San Francisco Street Connected with Racist Anti-Asian Legacy May be Renamed

Former San Francisco Mayor James Phelan left a racist legacy for opposing Asian immigration and  speaking about a “yellow peril.”

A street bearing the Mayor’s family name runs by City College of San Francisco and into a residential neighborhood.

Supervisor Norman Yee is now pushing for a name change and is seeking input from the neighborhood as well as City College, which had independently also taken up the idea,” reports the San Francisco Examiner.

Yee says once there is consensus, he will bring the proposed new name to the Board of Supervisors.

Phelan Avenue is actually named for the mayor’s father, but many feel the association is enough to strip the family of the honor of a street name.

“At a time when the country is rethinking who deserves to have statues and parks named after them, having a “street that an institution like City College is on named after someone whose family left a legacy of racism, doesn’t reflect [our] values,” City College English professor Alisa Messner told the Examiner.

According to the SF Weekly, names under consideration include Chinese American historian and activist Him Mark Lai; African American dancer and writer Thelma Johnson Streat; the Muwekma Ohlone tribe that first settled the region; or just “Freedom.”

Phelan ran the city from 1897 until 1902. He also ran for the Senate using the slogan “keep California White.”

He was also quoted as saying “California is a White man’s country, and the two races cannot live side by side in peace, and inasmuch as we discovered the country first and occupied it, we propose to hold it against either a peaceful or a war-like invasion.”

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