other space.<br />
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We taught the students for eight weeks in human sexuality. It was an opportunity for all students to get sexual education: is it normal to masturbate? Is it okay to have same sex feelings? These are the things that therapists should have addressed.<br />
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'''Would you tell me a little more about the Institute? '''<br />
<br />
Well we have an extensive sexual information library, and all our speakers are taped, as well. Every subject you can imagine in human sexuality. It's this HUGE collection. So people from other schools come to us for that and the library and the tape library. A large collection of erotic art, of books.<br />
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'''When did you come out as bisexual? '''<br />
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I started hanging out with some gay men I worked with. They were like my brothers, and I was fine with them being out. It was the 50s, the gay rights movement hadn't happened yet, but these were guys that were in the entertainment business, very well to do, and a couple were nurses. Through them I met my first woman lover, when I was 24. She led a very glamorous life in Hollywood as a screenwriter. I pretended to be lesbian--well I didn't pretend, I told the community of women down there that I was bisexual -- but they said "no, no you're lesbian". I went through this two-year period of questioning. "Am I lesbian? Am I bisexual? What's the truth?" Maybe I should just give up men. But my erotic interest in men just kept creeping in.<br />
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When I was with my woman lover it felt very natural. I didn't tell my family, because I came from this family that did not support me at all. I didn't tell my mother anything. My stepfather was a beast. My Dad was an Irish catholic, an uptight guy though I loved him very much. But I wasn't about to tell any of that.<br />
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Later on when I came out of my second marriage, I was still working as a nurse but I knew there was a whole lot more to life. I knew I didn't want to get married again, I didn't want to live with anybody unless my perfect soulmate came along. I wanted to be single, I felt I wasn't a monogamous person. One person didn't ever meet all my needs, though I have great respect for my relationships and I made commitments and kept agreements. I just really needed both genders. I met some people that were going to a sexual freedom league party one night, and I went with them just out of curiosity. Then I had several years of going just to kind of straight sex parties.<br />
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I had a lot of sexual activity during the 1970s. Then I got very bored with it in the late '70s. But I treasure all those memories. To this day I've never been sexual with anyone that I didn't really want to be sexual with. I was very selective, even in that community. I treasure all that."<br />
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'''Tell me about founding the Bisexual Center in San Francisco, and how that came about. '''<br />
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"We started a bisexual center in San Francisco in '73 which went till '84. It was first at a building downtown and then in the Haight. We had social programs, rap groups, workshops, counseling, newsletter, speakers bureau, and people just flocked to it because there was just no other place for bisexual people to go then without being trashed. There was no other place in the country, just a small discussion group in NY.<br />
<br />
Now, Bi Pol, which is the political arm of Bi started in '84. Bi Net, which is the national organization of the bi movement started in '90, and now several bisexual books have come out in the '90s.<br />
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The AIDS crisis in a peculiar way brought gay and bisexual men together and lesbian and bi women together more because when all the educational workshops were offered about safe sex of course everybody who had same sex experiences as well as opposite sex experiences were welcome, but heterosexual people didn't want to come. So bisexuals, many of whom had aligned themselves politically with gay and lesbian people, came to these workshops and I ran many of those workshops. We also had a gay man and a bi man and we did what we called the "sexologist sexual health project." We went out and did these three hour presentations with films, and they were a lot of fun; exercises and games all about safe sex and how to make it juicy and hot and sexy. And the Buddy Connection still exists, they got their training from us and they continue with that process. At the Institute the first women and AIDS workshop and training was offered with 12 different safe sex workshops in a week--we did 7 of them.<br />
<br />
So the terrible scourge on humanity that is called AIDS--the only silver lining is that it threw bisexual people and gay and lesbian people together with a common goal of taking care of each other and taking care of ourselves. The S/M community too, that community was outstanding in dealing with issues of safe sex."<br />
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'''What group do you see yourself as most a part of now? '''<br />
<br />
"I have friends and feel comfortable, whether it's tantric stuff in Marin county or transvestite stuff or the transgender community or the S/M community the swing community, the straight community, gay/lesbian community, bisexual, therapy. I mean I have all these communities that I feel comfortable with and move around in just because I had this opportunity (because of Joel Fort) who opened the door for me and I jumped through and never stopped running. Work in the sex field, it's been so rewarding for me that I really think that the 2nd half of my life (from 40 to 66 now) has been the best years of my life--I like myself, I feel good about myself, I do good work, I'm respected for what I do. And when I look back on my teens and twenties, those were unhappy times for me--I didn't like myself, I didn't know what my destiny was, I hadn't figured out my own attractiveness and my own ability to fit into the world. But I found my niche, and fortunately it's in San Francisco, because if I was born anywhere else--who knows?"<br />
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'''Why do you think San Francisco is this mecca for radical sex work and education? '''<br />
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"Harmonic convergence--that's why San Francisco is the way it is. It's always been a place, like Paris, that's attracted creative people. It's a mixed bag, though--there are some very conservative people in San Francisco. But I don't know--maybe it's the weather, maybe it's the location, but I feel that this whole northern California area, is kind of a special place. The Bay Area, however, has it's disadvantages--it is very polluted. The highest incidence of breast cancer in the world is here--and I had breast cancer and survived it well."<br />
<br />
'''What projects are you working on now? '''<br />
<br />
"I'm going to Berlin in the spring, one of my colleagues is there: Erwin Haberly. He's a gay man and he's resurrecting what used to be the Magnus Hirschfeld Institute which was burned to the ground when Hitler came to power. So I'm going to help with that. Magnus Hirschfeld was a gay Jewish man who was a sexologist.<br />
<br />
You see, before Hitler came to power, the Weimar Republic was very, very progressive. Then Hitler came in. You know this country is not much different than Germany in terms of some of it's attitudes. So that danger always exists.<br />
<br />
But also, I'm very much interested in sex and aging, and looking at the issues about that for all people, not just for bi people. So I'm beginning to give talks on sex and aging--because they're not just these retired couples living in Florida that are about aging. But it's about--what do S/M people do when they get old? What do sex industry people do when they get old? What do people like me do? You know we still we may lead very different lives than those people depicted in the AARP or on television ... creeping around. We still may be leading very vigorous active lives -- and should!"<br />
<br />
''--interview by Elizabeth Sullivan''<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''Sullivan,Elizabeth - Writer ''<br />
<br />
[[Women's Liberation Origins and Development of the Movement |Prev. Document]] [[Women and Performing Arts |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=KATE_KENNEDY&diff=3848
KATE KENNEDY
2007-10-07T22:31:43Z
<p>Admin: 1 revision(s)</p>
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<div>[[Image:wimmin$kate-kennedy-photo.jpg]]<br />
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Kate Kennedy<br />
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Among the host of people who down the ages have gone largely unheralded despite their significant contributions to the advancement of social justice is Kate Kennedy, a 19th century San Francisco school teacher. In 1874 her test case secured the legal precedent in the United States for equal pay for women doing the same work as men. In 1886 she was the first woman in California to run for state-wide public office--State Superintendent of Schools. And in 1890 her test case ended, once for all, the political spoils system in California: no longer could civil service workers--and that included teachers--be fired except for professional "misconduct or incompetency."<br />
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A good deal is known about Ms. Kennedy and her achievements owing to a number of short biographies and the public record. Her absence from current histories is puzzling, then, especially when one learns that a public school in her adopted city was named after her. So too was the Kate Kennedy School-Women's Club, founded "to further teachers' rights professionally, to secure salary for equal work [yes, the invisible men's club had robbed women of their equal pay after Kate's death], to gain recognition for professional promotion for like achievement and like credentials, regardless of sex."<br />
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Perhaps her obscurity adheres to the obscurity of another San Franciscan of the same era, Henry George. Kate proudly held membership in the Knights of Labor, the first grand union of labor guilds in this country: indeed, she was probably the first teacher in the country to belong to a union. Yet curiously she wasn't a capitalism-basher. At least not when capitalism in its precise sense is meant. Capital, when one is speaking exactly, refers to stuff made by human beings, while everything which exists regardless of human beings comes under the title of land. Natural resources, the radio frequency spectrum, and what realtors call "location, location, location," all these are not capital, but land. Kate followed Henry George in advocating that the annual value of land belongs to society. All of it.<br />
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After 1880 she spoke often to the Knights of Labor and other labor groups on this subject. She wrote a book, ''Dr. Paley's Foolish Pigeons & Short Sermons to Working Men'',''' '''hoping to advance the spectacularly radical policy of eliminating all taxes on labor, including wage and sales taxes, and instead to shift the entire burden of operating government onto landholders. After all, Kate argued, since society creates land values, why should labor and capital be taxed to provide governmental services while landholders are free to collect that very value as ground rent? Absurd, charged Kate. A double indemnity.<br />
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It may be that Ms. Kennedy's passionate advocacy lay rooted in her formative years in Ireland. She was born there in 1827, the year before the English ban on educating the Irish was lifted. She and her elder brother participated in the nationalist movements of the times, but when the potato blight struck the island and the English colonial army enforced the payment of land rents to the 3,000 or so Englishmen who held title to most of Ireland, the Kennedy family despaired of the people ever gaining independence. Over a million Irish starved to death while nearly all produce in Ireland was taken up as rent. The Church called this fate the will of God and so Kate left Catholicism and Hibernia all at once in 1849, first stopping in New York, then coming on to San Francisco in 1856.<br />
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Surely here was a woman who strove to reshape not only San Francisco's, but the nation's sense of citizenship.<br />
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''--David Giesen''<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''Giesen,Dave - Writer ''<br />
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Isadora_Duncan&diff=3846
Isadora Duncan
2007-10-07T22:31:42Z
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<div>[[Image:wimmin$isadora-duncan-on-stage.jpg]]<br />
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Isadora Duncan dancing.<br />
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Isadora Duncan, born in San Francisco in 1877, was possibly the most influential advocate of [[Isadora Duncan Intro modern dance]] internationally in the twentieth century. She brought her freeform movements and her toga-style dress, modeled after Greek sculpture, to packed audiences in dozens of countries. Duncan gave expressionist dance words through her books (''My Life, The Art of Dance''), speeches, and letters to the newspapers: "What I am interested in doing is finding and expressing a new form of life" Duncan declared in ''The Mentor'' (February 1930).<br />
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In a period during which art dance was limited to entertainment, corsets, and a Ballet vocabulary, Duncan revealed the revolutionary potential of body-movement art once freed from restricting garb, "technique", and the economic constraints of the bourgeois audience: "I left Europe where art is closely linked with commerce. And it will be contrary to all my convictions and wishes if I shall again have to give paid performances to a bourgeois public."<br />
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Duncan was inspirational to poets, artists of many disciplines, and revolutionaries: "There is just one thing that astonishes me. That is to hear that the American government has no sympathy with revolutions. I had always been taught that our great country was started by a revolution..."<br />
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Duncan's quest was to express the inner landscape through her body. It was not to achieve virtuosity of form or strength of line: "No pose, no movement, no gesture is beautiful in itself. Every movement is beautiful only when it is expressed truthfully and sincerely. The phrase 'the beauty of line' is by itself absurd. A line is beautiful only when it is directed toward a beautiful end."<br />
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She spent her childhood moving from one poor apartment to another with her mother and two sisters, and dancing alone by the sea. Her mother, though struggling to support the family on her own after Duncan's father left her, found the energy to expose her children to fine arts and literature: "When I could escape from the prison of school, I was free ... My real education came during the evenings when my mother played to us Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert, Mozart, Chopin, or read aloud to us from Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, or Burns," Duncan wrote in ''My Life. ''<br />
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Hardships in Isadora's life inspired her vision, which primarily was a free school for children which she believed would be the lever to move the world: "When I speak of my School, people do not understand that I do not want paying pupils; I do not sell my soul for silver. I do not want the rich children. They have money and no need for Art. The children I long for are the orphans of the war, who have lost everything, who no longer have their fathers and mothers. As for me, I have little need of money. Look at my costumes. They are not complicated; they did not cost very much. Look at my decors, these simple blue curtains I have had since I first started dancing. As for jewels, I have no need for them. A flower is more beautiful in the hands of a woman than all the pearls and diamonds in the world."<br />
<br />
Duncan supported many new ways of living including vegetarianism and birth control. A believer in the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, she declared free art necessary to Communism: "The children of Communists still receive an essentially old-fashioned bourgeois education. If you want the future generation to understand the nature of Communism and the International, you must today free the child from the slavery of bourgeois education and prejudices."<br />
<br />
The Commissariat of Education in Russia gave Duncan a house and grounds to start her school, along with one thousand children the first year. Duncan traded the packed Opera houses of Europe for the bare existence in Communist Russia. Comrade Podvoisky told Duncan upon her arrival, "In your life you have known great theaters with applauding publics. That is all false. You have known trains du luxe and expensive hotels. That is all false. Ovations - false. All false. Now you've come to Russia ... if you want to work for Russia ... go alone amongst the people. Dance your dances in little barns in the winter, in open fields in the summer. Teach the people the meaning of your dances. Teach the children. Don't ask for thanks." After a famine her school was cut down to twenty students.<br />
<br />
She voiced strong support of the liberation of women, children, and the working class, all of which she saw in reference to the spirit of humankind. At twelve years old, she resolved to "live to fight against marriage and for the emancipation of women," she recalled in ''My Life.'' "So long as children are aloud to suffer, there is no love in the world."<br />
<br />
Isadora Duncan's most revolutionary quality was her public honesty as one can see here in these statements to the press concerning her marriage to a Russian poet named Esenin whom she described as " a genius ... mad as a hatter, strong, full of vitality." She brought him to the United States and eventually helped him return to Russia. "I never believed in marriage. I married Serge to enable him to get a passport to America ... marriage between artists is impossible.<br />
<br />
Serge loves the ground I walk on. When he goes mad he could kill me-he loves me so much more, then. For four months I worked with Serge. He is the loveliest boy in the world, but a victim of fate. Like all geniuses, he's cracked. I've given up hope of ever curing him of his occasional madness."<br />
<br />
In Isadora Duncan's own words, "Yes, I am a revolutionist. All true artists are revolutionists."<br />
<br />
''-by Jodi Lomask, 1997''<br />
<br />
[[Image:wimmin$isadora-duncan-backstage.jpg]]<br />
<br />
Isadora Duncan backstage.<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''San Francisco Performing Arts Library - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
<br />
San Francisco Performing Arts Library - Publisher or Photographer<br />
<br />
Lomask,Jodi - Writer<br />
<br />
[[Women and Performing Arts |Prev. Document]] [[Women Swimming in the Golden Gate |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Good_Vibrations:_Center_of_Pleasure_Activism&diff=3844
Good Vibrations: Center of Pleasure Activism
2007-10-07T22:31:40Z
<p>Admin: 1 revision(s)</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:wimmin$good-vibrations-shopping.jpg]]<br />
<br />
Comparative shopping at Good Vibrations<br />
<br />
