I call “Hogwash” on the headline of the Journal’s opinion page that reads “Segregated San Francisco.” I also was born in San Francisco. I lived in the Geneva-Mission district, not far from the author of that piece, Michael Corrigan. But, unlike professor Corrigan, I went to public school and did not experience racism or “segregation.”

Definition of segregation is the enforced separation of different racial groups in a country or community.

A little history: My great-great-grandmother immigrated to San Francisco before California became a state in 1850. The Gold Rush was in 1849 and the Civil War began in 1861. San Francisco was bustling with prosperity and vision. Discrimination was not in the hearts of the people of San Francisco. My childhood was filled with stories of the history of the city and none included racism or segregation. Selma might as well have been on the moon, even in the 1960s. So why a story of segregation in San Francisco?

I believe Mr. Corrigan’s experience is attributed to the fact that he attended a fancy, private Catholic boys school and Blacks weren’t Catholic. But neither were Jews or Russians or Koreans or the Chinese. It’s ridiculous to treat San Francisco’s cultural diversity as segregation.

San Francisco was more like a combination pizza. If you ever visited San Francisco, you’d be familiar with Japantown, where you could eat and speak Japanese. It was near the Korean area just west of Russian Hill. North Beach was Italian, and there was a Catholic church on every corner. Mormons settled San Francisco before the Gold Rush and gave their hills to the Chinese settlers. Their children attended private Chinese schools and even today the street signs are in Chinese (and no one calls it segregation).

Saying there was segregation is like diminishing a mushroom because it shares a spot on the pizza with a bell pepper. You may not like mushrooms, but that doesn’t make the mushroom less valuable. I digress.

I worked at the telephone company from 1963-1966. I rode public transportation for three years with Catholics and Blacks and Chinese and gays from the Polk Street district, and I promise you, no one cared a hoot about your sexual preference, religion, race or language. It was a city where being ordinary was strange, and it had to be the least racist place on the planet.

But I agree with Mr. Corrigan that by 1968 racism was on the move. So what happened?

The reason for racist turmoil was the same then as it is now. Exactly the same.

It was the violent rise of communist revolutionaries and the apathy and tolerance of normal folks who just wanted to live their lives.

The Weather Underground was percolating, just across the Bay at the University of Berkeley. They were burning banks, attacking police, setting cars and buildings on fire and fomenting hate (sound familiar?). Patty Hearst was kidnapped at UC Berkeley, the Vietnam War was raging and my schoolmates were being drafted into a war they didn’t understand. Berkeley was simmering with Marxists that spawned the hate and disrespect shown to our brothers and sons returning from war. And thus began the terror and Anti-American hatred seen in cities all over America, both then and now.

The following is promo from a documentary called “The Weather Underground: America’s Most Notorious Revolutionaries.”

“In October 1969, hundreds of young people wielding lead pipes and clad in football helmets marched through an upscale Chicago shopping district, pummeling parked cars and smashing shop windows.” Sound familiar? Thus began the “Days of Rage” of the Weathermen, later known as the Weather Underground. Outraged by the Vietnam War, these student radicals proclaimed a Declaration of War against the United States Government as they bombed the Capitol building, the Pentagon and U.S. banks, finally evading one of the largest FBI manhunts in history.

I remember the names of Bernadine Dohrn, Angela Davis and Bill Ayers. The group was classified as domestic terrorists and they were allegedly responsible for murders, pillaging, bombings and destruction. They supported the Cuban revolution and Communist revolutionaries and when asked, Bill Ayers said his “only regret was they had not done enough.”

They inspired the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation movement and advocated for the overthrowing of the United States. After one particularly destructive explosion, police found 57 sticks of dynamite, four completed bombs, detonators, timing devices, and other bomb-making equipment.

In Chicago, they planted a bomb that blew up a statue commemorating the deaths of police officers, and in 1970 they accidentally detonated a bomb in Greenwich Village, killing three of their own members. That bomb was designed to kill Army soldiers and officers attending a dance and another to randomly kill people in a Columbia University library.

They spent their lives building a communist organization to further the causes of Marx and Lenin and proudly praised the Charles Manson murder of eight-month pregnant Sharon Tate and her household.

If you weren’t previously familiar with the Weather Underground you might be thinking they spent their lives in jail or in hiding, but not so. Bernadine Dohrn was caught, tried, convicted and dismissed on technicalities several times and managed to make the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list. But regardless of the bombings, murder or destruction eventually each of the group’s leaders went on to be university professors who taught other university professors who taught teachers who taught the students you see today on the streets of Portland, Seattle and Chicago. Their goals have not changed. They live today to hate America and have brought their hatred and racism with them into the 21st century.

But that’s not all. This same group including Dohrn, Davis and Bill Ayers went on to be good friends of Barack Obama, influencing his eight years in office. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Obvama remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers like Obama and radical educational activists.

San Francisco was not a segregated city. It was the best of places to live. The streets were safe, our neighborhoods small. We didn’t meld because most San Franciscans were first- or second-generation immigrants and comfortable with neighbors who lived, ate and spoke their language. There was no racism and no hate until the universities spread it with the likes of the Weathermen and directly or indirectly through our universities continue to spread the same lies, hatred and discontentment today.

Remind me to tell you about my experience with Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver.

Lynda Eggimann is a fifth-generation San Franciscan, living in the city until 1967 when she spent 2 years in South Korea. For 30 years she and her husband Max owned a Swiss Bakery in Northern California and often were able to travel to Europe to visit Max’s family. In 2006 Lynda founded Sube International to build low-income housing in Peru. They moved to Pocatello in 2001 to be near their 5 grandchildren.