Summary
Presenting before the county Board of Supervisors that week, Richard Hahn, chairman of the Task Force on Housing, detailed a statistical indictment of housing segregation in Marin on par with the deepest social-justice crevasses in backwater Mississippi In a 10-year period, he reported, Marin's non-white population dropped from 446 percent to 3.76 percent, while that same population grew across the entire Bay Area by 3 percent. And of the non- military and non- imprisoned "negroes" living in the county, 2,040 out of 2,312 lived in the "remarkable ghetto" of Marin City.
Historically, Marin City never "developed" like other neighborhoods in the county, it was slapped onto the swamplands north of Sausalito. Created during World War II for Marinship-workforce housing, the dredge-based infrastructure of the makeshift "city" was built for a five-year lifespan - cheap and purposefully disposable. But in the postwar years, as the white workers fled the scene for the fruits of baby boom America, Marin City's Southern black diaspora - priced out of the county's postcard pockets - had little choice but to stay put or leave the county for good. Twenty years later many remained trapped in the vicious Catch-22 circle of diminishing wages and hope."The supervisors are concerned and will, we believe, act further to remove the Ghetto from Marin," wrote Sun editor and publisher Merrill Grohman in his congratulatory summation of the meeting. "Citizens as of this week are more aware of the enormous extent of our county's ugliest sin."See the full content of this document
Extract
Ghetto Defendants
45 years ago
"[Mann City is] the only community in America where whites and Negroes Uvea together voluntarily; and that was so, and so wild and joyous a place I've never seen since"- Jack Kerouac, On theRoad, 1951"No sane black man really wants ...See the full content of this document
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