San Francisco, CA
The photographer who captured Black San Francisco in the 1960s: ‘We wouldn’t have seen it without him’
David Johnson saved a portrait he took as a teen of his younger brother and a relative while they were growing up in segregated Florida in the 1940s.
Johnson, who was the only person who could read and write in his household, knew nothing about photography then, he recalled in 2017, but something told him that one day he would be a photographer.
His decision would prove to be prescient. Johnson’s interest in the field led him to San Francisco in the 1940s, where he would become the first Black student of Ansel Adams, an accomplished documentarian of the city’s Black community and an activist.
Johnson captured iconic images of the Fillmore district, a thriving community for San Francisco’s Black residents before they were forced out by government “redevelopment” initiatives in the 1960s. He also documented the civil rights movement, including the 1963 March on Washington, and photographed high-profile figures such as WEB Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Thurgood Marshall, Nat King Cole and Eartha Kitt.
“He was quite a man,” Candace Sue, Johnson’s stepdaughter, said in an interview. “There are very few people who in their lifetime can achieve even one of the things he managed to achieve in his 97 years.”
Johnson died last month at age 97, but lived to see a renewed appreciation for his work. In recent years, Johnson’s photos were inducted into the Library of Congress and the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and featured in an exhibit at city hall. The Bancroft is home to Johnson’s archive, which serves as a primary source material of the era.
“[Johnson] is this great story of when a masterpiece finally finds its moment,” said Christine Hult-Lewis, the library’s pictorial curator.
Ansel Adams told him: photograph what you know
Johnson, born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1926, was interested in photography from an early age. He got his first camera as a prize for selling magazine subscriptions as a teen, he said in an interview at the Bancroft Library in 2017.
He fell in love with San Francisco when he visited after being drafted into the US navy during the second world war. When his service was over, Johnson knew he wanted to study photography and wrote to Ansel Adams, who was overseeing a program at the California School of Fine Arts.
“[I] wrote a telegram and said ‘Dear Mr Adams, I’m interested in studying photography. And by the way I’m a Negro.”
Most schools in the south didn’t admit Black students, and Johnson didn’t want to travel across the country only to be turned away. “I had to cover my bases,” he said.
When a spot opened up, Adams offered him admission to the program and invited Johnson to stay with him until he could find a place to live. He was met by the acclaimed photographer Minor White, who would become his mentor. White and the other photographers around Adams’ home at the time wanted him to have a better camera and pooled together their old equipment, Jackie Sue Johnson, Johnson’s wife, told the Guardian.
“He was thrown in a group of people that didn’t look like him – they were all white, but they gave David all of their equipment that they weren’t using,” she said. “They taught him a lot. They just took him and really supported him.”
Adams and most of the other photographers were interested in nature, Jackie Sue Johnson recalled, but that was never David’s passion. “He didn’t have a car, and if he had a car he didn’t have gas money, so he couldn’t go to Yosemite and Muir Woods and take this wonderful nature photography.”
White and Adams told him to photograph what he knew. “What David knew is he knew his people,” said Jackie Sue Johnson, who along with her husband authored a book on his life.
Johnson headed to the Fillmore. Sometimes called the Harlem of the West, the Fillmore also had a thriving jazz scene before redevelopment ousted thousands of people. He remained in the neighborhood for years, and went on to work as a photojournalist.
His work centered people – a couple dancing close in a juke joint, men chatting outside a record shop and, in one of his favorite photos, a little boy in a cap sitting on steps.
“The pictures have this real poignancy of a place that just doesn’t exist in the same way any more,” Hult-Lewis said. The influence of Adams and his education can be seen in the quality of Johnson’s prints, she said, and the beautiful composition of his photos.
One of his most famous images is the Fillmore from four stories up. He climbed up the scaffolding of the Bank of America to capture a quick photo of a street corner from above, with street cars and vehicles in motion and pedestrians making their way from one side to another. Earlier in the day, he had taken a moving portrait of a disabled man on a skateboard.
“Athletes will say that when they hit several home runs, it was kind of their day. There are instances in my life and photography where it was just my day,” Johnson said in the 2017 interview. “The images just sprung out of nowhere. It was almost saying – that’s it, go for it.”
Johnson had a gift for capturing a single moment, Jackie Sue Johnson said. In another one of his more well-known photographs, a boy holding a flag sits in the lap of an Abraham Lincoln statue at a civil rights demonstration in San Francisco. “Lincoln, the flag, everything was there. It was almost like the gods set it up for me,” Johnson recalled.