Big cities have always been the place to go to for sex. But why has the city of San Francisco in particular produced so many sex activists, and such a vital, visionary pro-sex movement?<br />
<br />
Joani Blank, founder of the Good Vibrations sex store, claims it's the testosterone. "Really," she says, "all the gay men living in this city ''does'' have something to do with it -- sexual energy is driven by testosterone in both men and women. It's not an excuse to exploit people but it's a biological fact." Gay men have been especially attracted to San Francisco, at least since the 1940s. The mystique of the frontier frees people, and there's a sense that civilization doesn't reach from the East coast. People move here to change their lives; it's the decadent "Baghdad by the Bay."<br />
<br />
'''What is Good Vibrations? '''<br />
<br />
Good Vibrations has been selling vibrators, dildos, cock rings, and other sexual toys and books in San Francisco's Mission District for almost 20 years. Joked of as the "clean well-lighted place to get a butt plug," Good Vibrations is partly responsible for the air of celebration that exists around sexual pleasure in this city. The stores are well-stocked, customer-friendly, celebratory and even activist about sex. Frequently they sponsor workshops and lectures with titles like "Female Sexuality for Men Only." People are drawn to the message that sex is wonderful, joyful, and nothing to be ashamed of.<br />
<br />
Joani Blank started the first storefront as a sole proprietorship on 22nd St. at Guererro, near Cafe Babar, in 1977. From there it has moved to 1210 Valencia Street and grown into a two-location worker-owned and democratically-run business. In 1985 Good Vibrations expanded to offer an extensive mail-order catalog. In 1989 Joani initiated the process of converting Good Vibrations into a worker-owned business, and that process was completed in 1992.<br />
<br />
"Joani had always encouraged her employees to participate in decision-making" Good Vibrations's web site (www.goodvibes.com) reports, "Staff had always met regularly to discuss policies and procedures, including setting their own salaries." Unlike most businesses, policy is set through an open process of considering the environmental, economic and human impacts of business decisions.<br />
<br />
--''Elizabeth Sullivan''<br />
<br />
[[Image:wimmin$good-vibrations-interior.jpg]]<br />
<br />
Interior of Good Vibrations, mid-1990s.<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''Christopher,Phyllis - Photographer-Artist ''<br />
<br />
Christopher,Phyllis - Photographer-Artist<br />
<br />
Sullivan,Elizabeth - Writer<br />
<br />
Good Vibrations - Publisher or Photographer<br />
<br />
Good Vibrations - Publisher or Photographer<br />
<br />
[[WOMEN IN S.F. IN 1851 |Prev. Document]] [[San Francisco's First Women-Centered Sex Toy Store |Next Document]]</div>
Admin
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Men_:_Women_in_Early_San_Francisco&diff=3840
Men : Women in Early San Francisco
2007-10-07T22:31:38Z
<p>Admin: 1 revision(s)</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:wimmin$lillie-langtry.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Mrs. Lillie Langtry as "Miss Hardcastle" in '''She Stoops to Conquer''', c. 1875'''<br />
<br />
''"When the city assumed the ways of older cities, when it was blessed by the coming of wives, mothers, sisters, and little ones, and social relations were established..."'' (Barry and Patten 1873, 50-1)<br />
<br />
'''Just How Many Women Lived in '''<br />
<br />
San Francisco in the 1850s?<br />
<br />
Men greatly outnumbered women in the first decade of San Francisco. Even in 1870, more than a decade past this early period, there were 2 women for every 3 men living in San Francisco. On January 26, 1847, the pueblo of Yerba Buena was officially named San Francisco. The total population at the time was nearly 500 people. Of these, there were 321 men and 138 women (Soule, Gihon, and Nisbet 1855). By the end of 1849, there were an estimated 20,000 inhabitants of San Francisco, an equal number in transit from incoming ships to the gold fields, and nearly 30,000 migrating by land to visit or settle in the city. Of the 40,000 immigrants who arrived by ship in 1849, only 700 were women. The sex ratio became even more skewed against women as San Francisco's population exploded.<br />
<br />
A history of an early charitable society run by women, the San Francisco Ladies' Protection and Relief Society (founded 1853), reports that in that year the city had about 50,000 inhabitants. Of these, about 8,000 were women and 300 children. Given the small number of children, and the fact that most of the male inhabitants were between the ages of 20 and 40 (years in which it would be expected that they would be marrying and having children), it seems clear that many of these 8,000 women were not wives and mothers, nor were many of them children. There were, in addition, limited occupations open to women at the time. In 1870, the first year women were included in the statistics of industrial employees in San Francisco, only five manufacturers hired women (Barnhart 1986). The obvious answer to the question, "What were the women doing?" is prostitution.<br />
<br />
No official numbers of prostitutes exist from this period. The evidence of their numbers comes from narrative accounts written by the early inhabitants. None of these accounts are by prostitutes, however, and even police records don't yield much. Anti-vice laws were not seriously enforced. Ordinance No. 546, "To Suppress Houses of Ill-Fame Within the City Limits," was put on the books in 1854. There were 14 arrests for common prostitution in 1859, however, and fewer in the following four years. Fires following the 1906 earthquake also destroyed daily municipal records, leaving only yearly summaries. This leaves a sizable gap in our record of the most typical occupation of San Franciscan women of the period (Barnhart 1986).<br />
<br />
Here's one description of prostitution from a French visitor's journal written in 1851: "Many ships have reached San Francisco during the past three or four months, and the number of women in town has greatly increased, but a woman is still sought after and earns a lot of money. Nearly all the saloons and gambling-houses employ French women. They lean on the bars, taking and laughing with the men, or sit at the card tables and attract players... To sit with you near the bar or at a card table, a girl charges one ounce ($16) an evening. She has to do nothing save honor the table with her presence. ...For anything more you have to pay a fabulous amount. Nearly all these women at home were street-walkers of the cheapest sort. But out here, for only a few minutes, they ask a hundred times as much as they were used to getting in Paris. A whole night costs from $200 to $400" (De Russailh in Lewis 1962, 127-8). He's clearly disgruntled at this state of affairs. In the early years, however, when carrying a barrel across town brought high wages, prostitutes could also command good wages. Labor of all kinds was in short supply. In fact, women could earn an apparently high wage as servants, but the high cost of living eroded the actual value of the wage (Barnhart 1986). Women's sex labor was highly-paid because labor was in general highly-paid at the time. That it was highly-paid women's labor (or at least perceived to be such) was not unique to San Francisco. The causes of labor shortages in San Francisco were, however, gender-specific: men came to seek their fortunes and tended to go off to the gold fields, then women followed as the city took shape.<br />
<br />
Apparently French prostitutes commanded the highest prices; the French journal-writer was partly correct. There were also a number of Australian, Chinese, Mexican, and German prostitutes who pursued their livelihood alongside Americans. All of these foreign women (with the notable exception of the French) were occasionally the objects of xenophobic attacks from the increasingly nationalistic Americans. Mexican and Chinese women were more often the target of racist attacks and were less likely to be able to make a decent living. Here's a typical attack: "The women of all these various races [Mexicans, Chileans, Chinese, negroes] were nearly all of the vilest character, and openly practised the most shameful commerce" (Soule, Gihon, and Nisbet 1855, 412).<br />
<br />
The double story of the sex ratio of early San Francisco, then, is that there were few women in comparison to the number of men and that many of these women were prostitutes. One historian suggests that San Francisco, having in 1849 nearly instantly become a city of multi-nations and bachelors looking for their fortunes, no one set of mores held sway, and men held prostitutes in more respect than elsewhere. In the first year or two of the city's existence, the names men used to indicate a prostitute were euphemistic: 'ladies in full bloom', or the 'fair but frail.' By 1853, however, more derogatory terms like prostitute, Cyprian, harlot, and even whore had passed into common usage (Barnhart 1986). Josiah Royce, who was born in California in the middle of the nineteenth century but was sent back east to Harvard for his education and career, captures this respect despite being critical of it: "There were some women in the city in 1849, but they were not exactly respectable persons, yet they were the sole leaders of society. They too gave it even in later years a certain grace and gaiety that makes one speak of them, with a curious sort of reverence, very frequently in the course of the Annals" (Royce 1948, 312).<br />
<br />
The small number of women in the city was noted in other ways as well. Women stood out as oddities in public places. The Annals reports, "We remember the day, when a woman walking along the streets of San Francisco was more of a sight than an elephant or giraffe would be today" (Barry and Patten 1873, 138-9). Various members of "respectable society" felt the privation. A woman who was an early inhabitant reported, "The only really private house was one belonging to a young New Yorker, who had shipped it from home. ... The bride for whose reception this house was intended arrived just before me, but lived only a few weeks.... At a party given to welcome her the whole force of San Francisco society came out, the ladies sixteen in number" (Fremont in Lewis 1962, 101).<br />
<br />
In a reconstruction of the time written by a journalist in 1917, the number of women at a society event measured its success. There had been "fancy-dress balls at the Bella Union, balls given by the California Guards, and the like. The Oriental Hotel, frequented by the army and navy set, had given a series of subscription dances. But the largest number of ladies at any of these affairs was twenty-five!" After the St. Francis managed to attract sixty women to a series of soires, the "Monumental Engine Company, Big Six ... gave a grand ball, exquisite beyond compare in the decorations, the music, the ices and pastry. As for ladies, the St. Francis with its record of sixty was thrown utterly into the shade by the record of the Monumental, of FIVE HUNDRED ladies!"<br />
<br />
Just where the five hundred came from is, even to this day, shrouded in mystery. A stringent rule, it seems, had been made that no gentleman could enter the ballroom without a lady. All California was ransacked. Some maintain that the ladies were brought, by pony express, from as far east as St. Joseph, Missouri (Jacobson 1941, 168-70). Polite society, it seemed, would go to myth-inspiring lengths to attract the right sort of woman to social events.<br />
<br />
Women were taken, at least rhetorically, to be civilizing forces. One account of the period made the following plea: "In the midst of abundance of every kind women are very scarce; the domestic circle does not exist; domestic pleasures are wanting, and household duties are unfulfilled ... we will try to advocate the cause of poor and forlorn bachelors, and persuade some respectable heads of families that have to settle in life, to come to California and build up the society, which, without women, is like an edifice build on sand." But there were less idealistic reasons to want more women around. This same man also complained, "the greatest privations that a bachelor in this country is exposed to, consist in not being able to furnish himself with clean linen when he desires because there arent enough washerwomen or wives around to do it" (Wierzbicki 1849, 80-1). A historian of the period reports what happened in regards to this mundane concern. Apparently by 1851, running a laundry was no longer a very lucrative business, and water shortages occurred repeatedly. By 1855, Chinese inhabitants had a virtual monopoly on laundries (Barnhart 1986). The Annals underscores the perceived baseness of the task: "The Chinese and the free negroes, of whom there was now [in 1851] a goodly sprinkling, were 'the hewers of wood and the drawers of water' of the place; and performed washing and women's business, and such menial offices as American white males would scorn to do for any remuneration" (Soule, Gihon, and Nisbet 1855, 369). So as is typically the case, women were both idealized and despised for being women. The skewed sex ratio in San Francisco only brought to the surface such dynamics, dynamics that were less overt, or which came to a head later, in other cities.<br />
<br />
''--Caroline Danielson ''<br />
<br />
'''Sources: '''<br />
<br />
Barnhart, Jacqueline Baker. 1986. ''The Fair but Frail: Prostitution in San Francisco, 1849-1900''. Reno: University of Nevada Press.<br />
<br />
Barry, Theodore Augustus and B. A. Patten. 1873. ''Men and Memories of San Francisco in the Spring of 50''. San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft and Company.<br />
<br />
Beans, Rowena. 1953. ''Inasmuch; the one-hundred year history of the San Francisco ladies protection and relief society, 1853-1953''. Edited by Carol Green Wilson. San Francisco: James J. Gillick and Co.<br />
<br />
De Russailh, Albert Benard. 1931. ''Last Adventure: San Francisco in 1851.'' Translated by Clarkson Crane. San Francisco: The Westgate Press.<br />
<br />
Fremont, Jessie Benton. ''1878. A Year of American Travel. ''New York: Harper and Brothers.<br />
<br />
Hirata, Lucie Cheng. 1979. ''Free, Indentured, Enslaved: Chinese Prostitutes in Nineteenth-Century America.'' Signs. 5: 3-29.<br />
<br />
Jacobson, Pauline. 1941. City of the Golden Fifties. Berkeley: University of California Press.<br />
<br />
Lewis, Oscar. 1962. ''This Was San Francisco.'' New York: David McKay Company, Inc.<br />
<br />
Magdalen Asylum of San Francisco. ''1868.'' ''Report and petition of the Managers of the Magdalen Asylum of San Francisco.'' Sacramento: D.W. Gelwicks, State Printer.<br />
<br />
Magdalen Asylum of San Francisco. ''1870. Report and petition of the Managers of the Magdalen Asylum of San Francisco.'' Sacramento: D.W. Gelwicks, State Printer.<br />
<br />
Royce, Josiah. 1948. ''California from the Conquest in 1846 to the Second Vigilance Committee in San Francisco''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.<br />
<br />
Royce, Sarah Eleanor. 1932. ''A Frontier Lady: Recollections of the Gold Rush and Early California.'' Introduction by Katherine Royce. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.<br />
<br />
Ryan, Mary. 1990. ''Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880.'' Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.<br />
<br />
San Francisco. ''Ordinances and Joint Resolutions of the City of San Francisco. 1854''. San Francisco: Monson and Valentine, Printers.<br />
<br />
Soule, Frank, John H. Gihon, and James Nisbet. 1855. ''The Annals of San Francisco: Containing a Summary of the History of ...California and a Complete History of Its Great City.'' New York: D. Appleton & Company.<br />
<br />
Wierzbicki, F.P. 1849. ''California As It Is and As It May Be: Or, a Guide to the Gold Fields.'' San Francisco.<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''Gaar Collection,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
<br />
Danielson,Caroline - Writer<br />
<br />
[["Respectable" Attitudes Towards Early Prostitution |Prev. Document]] [[WOMEN IN S.F. IN 1851 |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Carol_Seajay,_Old_Wives_Tales_and_the_Feminist_Bookstore_Network&diff=3838
Carol Seajay, Old Wives Tales and the Feminist Bookstore Network
2007-10-07T22:31:36Z
<p>Admin: 1 revision(s)</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:wimmin$old-wives-tales.jpg]]<br />
<br />
Interior of Old Wives Tales bookstore.<br />
<br />
"''I came to San Francisco with a ray of hope about living life as a lesbian woman''."<br />
<br />
'''Starting from the early 1970s, Carol Seajay knows intimately the history of women's bookstores in San Francisco. In addition to her work with Full Moon in San Francisco and A Woman's Place in Oakland, she is a co-founder of Old Wives Tales, the women's bookstore on Valencia Street that closed in 1995. She is also a founder of the Feminist Bookstore Network and Newsletter, which is going stronger than ever in 1997. '''<br />
<br />
Carol Seajay arrived in San Francisco from school in Michigan in December of 1973. The first connection she made with the women's and lesbian culture that she was seeking here was through a flyer in a women's bathroom in the Main Library. It advertised a Women's Coffeehouse and Bookstore, at a place called the Full Moon. The early seventies saw a concerted effort on the part of feminists to cultivate an alternative culture--a world based on feminist values and the celebration of the power of women. Posting announcements in women's bathrooms was a favorite technique, the perfect expression of solidarity between women.<br />
<br />
Seajay already had an affinity for books by and for lesbians. She had attended the University of Michigan in Kalamazoo, and there she read early lesbian classics like Anne Aldridge, Beebo Brinker, ''The Price of Salt''--anything about lesbians that she could find. But none had a happy ending. She said, "I just never read the last chapter--that was the advice everyone gave you." Early lesbian novels available in the late sixties inevitably ended in double suicides or dramatic conversions. A friend gave her a grant of $50 a month to write a lesbian novel with a happy ending. For her last year of school Seajay worked on the novel and at a job doing abortion counseling.<br />
<br />
January 22, 1973 brought a huge change for women in the United States with the supreme court ruling on abortion, Roe vs. Wade. After the decision, according to Seajay, there was a race between Planned Parenthood and the more radical activists for funding to provide health care for women. "I'd be willing to bet that 2/3 of those active in the abortion movement at the time were lesbians," Seajay said. "There is a clear connection between freedom from pregnancy and the freedom to be a lesbian, the freedom to make your own choices about what you do with your body." But one woman in the health care community used a strategy of outing radical feminists as lesbian (there were not many out lesbians at the time) in order to secure a job for herself. In those days outing meant certain exclusion, and Seajay was an early casualty.<br />
<br />
She worked for a while as a cocktail waitress, saved her money, and bought a 2-cylinder Honda motorcycle for $400. She left Michigan and drove the Honda to San Francisco. At the time, Seajay said, the choice was strictly New York or San Francisco for lesbian and gay people. But in New York, people did the bars at night, slept all day and jumped off a bridge when they got to be 30. "I came to San Francisco with a ray of hope about living life as a lesbian woman," she said. San Francisco offered acceptance, companionship, and even celebration of being a lesbian or a gay man. That vision, of children and friends all knowing and of growing old while being out, was the promise San Francisco held out for Seajay. This was also true for many other lesbians and gay men who began streaming here from all across the country in the late 60s and 70s.<br />
<br />
'''Arriving in San Francisco '''<br />
<br />
