Human Rights History: a Tenderloin Walking Tour with Dr. Linda Day

As part of San Francisco’s citywide celebration of International Human Rights Day, TLM offers a special walking tour that surveys Tenderloin sites where everyday people fought for dignity, safety, and the right to exist, visiting such locales as UN Plaza to GLIDE Memorial to the corner of Turk & Taylor Streets. 

Each year on December 10, the world marks International Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As part of a city-wide observance in San Francisco, the Tenderloin Museum presents a walking tour that explores our district’s rich history of people fighting for and honoring their human rights, as well as our location’s physical connection to the United Nations and the origins of International Human Rights Day. 

Led by Dr. Linda Day, professor emerita of urban planning and seasoned city guide, the walking tour begins in United Nations Plaza, the public space at the convergence of San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood and its stately Civic Center. The plaza commemorates the 1945 signing of the UN Charter in SF, and the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is literally enshrined into the plaza’s built environment. Yet, mere blocks away in the edgy urban enclave of the Tenderloin, working people and those on society’s margins have fought (and continue to struggle) against threats to their human rights like poverty and discrimination. 

The Human Rights History Tenderloin Walking Tour telescopes between UN Plaza as a monument to a worldwide notion of human rights and the many struggles for those human rights in the specific locality of UN Plaza and the Tenderloin. The tour will cover:

• The 1977 Section 504 sit-in, during which disabled activists occupied SF’s Federal Building for 26 days, which won the first federal civil rights protections for people with disabilities.

• The ARC/AIDS Vigil, which kept watch at UN Plaza for a decade, demanding care and attention for people the government was content to ignore.

• The Ambassador Hotel, with its heroic ad-hoc network of mutual aid, community healthcare and hospice during the AIDS epidemic. 

• The 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, at which transgender women and queer youth stood up against harassment and discrimination by police and 

• GLIDE Memorial Church, Cecil Williams, the organization's prominent role in the Civil Rights Movement, and its daily struggle against systemic poverty. 

This walking tour is presented as part of a week-long, city-wide celebration of International Human Rights Day organized by the San Francisco and the Heising-Simons Foundation. In addition, TLM presents a special matinee (4pm) of The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot on following the Human Rights History Tenderloin Walking Tour.