‘More than just a photographer’: a foray into activism
For a time Johnson operated a studio in the Fillmore, but he eventually stopped working as a photographer and turned to other jobs to support his family, Hult-Lewis said. He worked at the University of California, San Francisco, where he co-founded the Black caucus to advocate for the rights of Black workers, Candace Sue said. Johnson and the NAACP sued the San Francisco unified school district to demand school desegregation as required by law.
“My personal saying is David was more than just a photographer,” Jackie Sue Johnson said. “He loved photography. It’s all he could talk about, but he was [also] a civil rights activist. He was always an activist. He was always trying to help or advocate for the underdog.”
Into his 90s, he would visit the San Francisco board of supervisors to advocate for legislation, particularly those supporting people with mental illness, his family said.
He never had exhibitions while he was working as a photographer, but his work has been rediscovered and recognized widely in recent years after it was featured in the 2006 book Harlem of the West.
“When I found his work I went hallelujah because it had a much more expansive description of this neighborhood,” said Lewis Watts, a co-author of the book, photographer and professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
“He was an incredible artist and an incredible person,” said Watts, who said he viewed Johnson as a friend, colleague and mentor. “The humanity in his work is reflected by the person that he was.”
In the years since, his photos have been included in a KQED documentary on the Fillmore District and exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, as well as city hall. It’s been a slow build, Hult-Lewis said, but Johnson was thrilled to witness it.
Johnson will be remembered for his civic contributions, Candace Sue, Johnson’s stepdaughter, said, and his documentation of the Fillmore.
“We remember and can see the joy and vibrancy of the Fillmore and what it was like before it was destroyed,” she said. “He documented what is no more and I don’t think we would see it the way we see it today without having that lens of the past.”
Few things are more valuable in the Bay Area than real estate. In San Francisco, the median house price is now over $2 million. Last month, at least seven houses in the city sold for $1 million over the asking price, and buyers regularly offer to pay in cash or waive contingencies to stay competitive. Yet there is one thing that remains even more valuable than a house, and possibly more valuable than money itself: stock in Anthropic or OpenAI.
Last week, 160 Noe Street, an Edwardian home in San Francisco’s desirable Duboce Triangle neighborhood, was listed for sale at $2.9 million—or the equivalent amount in Anthropic or OpenAI shares, as based on those companies’ current valuations. Rachel Swann, the listing agent, says she was inspired to set these unusual terms after meeting several Anthropic employees at an open house for a different property. “These people have a lot of paper wealth, but they don’t always have the liquidity to do things they want,” Swann says. Some of these employees were expecting to come into as much as $50 million from their Anthropic shares, and wondered if they could use that as leverage to buy a house, according to Swann. “This kept coming up over and over again.”
Swann’s listing is unconventional, but not singular. In April, an investment banker named Storm Duncan offered to exchange his Mill Valley home and an adjacent parcel of land for Anthropic shares. And in May, Vijay Chattha, who owns an agency that does PR for tech companies, listed his Healdsburg home for $2.5 million, or $2 million in Anthropic stock. “I want to sell my house, and I want to invest in Anthropic,” Chattha says. “Why not combine the two?
Chattha’s house—a three bed, three bath with a pool and a bocce court in a part of Sonoma County that abuts some of the region’s most famous wineries—also comes with coveted short-term rental status, allowing the owner to list it on platforms like Airbnb. Only a handful of properties in Healdsburg come with that status, and only about a dozen come up for sale in a given year.
Chattha is offering a $500,000 discount to Anthropic employees because he believes the value of Anthropic shares will grow faster than any other investment, and his vacation home in wine country is the best bargaining chip he has to try to access them. “If you look at Anthropic’s growth last year, it’s insane,” he says, noting the $380 billion valuation the company claimed in February. “Now they’re raising at $965 billion. That’s three X in like three months.” He added that he was open to exchanging the house for shares in Anthropic, but not OpenAI, because he prefers using Anthropic’s products.
The real estate listings come at a time when investors are salivating at the record-high valuations of Anthropic and OpenAI, and even those considered wealthy by Bay Area standards are feeling FOMO about the affluence that could come from these companies’ debuts on the stock market. (On Monday, Anthropic submitted paperwork for its initial public offering; OpenAI is also reportedly preparing to file in the coming months.) Despite the unprecedented valuations of these companies, many people believe their stock prices will only go up, and that anyone who gets a piece now could win the jackpot.
People are clamoring to buy equity in OpenAI and Anthropic on the secondary market, leading to a frenzy of transactions that may or may not be legitimate. As a result, Anthropic updated its policy around “unauthorized Anthropic stock sales” this spring, which notes that “if someone purports to sell Anthropic shares without proper board approval, that transaction is invalid.” A spokesperson for Anthropic pointed back to this policy when asked about the possibility of exchanging company shares for real estate.
