San Francisco’s Fillmore district, pictured in the 1950s, had a thriving, predominantly African American community before urban renewal decimated it in the 1960s. 

How do you make up for the sins of the past?

“You don’t” is how much of the country would answer that question. Fighting against efforts to remedy longstanding injustice is among the animating forces behind the MAGA movement.

Here in San Francisco, we have a different view. And one local injustice looms larger than most.

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The city’s Fillmore district was decimated by urban renewal in the 1960s and ’70s, destroying a once-thriving hub of Black life and culture. Nearly 50,000 African Americans were displaced. The Black population of San Francisco has since dropped precipitously from 13.4% in 1970 to approximately 5.6% in 2024.

San Francisco has given African American residents little recompense for its willful destruction of their community. Instead, it has too often twisted itself in knots in sideways pursuits of remediation — including, but certainly not limited to, ending the teaching of algebra to middle schoolers in the name of equity.

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Suffice it to say, this was not among the exhaustive list of actions proposed in 2023 by the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee.

Discussions between the city and members of the Black community as to how to make the report’s recommendations a reality are ongoing. In January, Mayor Daniel Lurie signed on to the creation of a public-private reparations fund but committed no city monies.

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San Francisco Director of Community Affairs Ernest “EJ” Jones told........

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