The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

by Richard Rothstein

The only integrated war project in the Bay Area was one that housed shipyard workers in Marin County, across the Golden Gate Bridge from the city. The project was not integrated purposely; the first buildings were dormitories for single men, and the shipyard’s rapid expansion left no time to separate the races. As workers flooded in, officials could barely keep up, just handing out blankets and pillows and assigning rooms that were available. Perhaps to their surprise, the officials found that integration presented few problems among the workers, so the biracial character of the project was maintained when workers’ families arrived. After a few years, however, private housing in the area became available to whites, and the Marin project, too, became predominantly African American.