When Seajay was first in San Francisco, there was already a very developed, very intense, lesbian scene. It was a vibrant community. Seajay had read Lyon and Martin's [[Mainstream Feminism Responds to Sex Positive The Ladder]] back in Michigan. A subscriber had to sign a slip swearing she was 21, so Seajay borrowed it from a friend. "I remember thinking, there are enough lesbians [in San Francisco] to publish a magazine!" When she got to San Francisco and was first getting involved in the scene here, "it was electric, every night, there were at least two very exciting things you could do--you had to choose because there was so much.<br />
<br />
"There was a sense then, that if we wanted to turn over patriarchy--we could." In that spirit, with possibilities opening to women in such dramatic new ways, Seajay decided that she wanted to be an electrician. She signed up with a women's trade group to be trained once she passed the union admission tests, but the waiting list for training was 2 1/2 years, due to the bad economy at the time. So, while waiting she went to a local free school operating at the time and took classes like, ''Lesbianism, Socialism and Feminism'' and ''Criticism and Self-criticism''. This deepened her love of reading as well as her lesbian identity.<br />
<br />
Full Moon Cafe and Bookstore, the bookstore on the flyer in the Main Library women's bathroom, was on 18th Street. The collective, which Seajay quickly joined, spent all spring getting the store together. They laid a new cement floor. They also handled all the drainage and plumbing themselves. "It was a dyke thing to do everything ourselves," Seajay said. "So if you open a dyke coffeehouse, and it needs a new cement floor, you learn to lay cement floors."<br />
<br />
The side room of the cafe held books (it was about the size of a Murphy bed), and that was the bookstore. The collective's attitude about most things was always, "Why ask? We'll just do it." Unfortunately that meant that they never got licenses for any of the cabarets or gatherings held at Full Moon. In 1977 they were closed because they didn't have a cabaret license. Upstairs neighbors complained and the Full Moon collective lost their lease.<br />
<br />
Seajay got a job with the state where she coded questionnaires as an assistant statistician, and read her homework for free school at lunch time. "In those days," she recalled, "for an hour of minimum wage work a person could afford to buy six mass market books. Nowadays they could afford maybe 1/2 maybe 2/3 of one book. But there was a very socialist feel to San Francisco then, people had way less stuff." After saving up some money, she went to India for four months. When she got back, she moved in next door to a woman from her socialism class named Gretchen Milne (now Forest), who was one of the women who started A Woman's Place, a feminist bookstore in Oakland.<br />
<br />
'''San Francisco Lesbian Literary Scene '''<br />
<br />
It was the mid seventies, the recession, and Seajay's new neighbor, Gretchen Milne, was living on unemployment and working on A Woman's Place bookstore. Seajay went down to check it out, there were two whole shelves of lesbian books. "I was astounded. After I finished reading all the lesbian books I started reading Black women's work. It was similarly woman-identified and very powerful. Ann Petry, ''The Street'', Toni Morrison." Everything she could want. She started volunteering, riding the bus to Oakland once or twice a week to sit on the floor and read every last book.<br />
<br />
At the time, Seajay recalled, lots of lesbian ideas were actually coming out in poetry. People were starting to do anthologies, self-published, staple-bound. Poetry became very important to San Francisco's lesbian community. The Women's Press Collective was started and Judy Grahn and Wendy Cadden were making all the books themselves. There was even a women's distribution company for women's newspapers!<br />
<br />
Paula Wallace was a worker at A Woman's Place with Seajay at this time and she and Seajay were also lovers. They decided to start a San Francisco women's bookstore together. So they applied for a loan from the very friendly San Francisco Feminist Federal Credit Union. At the time, there were three people on the loan committee. A feminist bookstore owner from Hayward was one, and a lesbian feminist published poet was another. This illustrates the success of feminist organizing in the seventies. When the women's bookstore project needed a loan, they went to the Feminist Credit Union. After applying, Seajay went off to the First National Women in Print Conference.<br />
<br />
'''Beginning of Feminist '''<br />
<br />
Bookstore News<br />
<br />
The First National Women in Print Conference happened thanks to the organizing of June Arnold and Daughters Publishers. No one else from A Woman's Place could go (partly because there was the [[I-Hotel Eviction Summary I Hotel crisis]] at that time) so Seajay got in her car and went herself. "It was a traveling time," Seajay recalled, "people just got in cars and drove where they wanted to go. That's how this literature got around. We drove it. People didn't have to worry as much about money, or keeping jobs, there were ways to get by.<br />
<br />
"You see, the baby boom left school and there weren't any jobs for us. We weren't necessary. But we said, good, we don't want your jobs anyway. In Canada at the time they were experiencing the same thing, and the government encouraged kids to travel around, see the country instead of work; they sponsored crash pads all over."<br />
<br />
It was a week long conference in Nebraska (picked because it was equidistant from the coasts and everybody was driving), and it was incredible, according to Seajay. 18-20 women's bookstores and 180 women at a beautiful Campfire girl camp. It was attended by bookstore workers and owners, illustrators, and printers, but no writers, because it was a conference for ''workers,'' Seajay emphasized. "We were very influenced by Marxist ideas about laborers controlling their own labor. We didn't put the writers on a pedestal." The initial idea for Feminist Bookstore News came out of this conference as a way to stay in touch with each other. The first issue was published on October 14, 1976.<br />
<br />
The week before the Women in Print conference, Seajay got notice that she could finally get into an electrician's class. During the conference Paula called to report that their loan from the credit union was approved. Elated, Seajay instantly decided to pursue the decidedly more risky venture of starting a feminist bookstore. So with $6,000 from the credit union, and a $2,000 loan from Paula's parents, they started Old Wives Tales.<br />
<br />
'''Success in the Mission '''<br />
<br />
Dolores Neighborhood<br />
<br />
The first store was at 532 Valencia St., below the Club for the Deaf. They were around the corner from the George Jackson Defense Fund, Rainbow Grocery, The Communist Party Bookstore, the Roxie movie theater, the Tenants Union, Artemis Cafe (a women-only cafe), Osento (a women-only bath house), Garbos (a lesbian-owned haircutting shop) and Amelias (a women's dance bar--now called the Elbo Room). Angela Davis was a frequent customer at Old Wives Tales. Lesbians were proudly coming out in the Mission Dolores neighborhood and making it their own.<br />
<br />
At the time Seajay lived in collective households, first, right around the corner on Rondell Avenue, and later on 21st Street between Valencia and Guerrero. "I would walk home at night and feel that it was the golden age of the world. It was a precious time, and I knew it might not last. I knew it was all so radical that I feared a repercussion. Look, if we were as threatening as we ''wanted'' to be, then we could expect some right wing vigilantism. Still, I expected that by the time I was 40 there would at least be socialized health care. I mean, at the time there was a War on Poverty. It was understood that it was ''poverty'' that made kids dumb."<br />
<br />
They opened Old Wives Tales on Halloween, 1976, paying themselves $200 a month. Around this time Seajay and her housemates took on a foster daughter through a program for gay and lesbian teens who had run away to San Francisco. The first person they hired was a friend of Seajay's foster daughter, who worked part time and stayed for ten years. There was a great deal of internal pressure on participants as everyone tried to work in an egalitarian and cooperative way--not a familiar mode for anyone raised in a capitalist society. And this was in addition to the external pressure of trying to run a small business (bills, expenses etc.) After two years, in 1978, Seajay and Wallace broke up.<br />
<br />
Wallace drove off and ended up in New Mexico, where she bought Full Circle books. Old Wives Tales became a collective instead of a partnership. They also moved from 532 to 1009 Valencia for more space. The time was a struggle, but the community really supported the store, and tourists and travelers came from all over to shop at and see Old Wives Tales. Most people easily felt comfortable upon entering, because the vision behind the project was a women-owned store where the whole community was welcome. Over the next few years, Seajay watched it grow into an integral and bustling corner of the women's community on Valencia Street.<br />
<br />
'''Falling Apart '''<br />
<br />
Around 1982, lots of internal hassles surfaced. Seajay had invited another lover to join the collective after Wallace left, and the break up that came a few years later was rather difficult--the collective also tried mediation. Then, like a lot of feminist organizations in the 1980s, there came discouraging problems around racism. The Old Wives Tales collective dealt with embezzlement, alcoholism, and went through more mediation as a group.<br />
<br />
Exhausted with all she had put into Old Wives Tales over the years, Seajay was literally watching the store fall apart. By 1994 it needed to be fully rebuilt organizationally. Seajay decided to resign, but the collective wouldn't accept her resignation. "I was very burned out, but I stayed for a while because it does take skill to run a bookstore well." She advised the collective and passed on her formidable bookstore-running skills. Gradually the collective transitioned into an official non-profit and Seajay resigned. She didn't really recoup any part of her investment from Old Wives Tales when she left.<br />
<br />
People without experience were running the store once Seajay left, and it was in and out of financial trouble. When A Different Light came to town from New York, it squeezed Old Wives Tales even more. They took business from Old Wives Tales mainly because Old Wives Tales began to look like old-fashioned feminism next to the slick New York-associated A Different Light. This was illustrated best by the two groups lining up on different sides of the S/M wars which were raging at the time. Some Old Wives Tales workers were critical of those who "acted out their childhood pain through sexual violence" while many Different Light people saw S/M as a liberating avenue to heightened sexual excitement and self-awareness.<br />
<br />
In 1995, riddled with strife and debt, Old Wives Tales closed its doors. Seajay's attention was already turned full time to the Feminist Bookstore News and Network.<br />
<br />
Although San Francisco is poorer for the loss of our women's bookstore, today there are 120 feminist bookstores all over the United States and Canada (150 loosely counted.) In April of 1997, Feminist Bookstore News will celebrate its twenty year anniversary of connecting women's bookstores across the country.<br />
<br />
"We had a vision," Seajay said, "that women could learn to do for ourselves, that we could make our own mistakes, and I still believe this passionately."<br />
<br />
''--Elizabeth Sullivan''<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''Seajay,Carol - Photographer-Artist ''<br />
<br />
Sullivan,Elizabeth - Writer<br />
<br />
[[Mainstream Feminism Responds to Sex Positive |Prev. Document]] [[Great Expectations: The Women's Action Coalition |Next Document]]</div>
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EXOTIC DANCERS' ALLIANCE
2007-10-07T22:31:33Z
<p>Admin: 1 revision(s)</p>
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<div>[[Image:wimmin$ofarrell-workers.jpg]]<br />
<br />
Workers at the O'Farrell Theater.t<br />
<br />
Interview with Dawn Passar<br />
<br />
''by Siobhan Brooks ''<br />
<br />
Dawn Passar is one of the co-founders of EDA (Exotic Dancer's Alliance) along with Johanna Breyer. She was born in Thailand and has worked in the sex industry in the United States for ten years. She works at the Asian AIDS Project in San Francisco where she does outreach to clients. In this interview Dawn gives an account of her experiences in the sex industry and her political activism.<br />
<br />
'''Siobhan Brooks:''' Why did you start doing work in the sex industry?<br />
<br />
'''Dawn Passar:''' When I first came to San Francisco, it was in 1982. I was living in Rhode Island for nearly eight years with my ex-husband, I came alone and that's when I starting stripping. I used do also dance in Thailand.<br />
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'''SB:''' What was the first club you danced at?<br />
<br />
'''DP: '''I danced at the Penthouse on Broadway, the Roaring 20's, the peep-shows. After that I went to the [[Mitchell Brothers Mitchell Brothers]]'. In 1982 the Mitchell Brothers' was the only lap dancing stage show theater in town. The rest of the clubs were topless and the customers would buy the girls drinks. On Broadway the girls would make minimum wage an hour and tips. We would split more than 50% of our tips with the bartender, the waitress, and the doorman. When I went to the Mitchell Brothers' they hired me right away, I worked there for five and a half years. I was making minimum wage an hour. I worked there until 1987 until I was laid off. I asked the management why I was laid off and they told me it was a matter of turning over new faces.<br />
<br />
Around this time the Market Street Cinema was another live nude theater with lap dancing. The difference between Market Street Cinema and the Mitchell Brothers' was that the Cinema didn't have wages, and didn't pay the dancers, but you got to keep all your tips from lap dancing. After I was laid off at Mitchell Brothers' the theater stopped paying dancers wages, and the dancers had to pay to go to work. The paying of stage fees started at the Mitchell Brothers' and the trend trickled down to other theaters. Soon after that the Market Street Cinema adopted the system of not paying dancers wages and charging dancers to work. This system is snowballed nationwide and in most clubs in San Francisco.<br />
<br />
'''SB: '''What were some of the problems that you noticed at the Market Street Cinema that lead you and Johanna to organize EDA?<br />
<br />
'''DP: '''I remember when the Cinema implemented a ten dollar stage fee. We would all complain because according to the law we didn't have to pay at all, and now we have to. But then we were all like, "Okay, fine ten dollars, no big deal." Three to four months later the stage fee was fifteen dollars, then twenty. In less than a year the stage fee went up to twenty-five dollars. We began to organize because we felt that the stage fee would continue to go up if we didn't do something. We gathered a bunch of women and had our first meeting at a nearby restaurant. We also invited the manager to come--which wasn't easy. At the second meeting is when certain women were singled out as being "trouble-makers".<br />
<br />
One of my co-workers felt she had a good clique with the management, and by herself she told the management what she felt was wrong with the theater . Shortly after she was fired. Most women wanted to organize, but only a few were at the forefront. For many women that was the only job they had, and they didn't want to lose it. But many women took a risk by providing support for the women who were at the forefront. Johanna and I along with a few other women were at the forefront of the organizing.<br />
<br />
We had a series of organized meetings, we wrote a letter to the management, and we got recommendations from other dancers. We sent the letter to the owner of the club asking him to reduce the stage fee to fifteen dollars. At that time no one was making enough money to come up with twenty-five dollars. We calculated the expenses of the women with kids, and the cost for baby-sitters. We also asked the management to improve their scheduling. A single mother with kids will pay a baby-sitter and come to work, only to get turned down. The manager might tell her that there are too many girls working, or that she came to the club too late, or that they didn't like the way she styled her hair that day--I'm going to send you home. That woman lost money because she already paid a baby-sitter to watch her child. Those were the kind of situations we asked management to take into consideration. The management never responded to our letter, they said that they would not reduce the stage fee. The son of the owner attended one of our meetings. I spoke to him after the meetings and he told me that his father would never reduce the stage fee. We had tried all the necessary steps: speaking to the management, holding meetings, writing letters. The outcome was not favorable to us, so we took the matter outside of the club and filed a complaint to the Labor Board.<br />
<br />
'''SB''': How did that process go? <br />
<br />
'''DP: '''At first it wasn't easy because when we were looking for a consultant we called up the Labor Commissar to find out our rights, and when we told the people that we were strippers, they hung up on us. They asked us if we were in a union or part of some type of organization, and if we were employed. But that's why we called because we weren't sure if we were employed. This was one of the main reasons EDA was started, so that when we were asked by people at the Labor Commissar if we are part of an organization, we could say that we're part of the Exotic Dancer's Alliance organization. That way these people will listen to us and not hang up on us. You only need two people to have an organization, so the two people were me and Johanna.<br />
<br />
We then went to CAL-OSHA which is a occupational safety organization in California that oversees health, safety, and cleanness in the work place. We went there and told them and told them about the two bathrooms without doors at the Cinema. We felt that the man who works there would use the bathroom in the dressing room, which we felt was only for the women. Even though we performed naked on stage, the dressing room was our privacy. The people from CAL-OSHA came and gave the owner a citation ordering him to put doors on the bathroom. That was the first victory for us; having someone order the owner to do something for us. It was a small victory, but still a victory.<br />
<br />
'''SB: '''Can you talk about the process you went through of getting out of the sex industry?<br />
<br />
'''DP: '''Well, I was blacklisted from dancing at any club in San Francisco, so I had to get out. I can never dance anywhere in this city again. I can't go to a club and say the name Dawn Passar. All the clubs in San Francisco are pretty well connected with one another. I worked from 1982 to 1992 in the sex industry. After I was blacklisted I became an activist because I didn't have any other type of job. I had prepared myself to lose my job when I began organizing. When I left the Mitchell Brothers' after working there for five and a half years, I realized that this is not the kind of job you can do forever. I was also a single parent at the time. During the time of the organizing at Market Street Cinema I had begun going to school. I got grants and scholarships to pay for school, that really helped me since I was a immigrant who couldn't read or write English that well and had no other vocational skills. That's why I was in the sex industry. That was the turning point in my life, and I was still dancing because I couldn't just stop totally. Once you start dancing it's something that you're used to in your daily life.<br />
