Aliyah Dunn-Salahuddin

This dissertation is a history of the Black freedom struggle in San Francisco filtered through the lens of environment, race, and infrastructure. Primarily focusing on the Bayview-Hunters Point community of the 1960s and 1970s, the project emphasizes: 1) the production of urban black space in relation to gender and Black political ideology; 2) the development of US nuclear capabilities in San Francisco and issues of environmental justice; 3) the relationship between Black environmentalism and civil rights in Northern California. At its core, this project is an urban black history of post-WWII America that traces the spatial, material, and social conditions of African Americans in San Francisco’s Bayview Hunters Point. Utilizing oral history, community engagement, and original dance film shorts, this project reveals the ways that African Americans informed and shaped their environments, as well as the institutions and systems that governed their lives.