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Reverend
Wilbur Hamilton
Executive Director
San Francisco Redevelopment Agency
1977-1987
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On Demolishing
the Church His Father Built
Around 1942,
my father bought a church that had been vacated by the Japanese
community. If you run the clock years ahead, I became the director
of the program that is dealing with this whole community. I know
every building, every alley, and each one of them has some history
and significance for me
I had to actually
acquire my dad's church when he moved from that building. He moved
from 1760 to 1540 Post Street where he bought land and built a new
church. I had the responsibility to negotiate the acquisition of
my dad's church and to demolish that building. Now I had a building
on my hands that was being defended not by the congregation but
by a group of people who felt the building should be preserved because
of the murals on the wall. I contacted Aaron Miller, the muralist,
who astounded me when he said, that when the church is demolished,
the murals ought to be destroyed. I had misgivings about demolishing
the first church and when the demolition occurred I went through
that site and retrieved a number of old copper items that I had
refinished. I have them now in my home as mementos from that church.
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On
Being Recruited by Justin Herman
Justin was quite
a man, a most unusual fellow, a bright man, and a visionary. He
was one of the two or three best urban renewal directors in the
country in terms of his ability to see a vision for what renewal
could do. But he did not understand the downsides of it in terms
of its impact on people. Justin Herman had disagreed violently in
public meetings over a number of policy matters. The agency was
having great problems with WACO, the Western Addition Community
Organization, established by Mary Rogers and Dr. Hannibal Williams.
What Justin
did was he created a public meeting filled with African Americans
from the Western Addition. Everybody who was anybody from the Western
Addition was in that room. Then he threw down the gauntlet and took
some kind of totally inane and unconscionable position and I was
on him quickly with force and anger. Justin stood up in his chair
and bellowed at me, "If you're so damned dissatisfied with what's
going on, why don't you come out to the Western Addition and run
the program?" Now here I am surrounded by all of my colleagues,
my constituency if you will, so I said, "You've got a deal." And
I became the director of A2.
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On First
Meeting Dr. Hannibal Williams
Dr. Williams
appeared in the community as an activist. At that time, he was active
out at San Francisco State University. He was active in the Black
Students Union and he immediately became a memorable entity in the
movement against Redevelopment. He saw it as the destruction of
the community, the lack of self-determination, and all those issues
that were socially alive at the time. I met him in front of a bulldozer.
I was called to a construction site where he was standing in front
of a bulldozer. He was just adamant, "I am not leaving and you will
not do any improvements on this site. It's the wrong housing and
the wrong place and you destroyed our community. This job will not
go forward." And that was my initial introduction to Dr. Williams.
As the chairman of WACO, he berated me and named me as an enemy.
We did develop, at least, a healthy respect for one another, and
then he disappeared. He was gone for a couple of years. The last
thing that one would have expected of him was that he had a personal
religious experience. He had gone away to seminary and had returned
as Dr. Williams. We became lifetime friends. He ended up as a commissioner
for the agency. I officiated at his marriage, I dedicated his church,
and we have been friends a long, long time. Now he is the assistant
to me in this church.
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