<br />
I went to school and completed my Master's Degree, and graduated in 1992. As I was becoming educated, I realized that my working conditions were different from those of other people. It was the first time I stepped out of my daily life of being at home taking care of the kids and my work activities. I realized that people get different treatment at other jobs and that's what inspired me to get an education and find out more about my rights. After I graduated I was doing organizing work that lead up to me getting the job I have now.<br />
<br />
'''SB: '''You said you danced in Thailand, what was your experience doing that?<br />
<br />
'''DP: '''Well, this was in the early '70s and the Vietnam War was still going on, but coming to an end. The sex industry was probably a repercussion of the Vietnam War. During that time there were several different American GI bases in Thailand. In different cities in Thailand American GIs roamed the country. They were looking for women, so bars and nightclubs were springing up, and I was one of those women. Well, girl I would say since I was fourteen. At that time Thailand had go-go clubs, but without the nudity it has now. Women than just wore thigh high boots and a bikini. When the war ended sometime in 1975 I believe it left women used to the easy money bar life, and the Rent-A-Wife life. In Thailand they don't call it prostitution, but Rent-A-Wife. Rent-A-Wife is when a woman stays with a GI for however long he's there, and he pays you for your time. Everyday she cooks and cleans but without obligation to marriage.<br />
<br />
Prostitution was always illegal in Thailand, but you can go to the red light district and everything is pretty much in the open. It's different now because life is harder. Women have to do a lot more for less money. There's more nudity now in the clubs, which is against the law, but the law isn't enforced. All this is due to corruption, hierarchy, and classism.<br />
<br />
'''SB: '''Do you know what's going on in terms of activism around sex worker issues?<br />
<br />
'''DP: '''There is an organization called EMPOWER. They do HIV prevention training and education. They're doing a pretty good job, the organization has existed for about ten years. But the sex industry is still a big problem in Thailand. There you have the very rich or very poor. In America you have racism, in Thailand you have classism since most people have the same color of skin.<br />
<br />
'''SB: '''Did you feel poor growing up in Thailand?<br />
<br />
'''DP: '''I think poor has different definitions. I would say I was poor, but never hungry. We always had food. Maybe I was poor in the sense of material things. If you live in America you have a car, a TV. In Thailand I didn't have those things, but we didn't need them. The word "poor" has different connotations for different people. So, perhaps I was never poor.<br />
<br />
'''SB: '''While you were organizing was there ever a time when you felt your life was threatened by the managers?<br />
<br />
'''DP: '''Sure because there were rumors that all the owners were part of the Mafia, big in size with lots of money. Those were only rumors which I took with precaution, I also made a point of going to the media. One of the protections anyone who does organizing has is the media, it's good to come straight forward to the media. However, the worries are always there, they never go away. People told me that I could end up in a trunk never to be found again, that they could suit us down and we would never be heard, all those things.<br />
<br />
'''SB: '''Why don't you talk a bit about your job at the Asian AIDS Project?<br />
<br />
'''DP: '''When I got blacklisted from the sex industrythe stripping industryI became an activist and I gave talks to different women's gatherings. I was giving a talk at a gathering with Carol Leigh from C.O.Y.O.T.E and I announced in the audience that I didn't have a job, and I asked people if they knew of a job. One of the men from the Asian AIDS Project told me to apply for a job there. At that time I was like, "Well, that's nice." I never called him back, three months later he called me back asking if I was still interested. I never called him back because I thought it was just an office job and that I didn't even read and write English that well. I could write and read English by the time I graduated school, but the idea of working in an office was too scary. After a year and a half without a job I thought I would give this job a try. I applied and got the job I have now. I've found that I have a lot of support from people who work here, they knew that I could do the job, they helped me with different trainings. Come to think of it, it's not that different from being a sex worker.<br />
<br />
My job requires outreach, case management, advocacy, and training. The idea of the HIV prevention education is to bring the service to the community, which is women in massage parlors. People are not going to come out and say that they need to learn more about HIV and AIDS. They won't take time to do that or they feel that their family comes first and they won't think about themselves. They are thinking about work, taking care of the kids and the family. But their health comes last. We are the first ones in the whole nation to do outreach to the massage parlor people. Every big city has a massage parlor or a Chinatown: New York, L.A. Other agencies have tried but we have giving trainings and shared information with them. It takes a different level of togetherness to reach people successfully. When I say successfully I mean people who can get successfully into the massage parlor, and earn the trust of the manager, the owners, and the workers there. We let them know that you are providing health education and HIV testing.<br />
<br />
'''SB: '''How did you function being a stripper in a society based on filling out forms, doing your taxes, getting credit, or renting an apartment?<br />
<br />
'''DP: '''Well, I didn't have any credit (Laughs). I had two kids, and I remember I was trying to get on welfare because I needed it. I didn't have any ID or a birth certificate. I was still functioning as if I was in Thailand when it came to doing paper work. I felt that doing paper work was unnecessary. When I signed for my kids to go to school I had to fill out papers stating that I was the parent/guardian of my kids. My occupation on those forms was a cashier.<br />
<br />
At the time being a cashier at the dirty movie theater would give me more credit than if I filled out on the form that I was a stripper. The reason why the occupation of a cashier came up was because my kids were used to seeing me come home with cash, and they would go, "Oh, Mom! You're a cashier, ah?" This is when they were young, like three and in half years old. So, I was like, "Okay, I'm a cashier." But when they got a little bit older I told them that I was a stripper. I told them that the money that was feeding you, the money that brought you toys was stripper money. I wouldn't tell the schoolteacher, but I told my kids and I told them to be careful who they told. I told them that the parents of some of their friends may not like this.<br />
<br />
'''SB: '''What did your kids think about you stripping?<br />
<br />
'''DP: '''Well, when they were younger they didn't understand what it was. All they cared about was the fact that I could buy them toys, and take care of them. When they got older they understood what my job meant. I remember one of their friend's mother at a PTA meeting was asking another parent that I knew if she knew I was a stripper. The woman was like, "How could she do that? That's so bad!" The other parent said that I wasn't a bad person, and that she didn't even know me.<br />
<br />
'''SB: '''In my experience being younger than you, and stripping in an era where working in the sex industry is a little more acceptable, I want to know how did you actively encounter those negative views?<br />
<br />
'''DP: '''Yes, it was viewed as a negative job. When I first came here I had a job as a dishwasher in a Thai restaurant. I had enough to pay the rent, but then I got really sick and I was in the hospital. When I got out I lost my job and I couldn't pay my rent right away. I was dating someone who was a manager of a strip club who said, "Oh, come and dance. You'll make money right away." And sure enough I made cash that night. I thought to myself that this was really a bad job compared to "normal" jobs, I'll just do it for two weeks and get enough money in the bank and leave this job. When I got into it I didn't think it was bad, money was good at the time, cash flow was every night. It was good money because with a different kind of job you had to wait two weeks to get your paycheck. I got to know the women in the industry, and I realized that life is what you make of it. If you make it bad then it will be bad, I believed that I could make my life good. I refused to go back to dishwashing.<br />
<br />
'''SB: '''Do you think there is a cultural stigma to sex workers?<br />
<br />
'''DP: '''Well, white men have stereotypes of Asian women being quiet and cooking and cleaning for them. I get that, and I was one of those women who for years never talked back and cooked and cleaned for my husband. I think that knowledge is power and people get older and change their lives. In relation to my own community I haven't experienced a stigma. I'm pretty open in my community about what I do. I think in my culture the attitude is be the best at what you do.<br />
<br />
'''SB: '''What is your definition of a feminist?<br />
<br />
'''DP: '''I think it comes back to the choices one makes in life. I think the choices that women make need to be supported by everyone. Being a sex worker, some feminist would say, "How could you do that? You're being exploited." I think the problem is that I would need them to support me, not condemn me. We should be looking at how to make the sex industry safer to work in. But by telling me to stop doing what I chose to do for a living is not empowering. I find it disempowering to be around people who are quick to judge mepeople like that are neo-Nazi feminist. We need to support one another.<br />
<br />
'''SB: '''Where did you go to school?<br />
<br />
'''DP: '''I went to San Francisco Art Institute, and I got my Master's from the California College of Arts and Crafts. I was always a visual person and I come from an artist background; my uncle is an artist. When I thought about going to school I was thinking in terms of traditional education---writing and reading, all the things school requires. But I realized I could take pictures, so I was majoring in photography and film making which didn't requiring reading and writing.<br />
<br />
The Merit Fellowship and the Fourth Foundation liked my work and gave me scholarships which helped my self-esteem and made me believe that I was good at something. When I reached my senior year I realized that I had to write a thesis, three to five-thousand words. I was a student at the Adult Literacy Program at the Berkeley Read Program. My skills in writing and reading English improved. Thanks to Miss Audrea Folley, my tutor<br />
<br />
'''SB: '''What are some of the main mental health problems with women in the sex industry?<br />
<br />
'''DP: '''The suicide rates, substance abuse, and sexual harassment exist at the work place. In professional work settings companies usually offer health care or counseling to their employees. That doesn't exist in the sex industry. The sex industry should offer this kind of health care coverage for their workers. When women do get sick, they have to relay on the City and County and taxpayers' money to pay for their medical expenses. This should be the responsibility of the employer. In terms of psychological problems that I have seen: suicide, drug overdose, and domestic violence are the leading cause of death among sex workers. Currently, there are not any health outreach workers providing safe-sex information and health education in strip clubs. More young women are seeking this kind of work because it seems glamorous, and a way to make easy money. I mean all of that is there, but other shit comes with the job. Emotional abuse is very high within the job.<br />
<br />
I remember there was this student who came from U.C. Davis. She never drank, smoke, or did any drugs. She was going to school and she just wanted to make extra money, and she did. The first three months she was fine, she was new, everyone liked her and she made a lot of money. I saw her a year later and she was on the street on every type of drug she could get---she was unemployed and homeless. If she was an "employee" rather than an "independent contractor" at the strip club she was working in, she would be entitled to health benefits. These kinds of situations are not uncommon to women in the sex industry.<br />
<br />
'''SB: '''How do you think the situation for exotic dancers can be improved?<br />
<br />
'''DP: '''The dancers need to be well-informed about their labor rights, in relation to employee status, and work together at having an organized work force. The dancers can get together and have a co-op strip club---that way working conditions can be improved.<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''Carlsson,Chris - Photographer-Artist ''<br />
<br />
Brooks,Siobhan - Writer<br />
<br />
Anonymous - Writer<br />
<br />
[[REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS RANT |Prev. Document]] [[A San Francisco Matron |Next Document]]</div>
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X-ray Photographer: Elizabeth Fleischmann
2007-10-07T22:31:30Z
<p>Admin: 1 revision(s)</p>
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<div>[[Image:wimmin$elizabeth-fleischmann-at-work.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Elizabeth Fleischmann using a portable fluroscope prior to her death in 1905.'''<br />
<br />
By far the most unusual and overlooked San Francisco photographer is Miss Elizabeth Fleischmann, who in 1896 opened California's first X-ray photography laboratory. She is widely credited as being the foremost expert in X-ray photography of her time. A high-school dropout who taught herself the little-known art of radiography, Elizabeth is featured in an extensive article in the June 1900 ''San Francisco Chronicle ''titled "The Woman Who Takes The Best Radiographs":<br />
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"Miss Fleischmann's radiographs excel for many reasons ... Her nice adjustment of the ray according to the density of character of the object which she desires to photograph, is an art in itself. Then, she never fails to take the radiographs at just the proper angles, so that when we have two, taken from different points of view, to guide us in an operation, we can rely upon them with absolute certainty. We have never failed to go straight to a foreign body imbedded in the human anatomy which is shown by her radiographs ... Add to this the fact that she has never yet burned anyone in the least while applying the ray.<br />
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"The process of taking radiographs is a very simple one, much less complex in some respects than the ordinary process of solar photography. The object is placed upon the sensitive plate which is to be the negative, and the rays of the Crookes tube are directed downward upon and through it for a brief time, penetrating all woven fabrics as if they were mere vapor, piercing the flesh which appears in the radiograph as a faint film, passing through cords and muscles and bones with varying facility, the result showing the exact degree of resistance offered by all these substances; when the rays find a metallic substance, offering an absolute barrier to their progress, they leave the latter as a black shape on the radio- graph. The principle is as simple and elemental as the shadows thrown upon the ground by sunlight or electric lights, but the radiograph which shall serve the delicate uses of surgery and be an infallible guide for an operation on which hang life and death, requires a consummate skill, experience, and a fineness of judgment and perception which is almost like a sixth sense."<br />
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During the [[SAN FRANCISCO'S ROLE IN THE WAR IN THE PHILIPPINES Philippine War]], Elizabeth took X-rays of the wounded soldiers who were transported to San Francisco. She located their bullets and splinters, and became indispensable to Army surgeons. When Elizabeth's fame as the one of the greatest experts in radiography grew, her X-rays attracted the attention of the Army Surgeon General who rated her work as the best known.<br />
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Elizabeth is most known for her work on wounded humans, but she also experimented by taking radiographs that were clearly valued for their artistic rather than diagnostic merit. Some of her X-ray photographs were featured in ''Camera'' ''Craft ''magazine and even the ''Chronicle ''noted: "Radiography is varied in its applications, having its light as well as its serious side. It reveals the bony structure of living animals with remarkable fidelity. The gauzy anatomy of the frog, the delicate articulation of the snake, become things of beauty beneath its power... The radiograph was recently employed to show the exact contortions of the wee grub, which produces the strange antics of the Mexican jumping bean."<br />
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In her time, X-ray photography was viewed as a potential cure all, it was even hoped to be an effective cure for cancer the "most dreaded disease of the century." By 1900 Elizabeth had several cancer patients under her care. Unfortunately not much was known about the lethal side effects of producing X-rays. Elizabeth lost an arm due to radiation poisoning and in August, 1905 she lost her life. The ''San Francisco'' ''Chronicle ''obituary wrote that she died "after suffering for months from injuries sustained in the pursuit of her profession as a radiographer. In her demise the community loses one of the most admirable women of science and of the most ardent workers in the interests of afflicted humanity."<br />
<br />
''by Mary Brown, 1997''<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''Palmquist - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
<br />
Brown,Mary - Writer<br />
<br />
Palmquist - Publisher or Photographer<br />
<br />
[[Women's Photography After the Gold Rush |Prev. Document]] [[Chinese Immigrant Teaches Herself Photography |Next Document]]</div>
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Chinese Immigrant Teaches Herself Photography
2007-10-07T22:31:26Z
<p>Admin: 1 revision(s)</p>
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<div>[[Image:wimmin$babes-of-chinatown-1899.jpg]]<br />
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'''Photo in Chinatown from 1899 by Mrs. Hortense Schulze'''<br />
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One California Camera Club member was the first known woman of color photographer in San Francisco, Mrs. Tape, who was also considered an expert in lantern slide photography. The reason for her migration at age 11 from a town near Shanghai, China is not known, although many Chinese girls at that time were imported to be sold as sex slaves or prostitutes. Several months after her arrival in SF's Chinatown (around the late 1860s) , the Ladies Relief Society took her in, where she learned English and the American mannerisms that were destined to astound a reporter who visited her family from the ''Morning Call'': <br />
<br />
"I had only come to see some photographs and talk with the lady that took them , and here I was sitting in a room with a family of full-blooded Chinese listening to a Chinese girl playing an old-time favorite on an American piano and talking to me with as much esprit as any girl of my own race. This fact struck me at first as exceedingly ludicrous, as I had always been accustomed to view the Chinese in an entirely different light: but when I saw around me the father and mother and their accomplished children I changed my opinion in regard to the race in general and saw that with proper instruction before they had become imbued with national traits they were as susceptible of civilization as any nation in the world.<br />