Welcome to our running tally of Election Night results. Or, as this is California, well beyond tonight, as results continue to trickle in.
The first batch of results should arrive at 8:45 p.m., with three more to follow tonight. The Department of Elections has the breakdown.
San Francisco is voting in three special elections, for District 2 and District 4 supervisors and for a Board of Education member. Both supervisor races are referendums on housing, especially District 2, while the main backdrop of the D4 race is all the hot feelings around the fate of the Sunset Dunes Park (nee Great Highway).
The winners of all three special races will have to compete again in November for their seats.
Keeping it local, SF is also voting on four ballot measures. Prop A is for a bond to pay for an emergency water-system. B is for term limits. C and D are dueling measures related to the “overpaid CEO” tax. (Links go to our reporting on each race or issue; or click here for our Election 2026 page.)
Vote local, think national: Which two candidates will advance to the November election to replace Nancy Pelosi?
Statewide races include the primaries for governor, education superintendent, lieutenant governor, and much more.
Polls close soon. If you haven’t voted yet, find your polling station here.
Tuesday, June 2, 5:40 p.m.
Two and a half hours until our polls close. Before we go down the local rabbit hole, a reminder that other states have primary action today: New Jersey, Iowa, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Montana.
Why does it take so long to get results in California? CalMatters has you covered on that story. We shouldn’t expect a call tonight on the governor’s race.
The last big election was November 5, 2024. (Remember?) Ten days later, there were still races to call in San Francisco.
So if you’re waiting for the pundits (and maybe even us) to tell you What It All Means, you might have to wait a while.
More from The Frisc…
San Francisco, CA
San Francisco voters to decide on dueling measures on Top Executive Pay Tax changes
San Francisco voters weighed in Tuesday on two competing measures that seek to change the Top Executive Pay Tax, with one of the measures also including a change to the Gross Receipts Tax.
Should both measures pass, the one with the most votes will take effect, according to the propositions’ legal text.
Currently, the measures state that most businesses with San Francisco gross receipts up to $5 million are exempt from the Gross Receipts Tax. And businesses that use more than half of their city payroll for in-house administrative and management services pay an Administrative Office Tax instead of a Gross Receipts Tax.
The Top Executive Pay Tax is a tax some large businesses pay if their highest-paid managerial employee earns more than 100 times the median pay of their San Francisco employees. Businesses that have city gross receipts up to $5 million and are not subject to the Administrative Office Tax are exempt.
Proposition C
Proposition C states it would increase the number of businesses that could be exempt from the Gross Receipts Tax and would stop any further increases to the “Top Executive Pay Tax” after a final rate bump.
The proposed measure says it would raise the Gross Receipts Tax exemption ceiling to $7.5 million. The $7.5 million ceiling would also apply to the Top Executive Pay Tax exemption.
As for changes to the Top Executive Pay Tax, Proposition C states it would implement the 2028 tax rate increase in 2027, but then stop any future increases.
Supporting Proposition C are Rodney Fong, CEO of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, and Chris Wright, senior vice president of Advance SF, an organization of companies, which includes Bank of America, OpenAI, Waymo, the SF Giants CEO and others.
Fong and Wright, in their argument for the measure, say giving businesses more tax breaks would help keep more employees on payroll and would give companies the ability to “contribute to city services in a predictable and balanced way.”
Critics of Proposition C, such as the San Francisco Tenants Union, slam the measure as “billionaire-backed” and argue it would kill the Top Executive Pay Tax and would hand out more tax breaks to businesses at a time when the city is in a budget deficit and faces cuts to essential services.
Proposition D
Proposition D also seeks to change the Top Executive Pay Tax, which is collected from some large businesses where the highest-paid managerial employee earns more than 100 times the median compensation paid to other employees.
If approved, the measure would change the calculation of the tax using the compensation of all employees, not just employees based in San Francisco. Top Executive Pay Tax rates would also be increased for San Francisco gross receipts and payroll.
Supporters have billed the measure as a way to counteract federal cuts to Medicaid. A report by the City Controller’s Office said the measure could result in $250 million to $300 million in additional revenue.
“Proposition D is the solution to our budget deficit. It asks large corporations — not small businesses, not working families — to contribute a little more,” supporters said in the city’s official voter guide.
The measure has the backing of most of the Board of Supervisors, along with labor unions and Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
Opponents, including Mayor Daniel Lurie and state Sen. Scott Wiener, have argued Proposition D would negatively impact the city’s recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic.
“San Francisco is already one of the most expensive cities in the country to live and do business. Adding extreme and unpredictable tax increases risks driving employers away just as we are trying to bring jobs, workers, and foot traffic back downtown,” said Supervisor Matt Dorsey in the city’s voter guide.
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