Article: Discrimination, S.F. style, hit Mays

ANNIVERSARIES are not always pleasant. Fifty years ago Wednesday, the San Francisco Chronicle ran this headline: "Willie Mays is refused S.F. House -- Negro."

The racial term is now unacceptable. Half a century ago, in a city called one of the most liberal, diverse and open-minded in America, a great baseball player found himself unacceptable.

"It was a very conservative place in those days," Gary Shemano said of his hometown.

Shemano is 62, an investment executive, a golf champion. His late father, Jake, a banker, became in Mays' words "the best friend I have in the world."

Throughout the summer of 1957, the move of the New York Giants to San Francisco and the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los ...

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