<br />
"I expressed my usual surprise that she had been able to conquer the difficult art of photography, and she only laughed, saying, 'Oh, these are nothing to some of the work I have done. My friends usually beg everything good and leave me the rest. But here, look at these,' and she produced a pile of lantern slides, 'these are some that I take pride in.'<br />
<br />
Although by then many amateur photographers sent their plates in to be developed, Mrs. Tape still insisted on preparing her own plates and printing the photographs. She learned photography by, "reading different authorities on the subjects and then studying the methods to see which was the best." Apparently she found quite a good method. Her landscapes, still lifes and portraits were exhibited at several shows and she received the highest awards in amateur photography from the Mechanics Institute. The February, 1892 issue of the ''Pacific Coast Photographer'' also made note of her achievements: "Mrs. Tape, the bright and intelligent Americanized Chinese lady, is becoming a slide expert. She probably does what but few amateurs have undertaken -- the manufacture of her own slide plates."<br />
<br />
At age 16 she had met and married her husband Joseph Tape, an Americanized Chinese man who worked as an interpreter for the Imperial Consulate of China. His express business also had a monopoly over transporting the Chinese workers who came here in bond. The Morning Call reporter noted they were fairly well off and quite determined to assimilate as Americans.<br />
<br />
Much like the rest of the country, photography for San Franciscans was overwhelmingly a hobby or career for white women only. Out of the 2,201 female photographers across the country noted in the 1890 US Census, only six of them were black.<br />
<br />
''by Mary Brown, 1997''<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''Palmquist - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
<br />
Brown,Mary - Writer<br />
<br />
[[X-ray Photographer: Elizabeth Fleischmann |Prev. Document]] [[Sudsofloppen: Consciousness-Raising and the Small Group as Free Space |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=%22Respectable%22_Attitudes_Towards_Early_Prostitution&diff=3824
"Respectable" Attitudes Towards Early Prostitution
2007-10-07T22:31:23Z
<p>Admin: 1 revision(s)</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:wimmin$prostitutes-dancing.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Barbary Coast dancehall'''<br />
<br />
It seems clear from accounts of the time that women who were not prostitutes feared being taken for prostitutes, or likened to prostitutes. One woman worries about the custom of giving expensive presents to daughters of decent families. These women are being treated nearly as prostitutes, and they're accepting, and even welcoming, this treatment (Royce 1932, 114-15). If women were not careful, the line between respectability and license would disappear (though it's not clear what good the line did them, since in their eyes men had control over defining who fell on which side of the line, therefore men had the upper hand no matter which side of the line one fell on). So they reinforced the line in various ways, frequently by blaming the prostitute for having disreputable morals. Here are two examples of this sort of move.<br />
<br />
Josiah Royce's mother, Sarah, wrote her account of life in early San Francisco at her son's request. In part of the memoir that resulted, she told the following story as an illustration of the moral dangers posed to those who came to make their fortunes in San Francisco: "one of the sensations of that year (1850), was an entertainment, got up for the benefit of a Benevolent Society which, even in that early day, had been organized months before, and had done, and continued doing, works of mercy, which cheered and saved many a lonely wanderer. The entertainment was conducted by the ladies of the different churches, of which there were, in the city, already four. ...[T]here entered the room a man, prominent for wealth and business-power, bearing upon his arm a splendidly dressed woman, well known in the city as the disreputable companion of her wealthy escort. With cool assurance he proceeded to make her and himself quite at home; but in a few minute she was waited upon by a committee of gentlemen, who called him aside, and told him they were sent, by the lady-managers to say that they declined to receive as an associate, or to have introduced to their daughters, one who stood in the relation occupied by his companion, and they respectfully requested him to invite her to withdraw with him. Of course there was nothing for him to do but to comply; and all went on again pleasantly. It was reported that he had previously boasted that he could introduce Irene any where in San Francisco, but the events of that evening proved to him, as well as to others, that while Christian women would forego ease and endure much labor, in order to benefit any who suffered, they would not welcome into friendly association any who trampled upon institutions which lie at the foundation of morality and civilization." (Royce 1932, 113-14).<br />
<br />
The following letter was reportedly sent to the Vigilance Committee of 1856 after Charles Cora, a well-known gambler, had been hanged for the murder of William Richardson. Belle and Charles married on the day of his execution.<br />
<br />
To the Vigilance Committee: "Allow me to express to your respected body our high appreciation of your valuable services so wisely and judiciously executed. You have exhibited a spirit of forbearance and kindness that even the accused and condemned cannot but approve. May Heaven continue to guide you.<br />
<br />
"But, gentlemen, one thing more must be done: Belle Cora must be requested to leave this city. The women of San Francisco have no bitterness toward her, nor do they ask it on her account, but for the good of those who remain, and as an example to others. Every virtuous woman asks that her influence and example be removed from us.<br />
<br />
"The truly virtuous of our sex will not feel that the Vigilance committee have done their whole duty till they comply with the request of Many Women of San Francisco (Jacobson 1941, 149)."<br />
<br />
''--Caroline Danielson''<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''San Francisco Public Library,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
<br />
Danielson,Caroline - Writer<br />
<br />
[[Gold-Rush Era Prostitutes |Prev. Document]] [[Men : Women in Early San Francisco |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=REPRODUCTIVE_RIGHTS_RANT&diff=3820
REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS RANT
2007-10-07T22:31:21Z
<p>Admin: 1 revision(s)</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:wimmin$clinic-defense.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Women practice linic defense tactics outside the Planned Parenthood clinic on Octavia and Bush in San Francisco.'''<br />
<br />
I''' '''tried to stop what happened that day, but it wasn't going to be stopped. A woman died. It was reported as a car accident, a not terribly unusual event. But it didn't have to happen. On some level, the clinic escort team failed miserably. I was co-coordinating our efforts with a woman considered a warm, nurturing escort, a self-avowed Christian-for-choice. I didn't trust her as far as I could throw her (which in retrospect is what I should've done).<br />
<br />
In most respects the morning had seemed successful. We'd deployed enough people around the clinic that the Operation Rescue (OR) scouts, checking all the clinics open that morning, wouldn't be likely to advise a hit against ours. We'd avoided the ORs' attempts to bump or trip us so they could tell the police we were assaulting them. We'd brought women smoothly through a particularly skilled cohort of OR "sidewalk counselors," a quartet of young women in their late teens and early twenties.<br />
<br />
These "counselors" looked ... meek; they stood apart from the contingent of fetus-porn sign carriers yelling about baby-killing, and from the vicious old men fondling their beards (tough old coots with military backgrounds written all over them). The "counselors" pounced like piranhas on any woman from fourteen to sixty that passed near the clinic. One of them, during a previous action, had looked me straight in the eye as I escorted a client into a clinic and, hearing people use the familiar chant "Pro-life, that's a lie, you don't care if women die," responded in an emphatic whisper, "That's right!"<br />
<br />
By the second time they messed with a client we were ready. We blocked their sign-carriers before they blocked us, and formed corridors to give the client and the escort smooth passage. We even dampened the "sidewalk counselors" piercing cries of "Don't go in there! They'll hurt you and kill your baby!" by holding up our placards ("This Clinic Is Open" and "Defend Our Abortion Rights") and singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."<br />
<br />
But what happened to a woman I'll call "Ana" occurred after she got into the clinic. Someone got to her boyfriend, perhaps between the clinic and his car after he dropped her off. He decided she didn't have any right to get the abortion.<br />
<br />
First he got loaded. Then he came into the clinic. He started yelling in the waiting room about how she couldn't kill his baby. The clinic staff ejected him, warning the escorts not to let him back in. But meanwhile he'd gotten her purse. He demanded to see Ana after she was already being prepared for surgery. If only we had been strong; if only I had gotten some of the women together and just taken back the purse (the men on the escort team that morning were all very uncomfortable with this idea!).<br />
<br />
My Christian co-coordinator instead chose to call in the police. It seemed opposed to what we stood for, but she insisted. Something was already terribly wrong, and it got worse when the cop hung out with the kid, just talking like brothers. I still thought I could save the situation. I'd get him to leave, then we could handle it. The cops always claimed they didn't want to be there anyway, that they had more important things to do.<br />
<br />
I told the cop that things were pretty much over for the morning, that we had everything under control--gave the whole rap, none of it false. But now that this cop had been invited in, like a vampire, he wasn't about to let go. He threatened and lez-baited me, obsessed with getting to talk to Ana. He pled the kid's case. He lied to me and to the clinic director in his efforts to get her to bring Ana out of recovery to him.<br />
<br />
Ana had said to me that she was never going to see her "boyfriend" again, and that she didn't even know if he was the sperm donor for today's problem. She thought he was pretty crazy. But if he had her purse, how was she going to call her brother-in-law (who, like most of her family, lived over an hour from San Francisco in a lower-income commuter town) to come and get her? While she was trying to work out getting home without her purse ''and without ''this creep, the policeman was working to undermine her decision, put her back into the intoxicated young man's custody. Finally, he simply ordered the clinic to surrender the patient to him, and then proceeded to badger her until she agreed to go home with the drugged-out anti-abortion ex-boyfriend who'd seized her purse. The cop, with the tacit support of the Christian escort coordinator, pulled out all the emotional stops--He just wants another chance, he just wants you to ''know how ''much he loves you. (Subtext: he's got a right to you.) How much did he love her? I guess she found out. I hopelessly watched as she got into his flashy car and drove away.<br />
<br />
I let a woman be murdered; I watched her get sucked down the drain by a desperately sweaty blond cop who had entirely too much emotional investment in getting her to ride with''' '''the purse thief. I learned once again what a crock of shit being nice is, and Ana learned how much love and protection there was for her in this world. Later we read about a freak crash on the freeway heading to her small town, involving a rare and flashy vehicle and two Hispanic teenagers.<br />
<br />
'''All in One Day: Mainstreaming the End of Choice '''<br />
<br />
Shortly after columnist George Will suggested that rather than focus the antiabortion battle on electoral races (where it tends to be lost), enemies of abortion rights re-animate the doctrine of abortion-as-sin by "stigmatizing" the woman involved, examples of his strategy began popping up everywhere. Women, already urged to be anxious about everything from exercise to eyebags, were now invited to forget 20-plus years of the tenuous right to make choices about the uses of our uteri, and instead wring our hands over the "moral crisis" (whose?) of abortion.<br />
<br />
It may have started with Will and his ilk, but our own willingness to be such self-doubting wimps doesn't help. I remember a sensitive, oh-so-ethically-tortured cover piece in the ''Village Voice ''by a woman who had apparently had a few bad experiences with feminists (hey, who hasn't?), decrying the frequency of abortions. Instead of reaching the obvious conclusion--that current contraceptive technologies just aren't good enough--she joins the Will chorus and blames the women. Her delicate soul was tormented by wondering if women were seeking abortions as ''rites of passage? ''New Age Crap like this implies that we should instead be crowning our pubescent lasses with spring blossoms on windblown beaches while singing menstrual chants. It's also callous stupidity, losing sight of the fact that when women come of age, we can get pregnant, with or without chants, garlands, and beach (which, come to think of it, would be a lot nicer than looking at the sappy posters in a clinic recovery room). So we need the option to end unwanted pregnancies, just as we need affordable effective prenatal care.<br />
<br />
If we want to do anything other than begin the mom life at fourteen or fifteen, the sane, smart, even courageous choice for a young woman as well as for the children she may one day raise, is abortion. The ''Voice ''writer aside, very few women that I know experience ''any ''physical or emotional malaise post-op. It's just like having a period, or should be. The influence of "stigmatization" erodes the self-esteem which promotes physical resilience: some clinic workers have told me they see more depression, discomfort, anxiety, and over-justification among women who were got at by anti-choice family members or acquaintances. Who knows? With the proliferation of New Age Crap riding on the coattails of feminism and hippie nostalgia, we'll probably soon be prodded to agonize over fetuses' past lives.<br />
<br />
My best friend, the Red Diaper Baby, has noted that in olden times good commies simply said, "Beware the mass media, they're a bunch of pigs," while today scads of would-be dissenting voices buttress their yen for a Front Page career by producing reams of ''analysis ''of the beast. One day of S.F. ''Examiner ''reading and I'm wondering how much my buddy's kidding when he sighs for the straightforward caveat of the good old days. First, the liberal Christopher Matthews column suggests without irony that the $5+ million war chest the Conference of Catholic Bishops is preparing for a sin-based anti-choice multimedia ad campaign ''is modest, ''even ''frugal, ''and perhaps ''does a service to "us all. " ''You see, it brings "the debate" out of "the cold, clinical, medical realm" where findings on brain function and viability just happen to consistently support calling a fetus a fetus and a baby a baby. ''Chris, Chris, I ''wanna cry from the heart, ''there's no "debate" here! ''Either these old ''guys have ''the right to tell me what I'm gonna do with my uterus, with the next one to twenty years of my ''life, ''or else ''their campaign has as much moral legitimacy as a fucking Marlboro ad! ''However ascetic you may find a $5 million P.R. budget.<br />
<br />
In my experience, tolerance of apologetic, morally sensitive attitudes about abortion plays into the same hands which the women and men who want to censor pornography are tickling: the Religious Right.<br />
<br />
Former car salesman Randall Terry, the troubled son of a violent father and a mother whose family has a tradition of feminist activism, including reproductive rights work, founded Operation Rescue in the mid-80s after an intense on-the-road conversion experience whose details change depending on whose version you hear. OR has a slick magazine, state-of-the-art computerized fundraising, savvy body mobilizing campaigns through sympathetic Catholic and fundamentalist churches, and tenacity. Its assets have been seized, its activities enjoined, but at this writing, it seems to have returned from the brink once again.<br />
<br />
Its Wichita extravaganza has given George Bush a chance to look moderate as the Justice Department abets OR's new strategy taking the fight to women's clinics in the Bible belt to avoid the more aware urban areas where there has been quick response from civil liberties, women's, and gay organizations (as well as the new network of militant pro-choice groups which has arisen all over the country, but mostly in metropolitan areas, in response to OR itself).<br />
<br />
Operation Rescue unites groups of people who sincerely believe all the other groups are going to burn in hell, devout Roman Catholics, Bible-believing Baptists and Spirit-filled Pentecostals, in rather authoritarian public displays of passive aggression: mass sing-, lie-, and kneel-ins to shut down medical facilities where abortion is offered. With less media presence OR members mount more violent attacks against clinics, their clients and escorts (calling the latter "death squads" is one of their more absurd attempts to ape activist-speak). The clinic attackers I've spoken with are quick to point out that there has never been an OR member convicted of actual clinic arson or bombing, but membership is fluid, and their training literature advises outright deception (key OR leaders in the Bay Area disavow all knowledge of the organization!) as well as vagueness about OR activities beyond the orchestrated media events.<br />
<br />
A trendy piece on contemporary Civil Disobedience activism, also in the Ex''aminer, ''centers on one Colonel Ron Maxson, painting the Nam vet in rose soft hues. This, we're told, is a gentle, simple man, a man of conviction, fighting for what he believes despite police brutality and a world that won't understand. What Colonel Ron does to express his great soul is physically block women from entering medical facilities; this "activist in the tradition of Gandhi and King" is a member of OR.<br />
<br />
A fifteen-year-old girl-child is left standing in the street waiting for police to remove Maxson and crew. (If they do; without strong pressure from pro-choice groups, police response is typically to order the ''clinic ''closed. At one OR action, I even saw the officer in charge ask the OR in charge if there were any pro-choicers he wanted arrested, and proceeded to arrest them.) The Holy Spirit might speak in her heart, Maxson reasons, telling her not to go through with her abortion. That these hours might also mean hemorrhaging from ''laminaria'' insertion, shock, needless pain, infection, perhaps even returning home for a desperate and ignorant attempt to self-induce and possible death, doesn't bother a man with the guts to stand by his convictions.<br />
<br />
After all, OR mentor Joe Scheidler, author of ''Closed: 99 Ways to Stop Abortion, ''Chicago Pro-Life Action League founder, and suspected clinic bombing participant, declared "a war of fear and pain" on women seeking abortions. I've seen ORs gleefully cite the (fabricated) ''Closed ''passage claiming that infections, perforated uteri, shock, hemorrhage and death rates rise by 5percent at a clinic that was targeted by OR. To Maxson, confrontations with "death squads," which have resulted in concussions, internal injuries, cuts, sprains, bruises, and at least one miscarriage for clinic escorts to date, represent ((a "spiritual confrontation between good and evil." It's hard for me not to agree.<br />
