Nevertheless, “race preservation” was the concern of white elite California in the 1930s testimony before the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization warned that “the Filipinos are…a social menace as they will not leave our white girls alone and frequently intermarry.” Further, California’s anti-miscegenation laws prevented Filipinos and other Asians from marrying outside the race. until 1965, thereby preventing most of the men who lived in Chinatown and Manilatown from establishing families. government denied some of them promised benefits after the fighting stopped.Īsian women were, for the most part, excluded from entering the U.S. Many of the old-timers, though not citizens, had served in both World Wars, but the U.S. So did old-timers, who settled in San Francisco following years of working in seasonal harvests, on merchant ships, in canneries in Alaska and Washington, and so on, up and down the Pacific Coast. Many young Filipino and Chinese men who worked as day laborers, dishwashers, messengers, and at any other profession that was deemed “appropriate for Orientals” lived there. During the 1920s and 1930s, the I-Hotel (built the year after the devastating 1906 earthquake) became home to thousands of seasonal Asian laborers.
In the late 1970s, the I-Hotel was just about all that was left of Manilatown, once a thriving community of mostly male Filipino immigrants that covered 10 blocks between San Francisco’s Chinatown and Financial districts. It was, as the San Francisco Chronicle put it, “a cause celebre for the politically engaged.” It was a protracted campaign that eventually drew hundreds of people into the ranks of activism. The movement to save the “I-Hotel,” as it was called, is one of the most important chapters in the history of Asian American struggle and of housing conflicts. It was also the block where the International Hotel stood.Īnd it became the block where the rights of people of color who were low-income and elderly tenants were fought over for nearly a decade. The “Wall Street of the West” had been expanding for years and the 800 block of Kearny Street was prime real estate. One of the most famous skylines in the world was being reshaped. The land Herman was referring to in the quote above was a city block in the heart of downtown San Francisco’s growing financial district. Justin Herman, former executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 1970 “This land is too valuable to permit poor people to park on it.”
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