Stacey Carter, a 55-year-old multimedia artist, has been collecting documents, photographs and artifacts from the Hunters Point Shipyard for more than 20 years.
Her new exhibit, “Decommissioned,” opens to the public on Saturday at the Shipyard Gallery in Building 101 of the Hunters Point Shipyard, and will be open on select summer Saturdays.
The photographs and memorabilia are the culmination of a lifetime’s work that began after moving to San Francisco following her graduation from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Pennsylvania.
She got a studio at the Hunters Point Shipyard in 1998 and subsequently became interested in the dilapidated, hulking World War II-era structures surrounding her workplace, first painting them and then searching for answers to their history. Up until five years ago, she believed no one else cared about that history.
And then, in 2021, the journalists Chris Roberts and Rebecca Bowe, who were writing about human radiation experiments in the Hunters Point Shipyard, heard about Carter. “They needed help researching,” she said. For Carter, it was a dream come true.
“Before, it was like, I’m starving and I don’t know how to make money,” she said. “But I’m staying up all night reading this history that nobody cares about.”
Early on, Carter discovered that documents relating to the Hunters Point Shipyard were held at the National Archives in San Bruno, about 12 miles south of San Francisco. She credits an archivist named Aaron Seltzer for guiding her research on the shipyard.
“Stacey has an intimidating depth and breadth of knowledge about the shipyard,” said Roberts, noting that Carter never failed to find hidden gems about the shipyard in archives or on the internet.
“I can’t tell you how useful it was to have someone who thought about the shipyard and radiation lab as much as I did,” he said.
Carter said some of her best work and research came from a collaboration with fellow shipyard artist William Rhodes. The two created quilts along with Bayview senior residents. The quilts are based on interviews with Black residents of Bayview Hunters-Point. It’s a perspective, she said, often ignored or forgotten in San Francisco.
“We did interviews with them, and the light bulbs were going off,” she said. “I’ve got pictures of this. I can back up what they were saying.”
Carter’s eyes began to tear up as she recalled an interview with someone whose father worked as a rigger in the shipyard. He described the shipyard as a dump, and Carter had the archival research that confirmed that description.
“I looked at this annual report for the Radiological Defense Lab,” she said. The Hunters Point Shipyard was “literally the West Coast radioactive waste disposal facility.” Carter said institutions from across the Bay Area sent their toxic waste to the Hunters Point shipyard.
Carter said it was amazing to back up the oral testimony of Black seniors with physical evidence.
“Everybody matters, you know,” she said, adding that it was a privilege to work with the Black community of Bayview-Hunters Point.
The exhibit covers the beginning of the neighborhood, when the Hunter family first arrived from New York in 1848. Phillip and Robert Hunter were real estate developers who were hired by wealthy landowners to develop Hunters Point.
The isolation of the area from the rest of the city during the Gold Rush era made the land undesirable at the time. Although the real estate development failed, the Hunters remained in the area and raised their families there. The neighborhood was named Hunters Point to commemorate the first settlers of the area.
A large section of the exhibit covers the World War II era, when the Hunters Point Navy Shipyard employed 18,000 people.
It is an exhibit rich with American history, including letters written by Black shipyard workers to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that documented employment discrimination in the shipyard. This constituted a direct violation of Executive Order 8802, which prohibited employment discrimination in defense industries.
She said she bought most of the artifacts on display on eBay: Hard hats worn by shipyard workers, awards to foremen, and even tools used at the time to service ships. Occasionally, a free pile at the Shipyard springs up.
The exhibit will be open to the public seven Saturdays during the summer starting June 14. Journalist Chris Roberts is scheduled to speak at 2 p.m. on July 12.
Hello,Mr.Velazquez my father worked at Hunters Point Shipyard.I remember many things he told me about it.I would like to talk to you about it.Could you call me at 916 670 3574. Thank you. Robert Martin