<br />
'''Raw Good and Evil, or, Background on Us and Them '''<br />
<br />
It's not fashionable, probably not PC, and worlds away from New Ageism, but I do see Operation Rescue and its fellow travelers as my enemies, as "Them."<br />
<br />
It's my experience as an escort coordinator that has inspired this rant. There's a clinic in an old building, on an incredibly chilly corner of San Francisco, redolent of eucalyptus, where voodoo Priestess, underground railroad stationmistress, Madam, and probably herbwise woman abortionist [[Mary Ellen Pleasant Mammy Pleasant]] had her establishment. Here she planted the fragrant messy trees with her own hands. Today it's the site of a low-cost clinic. This privately owned facility is OR's most-targeted site in San Francisco, possibly because of proximity to OR-sympathetic churches like St. Dominic's and St. Mary's (a.k.a. St. Domino's and St. Maytag's), serving a cross-section of Bay Area women, the majority being younger women of color.<br />
<br />
Somehow my partner and I managed to get up early enough every Saturday morning for almost a year--until our own demanding daughter arrived one November dawn--to work with the Bay Area's direct action, pro-choice coalition defending the clinic. We escorted clients past "pro-lifers" who shoved, shouted, and waved huge color blow-ups of dead newborns purported to be aborted fetuses in the clients' faces. They tried to photograph clients' license plates and faces. They used the heavy plywood backing their fetal porn to bash pro-choicers, and the substantial size and weight of their bodies to threaten. They cunningly used the police to present their actions as simple First Amendment rightslike picketing. The surreality was perhaps enhanced by the colors and shadows of pre-sunrise, but it was confirmed by the fact that all this went on with almost no mention in the news. The biggest attacks would get at best a fact-garbled paragraph or two buried deep in one of the papers.<br />
<br />
It never ceased feeling strange to go about my weekend after clinic mornings. In the normal world, traffic whooshed by the corner, at most honking an encouraging honk at the sight of the pro-choice placards, and most men weren't poised to hit or trip me; most cops and old ladies weren't threatening me, and most people either didn't know or didn't care that women's basic privacy, basic dignity, basic rights to choose and receive medical care, were being routinely shit on.<br />
<br />
--''Angela Bocage (originally published in Processed World #28, 1991)''<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''Gerharter,Rick - Photographer-Artist ''<br />
<br />
Bocage,Angela - Writer<br />
<br />
[[WOMEN CLAIM THE VOTE IN CALIFORNIA |Prev. Document]] [[EXOTIC DANCERS' ALLIANCE |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Women%27s_Liberation:_1970s,_Early_Movement&diff=3818
Women's Liberation: 1970s, Early Movement
2007-10-07T22:31:19Z
<p>Admin: 1 revision(s)</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:wimmin$angela-davis-poster.jpg]]<br />
<br />
Angela Davis support poster, early 1970s.<br />
<br />
Fresh from Detroit where she had worked as a health educator, Joani Blank was subletting a friend's apartment for the summer of 1971. She joined the Medical Committee for Human Rights, and at a meeting that summer [[Godmother of SexEd: Maggi Rubenstein Maggi Rubenstein]] leaned over and invited Joani to the next women's liberation consciousness-raising (C-R) group. Joani's invitation was the classical feminist recruitment scene. She went, and continued in C-R groups for several years, as her sexual health and education experience grew.<br />
<br />
Later, worker-owners Anne Semans and Cathy Winks, in their book ''"The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex"'', would write, "[[Good Vibrations: Center of Pleasure Activism Good Vibrations]] is part of the grassroots movement of the past decade, in which more and more women have stepped forward to name their own sexual experiences ... We feel that the celebration of female desire is integral to feminism, and that honest communication about sex is a prerequisite to equal rights both in and out of the bedroom." The seeds of this honest communication were nurtured in the consciousness-raising groups of early second wave feminism.<br />
<br />
'''Sex Education '''<br />
<br />
In 1971, Joani Blank had a job at the San Mateo County Health Department doing family planning counseling. Every day she dealt with young women who knew practically nothing about their own sexuality. They were there for birth control or pregnancy counseling, but many had never had an orgasm or taken a look at their own clitorises. The connection between those two facts is more profound than most people are able to admit. At the time, there weren't any perfect resources to point women towards for self-education, few books or pamphlets gave complete information about sex. Almost none communicated a sense of joy or discovery in learning about the topic, or a sense of its importance to a self-realized human life.<br />
<br />
Through the early networks springing up among sex education providers in the San Francisco Bay Area, Blank got a job screening candidates for Lonnie Barbach's first pre-orgasmic women's groups. Barbach was training therapists at the University of California, San Francisco to teach her techniques to pre-orgasmic women. Her gradual approach to masturbation was adapted from Joe LoPiccolo's earlier theories, and detailed in her own popular book ''For Yourself,'' published in 1975.<br />
<br />
Here, Joani met Maggi Rubenstein, a certified nurse who had worked with Joel Fort, and who later went on to co-found San Francisco Sex Information, the Bi Center, and the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. Blank was in Barbach and Rubenstein's first group of volunteers, which also included Carolyn Smith and Toni Ayres (two others who founded the San Francisco Sex Information).<br />
<br />
These sex education programs, like many other progressive organizing projects in the Bay Area, were encouraged and funded by the Glide Memorial Church. Glide, a local Methodist church with roots in the civil rights and labor organizing communities, had created a National Sex Forum program, run by Minister Ted McIlvenna, which employed Phyllis Lyon (a prominent leader in San Francisco's feminist and lesbian community). McIlvenna and his friend Dr. Herbert Vandervoot worked together to start the sex counseling program at UCSF.<br />
<br />
Their goal was to train medical students to have some comfort with taking care of people's sexual health, so integrally connected to physical health. This small group became known as the "Sex Advisory and Counseling Unit." Here the women's pre-orgasmic group derived a lot more from the model of a Women's Liberation consciousness-raising group than any straight therapy experience. Blank was never formally medically trained, but was gradually becoming a true expert on sexual health and education as she ran workshops, trained students, and started to think through new sex theory.<br />
<br />
''--Elizabeth Sullivan''<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''Robbins,Trina - Photographer-Artist ''<br />
<br />
Sullivan,Elizabeth - Writer<br />
<br />
[[San Francisco's First Women-Centered Sex Toy Store |Prev. Document]] [[Mainstream Feminism Responds to Sex Positive |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Japanese_Internment&diff=3802
Japanese Internment
2007-10-07T22:31:09Z
<p>Admin: 1 revision(s)</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:westaddi$carp-man-1950s.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Portrait with carp, c. 1950s'''<br />
<br />
In the late 1800s, most Japanese lived on Rincon Hill, near South Park in the South of Market area. After the 1906 earthquake, the Japanese community moved out to the Western Addition near the intersection of Post and Laguna streets. There they established Nihonmachi or Japanese town, now known as Japantown.<br />
<br />
In early 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, ordering Japanese Americans on the West Coast to be ncarcerated in internment camps. The Japanese community in San Francisco was treated like an enemy alien population. Any person of Japanese ancestry was required to sell their belongings, give up their homes and move into temporary relocation camps (usually race tracks) while internment facilities were built in the interior of the country. (The Buddhist Temple on Octavia near Bush is where many Japanese stored their belongings during the internment. Some of the first people sent to the camps were Shinto, Buddhist and Presbyterian priests because they were community leaders.) Japanese Americans were considered spies and a threat to the war effort against Japan. Ironically, many Japanese Americans served as spies on the American side of the war and others left the camps to lose their lives on the battle field under the American flag.<br />
<br />
Notably, Japanese Americans living in Hawaii were not interned, despite their greater numbers and the national security threat to that area following the Pearl Harbor bombing. Some theories assert that Japanese Americans were ordered removed from the coast of California not because they posed any national security threat, but because efficient Japanese farmers had taken over the agricultural industry from white farmers in states like California and Washington. The government feared an increase in Japanese American economic power since the agricultural industry would gain strength in a war time economy.<br />
<br />
Whatever the reason for the U.S. removal of Japanese Americans from their homes, the imprisonment of so many U.S. citizens and residents was devastating to the Japanese community. Families lost their homes, businesses, and worldly belongings. They were incarcerated by a government that they considered their own and were thrown into horse stables unfit for human habitation.<br />
<br />
The Japanese community proved resilient, however. Despite the atrocities committed against them during World War II, Japanese Americans returned to their homes after their incarceration in the camps and began the process of restoration. In San Francisco, although many Japanese Americans returned to their homes in Nihonmachi, some chose to move to the Richmond District.<br />
<br />
A decade or so later, those in Nihonmachi were forced to move again. At this time, Geary Boulevard was widened to provide middle-class residents of the Sunset and Richmond districts a major thoroughfare into downtown. This widening also effectively divided Japantown from Western Addition and the Fillmore, separating Japanese American and African American communities from each other. Also at this time, the land for Japan Center was sold to Kintetsu Corporation to build as a neighborhood shopping center. The corporation razed the existing Japantown/Koreatown along Post Street and built a more corporate and tourist-oriented complex, displacing many small business owners and residents who could no longer afford to live or do business there.<br />
<br />
The northern boundary of Western Addition and Japantown has always been defined by the segregation practiced by the San Francisco real estate industry, which effectively barred minorities from moving in north of California Street. Although this practice legally ended in the 1960s with the enactment of fair housing laws, even today few people of color live north of this historic racial divide.<br />
<br />
''--courtesy Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights, from an immigrant history walking tour conducted Sept. 20, 1997''<br />
<br />
[[Image:westaddi$ceremonial-pose.jpg]]<br />
<br />
Ceremonial garb, c 1950s.<br />
<br />
Contributors to this page include:<br />
<br />
''Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
<br />
[[Japanese Immigration |Prev. Document]] [[THE DESTRUCTION OF NIHONMACHI |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Western_Addition:_A_Basic_History&diff=3800
Western Addition: A Basic History
2007-10-07T22:31:08Z
<p>Admin: 1 revision(s)</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:westaddi$post-and-laguna-1927.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Post and Laguna Streets, 1927'''<br />
<br />
The area was built up after 1858 as the city's first middle-class expansion. The district's middle-class quality was lost after the 1906 earthquake when refugees poured into the neighbor-hood and threw up shacks and odd structures in every conceivable lot and corner. By the 1950s this diverse and relatively chaotic assortment of structures, dating from the 1800s, was seen as a cause of delinquency and public health problems.<br />
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The Western Addition A-1 clearance project led to the redevelopment of [[Japanese in Western Addition Japantown]] and the Geary Boulevard corridor in the early 1960s. Once built, the surrounding area appeared even more blighted by comparison, so redevelopment monies were directed toward continuing the removal of old housing stock. ''--Chris Carlsson''<br />
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[[Western Addition: Mid-1990s |Prev. Document]] [[Japanese Immigration |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Beat_Landmarks&diff=3798
Beat Landmarks
2007-10-07T22:31:07Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$2222-fillmore.jpg]]<br />
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'''2222 Fillmore Street, site of the Batman Gallery, founded by William Jahrmarkt with major assistance from Bruce Conner, who designed and had the first show there, opening Nov. 3, 1960. Conner also filmed '''Vivian''' here, in which the bohemian Vivian Kurtz frolicked through the gallery to the tune of Conway Twitty's 'Mona Lisa', while looking at Conner's Touch/Do Not Touch artworks.'''<br />
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[[Fillmore: The Beats in the Western Addition Beat]] Landmarks in Fillmore<br />
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[[Image:westaddi$2322-fillmore.jpg]]<br />
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'''2322 Fillmore Street, home of poet Michael McClure, friend and collaborator of filmmaker Bruce Conner's, and a crucial link between artists and poets in the 1950s. Conner shot the film '''The White Rose''' here, documenting the removal of Jay DeFeo's one-ton mandalic painting '''The Rose''', when she was evicted in 1964 by having her rent raised from $65 to $300. She had lived and painted here for several years and was an inspiration and a figure of awe to many other artists--Bruce Conner, Manuel Neri, Al Wong, Carlos Villa, Edward Kiehholz and Wallace Berman among them.'''<br />
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[[Ghadar Memorial |Prev. Document]] [[Western Addition: Mid-1990s |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Patty_Hearst%27s_SLA_Hideout&diff=3796
Patty Hearst's SLA Hideout
2007-10-07T22:31:05Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$patty-hearst-sla-headquarters.jpg]]<br />
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'''1827 Golden Gate (between Baker and Broderick) Apt. 6.'''<br />
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You think your place is crowded! This small studio apartment with a bed that folded into one wall housed an entire army--the [[Symbionese Liberation Army Symbionese Liberation Army]]--during its brief war against the Hearst Empire and the U.S. Government. Patty, a.k.a. Tanya, spent more than eight weeks in these cramped quarters along with SLA members Donald DeFreeze, Bill and Emily Harris, Willie Wolfe, Angela de Angelis, Patricia Mizmoon Soltysik, Camilla Hall, and Nancy Ling.<br />
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The SLA had kidnapped Patty on February 4, 1974, demanding that the press print its revolutionary communiques and that newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst give away millions of dollars worth of food to the poor. Though the food giveaways were bungled, Old Man Hearst did spend a fraction of his fortune on the effort, and America's newspapers dutifully printed every last piece of SLA propaganda. But the food giveaway problems, and a series of mixups, gave Patty the impression that her family wasn't working hard enough to get her back. At the same time, she was swayed by the SLA's criticism of America's obscene maldistribution of wealth, its domination by the fascist military-industrial complex that had murdered JFK, and so on. At the beginning of those weeks, Patty was an SLA captive; by the end, she was a willing, gun-toting participant in the [[Patty Hearst Bankrobber robbery of the Hibernia Bank]].<br />
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Some say she was brainwashed -- the best legal team money could buy managed to convince a court of law that this was the case. In any event, Patty escaped the fate of most of her comrades, who were burned alive by the murderous Los Angeles Police Department. She spent little time behind bars, and quickly resumed what passes for a normal life in Hearst social circles. In 1979 she was seen wearing a T-shirt that said Pardon me on the front and Being kidnapped means always having to say you're sorry on the back. Since then, she has appeared in the wonderful films of cine-sleazemeister John Waters.<br />
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''--Dr. Weirde''<br />
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=THE_DESTRUCTION_OF_NIHONMACHI&diff=3794
THE DESTRUCTION OF NIHONMACHI
2007-10-07T22:31:04Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$cane-1973.jpg]]<br />
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'''CANE: Citizens Against Nihonmachi Eviction, 1973'''<br />
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The giant mall known as "Japantown" was once the thriving center of the Japanese-American community in San Francisco. Before World War II, "Nihonmachi," the Japanese-American neighborhood, was roughly 20 square blocks and housed 95% of the city's Japanese-Americans. Forced relocation during World War II uprooted almost all, but many returned after the war to continue residency. During the sixties and seventies, giant real estate interests cast a greedy eye upon the areas prime real estate. Giant corporations, like Japan's Kintetsu Corporation, conspired with the City's Redevelopment Agency to displace many low-income Japanese-Americans and turn the area into its present state as Japanese theme park mall. The Citizens Against Nihonmachi Eviction (C.A.N.E.) was formed in 1973 to fight the eviction of low-income people and small businesses. They successfully mobilized thousands of people to demonstrate against City Hall and Kintetsu, and forcibly occupied several buildings slated for destruction, much as the tenants did at the International Hotel. Real Estate interests prevailed however, and foreign-owned hotels and retail centers displaced hundreds of local, home-grown Japanese-American residents and businesses.<br />
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''-- Jesse Drew''<br />
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Post-quake_URR_Carbarns_in_Western_Addition&diff=3790
Post-quake URR Carbarns in Western Addition
2007-10-07T22:31:01Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$mcallister-st-1909-photo.jpg]]<br />
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'''McAllister Street looking west from Pierce, May 10, 1909.'''<br />
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''''''<br />
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== 1909 photograph of McAllister Street looking west from Pierce. ==<br />
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=LONE_MOUNTAIN&diff=3788
LONE MOUNTAIN
2007-10-07T22:31:00Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$buena-vista-and-lone-mtn.jpg]]<br />
