The Museum of San Francisco’s first community-based exhibit is We Were There: Views of San Francisco’s Urban Renewal. It tells the tragic story of how the government-mandated urban renewal of the 1950s-1970s destroyed thousands of homes and displaced tens of thousands of residents in the Western Addition—mostly African Americans and Japanese Americans.

This exhibit features stunning photographs from the Burden Archive, many of them never seen before. The exhibit supports a special edition of The Argonaut focuses on urban renewal—a project made possible by a grant from the California Natural Resources Agency.