How has life in the Bay Area changed over the last 20 years? These stories straight from our Bay City News archives capture news of the day from 5, 10, and 20 years ago – as originally published at the time. Explore these history snapshots and ponder how today’s news compares to that of years past.
JUNE 19, 2021
Juneteenth’s federal recognition continues to shape how local institutions discuss history, civic memory and racial justice. The Bay Area observances marked the first days of a national holiday rooted in a much longer community tradition.
Bay City News Reported:
“Bay Area Officials Honor History Behind New Juneteenth Holiday”
Commemoration of the newest federal holiday began on Friday across the Bay Area, grew on Saturday and will continue on Monday with planned closings at government offices.
June 19 became a federal holiday on Thursday, when President Joe Biden signed a bill that Congress passed earlier in the week.
It celebrates the day in 1865 that African Americans in Galveston, Texas, finally learned that President Abraham Lincoln had declared them free two years earlier.
“Today, it is unconscionable to think this happened,” said state Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa). “And, like a lot of African American history, including the Tulsa Race Massacre a half-century later, it remains largely unrecognized outside the African American community.”
On Friday, a two-year art installation was unveiled in Golden Gate Park honoring the first enslaved people brought to the American colonies, in 1619. And a variety of events in East Palo Alto, Redwood City and Menlo Park honored the historical day.
In Richmond starting at 10 a.m. Saturday, a caravan of decorated vehicles processed to Kennedy High School for a rally and educational program to honor both the holiday and African American members of the class of 2021.
In San Francisco on Saturday, Mayor London Breed called the anniversary a “monumental day.”
“Growing up as a Black woman in the Fillmore, Juneteenth has always been a special day for me,” Breed said in a statement. “I remember cowboys riding their horses through crowds of performers, both young and old, re-enacting the emancipation of our ancestors…. Juneteenth is not just a reminder of our history of being enslaved and our prolonged struggle for equality; it’s a celebration of the contributions Black San Franciscans have made to the City we all love.”
And in Berkeley, officials announced that in recognition of Juneteenth, most city services, including summer programs for youth, will not be offered on Monday.
JUNE 19, 2016
Intercity rail remains part of the larger push to give Californians practical alternatives to driving. The added Oakland-to-Bakersfield service showed how incremental schedule changes can expand regional mobility.
Bay City News reported:
“Amtrak Adds Daily Roundtrip Service Between Oakland And Bakersfield“
Amtrak officials announced an additional roundtrip train service between Oakland’s Jack London Square and Bakersfield will be added Monday, making it Amtrak San Joaquin’s seventh daily roundtrip service.
The service is intended to make travel between the Bay Area and the San Joaquin Valley more convenient for passengers, according to Amtrak officials.
With a growing population and increased congestion on roadways, it was a critical investment to add the seventh trip in their transportation system, Amtrak officials said.
Transportation and Oakland city officials are expected to hold a news conference Monday at the Jack London Square station, located at 245 Second St., at 10 a.m. to discuss the new service.
JUNE 19, 2006
Federal abortion litigation continues to reverberate through California courts, health providers and national politics. The San Francisco case shows how Bay Area lawsuits have repeatedly entered the country’s central constitutional debates.
Bay City News reported:
“Supreme Court Takes Abortion Law Case From San Francisco“
The U.S. Supreme Court announced today it will add an abortion case originating in San Francisco to another case from Nebraska that it is already reviewing.
Both cases are challenges to a federal law known as the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. The high court is expected to hold hearings on the two cases after its next term begins in October.
In both cases, federal district judges struck down the law and federal appeals courts upheld those rulings.
The San Francisco case has broader issues, however.
In the first case, a federal trial judge in Nebraska and an appeals court in St. Louis based their rulings on the fact that the law lacks an exception to protect a woman’s health.
In the San Francisco case, U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton ruled last year that the law is unconstitutional for that reason and also for two other reasons.
The other grounds are that the law imposed a burden on women’s right to have an abortion in the time before a fetus is viable and was unconstitutionally vague.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed with all three reasons in a decision issued in January.
The high court will hear the Justice Department’s appeals of the two appellate court rulings.
San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said, “We are gratified by the high court’s grant of review in the 9th Circuit case. Together with Planned Parenthood, we’re convinced that our case more fully implicates the important issues underpinning a woman’s right to reproductive choice.”
The law made it a crime for a doctor to perform a type of abortion in which a fetus is partially delivered intact and then killed.
Supporters of the law say the procedure is a gruesome late-term measure that is never medically necessary except to save a woman’s life. Critics of the law contend it would also ban the most commonly used method for second trimester abortions before a fetus is viable.
Eve Gartner, a senior staff attorney for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said, “This abortion ban would forbid doctors to provide their patients with the care they believe is safest and best, and would give Congress and states a green light to endanger women’s health when they restrict women’s access to abortion.”
The San Francisco challenge to the law was filed in the fall of 2003 by Planned Parenthood. The city of San Francisco later joined the case on behalf of the city’s Department of Public Health and its employees and providers.
The law never went into effect because it was blocked by trial judges until the challenges were resolved.
Lawyers at the American Center for Law and Justice in Washington D.C. said they were pleased the court decided to hear the second case.
Jay Sekulow, the chief counsel of the center, said “By taking a second case involving the constitutionality of the national ban on partial-birth abortion, the Supreme Court puts the spotlight on one of the most horrific medical procedures in existence today.”
The center filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Nebraska case representing members of Congress who supported the law. Sekulow said the group will now file a similar friend-of-the-court brief in the San Francisco case accepted by the high court.
Editor’s Note: All the reporting, writing, and editing of this content was done by human journalists at the time of initial publication. AI tools were used to surface these stories from our internal Bay City News archives and provide the introductory context.