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'''Lone Mountain looms behind men (left of the center figure)standing on Buena Vista Heights, with the Golden Gate in distance behind that, October 31, 1886. '''<br />
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The last of the wooden crosses was torn down from the top of Lone Mountain in 1930. And in 1932 construction began on the Spanish Gothic style building for the San Francisco College for Women, Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. A beautiful garden stairway, called the "Spanish Steps" after those in Rome, marks the entrance on Turk Street. This property was acquired by the University of San Francisco in 1978 as an extension to its campus next to St. Ignatius Church.<br />
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After the third St. Ignatius Church on Hayes and Van Ness was destroyed by fire in 1906, a new church was begun "as a Jesuit act of faith" on former Masonic Cemetery land at Parker and Fulton. The Neo-Baroque style structure was built between 1910 and 1914 with a tin roof, steel frame, engaged fluted columns of terra cotta, pressed brick walls containing over 250,000 bricks, and 128 clerestory windows. Its twin towers could be seen by ships at sea. The 5,824-pound bell in the campanile had been saved from the church on Hayes and Van Ness.26 Today St. Ignatius is illuminated in the evenings and sits golden in the moonlight on its hill.<br />
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The Lone Mountain, Laurel Hill, Jordan Park area has changed dramatically over the past 150 years. The sand dunes have disappeared, and the cemeteries are gone. Today the neighborhood is a vibrant residential, commercial, and university community. Although its character will continue to change as time goes on, such monuments as the Pioneer's Memorial Plaque (at the entrance to U.C.'s Laurel Hill campus) and the green-domed Columbarium, if they are preserved, will continue to serve as tangible reminders of the area's past.<br />
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''--by Deanna L. Kastler, excerpted from "Lone Mountain & Laurel Hill: From Necropolis to Residential, Commercial, & University Neighborhoods", originally published in ''The Argonaut'', Vol. 3, No. 1, Winter 1992''<br />
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[[Old Cemeteries in the City |Prev. Document]] [[Harry Bridges Memorial Bldg. |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Laurel_Heights&diff=3786
Laurel Heights
2007-10-07T22:30:59Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$laurel-hill-cemetery-1890s.jpg]]<br />
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'''Laurel Hill Cemetery during the 1890s.'''<br />
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By 1941, the Laurel Hill Cemetery was gone. The top of the hill was set aside for the future Lowell High School, but later rezoned for commercial use. In 1953, Firemen's Fund Insurance Company bought the land and constructed a four-story office building, which today serves as the Laurel Hill campus of the University of California (neighbors have bitterly contested U.C. plans to convert the facility into a biomedical research laboratory). The slopes of Laurel Heights were developed in the 1940s and '50s with houses, flats, and small apartment buildings. These modern buildings contrast with the earlier Queen Anne and Stick style dwellings built in the same area.<br />
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The two blocks now known as Jordan Park were purchased by James Clark Jordan in 1891. The park was used by the military during the Spanish-American War in 1898 and was subsequently developed by Jordan, from 1900 to 1920, into an area of wide streets with large homes set on spacious lots with lawns and gardens.<br />
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''--by Deanna L. Kastler, excerpted from "Lone Mountain & Laurel Hill: From Necropolis to Residential, Commercial, & University Neighborhoods", originally published in ''The Argonaut'', Vol. 3, No. 1, Winter 1993''<br />
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Fulton_Street_streetcars&diff=3784
Fulton Street streetcars
2007-10-07T22:30:58Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$mcallister-st-1882.jpg]]<br />
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'''Hauling the cable to the new McAllister Street cable house in 1882. This is Laguna and Fulton Streets.'''<br />
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''''''<br />
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== Photograph from 1882 of cable car cable being hauled on Laguna and Fulton streets. ==<br />
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Peoples_Temple&diff=3778
Peoples Temple
2007-10-07T22:30:55Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$peoples-temple-site.jpg]]<br />
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This vacant lot at 1859 Geary was once the site of The People's Temple.<br />
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The bleak, desolate vacant lot at 1859 Geary, between Fillmore and Steiner, is all that remains of the San Francisco headquarters of the late Reverend Jim Jones and his People's Temple. Rev. Jones, as you may remember, was the leader of a generally well-respected San Francisco cult who, on November 18th, 1978, convinced over 900 followers to commit mass suicide.<br />
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Jones moved his cult from rural Northern California to San Francisco in the early '70's, where he gradually began to acquire political clout. His beliefs were not all that weird, at least by San Francisco standards; Jones espoused a share-and-share-alike brand of primitive communism based on the gospels, while decrying the greed and materialism of American culture and forging political alliances with leftists. Though his creed was sensible -- and far closer to the ideals and practice of Jesus Christ than most American churches ever dream of getting -- Jones's personality had a paranoid, authoritarian streak that worsened over the years. He craved absolute love, absolute worship, absolute obedience, and eventually reached the point of insisting upon it, at no matter what price.<br />
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During his San Francisco period (the mid-'70's) Jones became a fixture on the local political scene. He sent his followers out as precinct workers for the Moscone for Mayor campaign, and when Moscone eked out a narrow victory, Jones collected his debt by getting himself named commissioner of housing. Then, during the 1976 presidential elections, Rosalyn Carter's advance team, hearing that Jones's grassroots organization had made the difference in Moscone's victory, scheduled a meeting between the cult leader and the future First Lady.<br />
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In January, 1977, Jones supplied two thousand of the five thousand demonstrators who showed up to protest the evictions of low-income tenants from the International Hotel. And on Memorial Day, 1977, Jones and six hundred followers turned out for a huge anti-suicide demonstration at the Golden Gate Bridge.<br />
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At the same time he was developing political clout, Jones was showing signs of the Unfathomably Savage Weirdness that would later claim nearly a thousand lives. As far back as 1973, Jones and his inner circle had developed a fantasy-cum-contingency-plan for mass suicide in case the People's Temple ever found itself about to be destroyed by its enemies. Jones made it clear that if and when the mass suicide took place, he, like Ishmael, would remain behind as sole survivor so as to explain the event.<br />
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In 1975, Jones conducted a bizarre experiment at the People's Temple headquarters on Geary Street. Jones announced that an excellent wine had been vinted from grapes grown at the Temple's former Redwood Valley headquarters, and that all those present ought to imbibe, despite the Temple prohibition against alcohol. The Reverend circulated among his flock, making sure that all were drinking. Then he called for attention and grimly announced that the wine contained a potent poison; everyone in the room would be dead in less than an hour. By killing themselves en masse, Jones explained, they would be protesting the world's inhumanity.<br />
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How did Temple members react? About the same way that citizens usually react when their government declares war. Nobody rebelled; nobody called out for an antidote; nobody stood up and disputed the necessity of mass death. That dress rehearsal had to do, as the song goes, until the real thing comes along. The real thing came along in November, 1978. Jones and most of his followers had moved to Guyana to escape the greed and corruption of America. They started a communal village, Jonestown, and kept themselves busy growing food and improving the settlement's primitive infrastructure. But their leader was going from weird to worse. Convinced that the U.S. government was plotting against him -- and he was probably right, given that any openly pro-communist leader of Jones's persuasive abilities was bound to quickly attract the attention of CIA, FBI, and quasi-official red squads--Jones turned into a full-fledged nut case.<br />
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On November 18th, 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan led a team of investigators and journalists into Jonestown ... and all hell broke loose. After their disastrous visit, Congressman Ryan and various aides and journalists were mowed down on the airstrip, just before they could board their plane, by People's Temple gunmen. (Some, including Tim Reiterman, survived to tell the tale.)<br />
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Meanwhile, back in Jonestown, the Reverend Jones was mixing up a huge vat full of purple-hued Grape Flavor Aid spiked with potassium cyanide, and people were getting ready to drink. The whole community had assembled in the central pavilion, surrounded by heavily armed security personnel. No one here gets out alive. The youngest Jonestowners went first; Jones's 12-person medical team shot the potion into the backs of their throats with syringes, and parents and grandparents cried as their children thrashed, screamed, vomited blood, convulsed, and eventually died. Meanwhile, various loyal followers stood up and offered heartfelt tributes to the greatness and wisdom of Jim Jones:<br />
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''I'd like to thank Dad because he's the only one who stood up for me. ''<br />
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This is nothing to cry about, this is something we could all rejoice about ... Jim Jones has suffered and suffered ... He is our only God.<br />
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I'd like to go for socialism and communism. I thank Dad very much.<br />
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Just before the reel-to-reel tape that recorded these and other testimonials ran out, Jones himself said:<br />
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''We've set an example for others. One thousand people who say: we don't like the way the world is. Take our life from us ... We didn't commit suicide. We committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world. ''<br />
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Just because Jones was paranoid, sources say, doesn't mean that they were not out to get him. Some investigators are convinced that Jones was the stooge of a CIA mind-control and/or psychological warfare project, designed to discredit leftists while exploring various mind-control and mind-disabling techniques. Suspicion focuses on members of the Jonestown medical team, who were in a position to administer Langley-developed potions to the Reverend Jones. In all fairness, it must be admitted that the evidence offered in support of this theory is rather skimpy.<br />
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''--Dr. Weirde''<br />
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Fillmore:_A_Jewish_Neighborhood_in_the_1920s&diff=3776
The Fillmore: A Jewish Neighborhood in the 1920s
2007-10-07T22:30:54Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$bread-truck-1920s.jpg]]<br />
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'''By the early 1920s, Langendorf's Jewish Bakery had a fleet of trucks delivering across the city.'''<br />
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San Francisco had a lively Jewish neighborhood in the 1920s and 1930s. It flourished as part of the Fillmore District for about forty years. Before Jewish families moved out to more fashionable residential areas of the city or to the suburbs, shoppers poured into the busy food stores and markets on Fillmore and McAllister Streets on Saturday nights and Sundays. There they bought Kosher meats and chickens at the butcher and poultry counters. On Saturday nights stores opened after sundown when the twenty-four hour Jewish Sabbath ended, and stayed open until eleven o'clock.<br />
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This heavy concentration of Jewish families and businesses began to appear immediately after the 1906 earthquake and fire razed much of the South-of-Market area. Many of the Jews who had come to San Francisco before the turn of the century had settled south of Market. When their homes were demolished they moved up to McAllister and the Fillmore District.<br />
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The former headquarters and social rooms of the San Francisco Labor Lyceum Association were in a basement at 1740 O'Farrell Street. The old Workmen's Circle and Socialist Party activities centered here.<br />
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During the Jewish High Holidays, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, there were crowds throughout the day in front of the district's three synagogues on Geary, Webster, and Golden Gate Avenue. Many came outside periodically for some fresh air and a break from praying. A good percentage, however, never went in. Some couldn't afford membership in the congregations. Others were nonbelievers who nevertheless felt a need to identify themselves as Jews on the special days and "be counted."<br />
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As in many other major American cities, Jews -- along with other whites moving up the middle class ladder -- had a mass exodus to the suburbs in the post-war era. San Francisco lost half its Jewish families between 1959-1973, many moved to Marin and the Peninsula. Suburbanization meant the demise of this dense, culturally rich Jewish neighborhood.<br />
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''by Kate Shvetsky ''<br />
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Langendorf Bakery, 1160 McAllister St.<br />
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Langendorf's was considered to be the Number One Jewish bakery in the neighborhood. During the High Holidays, from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, the windows of the retail store would have on display jumbo-sized "challah" (egg twist) bread. Some were filled with raisins and candied fruit pieces, and the braided top crusts were sprinkled with colored candy or poppy seeds.<br />
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Bernard Langendorf came to America from Vienna when he was sixteen. He moved his small bakery west from Chicago to San Francisco in 1895, establishing Langendorf's Vienna Bakery on Folsom Street, south of Market.<br />
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His rye bread was reportedly made from an old Viennese formula. After the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed his small bakery, Bernard re-opened 878 McAllister, near Laguna. In 1915, with $400,000 raised from ten prominent San Franciscans, he built a new, expanded plant at 1160 McAllister. By the early Twenties, a fleet of delivery wagons with tow-horse teams rented from a nearby stable, together with several battery-operated white trucks, were covering the City. Neighboring merchants and former employees remember Bernard boarding the No. 5 McAllister streetcar and carrying a paper bag full of bakery cash on his way to the bank.<br />
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Heineman & Stern, 1040 McAllister St.<br />
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This was a sausage and meat-products factory with a retail counter. You walked into the white-tile-front store to a wooden floor covered with clean sawdust. Featured were displays of Kosher-style hot dogs, salamis, and balonies. The factory, established in 1877 on Larkin Street, moved to this location after the 1906 earthquake and fire. It remained here until 1971 when the business was sold and moved across the Bay to San Lorenzo.<br />
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Jefferson Market, 1002 Buchanan St.<br />
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The Jefferson, owned by I. Goldstein, was the principal fresh-chicken headquarters for the San Francisco's Jewish community. The place bulged with screeching chickens. A cloud of feathers constantly filled the air. Cages of noisy chickens were piled up on the sidewalk outside, leaving only narrow aisles for passing pedestrians and entering customers. You selected the chicken you want and one of the clerks would take it, squawking and flapping, out of the cage. He would carry it back to the rear of the market where the "shochet," the Kosher slaughterer, killed it with a straight-edge razor slit across the neck and hung it head down to let it bleed. Then it was plucked clean of feathers, wrapped in a newspaper, and handed to you.<br />
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Congregation Kenesth Israel. 935 Webster Street.<br />
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One of the Fillmore District's two orthodox synagogues. It was founded by religious immigrant Jews who wanted to follow strictly the precepts their families had lived by in the Old Country. They had split away from another group which founded the Beth Israel Congregation, a conservative -- that is, less orthodox -- synagogue on Geary Street. The cornerstone for the Webster Street building was laid in 1903. Today, the congregation now holds services at the Jack Tar Office Building on Post Street.<br />
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Diller's Strictly Kosher Restaurant. 1233 Golden Gate.<br />
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Diller's was the biggest, the best, and the most popular Jewish restaurant in the neighborhood -- and the City. Dinner cost a "bissel" (little) more -- seventy-five cents instead of the fifty-cent price at Schindler's -- but it was worth it. On weekend nights Diller's was packed. Many Jewish families returning to the City from the popular Sunday picnics of that day at San Mateo Park or Alum Rock Park in San Jose would come directly to Diller's for dinner before going home.<br />
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Hamilton Junior High School, Geary near Scott.<br />
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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.<br />
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''--by Kate Shvetsky ''<br />
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'''Source''': Jerry Flamm, ''Good Life in Hard Times,'' Chronicle Books, San Francisco<br />
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Japanese_Immigration&diff=3774
Japanese Immigration
2007-10-07T22:30:53Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$japanese-immigrants.jpg]]<br />
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'''Unidentified immigrants, c. 1930s, photographer unknown'''<br />
