Stanford history project centers on marginalized Bay Area community

Stanford historians are illuminating the complex story of environmental damage in San Francisco's Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood.
Group of people standing on a hill Stanford undergraduates particpate in a toxic tour of the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood as part of history professor Gabrielle Hecht’s course Nuclear Insecurity in the Bay Area and Beyond during spring 2020.

Tucked in the southeast corner of San Francisco, Bayview-Hunters Point is like a sidebar to the story of Black communities in the Bay Area. It’s easy to forget, with areas like Oakland, East Palo Alto and the Fillmore receiving most of the attention in conversations about marginalized neighborhoods.

Stanford historians hope to change that story. Gabrielle Hecht, professor of history in the School of Humanities and Sciences, and PhD student Aliyah Dunn-Salahuddin are producing an open-access, online archive of Bayview-Hunters Point’s toxic legacy from nuclear waste emptied into the neighborhood’s former shipyard after WWII. Their work arose through funding from a 2020 seed grant from the Sustainability Initiative that inspired Stanford’s new school focused on climate and sustainability.

Read the rest at Stanford News