By: Gabriel Frank-McPheter 

This summer, I had the honor of working at SV@Home as a Housing Policy Intern. Under the direction of our Executive Director, Regina Celestin Williams, my primary project was analyzing historical literature and census data to produce a deliverable on the history of Santa Clara County’s African American population. By better understanding the history of the Black community, housing discrimination, and displacement, we can better address disparities and injustices that persist today. 

Elementary economics tells us that growth is supposed to help everyone— that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” But I argue that when Silicon Valley’s economy boomed, African Americans were left out. From 1980-2000, more and more census tracts, disproportionately those with higher poverty rates, lost Black residents. Consistent with and building on the findings of local Black leaders like Chuck Cantrell, my findings show that African Americans are becoming a smaller and smaller share of the County’s total population. 

So, making Silicon Valley a more accessible place for Black folks to call home is essential, and I recommend place-based community development as a means to work towards that end. The place-based community development model empowers community members and organizations to play a central role in the growth of their neighborhoods through developing affordable housing, supporting local nonprofits and small businesses, community organizing, and programs like health initiatives or workforce training. Community developers were essential to preserving and strengthening Black neighborhoods in the East Bay and San Francisco, but when Silicon Valley faced the same gentrification pressures from 1980-2000, it didn’t have the same foundation of strong community development corporations to fight against displacement. I recommend a county-wide housing study to identify potential neighborhoods and sites for community-led investment and development. 

My deliverable, the story map linked below, details these recommendations after walking through the history of Santa Clara County’s Black population, from the early days of San Jose’s founding and its first Black neighborhoods to the rapid growth of Santa Clara County’s African American population from 1960-1980, to the displacement that followed as Silicon Valley’s economy boomed. As you scroll through and read the descriptions of key historical events and findings, you can click on their corresponding maps to see how the Black population changed across census tracts each decade and learn about historically Black neighborhoods. 

As SV@Home continues to support emerging local community developers, I hope this project can serve as a useful resource and a foundation for future research. Thank you to Regina Celestin Williams for supervising this project, Chuck Cantrell for their work and advice, Mathew Reed and Josh Ishimatsu for their consultation, and all the rest of the SV@Home staff for their support.