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Japanese immigration to California began in significant numbers in the mid-1880s, when the Japanese government first allowed emigration. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 had created a shortage of cheap Asian labor, and employers encouraged Japanese immigration to fill the gap. Many more came after 1898 from Hawaii, when the U.S. annexation of Hawaii allowed them to travel without passports. Although the Japanese population in San Francisco was small relative to the Chinese, immigrants from Japan suffered from similar prejudice and racism.<br />
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Union leaders formed the Asiatic Exclusion League in 1905 to fight against Japanese immigration and for school segregation. Similar to the 1880s - and present times--native laborers resented immigrants' willingness to work for low wages and blamed them for lack of jobs and a failing economy. The San Francisco school board ceded to the demands of the League and ordered Japanese students to attend Commodore Stockton, the segregated school in Chinatown. The Japanese, however, were unwilling to have their children attend school with Chinese students and appealed to the Japanese embassy, which, in turn, appealed to President Theodore Roosevelt. The President, concerned about foreign relations with Japan, convinced the school board to rescind the order. In return, Roosevelt signed the "Gentlemen's Agreement" with Japan in 1908, which limited Japanese immigration to the United States.<br />
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''--Courtesy Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights, from an immigrant history walking tour conducted Sept. 20, 1997''<br />
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Gough_Street_in_Japantown_1920s&diff=3772
Gough Street in Japantown 1920s
2007-10-07T22:30:51Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$japan-town-1933.jpg]]<br />
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'''Japantown, until WW II internment. [http://shapingsf.org/wiki/westaddi$gough-street-in-jtown-c-1933$gough-japanese-sign_itm.html Gough] between Bush and Pine, c. 1933'''<br />
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''''''<br />
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== Photograph of Japantown, Gough Street, around 1933. ==<br />
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[[THE DESTRUCTION OF NIHONMACHI |Prev. Document]] [[Divisadero and Turk |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=India%27s_Ghadar_Party_Born_in_San_Francisco&diff=3770
India's Ghadar Party Born in San Francisco
2007-10-07T22:30:49Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$ghadar-on-wood-st.jpg]]<br />
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'''The Ghadar Memorial sits at 5 Wood Street above Geary Blvd. near Masonic.'''<br />
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5 Wood Street<br />
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The Ghadar Party was established in 1913 by Taraknath Das and Har Dayal to agitate for Indian independence from Great Britain. At the outset of World War I many Ghadarites (almost a thousand) went to India to stir up a revolt, but because they were heavily surveillanced and infiltrated by British intelligence they were arrested upon landing. Das and others in the U.S. were arrested and threatened with deportation for their political activities. Defending the Ghadarites in the U.S. from deportation became a civil rights issue for anti-imperialists and the Left in general. The IWW, the SLP, and an assortment of liberals came together to organize the Friends of Freedom for India (FFI) and lobbied for the protection of the right of aliens to engage in political activity in the United States. The FFI even persuaded Samuel Gompers, no friend of Asians, to allow the AFL to champion these rights. Nevertheless in 1914, Congress passed a bill that made aliens who advocated political change in any country liable to deportation. The effects of this legislation are still felt today, with members of the IRA and PLO threatened with deportation from the U.S. for their political activities. The Ghadar Party, its hopes for a popular uprising disappointed, its leadership dispersed and under heavy persecution, and its organization infiltrated, collapsed after Ram Chandra, a leader of the group, was assassinated in 1918.<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
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''Carlsson,Chris - Photographer-Artist ''<br />
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Northern Calif. Coalition on Immigrant Rights - Writer<br />
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Carlsson,Chris - Photographer-Artist<br />
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Fillmore_Street_1960&diff=3766
Fillmore Street 1960
2007-10-07T22:30:46Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$fillmore-st-1960s-photo.jpg]]<br />
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'''Another day on Fillmore Street, during its peak as an [[The Fillmore: Black SF African-American neighborhood]], c. 1960'''<br />
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''''''<br />
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== Photograph of Fillmore Street from 1960. ==<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
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''African American Historical and Cultural Society,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
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[[Fillmore Arches Torn Down |Prev. Document]] [[Fillmore Street 1911 |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Western_Addition_Early_20th_Century_Life_and_Work&diff=3764
Western Addition Early 20th Century Life and Work
2007-10-07T22:30:45Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$fillmore-street-c-1911.jpg]]<br />
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'''Fillmore Street, c. 1911, when it was the commercial hub of the city. Plans were drawn up in 1912 to tunnel beneath Fillmore Street to the Marina District, but the plan never came to pass.'''<br />
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== Photograph of Fillmore Street from 1911, when it was the commercial center of the City. ==<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
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''Gaar Collection,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
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Gaar Collection,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer<br />
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[[Fillmore Street 1960 |Prev. Document]] [[Patty Hearst's SLA Hideout |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Fillmore_Street_1906&diff=3760
Fillmore Street 1906
2007-10-07T22:30:42Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$fillmore-and-sutter-northview.jpg]]<br />
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'''After the quake in April 1906, Fillmore Street became San Francisco's most busy shopping district. This view looks north from Sutter to Bush.'''<br />
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== Photograph of Fillmore Street, c. 1906. ==<br />
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[[Image:westaddi$fillmore-st-after-06-quake.jpg]]<br />
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Fillmore Street after the 1906 earthquake.<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
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''Gaar Collection,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
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Gaar Collection,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer<br />
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[[Ladies Society Stats |Prev. Document]] [[The Fillmore: A Jewish Neighborhood in the 1920s |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Fillmore_Cultural_Capital&diff=3758
Fillmore Cultural Capital
2007-10-07T22:30:40Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$black.jpg]]<br />
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The Fillmore: Black Cultural Capital<br />
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== After World War II the Fillmore District became a vital black community. Photograph from a Fillmore jazz club. ==<br />
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[[Image:westaddi$bop-city.jpg]]<br />
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Musicians at Bop City<br />
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[[Image:westaddi$black.jpg]]<br />
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'''Excerpted from "The House That Bop Built" by Carol Chamberland, from '''California History''' Magazine, spring 1997: '''<br />
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In the post W.W. II era, San Francisco was very much in tune with the creative, experimental times. The Fillmore district, formerly a [[Japanese in Western Addition Japanese neighborhood]], had blossomed into a thriving black community, bustling with restaurants, theaters, and nightclubs. All these establishments enjoyed a symbiotic relationship, and the action continued around the clock.<br />
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Talk radio personality Ray Taliaferro reflects on the Fillmore district that became home to [[Jimbo's Bop City Jimbo's Bop City]] and many other fine establishments: "It was a very thriving neighborhood. It was a neighborhood that came out of World War II. Prior to 1940, there were fewer than 5,000 black people in the city of San Francisco out of a population of 700,000. And at the conclusion of World War II in 1945, there were 47,500 black people. The Japanese-Americans of course were incarcerated during World War II in detention camps, and that left all that property available. That's when blacks moved into that neighborhood, and out of that grew this wonderful culture, this industry, this artistry."<br />
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Black people had arrived by the thousands to help the war effort by working in the newly erected Kaiser shipyards. Work was strenuous and housing was cramped, but everyone had jobs and money to spend. San Franciscans fiercely supported a round-the-clock network of clubs and restaurants. "And Jimbo, together with many other musicians and fine entrepreneurs, black entrepreneurs," adds Ray, "were responsible for having developed that era."<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
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''Chamberland,Carol - Writer ''<br />
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[[The Fillmore: A Jewish Neighborhood in the 1920s |Prev. Document]] [[Fillmore Arches Torn Down |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Fillmore_Arches_Torn_Down&diff=3756
Fillmore Arches Torn Down
2007-10-07T22:30:39Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$fillmore-ppie-towers.jpg]]<br />
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'''In 1943, the iron towers that had crowned each intersection of Fillmore Street for decades, originally built as a gateway to the [[SAILING TO BYZANTIUM: 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition]] at the Marina, were torn down as scrap metal for WWII.'''<br />
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== Photographs of the dismantling of the Fillmore Arches, torn down for scrap metal during World War II. ==<br />
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[[Image:westaddi$ppie-fillmore-scrap-1943.jpg]]<br />
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Arches from the PPIE on Fillmore being torn down in 1943.<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
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''Gaar Collection,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
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Gaar Collection,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer<br />
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Western_Addition:_Mid-1990s&diff=3754
Western Addition: Mid-1990s
2007-10-07T22:30:38Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$fillmore-street-scene.jpg]]<br />
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'''Fillmore Street in 1995'''<br />
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'''May 1994:''' In an ironic twist to the story of the Western Addition redevelopment area, an attempt to start a tenants' association at the 1,100-unit Fillmore Center, the upscale condominium towers that replaced the Old Fillmore area, is being actively resisted by the building management, a company called Prometheus. Black tenants have documented several cases of discriminatory treatment regarding deposits and rentals. Because we are African Americans, we are perceived as devaluing the property, said Gloria Brown, a 39-year-old single mother, a secretary at a contractors' association. Meanwhile, she spent the past winter fighting a leaky ceiling with buckets, in the new and improved, upscale complex. (''SF Weekly, ''5/25/94)<br />
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'''By March 1995''', Brown was leading the effort to get the new apartment management (Maxim Property Management) to make numerous maintenance repairs to carpets, electrical systems, and plumbing, as well as to resist the encroachment of drug dealing which has established a foothold in some units. During the major rainfall in 1995 the complex has suffered extensive flooding.<br />
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''--Chris Carlsson ''<br />
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[[Image:westaddi$fillmore.jpg]]<br />
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'''Fillmore Street in 1926. The arches were a famous symbol of Fillmore until they were [[Fillmore Arches Torn Down torn down]] for scrap metal in WW II.'''<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
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''Carlsson,Chris - Photographer-Artist ''<br />
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San Francisco Public Library,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer<br />
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Carlsson,Chris - Writer<br />
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Northerly_views_on_Divisadero_Street&diff=3752
Northerly views on Divisadero Street
2007-10-07T22:30:38Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$divisadero-turk-1947-cable-car.jpg]]<br />
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'''Divisadero at Turk, c. 1947'''<br />
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== Photograph of Divisadero and Turk Streets, c. 1947. ==<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
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''Shelley Rauchman - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
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[[Gough Street in Jtown c 1933 |Prev. Document]] [[1860 Western Addition view |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Old_Cemeteries_in_the_City&diff=3750
Old Cemeteries in the City
2007-10-07T22:30:36Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$laurel-heights-cemetery-view.jpg]]<br />
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'''Laurel Heights Cemetery during the 1890s, sprawling into the sand dunes of the Inner Richmond area.'''<br />
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'''1850s:''' Early San Francisco Cemeteries: Mission Dolores. Russian Hill. Telegraph Hill. North Beach, Yerba Buena, and Presidio.<br />
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'''1854:''' Laurel Hill Cemetery developed.<br />
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'''Late 1850s:''' Yerba Buena Cemetery abandoned.<br />
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'''1860:''' Calvary Cemetery, the Catholic Cemetery, developed on Lone Mountain.<br />
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'''1864:''' Masonic Cemetery developed.<br />
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'''1865:''' Odd Fellows Cemetery developed.<br />
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'''1880s:''' The cry "Remove the cemeteries!" began.<br />
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'''1900:''' Most graveyards filled. Cemeteries deteriorating.<br />
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'''1902''': Ordinance Number 8108 prohibited burials within the city. <br />
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'''1921:''' State legislation passed to allow cemeteries to be abandoned. Litigation followed.<br />
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'''1923:''' Second Morris Act passed allowing removal of bodies from cemeteries.<br />
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'''1920s:''' Masonic and Odd Fellows Cemeteries' remains removed to Colma.<br />
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'''1920s:''' "Franciscan Heights" subdivision developed on Odd Fellows land. University of San Francisco purchased Masonic cemetery land. Jordan Park developed.<br />
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'''1927:''' St. Ignatius College moved to Fulton and Parker Streets.<br />
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'''1930:''' St. Ignatius renamed the University of San Francisco.<br />
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'''1930s:''' Removal of Laurel Hill and Calvary encouraged. Several plans discussed but had little support.<br />
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'''1932:''' San Francisco College for Women built on Lone Mountain.<br />
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'''1937:''' Catholic Archdiocese ceased opposition to removal of Calvary.<br />
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'''1930s/1940s:''' Removal of Laurel Hill and Calvary remains to Colma.<br />
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'''1940s/1950s:''' Development of Laurel Heights with residential homes and apartments.<br />
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'''1964:''' University of San Francisco became co-educational.<br />
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'''1978:''' University of San Francisco acquired Lone Mountain campus.<br />
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'''1980s:''' Columbarium renovated under ownership of Neptune Society.<br />
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'''1988: '''St. Ignatius High School torn down. Koret Recreational Center built.<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
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''Gaar Collection,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
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[[Laurel Heights |Prev. Document]] [[LONE MOUNTAIN |Next Document]]</div>
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Bell_Mansion&diff=3748
Bell Mansion
2007-10-07T22:30:35Z
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<div>[[Image:westaddi$bell-mansion-1928.jpg]]<br />
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'''The Bell Mansion at Bush and Octavia, about to be demolished in this 1928 picture, hosted much intrigue between Thomas Bell and Mary Ellen Pleasant, the infamous Voodoo Queen of early San Francisco. This same corner later became home to a [[REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS RANT Planned Parenthood Clinic]].'''<br />
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== Photograph of the Bell Mansion on the corner of Bush and Octavia just before it was demolished in 1928. ==<br />
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Contributors to this page include:<br />
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''Gaar Collection,San Francisco,CA - Publisher or Photographer ''<br />
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Bancroft Library,Berkeley,CA - Publisher or Photographer<br />
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[[Patty Hearst's SLA Hideout |Prev. Document]] [[JONESTOWN, S.F. |Next Document]]</div>
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