{"id":261776,"date":"2025-09-28T17:22:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T17:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/261776\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T17:22:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T17:22:11","slug":"new-exhibit-tells-stories-of-san-diegos-lost-historic-black-and-latino-neighborhoods-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/261776\/","title":{"rendered":"New exhibit tells stories of San Diego\u2019s lost historic Black and Latino neighborhoods \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

San Diegans and tourists standing on the corner of Second Avenue and Market Street may spot an inconspicuous plaque on the sidewalk commemorating the Douglas Hotel, a former establishment for Black visitors and entertainment during the first half of the 20th century.<\/p>\n

Known as the Harlem of the West,<\/a> the Douglas Hotel was complete with the Creole Palace nightclub where Black performers in the 1930s and \u201940s could perform during the years of segregation. It was torn down in 1985, ultimately replaced by mixed-use development.<\/p>\n

The history of the Douglas Hotel and the Gaslamp Quarter served as the inspiration for a new exhibition at the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park that aims to bring the forgotten stories of San Diego\u2019s historic Black and Latino communities to a wider audience.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt grew from that,\u201d said Gaidi Finnie, the executive director of the San Diego African American Museum of Fine Art, which partnered with the History Center to create the exhibition that opened Thursday.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Lost Neighborhoods exhibit at the San Diego History Center on Friday, Sept. 26, 2025, in San Diego. (Meg McLaughlin \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n

The exhibition focuses on the communities\u2019 deep roots in various San Diego County neighborhoods \u2014 from Julian to La Jolla to Logan Heights \u2014 and how gentrification, highway development and discriminatory housing policies led to their displacement.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we got into the real nitty-gritty, it got to be more educational \u2026 because a lot of these things people don\u2019t know,\u201d Finnie said.<\/p>\n

The exhibition, \u201cSan Diego\u2019s Lost Neighborhoods,\u201d uses a mix of oral history, augmented reality and archival news stories and photos to show what life was like for San Diego\u2019s Black and Latino communities.<\/p>\n

It highlights the vibrant and bustling Imperial Avenue in the years following World War II and the contributions of Black miners in Julian, including Frederick Coleman, a rancher and miner who discovered gold in Julian in the late 1860s.<\/p>\n

The exhibition also educates visitors on the policies that shaped \u2014 and threatened \u2014 neighborhoods. Residents faced challenges with discriminatory housing policies such as redlining and restrictive covenants that prevented Black families from living in White neighborhoods. And as the years went on, gentrification and development fragmented their own neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

A large section of the exhibition focuses on residents in southeastern San Diego and their fight against the development of state Route 252 in the 1970s and 80s. Caltrans proposed the highway through the predominantly Black and brown neighborhood, but residents were successful in pushing off the freeway\u2019s construction.<\/p>\n

A centerpiece of the exhibition is the story of the former Martin Luther King Jr. Way. The San Diego City Council voted in 1986 to change the name of Market Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Way to honor the civil rights leader nearly 20 years after he was assassinated.<\/p>\n

But a year later, the decision was recalled when voters passed a proposition<\/a> calling for the name Market Street to be reinstated.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone thought it would be permanent, but it was not,\u201d said Michel Anderson, a San Diego Parks Foundation board member who spoke to an audience at the exhibition\u2019s opening reception on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Lost Neighborhoods exhibit at the San Diego History Center on Friday, Sept. 26, 2025, in San Diego. (Meg McLaughlin \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n

Anderson also co-chaired a committee in 1987 to preserve the street name as Martin Luther King Jr. Way.<\/p>\n

The \u201cLost Neighborhoods\u201d exhibition took about two and half years to curate, Finnie said. UC San Diego students helped research the material and residents living in San Diego today provided interviews for oral testimonies of the historical events.<\/p>\n

Finnie says that Black and brown communities in San Diego are still trying to rebuild to what they once were. He hopes that the exhibition will serve as a sign of the neighborhoods\u2019 resilience and the impact they\u2019ve had on San Diego.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou cannot erase the resilience. You cannot erase the memory,\u201d Finnie said at the exhibition opening. \u201cYou cannot erase the people who refuse to be forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Diegans and tourists standing on the corner of Second Avenue and Market Street may spot an inconspicuous…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":261777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,728,3549,7264,7289,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-261776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-local-news","12":"tag-san-diego","13":"tag-sandiego","14":"tag-top-stories-sdut","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115283083488631474","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}